I just got tired every week it was who is in the nwo who is out guys bouncing back and forth then the whole group splits and it never got to a point. There wasn’t a beginning middle and end. Just doing the same shit week to week over and over for years. Then Russo comes in and everything just breaks down into nonsensical insanity where nothing made sense. Swerve bro.
I never watched wcw but did read the book of the unaliving of WCW and it the nwo stable does not make sense. And the variety of members was extremely bizarre.
@@JohnKobaRuddy The NWO made sense at first, but that changed when they started to just add a ton of people for no reason at all. Had the NWO been made up of just former WWF guys the angle could have been perfectly logical, especially if they had kept signing WWF talent and adding them to the NWO. This would have allowed them to really build on the "invasion" that started with The Outsiders, and keep the warring factions of WCW vs NWO fresh (and more importantly coherent) for a much longer period of time.
There’s a lot of parallels between Bischoff and Tony Kahn. Not understanding the industry, relying on the wrong wrestlers for advice, throwing around somebody else’s money at will. Paying out more money than bringing in.
The difference is that Bischoff is actually good at something, as Jim and Brian have admitted. Tony has yet to reveal himself to be good at anything aside from collecting his inheritance.
For all that they say Bischoff did to kill WCW, I don't think WCW made it as long as it did without him. Yeah he was using Turner's money, but so did others before him & did worse.
@@dzig228 People act like WCW was the only department to use Turner's money. The Atlanta Falcons survived on Turner money, for nearly 2 decades. The right's to the NBA went in the red a few times too. Also, Warner Bros and the Cartoon Network were hemorrhaging money.
Eric's television personality was like an actor playing a politician. And I loved (to hate) it. He is polite and well spoken in perosn but he's definitely a bit of a slimebag so it worked so naturally for him, just like Jim being an obnocious rich southern boy. Art imitating life a bit. 😂
Jim speaking fire 🔥. I didn't get cable in NY until my mom got it in 1990. I had to depend on a friend to give me WCW updates prior to that. Nobody cared about WWF we wanted the REAL wrestling in the late 80s which was the southern wrestling of WCW/NWA
Good or bad it would have gone under , if it was a top rated show it would have simply sold for higher but the same thing would’ve happened , THEY NO LONGER WABTED TO DEAL WITH WRESTLING , the bad booking was just cosmetic to the story
Re: bankruptcy & financial problems. Guys like Bischoff have a tendency to live beyond their means, to sell the image and use that to make money off others. It's usually a dance along the edge; and, if it goes south, they fall over the edge quickly and land hard.
I think this channel is behind the times and unaware for RU-vid strategies. It's more lucrative to release the full podcast ASAP and then put out clips. Not wait 2 weeks to release them. Maybe release a few clips right before it comes out. They're just losing money and making it inconvenient to the consumer
Corny is way off on this... He has no idea how the aol tome warner merger changed everything. The WCW he describes was gone by the time bischoff really had control. Bischoff gradually gained full control. At first he was just in charge of the TV side (his strength)
Love hearing Jim put over Eric Bischoff as a personality. Sure as a booker was the shits, but really enjoyed his on screen run, especially in WWE once hed matured and figured things out
With the WCW it was bad hires in the office , because the office deals with story line and promotions and advertising, you can't spend more than you gross for long , this type of (wrestling) is a sell asses in seats and PPV buys , that's why it failed
@@sionrouge1697 Spoiler alert, only keep reading if you don't mind spoilers, but WCW is out of business. Sorry to be the one to have to tell you this. Hopefully you took it better than that time your parents had to sit you down and explain Santa. That must have been a rough 17th birthday.
@@kidcoyoteanarchy let these guys talk. Shad Khan gets 400milnin tv rights for owning the jags. He has more money than Vince and Ari. These guys talk and talk and don't known what they're talking about
I thoroughly enjoyed WCW - I was a teen back then. Wrestling being fake was always a topic but Bischof's talentless son made it very obvious how fake wrestling actually was. Little Garrett had no business being in the ring, yet he wins a title AND you tell me he's the boss guy's son. Who didn't connect the dots then?
At this point, if AEW "dies" (Tony gives up), if there's a multi-episide program about how it died, no one will give a shit. THAT'S why the neckbeards want so badly to bless every "dream match" as the new Rock vs Austin because they know they're not going in that direction and time is ticking.
@@SSJ4Omega because WCW was atleast entertaining. AEW is just off in the weeds half the time. Even TNA announcers remember to say the participants' names 3 times. Tony can go an entire match without naming anyone correctly.
All this series is doing for me is reassuring my belief that Jamie Kellner killed WCW, not Russo or Hogan or Nash or Bischoff. Kellner basically dumped all the losses of the other Turner departments on WCW, while also blaming it for the decline of Turner-Time Warner. Kellner to me will always be a doofus, as he was the key that helped establish one of the worst corporate mergers in America.
I'll take anything Russo did in WCW over everything WCW was from the Fingerpoke of Doom in January 1999-Halloween Havoc 99. I forced myself to watch all of those episodes of everything WCW in 1999 and my god, it's a slog. At least the things Russo did were entertaining in the absurdity of it. 1999 WCW is just flat out boring.
Double M was a funny heal commentator. Mark getting involved physically and having a feud with Mean Gene was an abomination but he wasn’t the one booking it.
@@OffSumThraxx unfortunately I saw it. That was RIGHT before they turned him into a 70’s hippie. I already had one foot out the door when they turned him into “The Fat Chick Thrilla” tho 🤦🏾♂️
I think a lot of fans who were open to watch both WWF and WCW have a story like that when they quit watching WCW. For me I never fully stopped but quit watching every week when David Flair was on all the fucking time
I just saw a commercial about this.Vince Russo,said he was better than 80% of the roster.This guy was and still is a joke.He will always be the pimple on the ass of wrestling.
Has anyone mentioned Bob Pittman, Steve Case, Gerald Levin, and Dick Parsons about how they dissolved Turner Sports and deliberately manipulated Ted Turner out of control of his own corporation?
@kidcoyoteanarchy Right!! Reading the books published by Nina Munk and Alex Klein opens up the strategic manipulation that AOL used to get the Time Warner execs on board with the merger. Very informative and educational, by the way.
"You see I've waited a long time to say this to you Eric Bischoff! But in case you don't notice it's not Paul Heyman with his tail between his legs going to a WCW PPV" - Paul Heyman
Nope. Not at all. Geeez man. The network never wanted to lose WCW. The fans gave up on WCW and new acquiring entity did not want to handle all the red ink on the balance sheet. Nothing whatsoever to do with "the network giving up on it" 😂
Vince McMahon wasn't "competitive." He flat out sabotaged Crockett with his indirect ban of Starrcade. Vinnie Mac deserves everything he gets and then some.
Vince is a pretty lousy person but on his of atrocities, screwing Starrcade doesn’t even make the top 10. The territory system people despise him for destroying was effectively a cartel. They were every bit as petty and aggressive towards the “outlaw” promotions or independents as they’re known today. They were all cutthroats, Vince was just better at it. And if the stories about Moolah are true, then Vince wasn’t the only promoter with skeletons in the closet.
Regarding Bischoff not knowing the business, what does Jim think of the fact that both bischoff and Russo(with help from Al Snow) are posting a video every other day about how Tony Khan is the biggest idiot ever in wrestling?
@@arthurdaffos1490 yeah I'm just wondering how Jim feels about it. I'd bet anything they are only doing it because they are some of the few WCW era guys tony is not throwing money to and they see Jim's views are through the roof.
Ud think it b scary that cornette bishoff Russo Nash snow all agree on something but this is aew we r talking about. Only thing worse than the TV r the crazy fans trying to say aew is the greatest thing since sliced bread
Bischoff has always said he wasn't a wrestling mind and never looked at WCW as a touring wrestling promotion but instead a TV show. Even now on his podcast, he admits he let the wrestling minds (Flair, Dusty, Sullivan etc) take care of the booking and he'd do the production side.
@@stuartoreilly2019 He says alot of things. Sullivan was a good choice though. It's hard to find a booker that doesn't just takeover, or book himself in like a thousand main events
Detroit didn't get Cable until 1984 or 85. They used to have ON TV. WXON Channel 20 would go off the air at 8:pm. You needed to subscribe to the monthly service or buy a decoder box illegally to watch the movies, sports and adult entertainment that aired after 8 every night.
I just feel like this show was rushed. It just jumped to 1995 in the first episode. It completely skipped the rise and fall of Jim Crockett Promotions and the NWA, the Birth of WCW in the late 80’s’, and the dark days of WCW in the early 90’s.
There’s probably some truth in Eric’s statement. Around that time, he was working for AWA, and Eric admitted that he wasn’t getting paid well at that time so he was struggling financially. I’m sure that he didn’t have cable if he was financially struggling.
Just read Eric’s book. He was doing a good job until the Turner executives pulled the rug out from underneath him. Even Turner himself lost control over his own stations at some point.
At the time all the business shows and magazines talked about how ted was forced out of his own company what happened was bigger than wrestling and wcw was just collateral damage.
@@PJBlick mismanaging Bret. Bret was my favorite since kindergarten and when Bret turned heel after Austin, spring of my 4th grade year, Bret's mic skills peaked and his in ring attitude was gritty and Vince gave that heel spot to Shawn and Shawn wanted Bret out and Vince wanted to cut costs so he let Bret go, Montreal happened and then WCW mismanages the hot free agent they poached it shows how horrible the operation was.
At its worst WCW was still pulling about 2 million in the ratings. Still better than anything AEW does now. WCW was gonna be worthless without a TV deal.
The NWO obviously was a really effective storyline. But it had a shelf life. You always have to have new, fresh ideas. Bischoff became so obsessed with that storyline that he neglected the rest of his highly talented roster. The midcard and cruiserweight division got buried so that when the NWO did become stale, he had nothing to turn to. Also, continuity from the beginning was nonexistent. You’d have random matches from week to week and storylines would just die. That happened in WWF too, but Vince did it because he saw that it wasn’t going anywhere and pivoted to something that worked. By the time Bret Hart was properly utilized, he was basically just another guy. He wasn’t seen as main event material. If you don’t book a top talent correctly, that can happen. The NWO drew money. For a little while. But you have to have something else on the go constantly and something for everyone to do that keeps them relevant.
We all knew Bischoff didn't know what the hell he was doing but Jim be talking like he would've done much better. How many failing companies how you played a part in.....a few. You've failed at booking as well, but excelled at being a manager. You're good at knowing the business but you can't run a successful company yourself.
Why does Corny never bring up when he did the table for 3 show on the network with bischoff and Michael Hayes when he tells the story that he's so proud of that he almost blows his load every time he tells it about wiping the booger on Eric's car. And found out that he was the stooge being played by another stooge?
Because he really had or has no reason to hate Bischoff tbh. He only hates him because of what Ole said or Greg Gagne has said,I fuck with Jim but he really just makes up reason why he hates Eric…now its his bankruptcies and he wasnt a big enough wrestling fan
I swear he brought that exact story up not that long ago. I think it was on the podcast after Ole Anderson died. Also speaking from experience, I think being the stooge of a stooge is still enough reason not to like someone. Objectively I know the store manager of my former workplace has no real authority to change what I hated about my time working there but he was the direct authority above me, that was being very uncommunicative and requesting I work through holidays and so on. Sure he's making his life easier by not bucking the system and covering his own arse and I got that but knowing that, didn't make my life any easier, nor did it make me like him any more.
A warning for what ? The warning should be to WWE. Bigger doesn't mean better. Tony can keep doing what He's doing and doesn't have to answer to anybody. When the feds are done with Vince the wwe house of cards will fall. Multiple wwe indictments are coming. The feds have a 97% conviction rate
@@sionrouge1697"doesn't have to answer to anyone" isn't always good. You gotta have some filter or hierarchy so your talent isn't essentially running your promotion which is what we've seen in AEW. WWE at least has structure, if you wanna keep hanging your hat on Vince's crimes that's fine but WWE is separate from that now especially with the new regime in charge. And bigger does mean better, actually. WWE is making money hand over fist from the Endeavor merger, Netflix deal, sold out buildings and sponsorship deals. The content or creative is shit but they're raking in so much money and getting more eyes back on the product. AEW has been in the red for 5 years.
Alot of people talking about what killed wcw but you wanna know what didn't kill wcw? Those awesome themes that were just bootlegs of major radio hits of the time.
I just watched the second episode of this series, and it made me a lot more sympathetic towards Bischoff. Dude had to deal with execs rooting against the show on top of all the wrestlers's egos and demands. Anyone would go off the rails in that environment.
Wahoo, VonRashke, Zuhmoff, Gagne. Enos and Bloom are the only ones that did anything (The Beverly Brothers) that I recall. That's about a 2:30 clip...with an ad promo
@@maceomaceo11 zuhmoff went to the slammer Gagne looked like peanut vendor at a baseball game. Raschke was built like a ostrich wahoo by that point was old.enos was in the Beverly Brothers I think.
Absolutely loved WCW from 1996-1998. Unfortunately by the time 1999 rolled around, Hogan, Nash, Hall, Macho Man were overexposed and nobody wanted to see them anymore. People were ready for young guys like Benoit, Jericho and others to be elevated but never came about and hence the decline started. Eric bischoff is truly the master of pro wrestling.
To get Nash and Hall WCW cut Austin Foley HHH Ron Simmons (Farooq) Jim Ross That's essentially everyone that killed them. They had in 2000 AJ Styles Batista R Truth That's the next wave. WCW killed itself.
98 had some baaaaaad stuff Fall Brawl and World War 3 were 2 of the worst PPVs ever Hogan, Piper, Savage, Nash, Luger stinking the main events up REALLY over midcarders (Booker, Raven, Jericho, Eddie, Benoit) not getting any bigtime push
I'm not trolling when asking this. What is the love for WCW? I never watched it. In the UK. It was only seen as a 2nd rate show and only shown late night on a random night. I found a series called Reliving the War. I thought I would give it a try. We are now 3 weeks away from Ruffo turning up at WCW and I still have no idea why the love. The NWO unveil was good but then that was it's highest point. It seem to run on hope more than any substance. The 1st promo on Nitro was a babyface Hogan trying to be heel. Nearly every main event match from then on was a - Run in DQ finish. I FULLY understand that people wanted away from WWF 95 to early 97. WCW growth seems it was built on hope but ended up just being a let down. WWE turned into what WCW fans thought it was going to be like when the NWO took off. Each bad story just opened peoples eyes and they just started switching off bit by bit.
@@fingersTitan Hogan still had some fans. Savage/Flair pre-NWO was a rather hot program. NWO set things on fire with a brilliant story. Cruiserweights and new faces kept it interesting, a good mixture from early 96 to maybe fall 98. DDP and Goldberg drew money, guest stars like Rodman, Malone, Leno kept them afloat for a while too
@@smarkslowplay3512 but why was the NWO popular? Hogan couldn't cut a promo and half the rubbish he kept spouting was random, made no sense and that happened very early on. He only worked X amount of matches from that moment and got them out of the way in the first half of each year and didn't wrestle for the next 6 months. Nash and Hall were good but badly written on all fronts. Nash did work but not as much as you think. Hall worked a lot of matches. He were 2 or 3 times the total matches of Hogan and Nash combined at the split. DDP was great for a short time and as soon as he hit the top. They messed it up. Goldberg is the same. The run was good but the end was WCW. Yet again. If they pushed the Cruisers more. That would of been better. That is why Eddie, Chris and co jumped. Great talent used wrong. I honestly do not get it. Sorry.
This is why I knew the documentary wouldn't be an accurate one. It was produced by a wrestler, who didn't really care about wrestling until he was in it. Till then he just knew his dad was a wrestler. So he just uses the WWE talking points of what happened with WCW
@@sionrouge1697 They were different characters yeah, But still of the top 7 guys in WWF from 1998 - 2001 4 of them came from WCW at a point in time. Austin, Taker, Foley and HHH. only Rock, Angle and Kane weren't there. But when in WCW none f them were the same level of star WWF made them into. Cactus jack in WCW never would have made it the way mankind blew up in the attitude era. Stunning Steve never would have taken off the way Stone cold did. Mean mark would never have even hoped to live up to The Undertaker. And Jean paul levesque never could have hoped to be what Triple H was. While at a point WCW thrived in that mid to late 90s. Ultimately yeah WWE is where stars are made in pro wrestling outside of some years in the old NWA.
@@sionrouge1697That was a very bad comparison lol. A WR and a QB have two completely different skillsets and responsibilities. In wrestling every wrestler has the same goal which is to get over
I think a point people don't understand or just don't know is even if you had cable, that didn't mean you had TBS. I grew up in the Albany, NY area and we didn't get TBS on our cable systems till Summer 1995. The only way I saw WCW was 2am early Sunday mornings on WSBK 38 out of Boston, MA which was a superstation along with WPIX 11 in NY.
I would argue that Bischoff actually picked up a lot of wrestling knowledge. He definitely knows a lot about wrestling at this point, maybe not early on though.
Bischoff has openly admitted that he's great at making money, but not good at keeping it. He's just one of those higher risk entrepreneurial guys. Wins some and loses some.
Eric Bischoff is a snakes oil salesman but I trust his account of what went on the corporate side of things because nobody else was there or a least anybody from the wrestling podcast community and with all due respect that includes Jim and Brian's opinion. Edit: Jim admittedly was running smw, then working for WWE, and then ovw at the time, so he wasn't paying attention to wcw. And Brian last is a little bit older than I am so he was in high school or early twenties at the time.
The reason wcw in the early days gets often glossed over is nobody outside of nwa die hards saw wcw as competition to Vince...So the WCW story is often told as...when Eric took over...And I'm a nwa guy from the late 70s. .watching Georgia Championship Wrestling.
@@RobertoTheOriginalManFromTheA Basically the wheels started coming after Halloween Havoc '89. It was bad before that, but as a fan, we didn't know that
The answer to the question “who killed WCW?” isn’t a mystery anymore. It was answered in the first episode the moment Dick Cheetum explained that he was told in no uncertain terms by aol/time warner that being seen as in anyway pro WCW would be “career suicide” Bad creative (at least in comparison to WWF at the time) and profit deficits were like handing time warner the gun to shoot them with, but TW eventually would have found it themselves regardless.
Love Jim but I hate when he twists the truth to bash who he doesnt like. Everybody in wrestling was a con artist and bullshitter,Bischoff just had a look and suaveness that Turner wouldn’t have seen in Jim Ross,Bill Watts or even Jim himself. I also have my critiques of Bischoff but acting like just because he wasnt a life long,die hard fan of wrestling made him any less successful is just nit picky and stupid.
What killed wcw was the inability to move onto younger talent. Had such great young wrestlers they could have pushed. Very vince like in the early 90s being unable to move on from the older generation for guys like bret, scsa, rock. Vince got very lucky wcw took hogan and shawn losing his smile opened the door for the young talent
Bischoff is a snake but goddamn is he a smooth operator. Seriously, if you could give Corny 2% of Eric’s slick talking and ability to hold his temper, he’d have conquered the wrestling business.
I havent seen this series just yet, but they should have done it chronologically. First episode be about Jim Herd, the second about Bischoff, and the third be about Russo and the end of official WCW. From a story standpoint, I feel like that would make the most sense.
If you can find a copy, read The Death of WCW. It's written by WrestleCrap founder R.D. Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez, and published by ECW Press. It's worth the effort because they really go into detail and they also inject irreverent humor into the whole saga.
It isn't complicated. WCW didn't make new stars, the older guys like Hogan had too much pull and say, and they lost money with a company that didn't tolerate it
When sh1t stain (Russo) got rehired in 2002 by WWE, he wanted to rehash the invasion storyline with wcw guys who missed the invasion as they decided to sit out their contracts with Time Warner. Russo was let go 2 days later.
@DBecks09 "nobody needed the nwo in 2002" - yet when they debut at No way put that year. They got the biggest reaction that night. You revisionist marks are something else
@DBecks09 "nobody needed the nwo in 2002" - yet when they debut at No way put that year. They got the biggest reaction that night. You revisionist marks are something else
@@louio Yes you're right I exaggerated a bit. But they were old, especially Hall was struggling. So there was differently a case to do something with the fresher guys like Goldberg and Steiner. And then imagine they finally manage to convince Sting with it. (of course Steiner's injury would have ruined it for him as well unfortunately)
Crazy that both Ted Turner and Vince McMahon were essentially tricked & played out of their companies. That era of ambitious businessmen is officially dead and gone.
No shade because I love Jim and an a long time Cult member but you let Jim Herd run you off. Jim Ross and Ric Flair left when they couldnt take it…you cant hate on Bischoff because he was a better salesman or bullshitter to get the position he got.
You know more and more I'm realizing somebody really should do a "Groucho Marx" gimmick. No skill or talent just a really good con man 😂 Manager, valet, or wrestler, could be a whole stable really. Might be the most wrestling thing that could be done.
