Once Ted Turner lost control of Turner Broadcasting, which owned WCW, it was all over. Time Warner didn’t want anything to do with wrestling. And given what the product had become, who can blame them? If Turner still had control, the company would have lasted at least a few more years and maybe dug themselves out of their hole with the right management. I would have been interested to see how Cornette would have faired running WCW with their budget. I don’t know that Jim is equipped for a modern, 21st century, national presentation, but at least the booking would have been better. Even when they folded WCW still had an audience and their ratings were better than WWE’s today. A lot of damage had been done to the promotion’s reputation, but I still think if they got the right person in charge, they still had the infrastructure and it was still early enough that the fans they’d lost might have come back if they improved things. They still had a half decent young roster. They would have had to fire Hogan, though. He was holding everyone back.
I agree WCW had. WWFs number 96 through mid 98…but after Goldberg lost the title and they gave the belt back to Hogan for the umteenth time I turned away and never looked back and many others did as well. 1999 and forward WWE ran wrestling with the rise and popularity of the Rock Stone Cold Mankind Triple H etc
I miss WCW. And the Monday Night war between WCW and the WWF. Once WCW ended, the WWF gradually starting going down. Wrestling continues to exist now. But it never be like it was during the late 1990s.
Really wished WCW had been saved and had better/smarter booking the sad part is it was actually getting slightly better when they were focusing on younger talent and had logic booking but as most people say it was too late
Just think if WCW lasted to 2003 they could’ve had the majority of TNA’s roster plus stars that became available like Jerry Lawler, Chyna, RVD, New Age Outlaws, XPAC, Ron Killings, Ken Shamrock, Jeff Hardy, Eddie Guerrero (fired in 01), Steve Blackman. Now imagine with the people I listed if WCW kept Booker T, Steiner brothers, Sting, Flair, Nash and Hall.
It's too bad WCW went out of business because if they was good shape and was able to find A another network. WWF would be in trouble-Austin and Rock would still peace the company as regular performers, the WWF attitude era was gone.
I disagree. Bischoff was an idiot. He only had one good idea and he couldn't even milk that properly. Bisch and Hogan would have killed the new WCW or they would have limped along sadly like TNA has
@@michaelkeller5927 Yeah, Bischoff was such an idiot he took a failing territory and made it the #1 Company in the World, revolutionized the wrestling industry, created the biggest wrestling boom in history and stands to this day as the only person to have bested Vince McMahon in the business... Yeah, what an idiot....
I still think there were too many stupid backstage vignettes. Before 1999, WCW was much more focused on the actual wrestling matches. After early 99, they seemed to care more about those stupid ass skits which had nothing to do with wrestling and often made no sense e.g. wrestlers would say/do things right in front of the camera that were illegal and suffer no real consequences. I hate that shit.
AEW has potential to grow into a big company they need streaming service deal to go with TNT TBS TV deal RU-vid channel WCW ECW WWF what a era those days todays WWE sucks to PG lame stale dule boring I do like get a kick out of AEW ROH TNA these days not sure where TNA is on TV streaming or what these days same with ROH but AEW has potential to be good grow into big company to compete with WWE PG kiddie crap sucks TV 14 TV MA way to go if done right
WCW in 2001 was criminally underrated, it was starting to look promising when Scott Steiner was getting pushed as the biggest heel champion in the company during the time and starting a feud with Booker T, sad that it all abruptly came to an end when Vince McMahon bought WCW.
The way I see it is Nitro and the nwo made WCW a more grown up alternative to wwf prior to the attitude era But the nwo went on and on and on and become boring but the whole company seemed to be built around them By the time of the attitude era was in full swing the wwf had made stars of the previous mid carder's such as stone cold,the rock and HHH. WCW on the other hand were still pushing the nwo and worse, they were trying to copy wwf with hardcore wrestling Had the WCW tried to make new stars earlier like what they were trying to do in the year 2000 things may have turned out differently
Copy wwf with hardcore wrestling? Attitude era?? ECW sound familiar, they were much further ahead of wwf wcw 94-98 just with the presentation&booking of their talent Wwf saturday morning cartoon gimmicks, wcw good wrestling but missing 90s element
They had some building blocks in place for a good solid rebuild in 01. If they continued, they could’ve gotten hot around 02/03 I do disagree with your position on Nash. He was one of the truly credible stars in 01, so he would be perfect for the main event/ world champ
You’re right, IMO. Nash needed to be in the main event at the end because of his credibility, which he maintained in the miasma of 2000. He didn’t need to stay there long term but for a rebuilding promotion you could do so much worse than Nash.
Just think if WCW was around in 2002/2003 they could’ve had what TNA’s roster was plus WWE guys and girls like Jerry Lawler, New Age Outlaws, Ron Killings, Chyna, X-PAC, Ken Shamrock, RVD, Eddie Guerrero again since he was fired in 01 by WWE. This doesn’t even count the good things like Scott Steiner, DDP, Booker T, Hall and Nash.
Would you do a video about North American wrestling after WCW and ECW ended ? The impact it had on WWE and the mainstream,and if it wasn't for them going bust then we wouldn't have had TNA or ROH
I feel like if ECW dies but WCW lives, we still get ROH (or a similar company) but perhaps they end up the victims of talent raids by WCW and find it harder to make their mark. The what if ECW lives is interesting to me. Without WCW driving up wages and giving wrestlers a non-WWF place to work....there'd be a lot of established talent, they could get for cheap and it could secure ECW's future. Then again you assume with no WCW, there'd defintely be a TNA (or a similar promotion) and it could almost be like an old school territory war with 2 essentially regional companies on relatively the same level, stealing talent from each other and trying to run the other out of business so they're the only wrestling company that will hold the mantle of true WWF/E alternative.
10:30 Yeah, but the Invasion angle was a huge dump. Literally the worst that has ever happened to pro wrestling. And I don’t care if they defend it, it was basically the mockery or roasting at the WCW and ECW legacy. It was a poorly made fanfiction on mainstream television.
It’s sad cause the product really started getting better after Russo left but yeah it was definitely too late by then & they had already ran off majority of their fans
As a Hardcore Fan Of Both WWF and WCW For Most Of My Life Looking Back 20 Something Years Later After The Fall Of WCW iT was Bad Management and A Bad Merger That Ended Up Ending WCW, They Had a Great Couple Years With The NwO That Changed The Wrestling Industry But Once That Dried Up It Was All Downhill From There
Don't get why people keep trying to compare late WCW to WWE of today which makes no sense because wrestling overall during that 97-2001 era was on top of the world, took over pop culture you seen wrestling shirts everywhere, created Icons, it'll never be that way again no wrestler has come close to the popularity Austin, nWo, Rock, DX, Sting, RVD, etc had (guess people might throw in Cena idk)....Another note was Russo trying to turn WCW into shock TV like the attitude era which never been their thing...Booker T/Scott Steiner should of been leading the charge with the world title back in early 2000...I thought TNA was gonna be the WCW 2.0, they was off to a good start until they lost their identity and started trying to compete with WWE in 2010
Great video, but it’s hard to say too little, too late due to the fact that the company was going to sell anyway. Warner wanted to wipe their hands clean of all wrestling, and the Turner networks wanted to stop airing it. Had they not made the decision to sell, I think they had the right tools to carry on as an entertaining but increasingly lower budget program.
Honestly I wish wcw was saved in 2001 because they actually were bringing in talent from the indy scene in which they had some entertaining matches. They could of gotten back on track!
WCW in 2001 was looking promising but it was too late if they started fixing stuff by 98 they could still be around despite AOL not really wanting them on their Platform WCW could have shown them the ratings the revenue and more to show hey u may not like us but we bring capital and exposure to TNT keep us around give us a budget cut sure but keep us around and we can show u we belong and we can make some money once they prove their worth they could have convinced them to keep them around and probably expand their budget heck if u look at today AEW it’s Warner new WCW and now they absolutely love wrestling cause AEW prove them that wrestling does sell and yeah despite their ups and downs they still have potential of becoming more and more competitive and popular among the wrestling community
I know i will get crap from the wwe faithful. But i have watched aew since it began in 2019. Aew does have its on identity don't get me wrong. Maybe because its shows are on tnt and tbs. There is that underlying wcw presence there that i dont think is intentionally put into the profuct. I often feel and this is just my non-professional/fan opinion 😅 that had wcw lived on and had to make a similar name change like wwf/e. That this is what it would have been like today. But at yhe end of the day. Wcw was its on entity and had its on legacy. I want aew to have its on legacy and so far there doing fine. Plenty of homegrown talent sprinkled with just the right ammount of legends from other promotions that most act like they dont want there but we know you really do. Lol
Nash was one of their best stars. Sure, he was lazy and underwhelming, but so were so many other big names like flair, hogan, piper and the ultimate warrior. Nash was cool as shit, very charismatic and always fun to watch. Plus, he was legit as fuck, which is very important in wrestling.
The roster was genuinely good at the time- what a shame and a waste! Shows that even great names with skill can’t prop up god awful writing and storylines.
I’d say 2004 was; we got to see dream matches after the buyout and the very best of WCW, ECW and the WWE on one show (the brand split extension felt like Raw & SmackDown! were two very different albeit brilliant shows too). This was all a short term gain though as competition is what motivates high standards and creativity.
I’ve been saying for years that WCW in 2001 was brilliant; it was finally looking like the edgy WWF product and storylines made sense. Jonny Ace was clearly the right man for the job. It was too little too late as you said though 😢
@@socallawrence Jonny Ace is better known as John Laurinaitis in WWE; he was WCW's head booker, replacing Vince Russo and the quality of the product was noticeably much better (it's why the WWE would hire him as their director of talent relations). Storylines started to make sense and wrestlers were used appropriately (Steiner was main eventing and Jarrett was demoted to upper midcard which I think was his rightful place). Backstage he also fined the likes of Nash for taking liberties, who clearly didn't care about the quality of his work and it showed on screen. The Natural Born Thrillers were getting a huge push, as was Lance Storm and Mike Awesome. These were young talents who looked like the future of the company. Watch the last 3 WCW PPVs and you'll agree they were good.
Chuck Palumbo, Sean O'Haire, and Mark Jindrak looked like future Main Eventers while Chris Jericho and Eddie Guerrero were (no disrespect) midcarders at best.
All WCW needed to do at the time was go to therapy, get some homies and put Sting back to fight with Konnan and Billy Kidman. I mean, it’s not like Sid broke his foot on purpose.
Russo needs to meet Jim Cornette in the woods, and nobody would know what happened until nobody heard from shitstain anymore. Russo sunk Dubya see Dubya.
Brad Siegel and Time Warner sunk WCW. Not as bad as when Bill Watts, Jim Ross and Jim Cornette sunk WCW, nor as bad as when they sunk the WWF, or when Cornette sunk SMW, and TNA, and ROH and everything else he has ever touched.... But close.
As bad as WCW was in 2001, WWE in 2023 is worse in my opinion. There are parallels with them not making new stars and having non sensical storylines. But at least WCW wasn't run by one out of touch narcissistic man mocking his fans and doing everything to pisstoryline. The day WCW aired it's last show in March 2001 was the day wrestling died.
WCW from late-2000 to early-2001 was pretty underrated. Even if the ratings were still tanking, it was doing interesting things after Russo left. It’s just sad that it had to go, but was not supposed to die. Without WCW and ECW, wrestling would be boring. Thankfully, I guess thankfully, there’s AEW and independent wrestling promotions. But are they better than WCW and ECW? Absolutely not.
I'm glad they gave Scott Steiner a solid World Title reign towards the end. I think they put the World Championship on Steiner and Booker way too late. I think both of them should have held the World Title way sooner than they did. Another good thing about WCW in 2001 was Jason Jett. It seemed as if they were about to give him a big push and wanted to make him a big star in the Cruiserweight division.
I always thought the best part of watching WCW was the cruiserweight division. I think if Hogan and Russo would have never been hired, WCW might still exist today. Bischoff dropped the ball with these dudes and gave them too much power.
1: Had Hogan not been hired WCW closes their doors in 1996. They were already about to shut the doors when Bischoff was promoted as Bill Watts and Jim Ross ran it into the ground. 2: Eric Bischoff didn't hire Vince Russo nor did he give Russo any power. Bischoff was gone before Russo was hired.
WCW had a rollercoaster of a ride and they could have put WWF/E out of business, but totally lost focus and wasted millions of dollars in the process. I did see the signs of the company crumbling but they imploded
Great video. That group of powerplant guys really does feel like a "lost generation" of pro wrestling. Some like Palumbo, Stasiak and O'Haire made it to WWE but weren't able to get beyond that glass ceiling despite their talent, while others like Lash LeRoux (a favorite of mine from that era) faded in the indies.
To be fair even if O'Haire had been given his complete due, his wild nature out of the ring likely would have killed off his big push anyway at some point and in that case it probably would have felt like an even greater shame than what happened irl, as he would have had fallen from a greater height. I'd give you all the thumbs up in the world, if I could, for recognising Lash LeRoux. He was a very handy wrestler and was such a fun character and you can't tell me he wasn't at least as good as most of the 00's WWE midcarders.
Not gonna lie. I actually wish Disco Inferno and Alex Wright went to WWF(E) as a tag team division. Would be fun to see (Shamed that Wright retired too early)
Since AOL is an second incarnation of Yahoo today and since AOL Time Warner was one of the worst mergers ever, whose to say if they gave WCW a chance, WCW improved, still running strong today, would AOL still be around today as their own entity? Oh well, after Jamie Kellner took WCW off the air, which allowed Vince to buy it due to a previous lawsuit of WWE successfully suing WCW back in 96 due to Nash & Hall's character infringement on WCW, Eric Biscoff and Fushion pulling out the deal to buy WCW, a chose friend to Vince(not sure about all the deals with WCW getting pull off the air), I was glad to see the Time Warner AOL merger fail in the end. It was so obvious WCW Superstars(Ric Flair, Scott Steiner, Goldberg(until they made him wrestle long matches his 1st run there), Sting, DDP, Booker T, Rey Mysterio, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Jericho, etc. were over with the WWE crowd, but due to fragile egos, buryin the talent, making the crowd think that WCW was inferior(Buff Bagwell Vs Booker T Jul 3, 2001 in Washington Monday Night Raw), hotshot the end of the "invasion" which saw the big names come months and some years later, WWE could've been still making money off the story line til this day if done and booked properly.
I feel that if WCW had lìved, even just one more year, Booker T is taken as a much bigger deal in the WWF/E. It felt, at the time of WCW's closure(at least to me), that he was so close to being a huge deal but then WCW closes and he has to re-establish himself and spends too much time in the midcard as soon as the Invasion cools down.....and the less said about him versus Triple H at Wrestlemania the better. I kinda feel the same about Rhino in ECW. Not that he'd ever likely be trading wins and losses with Stone Cold and the Rock but if he'd had even one more year as the figurehead of ECW, he'd have likely been at IC title level easily and I suppose I could see him as a world title challenger in a 'lightning in a bottle' type situation with him having a run of good matches and a feud people were invested in and with Paul Heyman to speak for him.
Call me stupid call me conspiracy theorist call me anything... I really think Montreal Screwjob was a work (Bret was ageing & Vince wanted to let him go with a big Bang that wouldn't hurt his career but would actually make him more sought after) & I also think Vince Russo was really sent as a Vince McMahon's Trojan Horse into WCW
The Bret thing was definitely a work from the get. I think Vince went to Bret and told Bret "look, I can't afford you right now. Go to WCW. Get the $9 million dollars. Clock in and clock out. I am going to roll with Austin but once business is better I will bring you in on the deal we had. You can come back, have one last run and ride off into the sunset as an agent." Bret said okay. Where it went south was Owens death followed by Bret getting injured. As for Russo, nahh. Had Russo been a Trojan horse he would would have went right back to the WWF in his former role like Pritchard did after destroying TNA. Brad Siegel was a Trojan horse though. Zero doubts on that.
