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Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2018 22:48:27 GMT
What Happened?
I've listened to Vince Russo, Eric Bishoff, Hulk Hogan, Jeff Jarret, and Booker T.
I think I know exactly what happened.
Russo and Bischoff we're supposed to agree on storylines. If they couldn't compromise, then the CEO listened to both sides and decided as the tie breaker.
Vince knew Hogan's contract was coming to an end soon, and he didn't want to pay him. He had an impromptu meeting without Bischoff about the Bash at the Beach PPV coming that week. He asked the wrestlers in the locker room who should be champ, they unanimously voted Booker T.
Vince Russo thought this would pressure Bischoff into whatever he wanted to do.
The plan was to have Booker T beat Jeff Jarrett for the WCW Heavyweight Championship.
When Bischoff arrived Hogan and Eric had decided to have Hulk win the belt, but Russo already held a meeting without me them, thinking it would pressure them into just going with his plan.
Hogan and Bischoff wanted Hogan to fight Jeff Jarrett and win the belt for the final match. They argued and the tie breaker sided with Hogan and Bischoff. Hogan had creative rights over his character.
So Russo decided to have Jeff fight Hogan, do the lying down stunt and embarrass Hogan. Then have Jeff and Booker T fight after the contractual obligation fight.
I believe Bischoff and Hogan were told two different things from Russo. Then he pulled a fast one, cut a promo about firing Hogan and giving Jeff the belt back.
I think Bischoff and Hogan got pissed about the way it went down, maybe lied a bit to help his lawsuit, but I do think all signs point to Russo setting it up around Bischoff and Hogan's title match.
Think about it. Why does it make sense to have Booker T lose a match earlier in the PPV and then have him face Jarrett later? Because that was Bischoff's script. He wanted Bischoff to think they were following the script up until that Hogan/Jarrett match. Then he flipped it because it was live.
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Post by twothousandonemark on Jul 17, 2018 15:25:38 GMT
Anything to embarrass Hogan & Bischoff while the ship is already underwater is fine with me.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2018 20:27:04 GMT
Anything to embarrass Hogan & Bischoff while the ship is already underwater is fine with me. True.
I still don't understand bringing "Hollywood" Hogan persona back at that point.
He was back in Yellow and Red in August 1999 on Monday Night Nitro. He wrestled in a tag team match with Sting and Goldberg vs Nash and some other villains. I remember.
I don't understand why he's back in black a year later? As much as I can't stand Bischoff, and I think Hogan between 1998-2000 was just phoning it in, I can't stand Vince Russo. He was just flipped baby faces and heels every week to the point where it didn't matter anymore.
The only thing good that came out of the Vince Russo era was Ms. Hancock (Stacy Keibler)
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Post by twothousandonemark on Jul 18, 2018 4:50:32 GMT
Anything to embarrass Hogan & Bischoff while the ship is already underwater is fine with me. True.
I still don't understand bringing "Hollywood" Hogan persona back at that point.
He was back in Yellow and Red in August 1999 on Monday Night Nitro. He wrestled in a tag team match with Sting and Goldberg vs Nash and some other villains. I remember.
I don't understand why he's back in black a year later? As much as I can't stand Bischoff, and I think Hogan between 1998-2000 was just phoning it in, I can't stand Vince Russo. He was just flipped baby faces and heels every week to the point where it didn't matter anymore.
The only thing good that came out of the Vince Russo era was Ms. Hancock (Stacy Keibler)
Since we're diving deep, I didn't mind some of Bischoff, when he would at least admit reality &/or defeat. It's the Bischoff who flip flopped around making storylines up on the fly like they had hourly updates. Eric's demise from credible heel GM (or whatever we saw him as) was that he, unlike VKM, just slid around trying to look & sound cool. He should've remained the same Eric with the same truths & consequences. Even when he was being paired with Russo, he couldn't sit still. I'll go to my grave loving the nWo takeover of Nitro episode, which in turn would hand Thunder to WCW. The ratings for that one episode sucked so of course they abandoned that entire premise immediately - after building for it for nearly a full year lols. So then they're stuck with nWo curbing from that takeover, Thunder is on the roll & stuck in limbo cuz they caved for the Nitro rating, & everyone began getting buried alive & begging off for WWF. That nWo takeover Nitro is pretty much the Bischoff era in a nutshell. Huge popular buildup, execute, & bail at the first sign of trouble even if it means blowing everything built up to hell. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2018 18:11:25 GMT
True.
I still don't understand bringing "Hollywood" Hogan persona back at that point.
He was back in Yellow and Red in August 1999 on Monday Night Nitro. He wrestled in a tag team match with Sting and Goldberg vs Nash and some other villains. I remember.
I don't understand why he's back in black a year later? As much as I can't stand Bischoff, and I think Hogan between 1998-2000 was just phoning it in, I can't stand Vince Russo. He was just flipped baby faces and heels every week to the point where it didn't matter anymore.
The only thing good that came out of the Vince Russo era was Ms. Hancock (Stacy Keibler)
Since we're diving deep, I didn't mind some of Bischoff, when he would at least admit reality &/or defeat. It's the Bischoff who flip flopped around making storylines up on the fly like they had hourly updates. Eric's demise from credible heel GM (or whatever we saw him as) was that he, unlike VKM, just slid around trying to look & sound cool. He should've remained the same Eric with the same truths & consequences. Even when he was being paired with Russo, he couldn't sit still. I'll go to my grave loving the nWo takeover of Nitro episode, which in turn would hand Thunder to WCW. The ratings for that one episode sucked so of course they abandoned that entire premise immediately - after building for it for nearly a full year lols. So then they're stuck with nWo curbing from that takeover, Thunder is on the roll & stuck in limbo cuz they caved for the Nitro rating, & everyone began getting buried alive & begging off for WWF. That nWo takeover Nitro is pretty much the Bischoff era in a nutshell. Huge popular buildup, execute, & bail at the first sign of trouble even if it means blowing everything built up to hell. I believe a few things should have happened in order for WCW to win this war with WWF.
1. First of all, don't worry about the ratings with RAW. It's when you do kneejerk reactions that the loyal base turns on you. That 1-2 million fluctuation of fans is going to come back. Stick to the stories that the loyal fans are following, and give them a proper show. Like you said, don't build to something for a whole year, then change it at the last minute.
2. Use the old wrestlers who are over the top to get young guys over. They did this fine with Goldberg, but there were others that needed that push. They got the popularity they had by getting older WWF guys with big names for ratings, now give the audience a proper show. Hogan didn't need to have the WCW title from 1994-1996, that's nearly 2 years without a loss. They handled the Giant poorly. He could have been HUGE for WCW.
3. Stop with the constant 'heel' to 'babyface' turns. That should be a BIG DEAL when it happens. There were times when I swear I wouldn't watch Nitro for 2 or 3 weeks, go back and Goldberg was bad, then about two weeks later, he's good. I couldn't keep up, and didn't care.
4. Treat the WWF megastars who jumped ship to WCW with respect. Brett Hart was misused, Rick Rude was misused, and Ultimate Warrior was misused. Plus others. Brett Hart vs. Hogan should have been a big deal after he refused to job him at WrestleMania IX. Same with Ultimate Warrior. He was the only person Hogan never beat, (WrestleMania VI). Hogan was a bad guy in WCW at this point, perfect time for him to face babyface Brett Hart and Warrior. Then you could keep them around and do a Red/Yellow 'changed' Hogan vs them again, and he wins (double dip).
5. Too many N.W.O. members. It should have been exclusive. 5 White/Black and 5 Black/Red. After it ballooned to 10 members, it should have been a civil war storyline. If you are going to have that many members, then do what you said. Nitro is N.W.O black/Red wars and Thunder is WCW only. Or, Red/White on Nitro and Red/Black on Thunder. It got messy and muddled down.
6. Never hire Russo. That whole cheap boobs, butts, and less wrestling gimmick got old. I don't mind some good old fashioned female sexual stuff here and there, but his stuff was over the top and almost embarrassing. It got to the point where they wrestled about 5 minutes every hour, and talked, had strip teases, and backstage drama the other 35 minutes between commercials.
7. Keep doing MAJOR wrestling events on Nitro and Thunder instead of PPV only. That separates WCW from WWF. WWF would only do title changes on PPV, or they would always have a damn outside interference from another wrestler end the match. If WCW stopped doing that, have legitimate matches, with real consequences and belt changes on their live shows, then have something REALLY special for PPV (think outside the box).
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Post by Deleted on Jul 28, 2018 22:08:17 GMT
i was going to respond to this but i've dozed off reading War and Peace.........
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Post by dazz on Jul 29, 2018 21:29:58 GMT
Since we're diving deep, I didn't mind some of Bischoff, when he would at least admit reality &/or defeat. It's the Bischoff who flip flopped around making storylines up on the fly like they had hourly updates. Eric's demise from credible heel GM (or whatever we saw him as) was that he, unlike VKM, just slid around trying to look & sound cool. He should've remained the same Eric with the same truths & consequences. Even when he was being paired with Russo, he couldn't sit still. I'll go to my grave loving the nWo takeover of Nitro episode, which in turn would hand Thunder to WCW. The ratings for that one episode sucked so of course they abandoned that entire premise immediately - after building for it for nearly a full year lols. So then they're stuck with nWo curbing from that takeover, Thunder is on the roll & stuck in limbo cuz they caved for the Nitro rating, & everyone began getting buried alive & begging off for WWF. That nWo takeover Nitro is pretty much the Bischoff era in a nutshell. Huge popular buildup, execute, & bail at the first sign of trouble even if it means blowing everything built up to hell. I believe a few things should have happened in order for WCW to win this war with WWF.
1. First of all, don't worry about the ratings with RAW. It's when you do kneejerk reactions that the loyal base turns on you. That 1-2 million fluctuation of fans is going to come back. Stick to the stories that the loyal fans are following, and give them a proper show. Like you said, don't build to something for a whole year, then change it at the last minute.
2. Use the old wrestlers who are over the top to get young guys over. They did this fine with Goldberg, but there were others that needed that push. They got the popularity they had by getting older WWF guys with big names for ratings, now give the audience a proper show. Hogan didn't need to have the WCW title from 1994-1996, that's nearly 2 years without a loss. They handled the Giant poorly. He could have been HUGE for WCW.
3. Stop with the constant 'heel' to 'babyface' turns. That should be a BIG DEAL when it happens. There were times when I swear I wouldn't watch Nitro for 2 or 3 weeks, go back and Goldberg was bad, then about two weeks later, he's good. I couldn't keep up, and didn't care.
4. Treat the WWF megastars who jumped ship to WCW with respect. Brett Hart was misused, Rick Rude was misused, and Ultimate Warrior was misused. Plus others. Brett Hart vs. Hogan should have been a big deal after he refused to job him at WrestleMania IX. Same with Ultimate Warrior. He was the only person Hogan never beat, (WrestleMania VI). Hogan was a bad guy in WCW at this point, perfect time for him to face babyface Brett Hart and Warrior. Then you could keep them around and do a Red/Yellow 'changed' Hogan vs them again, and he wins (double dip).
5. Too many N.W.O. members. It should have been exclusive. 5 White/Black and 5 Black/Red. After it ballooned to 10 members, it should have been a civil war storyline. If you are going to have that many members, then do what you said. Nitro is N.W.O black/Red wars and Thunder is WCW only. Or, Red/White on Nitro and Red/Black on Thunder. It got messy and muddled down.
6. Never hire Russo. That whole cheap boobs, butts, and less wrestling gimmick got old. I don't mind some good old fashioned female sexual stuff here and there, but his stuff was over the top and almost embarrassing. It got to the point where they wrestled about 5 minutes every hour, and talked, had strip teases, and backstage drama the other 35 minutes between commercials.
7. Keep doing MAJOR wrestling events on Nitro and Thunder instead of PPV only. That separates WCW from WWF. WWF would only do title changes on PPV, or they would always have a damn outside interference from another wrestler end the match. If WCW stopped doing that, have legitimate matches, with real consequences and belt changes on their live shows, then have something REALLY special for PPV (think outside the box).
They needed to do a lot more than that, WCW was doomed regardless of anything else by the corporate structure they were bound to, WCW PPV's never made WCW money they made Warner Home Video or whatever because PPV's were done under their banners despite WCW paying for everything, so even when they did 4000k buys on PPV instead of that being a nice fat $6m payday for WCW it was a payday for another branch of Time Warner.
WCW were never going to win because winning is what fucked them over, when WCW was losing money as a division of Time Warner they were still a sound investment because they lost a few million at worst and a few hundred thousand at best for the majority of their run, but they provided hundreds and hundreds of hours of TV per year which until Bischoff negotiated to be paid to produce those hours ultimately only cost Time Warner whatever WCW lost that year, so were talking in some years of just a few $1000 of dollars for an hour of TV per week, and even at a low end on the PPV side prior to Russo joining a 100k buys would translate into several million dollars every few to every month for Warner Home Video or whatever.
It's when Warner realised hey this fucking wrestling company can actually make some money when WCW inflicted upon themselves a fatal wound because WCW could only turn a profit when their business was hot, when shit cooled off they went back to losing money and now people get concerned, WWF had the benefit of knowing they were going to go through some lean years but they can get it back eventually, and WWF never lost money except I think for 95, and then when they launched the network, otherwise WWF always knew how and where to tighten their belts, a bad year wasn't going to kill WWF as 95 showed, WCW though a bad year killed them once they turned a profit.
WCW were never going to win because winning meant both them being significantly stronger than WWF for years to the point they make WWF financially unviable for several years, and WCW couldn't do that, they couldn't even outdo WWF for 2 straight years, and when they did WWF were still making shit loads of money anyway.
Just like with so many of the companies in the 80's trying to rival the WWF is what caused the self destruction of WCW, you know who lasted? the likes of Memphis who weren't about trying to kick vince's arse but about keeping their shit running, they lasted almost a decade longer than everyone else because of this, and look at things now TNA tried to be a rival for WWE and they bankrupted themselves in their failure, ECW tried to be a big boy and they bankrupted themselves, NJPW may fucking kill themselves trying it also, people just need to stop and realise the only fucker who can kill the WWE is the WWE, you are not going to put them out of business the only chance of that happening is if they fuck themselves up at this point.
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Post by PreachCaleb on Jul 31, 2018 13:16:32 GMT
Gotta agree with dazz here. The corporate side of business is what finally killed off WCW.
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Post by Jayman on Jul 31, 2018 19:25:40 GMT
If only Jim Crockett didn't have to sell. Maybe things would've been different.
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Post by Jayman on Jul 31, 2018 19:26:26 GMT
i was going to respond to this but i've dozed off reading War and Peace.........  |
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Post by anthonyrocks on Aug 16, 2018 13:42:46 GMT
I used to be a BIG Fan of WCW until the "Finger Poke of Doom" happened.
When I saw that, I was DONE!
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