Story Lines 10.08.06: The Death of WCW
Posted by Mike Hamflett on 10.08.2006
Every rose has it's thorn. Big ass, badly booked, cash swallowing, thorns.
Before I start this week, I'd like to give a quick RIP to Antonio Pena. I'll never pretend to be the biggest student on EMLL or AAA, but enough people I have loved watching cut their teeth under him, and many more were influenced by those who were influenced by him. What I saw of AAA was awesome, and as a promoter, I always considered him an innovator. Thusly, I pay these respects.
Also, seeing as I missed the Roundtable, I'll take King Booker, Kennedy, Helms, James & Stevens, and Mysterio. MVP will punk out someone, let's say Scotty 2 Hotty, Jimmy Yang Wang or Tatanka.
Prologue
To take a look down any major card is to see it. For pure arguments sake, let's take a quick look at the No Mercy PPV which is currently upon us. I can see Rey Mysterio, Chavo Guerrero, Gregory Helms, Finlay and of course, King Booker. All of them have something different about their names now, and to a point, they have all experienced character changes that long separate them from the people they portrayed some five years ago. But the fact remains that they got some serious face time on another stage. When they arrived in a WWE ring, you had seen them before, that was for sure.
Even in typing the above, I still can't quite believe that it's been five years. Over five years even. Because when WCW's doors finally closed, it marked the ending of so many opportunities, and closed possibly the greatest chapter in the novel of the wrestling business.
What WCW gave to wrestling, wrestlers and fans has been discussed over and over again, and like most things, nostalgia has glossed over all those many, many shitty moments that made you curse Bischoff/Russo and kick the TV in on Monday nights. But there WERE some amazing moments. The business was changing in huge ways, ways that few would realise until they got lost in the shuffle. WCW started that. WCW, under the management of Eric Bischoff, and the talent of many older stars and younger workhorses, TV and PPV standards by reset by what was going on down south, and that should never be discounted.
However, history is written by the winners, and ultimately, there will never be much in the way of truthful recollections so long as Vince is steering any kind of WCW ship. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that you would never have a WCW tribute like the current ECW revival we are getting at the moment. Funnily enough, in a rather defensive statement on WWE.com Tommy Dreamer spouted off gloating about that fact, mainly in reference to the disparaging remarks made about ECW by one Eric Bischoff. The whole thing stunk of hypocrisy from Dreamer, who knows full well Vince is using ECW for dollars, not because he loved the product, and won't touch WCW because he still can't get over the fact that he wasn't king of the mountain for a time back in the mid-90s.
So at least right now, there is not a whole lot of stuff on WCW. I'd like to think that one day Vince will see sense and realise that there is money to be made giving credit where it's due. Maybe down the road, there will be a four disc DVD and eight books written, but until then, there is one industry standard which gives the good, bad and the very very ugly story of World Championship Wrestling. For now at least, it can be told.
The Death Of WCW
Subject: The amazing rise and dramatic fall of World Championship Wrestling Release Date: February 2005
It's interesting that the book's title would take the negative line. That single title implies that it was a grisly and depressing decline for WCW, and for those of us who watched it, it truly was. But it's odd that there is no positives to be heard of before you turn the first page. This isn't a rise and fall account.
But maybe that's intentional. Maybe by just using ‘Death', it implies what a horrendous collapse the company suffered under the weight of it's own excesses and the spiralling debts it accumulated supported for as long as absolutely possible by Ted Turner's humongous wallet. It really was almost impossible to knacker this one up. As alluded to early in the first chapter, when the promotion was in a terrible state in the early 90s, an exec brought forward the idea of folding the company altogether. A stern ‘No' was enough and it was never offered to Billionaire Ted ever again.
No, there was no way they could balls this one up. No way whatsoever. It would take the biggest gang of idiots, miscreants and vagabonds ever assembled to somehow mess things up when the going was so, so good.
Why this book should be fed to the masses is that at least for some part holds Eric Bischoff in high regard. Not enough publications since WCW folded have opined that yeah, Eric was really really good. He was the devil to ECW fans at the time, and that hatred still exists today. To WWF/E fans, he was some sort of anti-christ, who, along with Ted Turner, conspired to put the WWF and Vince McMahon on the scrap heap with all the other aging promoters Vince had done the same to ten years earlier. However, times have changed, and it's actually enjoyable to look back at some of those really really shitty things Bischoff did that you can now say, ‘yeah, that was actually pretty cool'. ‘Easy E's own book will hit shelves soon, and no doubt Vince will edit that thing with a chainsaw, liberally assaulting anything that bothers him. But the bottom line is this – Eric Bischoff saved wrestling - and this book finally shines a spotlight on why and how.
Bischoff took a stagnant Wrestling business and dragged it kicking and screaming into the 90s. Trapped in a time warp of boring characters, terrible storylines and no money whatsoever, both major promotions in America were on life support by this point. ECW was about two years away from infesting the brain of Vince McMahon, and his unopposed Monday Night Raw show was probably as poor a wrestling programme Vince had ever produced since Turner carried him for a couple of months.
The book's detailed account of the formation of the nWo and the change from the American Made Hulk Hogan to Hollywood Hulk Hogan, the most fantastic and revolutionary new heel the business had seen in years, is excellent and naturally vital. The book takes a year-by-year format, focussing primarily on 1996-2000, with intricately detailed references to all the important angles and people who gave birth to every major story that came out of Atlanta in that incredibly hot time. What's also pretty clear throughout is the underlying idea that the bubble is going to burst at any second, and if only he had done this or they had done that, the whole collapse might never have even happened.
This marks a noticeable shift in the tone too, which is a great reflection on the feelings of most wrestling fans who were with the product to the bitter end. The register during WCW's upward shift is one of promise, optimism and belief. As the downward slide begins, more sarcasm and even annoyance appears through the words, and to say watching WCW was slightly annoying back then would be a mild understatement, so job well done by the authors.
I would remiss in not mentioning the authors though, as through their eyes, the book becomes the definitive WCW book. WrestleCrap owner R.D Reynolds and Figure Four Weekly scribe Bryan Alvarez had both and inside and out perspective of every lump of shit to ever hit the WCW fan, and that comes through in spades. In the dissection of Vince Russo's appalling run with book, the anger rises to a breaking point, expressing just what a depressing relief it was when it closed its doors on that fateful last Nitro.
It never stops being hard to work out why WCW went out of business. Nor does it ever stop being a sad tale, if with a few humorous mistakes to lighten the mood. As many of lamented though, WCW's rotting corpse only pre-cursors what could one day happen to the whole industry should there be no competition for the last game in town. When WCW died, it took with it a great legacy which all the nugget-flushing will never get rid of in the minds of its fans. Reynolds and Alvarez have beautifully chronicled the short-yet-eventful history, and until Vince swallows his pride, this remains the literary worlds finest. Remember the good times this way, not via Vince.
Shorthand
Worst Bit: Very little that is actually bad, but the anger toward Vince Russo explodes in dirty fashion, and at times it's spewing venom is a little hard to stick with.
Best Bit: The 1997 chapter is bursting with fantastic recounts from those that were there and those that weren't, and as this was the year where it went really right and really wrong simultaneously, it makes for some brilliant foreshadowing and dramatic irony.
Buy It, Borrow It, Bin It: It seems to have got pretty cheap pretty quick, so buy it.
