Sharpshooter Review: Rise and Fall of WCW (Disc One)

Posted by Kyle Fitta on 07.31.2010

Witness the good, the bad, and the Russo all in 90 minutes!

I took some time to think how I could rate this, and I came up with this plan: I will rate each disc separately, and on Disc 3 I will give the final score of the entire DVD. To me, it seems the most logical way to approach this.

• Jim Crockett Promotions: Jim Crockett Sr. was a member of the NWA board and helped promote wrestling shows. He later moved down to the Charlotte, North Carolina, so he could run the NWA territory down there. Down there, he promoted boxing, roller derby, Harlem Globetrotter shows, and whatever he thought drew. Jim Crockett Sr. passed away in 1973, so his sons - Jim and David - took his place. Jim Crockett Jr. was looked upon as the boss since he was great with managing the talent, and therefore he became the president of the company


• George Championship Wrestling: Ted Turner loved his 'rasslin, so he gave them two hours each week on his station: TBS. This led to more publicity and made it easier to create big stars.


• Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling:The Mid-Atlantic territory eventually became the second highest money making wrestling territory in the States, which also led to a lot of big stars coming into the territory. Of course, this was killing the other territories because all their talent was leaving for the bigger companies.


•Starrcade: Dusty Rhodes wanted to create a "Superbowl" show. Jim Crockett liked the idea, so he went with it and had a lot of success off it. Jim Crockett says it was SO big that it closed the I-40/I-85 split right outside of Greensboro. That seems a bit far-fetched, though.


•Black Saturday: Vince McMahon bought Georgia Championship Wrestling. Vince McMahon wanted to have a show on USA and TBS, but it didn’t go as plan. The philosophy Vince McMahon portrayed wasn’t what the south was use to or wanted; The WWF was more cartoonish, while the south liked 'rasslin. It went together like lamb and tuna fish. Vince says there were several biased maneuverings from Turner that led to their rivalry. Crockett had to pay Vince double to get the network back. David says they ended up paying for Vince’s Wrestlemania.

• The Expansion: After that downfall, Crockett got back on track due to the growth of cable. It led to better crowds, larger arenas, as well as bigger stars. Magnum TA was one of their huge stars that they were going to push to the top of the mountain. However, a devastating car accident ended poor T.A’s career.

• Crockett Sells to Turner: At this time, they were selling out the big cities, although they getting the revenue they were expecting. David Crockett says he didn’t want to sell, but it came down to selling it to Turner or putting the Crokett family in serious financial problems. As much as Turner loved wrestling, he knew he wasn't capable to run the show. Instead, he allowed other morons to run it. Brilliant!

• Greatest Talent in the World: Turner had a lot of money, so he was able to get great wrestlers. Everyone says the in-ring product was oodles better than WWF. Michael Hayes says it was amazing to see such great wrestling on TV, but so much irrationality and chaos behind the scenes.


• New Management: In came the infamous pizza guy - Jim Herd. Herd came up with the ridiculous gimmicks such as Ding and Dong among other ludicrous ideas. Jim Crockett says he told Herd the product sucked. Jim Ross cuts Herd some slack, saying the company was in shambles already and Herd wasn’t that guy who could fix it. This eventually led to Ole Anderson taking over. Nobody says anything nice about Ole. Teddy Long calls him the worst booker of all time, which is a bit over-exaggerated. Ole got fired for several of reasons. They decided to bring in Kip Allen Frey, but that didn’t work out well, so they gave the lead book back to Dusty. The wrestlers were getting paid the same, even if they almost died in the ring or gave no effort at all. It was also hard for the bookers to keep the wrestlers in control. Some wrestlers decided to not show up for their scheduled dates.

• Bill Watts Era: Bill Watts was very successful running his own territory, Mid-South, in the ‘80s, so it made perfect sense for him to come in and save the company. Everyone was excited for Watts coming in, but it didn’t go as planed. Watts decided to bring in the old-school style into WCW. People thought the style “boring” and "passé". Watts also grew tired of Ted Turner’s executes (mostly Bill Shaw), which made him quit. Although Watts received a lot of criticism, he was successful in cutting the budget. WCW went from losing 8 million to just 400 grand.



• Bill Shaw Hires Eric Bischoff: Bill Shaw realized he wasn’t smart enough to run the company, thus he promoted Bischoff. Mike Graham goes on a bragging streak saying he told Bischoff he could get Hogan, and he was the master mind behind the tapings in Orlando, acting like it was a great idea. He also says he was the one that wanted to get rid of COTC for more PPVS.

• Hulk Hogan Arrives: Turner’s executives even wanted to bring in Hogan since he was a household name. When Hogan arrived, WCW booked their biggest star ever - Ric Flair against the biggest star ever in wrestling - Hulk Hogan. This was huge because WCW now had the star power to be successful.

• Nitro Debuts: Bischoff requested moving to Mondays to compete with Vince’s Monday Night Raw. Ted Turner, who wasn’t a fan of Vince in the first place, agreed with the idea. Nitro was officially born. They ran their first show on Monday when Raw wasn’t on. The show had a surprise debut of Lex Luger as well as Alundra Blayze dropping the WWF Women’s Title in the trash, and unlike Raw, Nitro was live. Bischoff took full advantage that opportunity by reading Raw’s results on live TV. Of course, we’ll get to what happened later as it backfire... well, at least in the Special Features.

• New World Order: Scott Hall says WWF turned him down for a guaranteed contract, so he went to WCW. Big Show says Nash and Hall’s contracts stated they had to be the highest paid wrestlers in WCW. Sullivan says WCW wanted it to look like Hall and Nash were still with WWF and were invading WCW. Even though this wasn’t said on the DVD, Sting was supposed to be the nWo’s third man until Hogan wanted to join it. Nobody knows what would’ve happened if it was Sting in the long run, but Hogan’s turn led to WCW killing WWF in the ratings.

• Cruiserweights: The WCW cruiserweights and others talk about how important the division was to the company. They talk about how different and awesome the division was in the US, and the sucess it brought to WCW against WWF.

• Goldberg: Bischoff says he wants to take the credit for making Goldberg a star, but he can’t. Goldberg says he was thinking about signing with the WWF but ended up going to WCW at the last minute, and then began training at the Power Plant. Goldberg made his Nitro debut on 9/22/1997 and defeated Hugh Morrus. Sullivan takes the credit for Goldberg facing Hugh Morrus.

• WCW Ratings Champ: WCW was giving fans everything they wanted from nWo, Goldberg, cruiserweights, Sting, Flair, and all the way to the Nitro girls. This all led to Nitro creaming WWF for 84 weeks.

• Celebrities: DDP went to a Jazz game and saw Karl Malone. Afterwards, DDP started talking to him about getting into wrestling. He agreed. They later show Bischoff and Hogan invading and taking over the Tonight Show. Jim Ross says you have to utilize a celebrity the right way in wrestling or it doesn’t work :cough: guest host :cough:. Malenko says people like Leno, Rodman, and Malone were good for publicity, but on the flipside it didn’t allow guys like him to shine.

• Goldberg vs. Hogan: Goldberg was on a roll and had only one more goal to accomplish: winning the title. Goldberg says he found out he was getting a title shot in Georgia on Thunder (less than a week before the show). Goldberg and Ross both talk about how illogical it was to put it on free TV and not hyping the match up more. But hey, it did big RATINGZ!!!!!

• Mistakes Begin: The Halloween Havoc ’98 PPV ending is shown, where it cuts off in the start of DDP-Goldberg. Bischoff talks about how he wanted the PPV to go more than the normal three hours for a surprise factor, but the cable companies screwed up. Kevin Nash began booking and used it as a tool to put himself over. They then show the infamous finger-poke-of-doom, where Nash won the title off Goldberg and jobbed to Hogan’s finger as a ha-ha. After that whole deal, Goldberg was never the same. Big Show says they told him he wasn’t over enough to get a raise like the others. Jericho says he busted his ass, but every time he got more over, they tried to bury him.

• Vince Russo: WCW got desperate and signed Vince Russo, the self-proclaimed mastermind behind the Attitude Era. Russo ended up causing more harm than good. One of his most infamous ideas was deciding to put the belt on David Arquette for RATINGZ! This brings us to the infamous Jarrett-Hogan match, where it was supposed to be a work, but ended up being a shoot, and didn’t end up helping anyone in the end. Mike Graham goes on a rant saying Jeff Jarrett didn’t draw a dime, but thought he did. He says he laughs at Jarrett for thinking he was bigger than Hulk Hogan.

• A Corporate Merger: Yep. The end is here. Time Warner merged with AOL. AOL didn’t want WCW on their show, so Vince McMahon bought everything from WCW. I'm shocked they never mentioned Jamie Kellner since he was the mastermind behind getting WCW off the air for good.

• McMahon Buys WCW: They explain some what of the Invasion angle, which should’ve been huge but wasn’t. Flair says WCW should’ve been shut down a year earlier because it was *that* bad. Vince McMahon says it wasn’t an ego boost when he bought WCW. It was only business. Sure Vince, whatever you say. Jericho jokes around, saying he wish he could’ve bought WCW for the amount Vince got for it.

• Legacy of WCW: They talk about how WCW made an impact even though it was ran a lot of idiots. They say WCW helped WWF out too in the end.


The Special Features:

• Lost in Cleveland: Dusty says Ole disliked Foley and wanted to get rid of him if Dusty couldn’t use him. Dusty booked, wrote, made, or whatever you want to call it, a mini-movie about Cactus Jack losing his memory after Vader powerbombed him. Cactus then lived with homeless people in Cleveland. I’m surprised Ole didn’t want to fire Dusty after this, but yet again Ole came up with Black Scorpion, so maybe he loved it.

• Bill Watts Defends Himself: Watts denies himself being a racist and the rumors of him getting fired for being one.

• Spam Man: This was stupid, but basically they wanted to make a character called “Spam Man”. But Spam didn’t like it, so they killed the character.

• The Origins of Goldberg: Goldberg talks about how the character was made. He says he wanted to be “the Hybrid”; however, it was copyrighted, so WCW came up with the name Goldberg. Goldberg said Manny Fernandez told him his finisher had to be impactful, which led to the spear. Goldberg says he saw Dean Malenko do the Jackhammer in Japan from the top rope and thought it was great, so he used it. He says the “Who’s next” came from a waitress when he was looking for a catchphrase, ironicly. He said he didn’t want to be like Stone Cold, but it just worked out that way.

• Bischoff Gives Away Raw Results: Bischoff doesn’t say sorry, but admits it was a lousily thing to do. Vince says it backfired.

The 411: In 2004 the WWE came out with the ECW Rise and Fall DVD. It was about three hours long, it was explained well, and also had Heyman and workers from the company talk piece by piece (in detail) about every little step in ECW's run.

When it was announced they were going to create a WCW one, I think every passionate WCW fan was excited. Unfortunately, this didn’t live up to the hype. WCW was around much longer than ECW, but for some reason ECW’s documentary was doubled the time.

If you truly don’t know anything about WCW, I guess the documentary is worth watching. For any loyal WCW fan it's not. The docamentary is vague since they don’t explain each topic in detail; they just touch upon it. They also left out many wrestlers that were helpful to the company (The Road Warriors, Muta, Steiner Brothers, etc. ). It also left out a lot of historical times (both good and bad), and didn’t fully touch upon how chaotic it was backstage or who was really in control at the time. Also, most of the interviews are from the Monday Night Wars DVD or some other WWE DVD. That really annoyed me because I already seen all those DVDS, but nothing irked me more than Mike Graham sitting high on his own “fame”, gloating how he created all these falsely proclaimed ideas. I seriously laughed at him thinking the Disney move was a good idea.

This was a huge disappointment , so I have to give the documentary a thumbs down.

Final Score:  5.5   [ Not So Good ]