My Gripe With 'The Death of WCW'

[Gillberg: 0-175]

Don't get me wrong. I bought both your books (Although I only bought WrestleCrap because you always seem to repost the same 20 classic crap articles. Period.), and I did have a good time reading them. I don't usually read, but I spent one rainy August day reading The Death from cover to cover nonstop. Yes, it is a good book. However, I think it could have been a lot better than it is. Instead of writing a wall of text, Mr. Numbers will come out and play a role in my list.

1) Jumping Around
Now I think I get you two. RD I *think* isn't a writer by profession. But Bryan? For someone who takes pride in writing FF Weekly, he should learn some rules of chronology. I can't describe any of my gripes down to the page number, because I can't be arsed to do so, but one chapter strikes me in particular. After Eddie Guerrero got into a car accident, the book detailed it, and how he got in the ring too early. I got that. But about 20 pages (and maybe even a chapter later) we return to that incident, acting as if it JUST happened in that point in time. I didn't know where I was in that point in time. 97, 98, whatever. All I had to tell the time to me was the chapter header and the main event card of the PPV that month.

This issue isn't so big, but get's kind of annoying.

2) The Bias
I know WCW was bad. I watched it during it's demise until I couldn't take it anymore. But still, the bias towards the company is horrific in this book. Yeah, signing The Worm was a bad decision internally, but instead of bashing it for page after page, why not elaborate more on the exposure and good it did the company. Not only that, but the book is riddled with comments like "they were too busy trying to fight WWF that they missed a chance to print money on PPV". After the 3rd time I read that comment, I got it. I didn't need to be reminded how bad decisions there were. I got it the first time. Every nook and cranny of the company has been turned against them. Yeah, they did wrong, but they also did good. I would have liked to have read this as more of a factual report rather than the facts fueled by opinion. It's not called "The Opinionated Death of WCW". The words "One could say" should have been added in that book hundredfold, at least.

3) Lack of the undercard
I was really hoping to dig into the skin of the storylines of WCW. Perhaps I was hoping for more of a summary of the company rather than the internal decisions that killed the company. The fact that the undercard gets buried by the top is often mentioned, but the undercard fueds are never really highlighted in the book. Nothing about the Flock, Jericho v. Malenko, etc. Most people remember the nWo, but to learn about the undercard would have interested me to no end, and to see how the politics played into their storylines.

4) Ending laziness
Towards the end of the book, I think RD and Bryan got lazy. It seems like it. Little is told about the storylines of the dying days of WCW, which interested me the most as I don't remember them. That suprises me because the birth of WCW is detailed very nicely in the beginning of the book, but the 2000-2001 chapters do very little other than bash Russo and say how Bischoff couldn't do anything with the company. Where was the bad decisions like the Natural Born Thrillers? Or good ones like the Magnificant Seven? Why not highlight how WCW was getting back on track instead of simply stating it, which I felt happened.

Other than those few things, I loved the book, and it's the first book since WrestleCrap that I've bothered to read on my own (not for uni). Good work, but an author needs to be criticized. Luckily, with the help of Slash Wrestling, The Death, and the Monday Night Wars, I think I got enough information that I seeked out to find.

[Hulkshi Tanahashi]

Who's this Dave you keep mentioning? Is it Dave Meltzer? If so, then I should point out he just wrote the forward. It sounds like you thik he was the co-author because he wasn't; Bryan Alvarez was RD's co-author.

[Gillberg: 0-175]

Whoops. My mistake. I do mean. Brian. Lemme go fix that.

[Cranjis McBasketball]

I'd argue you point for point, but I can't be bothered to do it. You've got your opinions and I have mine....I think RD and Brian did a great job.....though I will contend to my dying day he's mistaken about Hogan and Sting getting the residuals from a Jericho/Malenko doll set.

[Erik Majorwitz]

Someone just got axed on the WrestleCrap Christmas Party guest list.

Semper Fi,
Erik Majorwitz

[rdreynolds]

Nah, everyone is entitled to their opinion. An interesting thing that I don't think most people understand is that we have x number of words per book according to contract. Therefore, the question is do you want to spend some of that on stuff like the Natural Born Thrillers or stuff that was actually ok at the end, or would you rather have more of the actual causes of the demise? The original draft of DOWCW was way bigger, but we had to trim it back because of the text limits and also because it was (IMHO) way too wordy and hard to read. So I basically went back through and trimmed the fat of the book and made it more readable.

Bryan and I have kicked around doing a second edition at some point, so perhaps we could address some of the 'complaints' at that point.

RD

[Gillberg: 0-175]

I had no clue that book contracts were set up that way. Now that I know that, it addresses a lot of my concerns. Thanks for clearing it up. It does seem to make much more sense to me now that I know that what was written is condensed.

[Hulkshi Tanahashi]

rdreynolds said:

Nah, everyone is entitled to their opinion. An interesting thing that I don't think most people understand is that we have x number of words per book according to contract. Therefore, the question is do you want to spend some of that on stuff like the Natural Born Thrillers or stuff that was actually ok at the end, or would you rather have more of the actual causes of the demise? The original draft of DOWCW was way bigger, but we had to trim it back because of the text limits and also because it was (IMHO) way too wordy and hard to read. So I basically went back through and trimmed the fat of the book and made it more readable.

Bryan and I have kicked around doing a second edition at some point, so perhaps we could address some of the 'complaints' at that point.

RD

I would love to see a 2nd edition!

[Erik Majorwitz]

rdreynolds said:

Nah, everyone is entitled to their opinion. An interesting thing that I don't think most people understand is that we have x number of words per book according to contract. Therefore, the question is do you want to spend some of that on stuff like the Natural Born Thrillers or stuff that was actually ok at the end, or would you rather have more of the actual causes of the demise? The original draft of DOWCW was way bigger, but we had to trim it back because of the text limits and also because it was (IMHO) way too wordy and hard to read. So I basically went back through and trimmed the fat of the book and made it more readable.

Bryan and I have kicked around doing a second edition at some point, so perhaps we could address some of the 'complaints' at that point.

RD

Great explaination there Deal. Sucks that your creative genius is limited to a finite word count.

Semper Fi,
Erik Majorwitz

[bleemo]

Not to mention the obvious that maybe some people didn't think that those angles you thought were good were infact all that good. I didn't like the magnificent seven I thought that was pretty lame. Clealry none of these angles were good enough to save them so they couldn't have been that good. Man I remember tuning into WCW towards the end and thinking, "can these people get anything right?"

The one angle I thought had promise was the older guys being set on by everyone else. A war between main event talent and mid carders and newbies sounds awesome. Flair really sold it too but sadly Nash, Hogan and co didn't.

[Rocky Van Heineken]

I didn't get through the whole thing because I was thinking, "Didn't I read all of this in the first book?"

[tmp2005]

bleemo said:

Not to mention the obvious that maybe some people didn't think that those angles you thought were good were infact all that good. I didn't like the magnificent seven I thought that was pretty lame. Clealry none of these angles were good enough to save them so they couldn't have been that good. Man I remember tuning into WCW towards the end and thinking, "can these people get anything right?"

The one angle I thought had promise was the older guys being set on by everyone else. A war between main event talent and mid carders and newbies sounds awesome. Flair really sold it too but sadly Nash, Hogan and co didn't.

I don't recall Flair doing much of anything in the New Blood angle, and I especially don't recall him putting anybody over. I also don't recall Nash not putting anyone over. Hogan put Kidman over...sort of, and Sting put Vampiro over, but I don't remember Flair doing anything. Perhaps this is a case of your memory putting the Almighty Ric Flair in one end, and the Unholy Nash and Hogan in the other?

[bleemo]

I don't recall Flair doing much of anything in the New Blood angle, and I especially don't recall him putting anybody over. I also don't recall Nash not putting anyone over. Hogan put Kidman over...sort of, and Sting put Vampiro over, but I don't remember Flair doing anything. Perhaps this is a case of your memory putting the Almighty Ric Flair in one end, and the Unholy Nash and Hogan in the other?

Well apart from having his head shaved by his own son and Russo and in general being one of the first ones to get involved in the angle. He cut some decent promos where he would go ape about the disrespect of the younger wrestlers.

I'm hardly a Flair fanboy, I think the man's an arse but he does generally put people over.

Nash totally no sold the whole thing, each week he'd just turn up and beat up Russo or Bischoff. There was that whole Goldberg angle but that was really lame, talk about two knuckleheads.

[tmp2005]

bleemo said:

I don't recall Flair doing much of anything in the New Blood angle, and I especially don't recall him putting anybody over. I also don't recall Nash not putting anyone over. Hogan put Kidman over...sort of, and Sting put Vampiro over, but I don't remember Flair doing anything. Perhaps this is a case of your memory putting the Almighty Ric Flair in one end, and the Unholy Nash and Hogan in the other?

Well apart from having his head shaved by his own son and Russo and in general being one of the first ones to get involved in the angle. He cut some decent promos where he would go ape about the disrespect of the younger wrestlers.

I'm hardly a Flair fanboy, I think the man's an arse but he does generally put people over.

Nash totally no sold the whole thing, each week he'd just turn up and beat up Russo or Bischoff. There was that whole Goldberg angle but that was really lame, talk about two knuckleheads.

Oh yeah, he did have his head shaved. Forgot about that. Man, I forgot so much of the New Blood era. Hey, what did Palumbo and O'Haire do?

[Amaru]

tmp2005 said:

bleemo said:

Well apart from having his head shaved by his own son and Russo and in general being one of the first ones to get involved in the angle. He cut some decent promos where he would go ape about the disrespect of the younger wrestlers.

I'm hardly a Flair fanboy, I think the man's an arse but he does generally put people over.

Nash totally no sold the whole thing, each week he'd just turn up and beat up Russo or Bischoff. There was that whole Goldberg angle but that was really lame, talk about two knuckleheads.

Oh yeah, he did have his head shaved. Forgot about that. Man, I forgot so much of the New Blood era. Hey, what did Palumbo and O'Haire do?

they feuded with Nash and DDP/lost every important match against them

["Playboy" Don Douglas]

I also remember Flair putting (of all people) Buff Bagwell over.

[kevinhardy]

not enough bischoff