Early WCW - Was It Awful?

[Orange]

I used to watch WCW, but truth be told, outside of a few matches and such, I only really remember the tail end (lucky me, eh?). What took place in the mid 90's I have no recollection of, and to be honest I'm not completely sure I even watched it a lot. All I remember is playing with the toys and the video games, I believe I started watching some time around '98 or so.

But that's not the important part, I've been watching a bunch of YouTube clips and going over the match cards for PPVs, and some of it sounds awful. Sumo Monster truck matches, Coal Miner Glove matches, I understand this is just some of it - but that some sounds really, really bad.

So, am I being unfair to early WCW, or was it pretty bad?

On the plus side, this poster is pretty great

[Mayonnaise]

50/50 It all depends on who was in charge. The undercard was usually really good and solid as well as the tag division. Really the main events of certain eras were really good too. The mini-movie stuff was dumb as hell but as long as the matches didn't involve Robocop the matches were usually decent. It was when Hogan came in and tried to turn WCW into 80s WWF or stuff that people want to think that Russo pioneered that it got bad all around which lasted until Nitro started.

[Sigma: Current SRW Champ!]

There were really only a few awful periods in Early WCW. June-October 1991 was pretty terrible, when Ric Flair left and they put the belt on Lex Luger because Jim Herd had a thing for Lex, which turned out to be the ultimate demise of him. Then you have the last half of 1992 when Bill Watts in charge when the top rope was made illegal, neutering some of the fliers that they had in Bobby Eaton, Brian Pillman, Ricky Steamboat and others. And while the first year of Hogan's reign was silly, there are some really good stuff to come out of that. The true crap just came to a head at Bash at the Beach 1995. After that show, it started to self right with the debut of Monday Nitro.

[Spankymac is sick of the swiss]

It really was 50/50. On the one hand, you had stuff like the Chamber of Horrors Match and PN News, but on the other hand, you had The Dangerous Alliance and Vader, and the genesis of Sting.

["Playboy" Don Douglas]

For all the complaining about the top rope ban during Watts' tenure, I think there were a lot of good matches. And people would still come off the top, it just actually meant something, which is what Watts was hoping to accomplish.

Honestly, for me, the biggest negative about Watts as booker was his attempts to push his son. During that time, you had the Dangerous Alliance being great, Steve Williams and Terry Gordy raising hell in the tag ranks, etc.

For me, '90 had some good stuff, but wasn't spectacular. Following '89 didn't help. After Flair left in early '91, things went to hell in a hand basket with Herd continuing to try to make it a 3rd rate WWF. Basically, from the time Watts took over until Hogan showed up, I enjoyed far more of the shows than I didn't.

Of course, I haven't went back and watched a lot of it, so I don't know how it would all hold up. But at the time, I liked it.

[wildojinx]

The early 90s had sting, rude, steiners, pillman, dustin rhodes, liger, steamboat, arn, simmons, vader and flair all in the prime of their careers (though flair was starting to flame out before wwf helped ressurect his career). Yeah, you had horrid stuff like PN News and Oz and Chamber of Horrors, but that was more or less the exception to the rule.

[Deleted]

On the one hand you had some great work from Cactus Jack, on the other hand you had "Lost In Cleveland." I actually enjoyed WCW a good bit more than the E for most of the early 90s. They were bringing in guys from Japan that were doing moves that I'd never seen, Sting was awesome, Cactus was doing good, Vader was a wrecking machine, Steiners vs Williams/Gordy, Pillman, Austin, etc

[cabbageboy]

Yeah that 1992-94 era WCW stuff was quite good from what I recall, though they certainly had some foolish stuff thrown in there. The irony of stuff like the White Castle of Fear is that it was a stupid mini movie used to promote a very good SuperBrawl PPV.

[cherry coloured funk]

Jul 27, 2012 17:42:20 GMT -5 @akeem said:

On the one hand you had some great work from Cactus Jack, on the other hand you had "Lost In Cleveland." I actually enjoyed WCW a good bit more than the E for most of the early 90s. They were bringing in guys from Japan that were doing moves that I'd never seen, Sting was awesome, Cactus was doing good, Vader was a wrecking machine, Steiners vs Williams/Gordy, Pillman, Austin, etc

I was very young when it happened, but I LOVED the Lost In Cleveland story arc. It was very believable to a mark.

I loved Yoshi Kwan, too. I thought he was the most exciting worker I had ever seen.

[Deleted]

There was more good than bad.

[Deleted]

I used to rate WCW PPVs by the number of "Z's" I caught during a particular match. The more "Z's", the more I missed.

Nothing against the product itself, I had a screwed-up body clock due to working nights.