Post by tmc1982 on Dec 30, 2008 0:42:22 GMT -5
What really makes this period stick out is WCW went from realistic 80's wrestling to emulate WWF in about a week.
Then they hired Kip Fry, and it got worse.
The they hired Watts and it got uber realistic again.
Then fired him to bring in Eric to find the happy succesful medium.
Even though Eric had more then a fair share of shames in that time.
Beach Blast
Where in the world is Cactus Jack
I'm just curious, how did Kip Frye make it worse? As I saw it, the company became 100 times better wrestling, storyline and character-wise because Frye boosted the morale of the locker room in general with his pay bonuses.
Bill Watts is the one that most everyone hated because of his nutty rules but the wrestling and characters were still pretty good.
And contrary to popular belief, Eric was not behind the mini-movies or Cactus Jack's amnesia. Sharon Sidello was the Turner Exec behind the mini-movies idea and the Lost in Cleveland angle was the brainchild of Dusty Rhodes.
All that I've read about Kip Frey was that the wrestlers liked him because the wrestlers were suddenly motivated to work harder. Frey had a simple incentive program in which wrestlers would receive bonuses whenever they put on a great match.
But then, Frey suddenly left, and Bill Watts came in, and WCW became all f***ed up again. Watts' problem was that he tried to take wrestling backwards, by using a lot of strict kayfabe rules for the wrestlers (e.g. you couldn't invite family members and you had to stay for the entire show), and promoting a dangerous working environment (i.e. removing the mats from outside of the ring), and killing off the cruiserweight division by banning off-the-top rope moves.