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Post by StormanReigns on Jan 2, 2016 15:05:22 GMT -5
1. What is a specific thing to blame for this?
2. How would you have fixed it?
in '98, and early '99 they were still pretty strong. in just 3 years they went from being the #1 company in the world, to being bought by Vince. It 1 year, they went from posting ratings that peaked in the 6's, to being in the 2's. In retrospect, this plunge happened damn quickly.
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Post by Gravedigger's Biscuits on Jan 2, 2016 15:11:40 GMT -5
They just had a poor product at that time. Storylines that made no sense featuring the same old guys time and time again. Not to mention pissing the fans off with stuff like the Fingerpoke of Doom.
That combined with the WWF product being very entertaining, it caused a domino effect. Less people watching Nitro which lead to less people buying the PPVs and less people attending live events.
The product decline caused a financial decline, which even though WCW's product moderately improved in early 2001, it was too late. Once Ted Turner was out of power, they were toast.
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MolotovMocktail
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Post by MolotovMocktail on Jan 2, 2016 20:37:18 GMT -5
I'm going to harp on this until I'm blue in the mouth because WWE is making the same mistake: moving Nitro to 3 hours over-extended the product, and made it tedious to sit through for even hard-core fans, let alone casual ones. The WWF had more action in less time.
Once Vince Russo came on board, nothing made sense. Bad gimmick matches, and turns coming out of nowhere with no explanation or a ridiculous one.
The nWo had overstayed its welcome, and become very diluted. Rather than focusing on the core of Hogan, Hall and Nash, it became half the roster.
Bad booking made talent leave in droves. Once the Radicalz jumped (with Benoit winning the World Title the night before), the writing was on the wall.
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Post by El Hijo del Havoc on Jan 3, 2016 6:52:16 GMT -5
The ratings slope really started around April 1999. That's when you had the image/logo overhaul, DDP became champion, Sting & mid-life crisis Macho Man returned, Hogan was out for the spring & summer, and the biggest feud going was Ric Flair & Charles Robinson vs Macho Man & Gorgeous George
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Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Jan 3, 2016 7:03:31 GMT -5
Some of it was the other shoe dropping from short-term decisions with long term consequences from the previous years.
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Post by The Dark Order Inferno on Jan 3, 2016 7:49:34 GMT -5
In 1999 the fans seemed to get sick of not being listened to, since 1994 the company was built to protect Hulk Hogan and associates and it all came to a head with the fingerpoke of doom. 94-96 saw Hulk Hogan try to recreate the 80s and 96-99 saw him protected and presented as the face of WCW despite being the heel, never truly getting his comeuppance and in early to mid 1999, we got a taste of the future of the company, their big plan for the next millennium... Hogan as the face of the company. I hated the Attitude era, I still do but at least Vince took his comeuppance to make Austin look like a star, while Hogan, not so much and I can understand why people tuned out rather than face the prospect of Hulk Hogan trying to recreate 1984 for a second time. No regrets, no apologies, he was going to be booked as the face and that was that... And then Russo came, making a wounded company start to bleed out.
Watch Hulk Hogan's Uncensored 1999 Match against Ric Flair, keeping in mind that Flair was the face in the match and Hulk Hogan was the heel and you will understand why people just gave up.
How would I fix it? I don't think you could unless you close WCW and re-open it under a different name as a new legal entity because Hulk Hogan's contract effectively entitled him to book the company, if their plans didn't benefit him, he could and would veto and that would be that and you could never be sure if he would change his mind until after the event. The only way WCW could be saved is if Bischoff could be convinced to play hardball with Hogan in 1998, give him an offer better than what Vince would give, without any notion of creative control, no promise of a permanent main event slot because there is ZERO chance he would get that level of control from the WWF, none, and if Vince was crazy enough to offer it, WCW's issues would become his.
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Post by cabbageboy on Jan 3, 2016 11:12:57 GMT -5
From what I recall reading Flair himself wanted to do the double turn at Uncensored. I believe it was in Death of WCW. The problem there was that there was no current storyline that it fit. Flair had spent months being attacked and humiliated by the NWO, his own son had turned on him the previous month, etc. Given that the long term direction seemed to be Goldberg going on a rampage through the unified NWO en route to a Hogan rematch, the whole Flair detour was odd. As it went Goldberg lost all his momentum in 1999, went off to film Universal Soldier 2, and things were never the same.
I will differ from some people who think the NWO got played out to the point where people stopped caring. The reunited NWO did keep fan interest in early 1999 since people likely assumed it would lead to....something. Anything. Instead Hogan turned face, the group petered out, Hogan got hurt around Spring Stampede, and they did weird stuff like putting the belt on a freshly heel turned DDP. I have remarked in the past that DDP winning the title wouldn't have been bad as a short term thing when he was a hot babyface, but in April 1999 he came back with NO heat. DDP was the sort of guy that needed to be on TV every week to build a following and stay over. Take him off TV for a while and no one really missed him, then he came back and all momentum was gone. Add in a weird heel turn (when he too was victimized by Steiner and the NWO) and it was even worse.
This was just the beginning of WCW's awful ratings woes. Really I'd say the horrible downturn started around the time Warrior came in and did the awful feud with Hogan, and the company blew off or dropped a lot of the fun storylines that kept things interesting during the Summer of 1998. It was jarring how bad they got from just Bash at the Beach 1998 to Fall Brawl 1998.
WCW sucked. People say WWE might suck now but it's nothing as incoherent and anger inducing as WCW. If I had to say the one show that made me mentally give up on WCW it would be the show where Sting beat DDP for the title in Hour 1, then had to turn around and defend in a rematch in the main event that also included Nash and Goldberg. DDP spent most of the match protesting on the floor, then snuck in and hit a Diamond Cutter on Nash for the pin. That one was where I threw up my hands and gave up. It took a lot to break me, but that show did it. I kept watching to the bitter end, but I never cared.
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brody
Don Corleone
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Post by brody on Jan 3, 2016 11:44:04 GMT -5
In short, Lack of elevating the next generation and killing Goldberg off.
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ICBM
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Post by ICBM on Jan 3, 2016 12:41:54 GMT -5
Man....I hate this topic. I hate it because I spent so much time and money watching them during that time. But as bad as 99 was 2000 made it look like WWF in 97 by comparison.
Specific blame? Meh, it wasn't a bad idea to do the Flair turn. If they sold the logic of his months/yrs of getting beat down by NWO, taking charge but slipping from sanity into power corruption, than it works. But they didn't even bother implying this. Had they I think it works. But instead they just amped up the mental spots and transitioned from Hogan because he was injured (hip surgery #1 of 3). DDP was not positioned to be a champion as a heel. He terd his best and they had hm go over big name, sting, flair, macho, Nash, Sid. But it still didn't pop. Why? Because DDP is a face period
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ICBM
King Koopa
Didn't know we did status updates here now
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Post by ICBM on Jan 3, 2016 12:46:53 GMT -5
Hw to fix it? The Falir logic as I said above. The Bret/Goldberg angle could have and would have worked (Owen's death prevented it and the Hogan v Hart program both long planned). I also still believe that the corporate structure prevented the comeback. Sending Bischoff home screwed em up for a bit and led to the Russo/Ferrerra hires and the awful booking that followed.
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Post by MichaelMartini on Jan 3, 2016 15:11:30 GMT -5
In short, Lack of elevating the next generation and killing Goldberg off. Letting the younger fresher midcard go hurt them so bad it can't be stated enough. Look at the talent they let go - Austin, Foley, Eddie, Rey, Jericho, Big Show, Vader, Farooq, Benoit, Saturn, Malenko, Raven, etc to keep Hogan and pals. WWE is doing the same thing, getting rid of the young midcard to keep trotting out way past their prime old guys and part timers. WCW ran the NWO into the ground, WWW is running the far less over Authority into the ground. WCW tried to bring in celebs, so did WWE. WCW added shows like Thunder and went 3 hours, WWE added Smackdown and went 3 hours. WCW started making crappy movies, so did WWE. They're making all of the exact same mistakes.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 3, 2016 15:33:51 GMT -5
I usually love booking scenarios like this, but as time rolls on (15 years after the company closed shop) and the more we discover, this was a hot mess. I'm with Dysco.
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nisidhe
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Post by nisidhe on Jan 4, 2016 6:26:35 GMT -5
In short, Lack of elevating the next generation and killing Goldberg off. Letting the younger fresher midcard go hurt them so bad it can't be stated enough. Look at the talent they let go - Austin, Foley, Eddie, Rey, Jericho, Big Show, Vader, Farooq, Benoit, Saturn, Malenko, Raven, etc to keep Hogan and pals. WWE is doing the same thing, getting rid of the young midcard to keep trotting out way past their prime old guys and part timers. WCW ran the NWO into the ground, WWW is running the far less over Authority into the ground. WCW tried to bring in celebs, so did WWE. WCW added shows like Thunder and went 3 hours, WWE added Smackdown and went 3 hours. WCW started making crappy movies, so did WWE. They're making all of the exact same mistakes. WWE's troubles are somewhat different from those that ultimately killed WCW. Primarily, whereas WCW allowed its on-air talent to run the asylum, WWE suffers from a serious issue of micromanagement: every word spoken, every move planned, every detail of everything that goes on every Monday and Tuesday night, on pay-per-views and anything else it does, for some reason has to be exact or, at least, in accordance with someone's will who may or may not have WWE's best interests as a wrestling promotion at heart. WWE did learn a great deal from WCW's mistakes - there is nobody on today's roster who is making as much as any of the top tier at WCW during its peak, and "creative control" in the hands of the talent is a thing of the past. Moreover, as a stand-alone company it never suffered a sword of Damocles over its head dangled by someone at a parent company. The creative team, for better or worse, is kept at arm's length from the on-air talent in order to prevent the kinds of political booking that plagued WCW. The ring characters are no longer the legal property of the talent, but remain with WWE, making their transition to another promotion difficult and, to some extent, stifling the organic creativity behind the development of such characters by discouraging talent from bringing their own ideas into it for fear of losing the resulting rights to WWE when they are used. I very much doubt that the talent WCW lost during its decline would have jumped so readily to today's WWE.
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Post by The Dark Order Inferno on Jan 4, 2016 7:28:31 GMT -5
WWE's troubles are somewhat different from those that ultimately killed WCW. Primarily, whereas WCW allowed its on-air talent to run the asylum, WWE suffers from a serious issue of micromanagement: every word spoken, every move planned, every detail of everything that goes on every Monday and Tuesday night, on pay-per-views and anything else it does, for some reason has to be exact or, at least, in accordance with someone's will who may or may not have WWE's best interests as a wrestling promotion at heart. WWE did learn a great deal from WCW's mistakes - there is nobody on today's roster who is making as much as any of the top tier at WCW during its peak, and "creative control" in the hands of the talent is a thing of the past. Moreover, as a stand-alone company it never suffered a sword of Damocles over its head dangled by someone at a parent company. The creative team, for better or worse, is kept at arm's length from the on-air talent in order to prevent the kinds of political booking that plagued WCW. The ring characters are no longer the legal property of the talent, but remain with WWE, making their transition to another promotion difficult and, to some extent, stifling the organic creativity behind the development of such characters by discouraging talent from bringing their own ideas into it for fear of losing the resulting rights to WWE when they are used. I very much doubt that the talent WCW lost during its decline would have jumped so readily to today's WWE. Creative control is a thing of the past? Someone tell that to the creative members who've seen scripts changed for the benefit of Triple H after he voiced his disapproval of taking even DQ losses. He's still a featured player on TV, still gets factions built around him and he's still protected like the face of the company, even after all this time. He's helped to dictate booking and pushes that don't involve him so he's been in the same position Hulk Hogan was in WCW for the longest time.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 4, 2016 8:45:26 GMT -5
1. Backstage bs is what killed WCW.
2. You cant fix it.
Say your the booker and you put together a great show. Its all approved and ready to shoot on monday.
Well
2 hours before the show I call you. Seems Hulk Hogan doesn't like the fact that he isn't on the show. He wants to main even against Flair. So your main event is nixed. Yes I know they were booed out of the building last month and have done nothing since. But hulk wants it and its in his contract.
Also that cruserweight match you wanted to open the show...well now Hulk wants it to be a DQ finish as he wants to be the only guy getting a clean pin. Yes I know it messes up the next PPV.
And the US title match that was suppost to main event. Well we need to nix it as Hall and Nash want extra promo time to build their tag team match. They want it and its in their contract. Yes I know we advertised the match. Schiavonie will say something to cover it. So write something for him to say.
So with 2 hours left till we air, please fix all of this.
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Post by benstudd on Jan 4, 2016 8:57:04 GMT -5
I'm going to harp on this until I'm blue in the mouth because WWE is making the same mistake: moving Nitro to 3 hours over-extended the product, and made it tedious to sit through for even hard-core fans, let alone casual ones. The WWF had more action in less time. Once Vince Russo came on board, nothing made sense. Bad gimmick matches, and turns coming out of nowhere with no explanation or a ridiculous one. The nWo had overstayed its welcome, and become very diluted. Rather than focusing on the core of Hogan, Hall and Nash, it became half the roster. Bad booking made talent leave in droves. Once the Radicalz jumped (with Benoit winning the World Title the night before), the writing was on the wall. 1. As a fan I NEVER had a problem with the three hours. Compare that 3 hours to the current Raw 3 hours and it's light and day. 2. WCW went into the gutters cause they stopped doing the nWo properly. When reformed with a small group in early 99, WCW had great ratings. The problem was the WWF was beating them and Bischoff couldn't take that, he panicked, went paranoid, got burned out and quit. If Eric would have calmed down and forget the WWF and continue doing the nWo they would still be alive today. 3. The Radicalz had no effect on anything at all in WCW or WWF.
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Post by The Dark Order Inferno on Jan 4, 2016 9:46:08 GMT -5
1. As a fan I NEVER had a problem with the three hours. Compare that 3 hours to the current Raw 3 hours and it's light and day. 2. WCW went into the gutters cause they stopped doing the nWo properly. When reformed with a small group in early 99, WCW had great ratings. The problem was the WWF was beating them and Bischoff couldn't take that, he panicked, went paranoid, got burned out and quit. If Eric would have calmed down and forget the WWF and continue doing the nWo they would still be alive today. 3. The Radicalz had no effect on anything at all in WCW or WWF. Three hours of watchable primetime TV was doable with the roster WCW had, Thunder was where it all began to unravel as WCW's booking team was overstretched while having to dance around Hogan's whims. The Red and White NWO was a huge mistake from beginning to end, it should have been a unique faction without the NWO branding, should have been face and had a clear agenda to stop Hogan. It should have been the 'What next?' after the fall of the NWO, with them either feuding with a resurgent Horsemen or becoming corrupted with power too, causing perma-face Sting to leave and feud with them. Instead it was a means to keep the NWO going for the glory of Hogan and to get the title back around his waist. The importance of the Radicals and Jericho have been hugely overstated by the WWF/E, yes they were good in the ring but none of them were parachuted into the world title picture, it took them all a long time to get there and none of them won a world title before WCW's closure. Guerrero was fired between signing there and winning the title, he and Jericho were both used to put over Chyna which is somehow seen as treating them better than WCW where they got more TV time, angles and wins than many former WWE Champions, Saturn was buried, they tried to give Malenko a 'character', we won't go into how they treated Raven (Not really a Radical, but he jumped and got treated nearly as badly as DDP) compared to WCW, with Benoit being the only one they really took seriously, and he was a former WCW champion.
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Post by Milkman Norm on Jan 4, 2016 10:56:54 GMT -5
1. Acknowledge that you have two fan bases. The old Mid-Atlantic and Georgia Championship fans and the newer fans that came with the WWF guys who jumped. Book accordingly.
2. Stop Goldberg from being an idiot who puts his arm through a window
3. Have a healthy Goldberg go through the nWo building up from minor guys to Hall to Nash to Hogan as Nash described in his shoot.
3A. Have a back up plan because as seen at the Starrcade 98 match Goldberg wasn't over with the "smart" fans. Nash got a huge pop when he beat him.
4. Use what ever ego tricks you can to get Hogan to do what you want.
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domrep
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Post by domrep on Jan 4, 2016 11:55:57 GMT -5
I never really understood why the Radicalz left WCW. If I remember, at the time they were pissed b/c Sullivan had the book but also because they weren't getting the proper pushes. But here's a list of their accomplishments:
Dean Malenko - 4 time Cruiserweight champion/former US Champion/former tag champion Eddie Guerrero - 2 time Cruiserweight champion/former US Champion Chris Benoit - 2 time US champion/3 time TV champion/2 time tag champion/former world champ
To say they didn't get a push is beyond ridiculous. In fact Benoit's the only triple crown guy out of the bunch. Malenko didn't really get out of the Lightweight division in the WWF anyway. But yeah, them leaving killed their mid-card. In hindsight, WCW had two changes to get this right.
'97 - Sting should have won the belt clean, should have done the rematch w/Hogan at Superbrawl then Sting can feud with the likes of Bret Hart, DDP, even Goldberg, Benoit, Booker T. He wouldn't have had a shortage of challengers in 1998.
'98 - in a vacuum, the screw job of Goldberg at Starrcade and the fingerpoke of doom wasn't that bad. The problem was the follow-up. If that was the plan all along, the easiest storyline would have been Goldberg chasing Hogan for the belt. Goldberg wins at Starrcade 1999, wrapping up a year long storyline.
From Starrcade 99 on, I'm not really sure what they could have done. The 4 guys leaving put a dent in the mid-card, everyone is older. All things being equal, I'm sure they would have plucked guys like RVD and Lance Storm from ECW anyway but as other posters have said...the decisions made in 97 and 98 affected things in 99 and 2000. And let's be real here, WWF was still a shit show for most of 1999. WCW still had a chance if politics didn't get in the way
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Post by MichaelMartini on Jan 4, 2016 12:38:20 GMT -5
Letting the younger fresher midcard go hurt them so bad it can't be stated enough. Look at the talent they let go - Austin, Foley, Eddie, Rey, Jericho, Big Show, Vader, Farooq, Benoit, Saturn, Malenko, Raven, etc to keep Hogan and pals. WWE is doing the same thing, getting rid of the young midcard to keep trotting out way past their prime old guys and part timers. WCW ran the NWO into the ground, WWW is running the far less over Authority into the ground. WCW tried to bring in celebs, so did WWE. WCW added shows like Thunder and went 3 hours, WWE added Smackdown and went 3 hours. WCW started making crappy movies, so did WWE. They're making all of the exact same mistakes. WWE's troubles are somewhat different from those that ultimately killed WCW. Primarily, whereas WCW allowed its on-air talent to run the asylum, WWE suffers from a serious issue of micromanagement: every word spoken, every move planned, every detail of everything that goes on every Monday and Tuesday night, on pay-per-views and anything else it does, for some reason has to be exact or, at least, in accordance with someone's will who may or may not have WWE's best interests as a wrestling promotion at heart. WWE did learn a great deal from WCW's mistakes - there is nobody on today's roster who is making as much as any of the top tier at WCW during its peak, and "creative control" in the hands of the talent is a thing of the past. Moreover, as a stand-alone company it never suffered a sword of Damocles over its head dangled by someone at a parent company. The creative team, for better or worse, is kept at arm's length from the on-air talent in order to prevent the kinds of political booking that plagued WCW. The ring characters are no longer the legal property of the talent, but remain with WWE, making their transition to another promotion difficult and, to some extent, stifling the organic creativity behind the development of such characters by discouraging talent from bringing their own ideas into it for fear of losing the resulting rights to WWE when they are used. I very much doubt that the talent WCW lost during its decline would have jumped so readily to today's WWE.
I agree with the mistake of micromanaging everything. A wrestling show shouldn't be so rigidly controlled. But I think guys should have more of a personal investment in their characters. Without creative control we wouldn't have had the Montreal screwjob that kicked off the attitude era, or Foley's brilliant storylines for instance. WWE doesn't have to worry about talent going to other promotions since there are no threats. And besides, talent jumping back and forth helped both shows. It generated interest. Wrestlers not making as much money as the WCW guys did isn't a positive either. WWE is probably missing out on another Austin, Hogan, Rock because there are more lucrative options for charismatic athletes like MMA. These guys were rock stars, people paid to see them. They carried the promotions. These days, they have featured performers in a travelling circus. The brand is the draw and that is a shaky foundation.
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