What Made You Stop Watching WCW?

[Deleted]

Honestly? As weird as it may sound? The set & format changes did me in.

Dropped Saturday Night & Worldwide when they changed the studio show formats, dropped 'em dead. I stuck with Nitro until early 2000 - I'd been in regular back-and-forth switching channels mode for the last few years, with Nitro winning the amount of time I spent with one over the other. But the new sets, plus the crap quality of course, made me go back to a by-then improved WWF for good.

[timelimitdraw]

I stayed through the Finger Poke of Doom, the Radicalz leaving, Arquette winning the title, and the Hogan Bash at the Beach fiasco. It took Vince Russo putting the World heavyweight title on himself for me to finally tap out. McMahon winning the WWF title was weird, but at least he'd wrestled a bit and was in good shape. Arquette as WCW champ was a mess, but I could at least try to see the "mainstream attention" aspect of it that they were going for. 

Russo as the World heavyweight champion? Bro, that was an all-around bad idea, bro.

[ERON]

I never stopped watching completely, but the Russo era swiftly had me watching Raw primarily and only switching to Nitro during commercial breaks. Hugh Morrus becoming Hugh G. Rection was a tipping point for me.

[HMARK Center]

I have a hard time remembering, since I don't think it happened all at once. I only got back into watching WCW and WWF full time in early 1998, so I wasn't as burned out on a lot of stuff like the nWo as most fans were, and I tried to stick it out with WCW through 1999 because I had really gotten annoyed with WWF around that time. If I remember correctly, I was really not into babyface Rock, I preferred WCW's midcard to WWF's, and I had seen Wrestling with Shadows around the time and really felt like I didn't want to support Vince McMahon.

I do recall getting to 2000, though, and it just becoming a chore to keep watching. I was in that "I'll keep watching because maybe it'll get better!" mode, where maybe they'd do something interesting with a guy or two that I liked on a given Nitro and I'd get my hopes up, only to see things invariably crash down. So I do recall seeing a few WCW pay per views at friends houses in 2000, do recall following some storylines (Millionaires Club vs. New Blood, Booker T winning the title, Tank Abbot with 3 Count), but also just getting to the point more and more where I'd keep track of results online but really not watch all that much.

I want to say I was pretty much fully done by the fall of 2000 or so, but it was more a steady decline in interest than an all at once decision.

[corndog]

A few years back someone here broke down the Nitros from the Fingerpoke of Doom onwards and I realized I stopped watching completely in Spring '99. The Fingerpoke of Doom definitely completely soured me on WCW, but I still watched for a little bit longer. Chris Jericho was one of my favorite wrestlers at the time and I think once they took him off tv I was done.

[Hit Girl]

Russo

[honsou]

Finger poke of doom and honestly it became clear that Raw was just more interesting

[thegame415]

I just think WWE got better and that’s why I stopped.

[Tenshigure]

To the best of my recollection, I'd have to pinpoint it sometime around Starrcade '99, when they tried to recreate the Montreal Screwjob with Goldberg and Bret Hart. I think I may have watched a few more shows here and there (tuned in around the time of David Arquette's win in early 2000), but I went from an avid fan to hardly casual by that point.

[riseofsetian1981]

I still watched WCW on a consistent basis even during the questionable and insane angles, promos, and matches. They were still an alternative to the WWF/WWE at the time. Them shutting down was one of the worst days in professional wrestling honestly. It marked a true end of an era where there wasn't a legitimate form of competition anymore.

[Squirrel Master]

I knew WCW was going downhill from the moment they handed Above Average Mike Sanders the live microphone.

[salz4life]

Like now.... I never really stopped. I just paid more attention to WWE while following WCW enough to know what is going on.

[prettynami]

Probably after the Tazer thing. I didn't completely stop watching but I stopped watching it consistently and it drifted farther out of my consciousness. There is stuff I have fond memories of after that, but the majority of it seems like a stream of consciousness where I can remember an event here or there but not a single match, like I tuned in only for the promos, somehow. I can't even pinpoint what I watched instead, I look at WWE stuff from the time and don't remember any of it... So it must not have been that.

[James Fabiano]

Jun 11, 2019 23:05:23 GMT -5 romanstylesiii said:

As we all depart from WWE, I have to ask to the people on here who watched WCW, what made you stop?

To me, it was Hogan joining The Wolfpac. None of that made any sense to me. I would check in on WCW during its final two years, but never watched regularly after that.

Russo Mk. 1. I don't need to see someone compete with the WWF by turning the product into...another WWF.

[Milkman Norm]

Benoit, Guerrero, Malenko & Saturn walking out.

[spagett]

The ultimate irony was that WCW 2001 was actually starting to improve after years and years of horrible TV.

Nothing major, but you sensed the worst was over and there were tiny green shoots of recovery to be found. And then a few weeks later it was all over.

[Jake, The Jake, Jake]

My parents finally let me watch WWF.

[Deleted]

Fingerpoke of Doom was straight trash and it didn’t help that it happened on the exact same night Foley won the title.

Goldberg REFUSES TO FOLLOW THE SCRIPT, Arquette and Russo as World Champions, Judy Bagwell on a pole, Viagra on a pole... all these things have to have been done on purpose to kill the company. I refuse to believe otherwise.

[Wardlow on Wardlow 54]

Getting burned three years in a row at Starrcade, which happened on or around my birthday.

1996: Mediocre show, ends with a bait and switch where Piper beats Hogan but doesn't win the title because of stupid booking

1997: Mediocre show, ends with a shit finish because of Hogan's ego

1998: Decent show for the most part, ends with the Streak ending thanks to nWo politics

And then the Finger Poke happening a week later, when they had the chance to repair the damage, turned me off completely. I still watched here and there, but I was mostly a WWF fan from then on.

[Natural Born Farmer]

Jun 12, 2019 15:25:54 GMT -5 Milkman Norm said:

Benoit, Guerrero, Malenko & Saturn walking out.

I was struggling for a defining moment and this might be it. Bad as WCW was these guys were usually a reason to watch, and now they didn’t even have that.

And them turn up in the Raw crowd the next day was absolutely bonkers.