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Post by Deleted on Oct 29, 2020 4:07:17 GMT -5
2000 November, Part 2
Nov 20, 2000"In head-to-head quarters, Raw opened at 4.06 (Angle vs. Crash) to 2.51 (Kronik vs. Booker & Luger; beginning of Nash vs. Thrillers) which would be the closest gap in a long time and highly inexplicable as to why other than people are conditioned to Raw opening with a 25 minute promo and know they don't have to tune into the first segment, but still, one would think the idea that Rock, Austin or Foley would be doing an interview would be more exciting than Kronik." "At this point, everything is in a holding pattern because the bookers have been told to make no major changes in the product under the guise that Vince Russo would be brought back and they don't want to mess up his plans." "Skipper tried hitting on Ms. Jones. She was blowing him off. He asked what the Cat had that he didn't, and she said the Cat was over." "When you listen to Stevie Ray's commentary, you think Palumbo must be some sort of secret love interest the way he puts him over like he's Shawn Michaels." "The four-way with Nash, Palumbo, Stasiak and O'Haire was pretty bad, as it had little heat and it was all the guys trading off on Nash, so there wasn't much to it. Nash, against all odds, had Stasiak ready for the power bomb when Reno and Sanders both interfered, although five-on-one weren't too much for the mightiest of all team players. Six-on-one was, as Jindrak took him out and he was laid out by O'Haire shawnton bomb (and do they need to change the name of that move or what? Why not just put subtitles on the screen every time O'Haire comes out, "We copy WWF")." "Kronik laid out Konnan with the high times. Konnan apparently suffered a concussion and was knocked cold. This wasn't scripted and the show was stopped for several minutes in a scene similar to the Bagwell injury." "Although the whole angle has fizzled out so this may not happen, the plan for the Stacey Keibler angle was to stretch it out until March, and then reveal that Russo was the father (what a shock, huh?), but the big revelation would be that Ric Flair was Stacey Keibler's father from a fling in Baltimore 21 years earlier and that Ric and Russo worked together to break up the marriage because they were the only two who knew the secret, that it was an incestuous relationship, revealing that at one point, David had, in fact, had sex with his own sister. Russo had been waiting for that one ever since Ken Shamrock turned down the sex with the fake sister angle" "That Thunder interview on 11/8 with Lanita Erickson (the new announcer/interviewer) who the wrestlers jokingly refer to as "Missy Hyatt's mother," although she's actually two years younger than Hiatt, with former footballer Bob Sapp, was one of the saddest things in recent memory to make air (well, at least until this weekend's ECW TV)" "WCW officially inked the deal to send younger wrestlers to work for Bill Behrens on the NWA Wildside shows every week to gain experience" "A Saks Fifth Avenue executive filed a $10 million libel suit based on a placard held up at the 9/25 WCW Nitro show. The sign, held up by a former friend from high school, Robert Catell, read, "P.Goldschmidt steals from Saks." Court papers claim the sign held Goldschmidt up to public contempt and ridicule, disgrace and prejudice, causing him mental pain and anguish. Catell had been holding up signs at WCW and WWF TV shoots in the area, calling him a loser, among other things, which he said he laughed off, but the sign accusing him of being a thief went over the line." "Because an indie show that used several WCW wrestlers right before the 10/23 Nitro in Little Rock drew almost as much as Nitro did, WCW responded by no longer allowing talent to work any indie dates without clearing it with the office. Up to this point, the office hasn't been good about clearing dates, which only effects the lower paid guys, particularly those who are on nightly deals, or on low guarantees but with nightly bonuses since the company is running such few dates" "Newcastle was reported as a good show. The bad thing was fans throwing so much debris after the Steiner-Booker main event that a bottle hit Midajah across the face and caused her to be knocked out, but she was okay as she worked Thunder the next night." "House show on 11/13 in Birmingham, England drew about 6,500 paying about $205,000 ( My Note: I was at this show)....Almost none of the fans live knew about Storm winning the U.S. title the day before or the Major Gunns turn ( My Note: Thunder wasn't airing here anymore so we also didn't know the Thrillers had turned on Nash). They put Booker over Steiner on top, Booker talked about being in London (whoops)."
Nov 27, 2000 "WCW also did a German market PPV show on 11/16 in Oberhausen, Germany before approximately 9,000 fans in a 10,000-seat arena." "Because of technical problems, a lot of people with cable missed the first hour of the show. People with satellite dishes had no problems. More people ordered the show than anyone expected ahead of time. Nothing is official, but I got the word they want to do a similar show in the future." "Newsworthy comments were made by Konnan, who didn't have many good things to say about WCW and even hinted about wanting to go to WWF if the possibility existed. Rey Misterio Jr. said similar things, although not as clearly as Konnan. It was pretty strange to hear this on a WCW broadcast." "Wright got the win, or at least he thought. Awesome then got back in the ring and threw Wright out in the style of Kevin Nash." "Flair gave Jarrett's spot in the three-way later in the show to Wright (a babyface since the show was in Germany). This meant Wright had to work three times on the show." "Wright & Rection won the tag titles from Jindrak & O'Haire. This was supposed to be Wright & Disqo, but Disqo injured his back earlier in the show, and the plan was for the title change. Fans popped for Wright winning the belts. They really pissed off the German audience already when the word got that they pretended on Nitro that it was Wright & Disqo who had won the titles and that by Monday, even Wright had already lost them. Rection was told to stay out of camera range in the post-match so for Nitro, the only shot would be of Wright with the belt. This is probably going to hurt selling a second German PPV because of how they treated this one after." "Nash won over Wright and Awesome in a three-way to get a match with Sting later in the show for the European Cup title. Nash did nothing, making it a bad match. Awesome and Wright wrestled each other while Nash just stood in the corner. Then Nash power bombed Wright onto Awesome and pinned both of them at the same time. Fans were loudly chanting "We Want Hall" during the match" "Sting put Nash in the scorpion and Schulz tried to count it as a pinfall, but realized before three that Nash's chest was on the mat." "Charles Robinson was attacked by Steiner and Midajah was given the ref shirt. Booker then took out Midajah and another ref came out. Why didn't the second ref come out when Midajah was acting as the ref? Or do you only need to be wearing a ref shirt to be a referee in a world title match?" "Much of the really illogical stuff is gone. The shows are better, but the NBT show just doesn't do it for me as the guys have the look, but they are so green to be pushed to main event level. Just being tall and having a good cosmetic body doesn't make you a singles star. It does give you many chances at a singles push that a more talented shorter guy won't get, tho, as these guys will get more chances after this one and some of them probably will eventually make it." "There is a nucleus, but it's so hard to remove those two years of bad taste. They've got to rebuild the belts, and the way they handled the tag titles this week isn't a step in the right direction. Nobody cares about the product because their is no holy grail to chase that means anything, and they've got to create it." "The show opened announcing Wright & Disqo as new tag champs from Germany, showing the clip of the match where Wright & Rection won the belts but pretending Rection wasn't in the match." "Palumbo & Stasiak won the tag titles from Wright & Skipper when Kidman & Misterio Jr. interfered, Disqo becomes the first wrestling superstar since the immortal Judy Bagwell to hold the tag team titles while neither being involved in the match to win it or in the match to lose it." "Vito hit Reno with the bat, saying it had something to do with Maria. I barely remember they had a Maria, since she showed up one week and as never talked about again." "Rick Steiner returned holding the Battledome belt. Four Battledome guys were in Augusta doing the angle, led by T-Money. Steiner said how the Battledome guys claim Battledome is real and wrestling is fake. That was totally ass backwards. It should be the Battledome guys doing that promo on TV (I know they've done it on their own TV, but figure nobody watches that). This got mega heat, shocking to say. They did a four-on-one on Steiner with T-Money giving Steiner a low blow and taking his belt back." "Nash said he had 13 months and ten days left on his contract and he wanted to have fun. What a smart guy setting up an angle where he can jump to one company while building it up in the other company, or by doing so, pressuring the former company to feel the need to re-sign him at near his current huge deal. You can never knock someone for playing the game smart, although I wish it would help as opposed to hurt the struggling company." "Sanders and Thrillers came out and it appeared they were playing a game of legit one-upsmanship that nobody at home understood. Sanders talked about flying first class and a breach of contract (Nash was complaining loudly in Europe, after not complaining for a few weeks, both about having to do a program with the Thrillers and also about not flying first class in Europe since it is in his contract). Sanders seemed a little nervous but probably got the better of Nash, who is never nervous, slightly." "DDP's pop was nothing compared to that of a few weeks ago, because the single best thing the company has promoted in the last six months is the return of Hall, and the fans were, being that it's pro wrestling and you figure what is built on TV is what you are eventually going to get, expecting Hall and anyone but he or Hogan probably would have been a disappointment." "Bryan Clark beat Misterio Jr. & Kidman in a handicap match. Seems Wright wanted to pay the APA to soften up the FA's, but he only had enough money to buy one of them. I guess one was enough to make the FA's even look worse than they usually make them look. It was so funny on Nitro when Wright asked Kronik to beat them up and only had a credit card and they said they only take cash, when their whole catch phrase is breaking necks and cashing checks." "Main event was a lumberjack match with Stasiak beating Page. It's great that WCW has established stars elevating young guys with pinfall wins on TV main events. It's just the choice of the young guys to elevate is rather strange." "Mood in Augusta, GA was that everyone was down feeling the storylines make nobody interested in the product and that most people are phoning it in and the young wrestlers who aren't going half-ass through the motions just aren't accepted by the audience for their efforts" "All the stuff with the Battledome guys was put together by Bischoff. The deal is it's a November sweeps thing, with the idea that it's more to up the profile of Battledome, which used the WCW logo in its advertising for November sweeps which is where WCW came out of this. Ed Ferrara (who is basically the head writer at this point although the bookers are still under the impression Russo is coming back, but nobody knows anything for sure) et al. are not allowed to touch anything in any segments involving the Battledome guys, which is basically Bischoff's baby" "Midajah was unhappy on the European tour because her father-in-law was very ill and she wasn't allowed to leave the tour to be with him" "Vito may have been suspended for two weeks for making Vamp look bad before putting him over. He was off TV for a little while either way, and in his first match back against Crowbar, he got more heat because it was felt he didn't go up good for Crowbar's superplex attempt" "The episode of the "Nikki" show which features Nash, as WCW's luck would have it, goes head-to-head with the Mayhem PPV (except on the West Coast) on 11/26 at 9 p.m. on WB"
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Futureraven: Beelzebruv
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
The Ultimate Arbiter of Right And Wrong
Spent half my life here, God help me
Posts: 15,051
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Post by Futureraven: Beelzebruv on Oct 29, 2020 15:31:42 GMT -5
I'm going to miss this thread.
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Post by Feyrhausen on Oct 29, 2020 17:58:48 GMT -5
After the buyout, WCW, Inc. became "Universal Wrestling Corporation." WWE did not buy the whole company, just the assets it wanted. Everything else, like the contracts WWE didn't pick up and outstanding legal matters, stayed with UWC, which was officially folded by Turner Broadcasting in 2017. So whats the arguing about? My original post was about people being paid by time warner after WCW folded. They had WCW contracts that were picked up by time warner after the sale. What you just said in your post.
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cjh
Hank Scorpio
Posts: 6,585
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Post by cjh on Oct 29, 2020 18:47:59 GMT -5
After the buyout, WCW, Inc. became "Universal Wrestling Corporation." WWE did not buy the whole company, just the assets it wanted. Everything else, like the contracts WWE didn't pick up and outstanding legal matters, stayed with UWC, which was officially folded by Turner Broadcasting in 2017. So whats the arguing about? My original post was about people being paid by time warner after WCW folded. They had WCW contracts that were picked up by time warner after the sale. What you just said in your post. There was a narrative that went for years that top WCW talents were not under contract to directly to WCW. That seems to be false since it came out after WCW's closing that WCW's most highly paid talent and the wrestler most linked to that narrative, Hulk Hogan, was contracted specifically to WCW. WCW still operated after March 2001 as Universal Wrestling Corp. That is who continued to pay Goldberg, Kevin Nash, Sting, etc. As I mentioned, what was left of WCW after the sale to WWE was not closed for good until 2017.
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Post by Feyrhausen on Oct 30, 2020 5:28:15 GMT -5
So whats the arguing about? My original post was about people being paid by time warner after WCW folded. They had WCW contracts that were picked up by time warner after the sale. What you just said in your post. There was a narrative that went for years that top WCW talents were not under contract to directly to WCW. That seems to be false since it came out after WCW's closing that WCW's most highly paid talent and the wrestler most linked to that narrative, Hulk Hogan, was contracted specifically to WCW. WCW still operated after March 2001 as Universal Wrestling Corp. That is who continued to pay Goldberg, Kevin Nash, Sting, etc. As I mentioned, what was left of WCW after the sale to WWE was not closed for good until 2017. WCW did not operate. The name and most assets were owned by WWF. Time Warner created a new corporation to manage the leftover assets, mainly the contracts of a select few wrestlers like Goldberg. When you say they were operating what were they doing? Running shows with wrestlers Vince did not pick up? Making home videos and action figures? All it was was a shell corp to manage the last few contracts and amybe collect a few bucks from the last couple PPVs Yes, it seems they were under contract to WCW and not to Time Warner as had been previously thought. But after WCW was sold their contracts were being paid by Time Warner through the new company.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2020 6:13:31 GMT -5
2000 December, Part 1
Dec 4, 2000
"In a Pro Wrestling Torch interview, Vince McMahon said that Viacom was the main stumbling block in wanting to purchase WCW. He said, "At the last minute, there was a snag with Viacom. Originally Viacom gave us the green light and indicated to us that the price to us, in essence, would not be severe. So we began negotiations in earnest and good faith with the Turner people and had really good negotiations and I have a good appreciation for that. Then, unfortunately, at the last minute, out of the clear blue, Viacom's price became astronomical. From there everything broke down because it didn't make any sense for us to purse that kind of give-back." He said if it wasn't for that, the deal would have been made"
"Besides direction, the company needs an infusion of new talent. Since there is considered something of a hiring freeze, that's likely not going to happen. Not only new talent, but they need new talent being pushed to the top of the card. Even if the new talent isn't ready. They already blew it with Mike Awesome and Lance Storm, who no doubt fell victim to the classic WCW booking of dwelling on their shortcomings and why they can't headline instead of their dwelling on their talents and giving them a chance to headline and see if it'll work before cutting their booking legs almost immediately."
"WCW has a chance to put together an angle to shake things up, if it does it correctly, and it is the ECW invasion angle, just under another name. Granted, decibel level of heat is often overrated, but on TV last week, the hottest issue was the Battledome guys against the WCW guys, simply because they were outsiders and it appeared to freshen up a stale product. The problem with that angle is there is no way to make it mean money or sustain it."
"An ECW invasion is hardly a savior angle. Bottom line is that most of the WCW fans won't even know who most of the guys coming in are, or will care right off the bat except for the hardcore fans, but as the Battledome angle showed, if it's presented as something that isn't supposed to happen and kept realistic, that is still excitement to the show."
"Anyway, it's not going to happen because you don't make million dollar guys really put over guys working for $1,000 per night, although that's what would be needed to get anyone over at this point. People will shoot holes in it rather than try it. And jealousy will prevent them allowing it to be pushed to its optimum anyway."
"If they spent more time at the booking meetings trying to come up with long-term scenarios and less on ideas like Paisley coming out with a Meng wig that nobody laughs at, they'd be a whole lot better off."
"Vito's sister, Maria, returned, now just called Marie. She was yelling at Reno. They've now established that Reno used to date her."
"Kronik was supposed to walk out at 7:30, but instead left at the 6:11 mark. Nobody complained about it."
"Stevie Ray made fun of Douglas' pre-match promo getting no crowd reaction, which, while true, isn't something you'd want to do on camera."
"Cat attacked Mark Madden. This wasn't planned ahead of time but Cat totally worked with Madden, not hurting him at all. It was another of those backstage jokes for the boys, which actually was more entertaining than watching Cat wrestle anyway."
"They did a spoof on the "Blood Runs Cold" promo when Eric Bischoff brought in Glacier. The announcers all made fun of it, since they are reintroducing Ray Lloyd as a bumbling superhero character."
"Lots of heat on Major Gunns, who is legit unhappy about being in the heel role so she really doesn't work it."
"Bigelow then collapsed, doing a spoof on the Paul Orndorff deal from the Fall Brawl PPV. Nobody, and I mean nobody, bought that Bigelow was really injured even though they tried to sell it as serious."
"They've got the streak up to 20 wins somehow. When he came into the ring on Nitro the next night it was 25. So he went from 14 to 25 with just one win. I think he now gets wins every night WCW doesn't present wrestling shows, and wins on PPV count as five bonus wins."
"If you notice, nobody believes the steak, cares about the streak or brings the banners regarding the streak like they did the first time. Reason? Because the first time, people thought the number was legit and as soon as after 100, they started making up numbers, nobody cared."
"Absolutely nothing new on the management front. All the rumors regarding Bischoff picked up steam this past week, although no word of anything close to a deal. Jerry Jarrett had an interview and was offered a full-time job running the company, but because of his business commitments, he wanted a job only as a consultant. Lots of the speculation was that if Bischoff ran the company, that they would tape TV weekly from Las Vegas. Years back, Bischoff wanted to use Vegas as the permanent site for Nitro, but it never got done"
"Nitro opened with a mock Presidential press conference and Jarrett hitting a guy with a guitar."
"They tried to put over the PPV from the previous night. There was no mention of the 3 Count match that stole the show. In WWF, when an undercard match steals the show, they put it over on Raw, sometimes huge (Edge & Christian, Dudleys and Hardys have all been elevated from prelim guys to major league somebodies coming off hot PPV matches that were pushed as classics the next night on television). Instead, most of the guys were made to look bad with no mention of how good they had just looked."
"When they said that Booker may never wrestle again, the fans cheered. Now that was sad."
"Flair said his Steiner's Starrcade opponent was the same level of wrestler as Rock and Austin. Poor Ric's nose is going to be growing a lot if he keeps the commissioners' role."
"The plan is to get Duggan out of Team Canada because he's not happy in it, to the point he's been mocking the role at some of the shows and taped his mouth up on an interview to show he's being not allowed to say what he wants."
"Boogie Knights got the Harris Twins to be their APA's with a few drinks and sandwiches."
"DDP & Nash did an interview where they tried to get the company over by spending the interview leading the crowd in chants for Hall. There was even more heat than usual about this behind the scenes, given it was that afternoon when the word reached everyone about Hall getting another DUI and crashing another car, meaning the company would have to be absolute fools to bring him in. Everyone had been warned not to talk about Hall, nor was anyone allowed to even acknowledge all the Hall chants."
"Madden, probably figuring that it was safe because they'd have to punish Nash, which nobody has the guts to do, joined in. Hall was over like crazy. I think Page was just doing it because he needed the rub something fierce because fans weren't accepting him as Nash's partner because they've been conditioned to only want Hall."
"Do you think McMahon would allow, unscripted, HHH to do a live promo on Raw telling everyone to bring signs and chant to bring Hall back? I mean, if McMahon had already decided to not use him."
"NBT's came out to the Wolfpac music and DDP & Nash joked it was the only way they can get a pop."
"Misterio Jr. beat Jarrett via DQ. It was originally booked as Misterio Jr. winning via pinfall, but it was changed. I can't say who complained to change it because I don't know. This was so stupid, because it's four-on-one with the faces interfering in front of the ref. Against all odds, Jarrett still constantly had Misterio Jr. destroyed and ready to be pinned except the FA's would break up the count."
"A good indication that Russo may not be brought back is that the latest plan is for it to be a fake pregnancy to get Keibler back on TV and out of the angle."
"Bagwell through a major fit backstage, said to be reminiscent of Steiner at his worse, basically screaming at everyone that he didn't care if they fired him or not and screaming about how stupid everyone in the company was, mainly mad at production. There was supposed to be a spot in his match where Sid's face and voice would appear on the screen, Steiner would be distracted, and Bagwell would get a near fall with a schoolboy. They were out there waiting to do the spot but production never got the image of Sid on the screen, so Bagwell lost clean without his near fall spot"
"Add Larry Zbyszko to the list of those cut from the announcing corps. Bobby Heenan will be under contract until something like 12/28, but won't at this point be appearing on any more broadcasts"
"Torrie Wilson has been told that when her 90-day cycles are over, that her contract is going to be dropped. Wilson was making in the $200,000 to $250,000 range, and I believe closer to the former than the latter. With the exception of Lenita Erickson, all the women is WCW are now down to $52,000 and Wilson would be able to keep her job if she'd agreed to that range. She's been encouraged by Billy Kidman, who she now lives with, to go to WWF. The belief is that she would stay with WCW with a compromise offer, but not at $52,000"
"The speculation backstage, due to changing of plans (Filthy Animals break-up, etc.) was that Vince Russo is now thought to not be coming back"
"The Battledome angle appears to be done. It was only for November sweeps for both shows and obviously didn't help WCW in the ratings, even if the 11/20 angle was probably the most heated thing on the entire show. They were scheduled for 11/27, but there was a dispute regarding money. Apparently WCW was paying for the wrestlers to appear on Battledome. Since it was Bischoff's idea for the segments, Battledome apparently wanted WCW to pay for the trans of the Battledome guys to the WCW shows as well, including paying for first class tickets and rental cars. WCW, in its cost cutting mode, wanted Battledome to pay its own guys' trans and when Battledome wouldn't do it, they canceled the final appearance."
"In yet another example of quality control, on the World Wide shows in syndication that aired on 11/18, they were already announcing Palumbo & Stasiak vs. DDP & Nash for the WCW tag titles for the PPV. Palumbo & Stasiak weren't scheduled to win the titles until two days later and that same night was when Nash was going to introduce DDP as his mystery partner"
Dec 11, 2000
"Backstage at the 12/4 TV tapings, people were openly talking about it as if it was a done deal, and those who are close to Bischoff were strutting around a lot more confidently than they had done in the past. At press time, the deal has not been completed, and those close to Bischoff say he's very confident (he himself has a non-disclosure clause in the negotiations so is keeping things quiet) but he has been confident a deal would be made several times in the past and ultimate WCW has backed off or slowed down negotiations each time."
"What little is known is that Bischoff is planning on cutting the schedule down to five shows per month, at least over the short-term, a PPV in a major arena and four TV tapings of the current variety, taping Nitro and Thunder in succession on Monday nights, somewhat similar to what the company is doing although the company is running two or three house shows per month along with the five TV dates. Instead of touring, the idea is to move Nitro to a set location, with Las Vegas being the most likely spot."
"With today's pacing, unless they are a hot enough product to draw tourists, even booking a 2,000-seat venue, they'll be dead without giveaways within a few weeks and unless the building acoustics are strong, even if they pack the place, after a few times in the same building, the crowd reactions will be down. The upside is that WCW can at the beginning pack a small building and small building atmosphere is clearly preferable to empty larger buildings."
"Bischoff's ideas to re-invent wrestling have been privately talked about stemming from the Battledome show, with the idea of taking a group of individuals with a good cosmetic look and physique training them to be superstar wrestlers, instead of taking trained wrestlers and attempting to give them the look. Many have already complained that 80s cosmetic superhero thing is out the window, noting that copying the Battledome "look" for pro wrestlers would make far more sense if Battledome was a hit show today and capturing an audience that pro wrestling was losing, which it isn't."
"What gets over is the unique. One Superstar Billy Graham in 1977 is magic at the box office. An entire card of them is actually a bad wrestling show. Ditto Hulk Hogan in 1987. Steve Austin in 1998 would be different in that his workrate was such that an entire card of Steve Austin's would be a great show, but it would also guarantee that Austin himself wouldn't have gotten over the way he did."
"Show opened with Oklahoma (Ed Ferrara) doing his Jim Ross impression. Madden got his shot in at the real Jim Ross, calling him a miserable human being but one of the all-time great announcers. I guess that's what happens when WWF isn't going to buy WCW. Since they were in Nebraska, the Oklahoma deal actually got super heat."
"DDP & Nash beat 3 Count in one of those insane booking deals. Because of the size difference, particularly Nash vs. Moore, the match looked stupid and Nash wouldn't sell anything which only made it worse. They not only squashed them, but embarrassed them, with Nash power bombing Moore after nearly killing him with a biel, and Page cutting Helms and Nash pinning both guys at the same time."
"They probably don't understand why fans don't get into 3 Count's great undercard matches (such as a three-way ladder match with Karagias & Knoble and Jung Dragons on Starrcade) when fans just see them as battle of the impotent jobbers that there's no point in caring about, using ladders. Compare that to WWF's booking of the Hardys, once they recognized that the Hardys could really go. Check those sales charts of the Hardys videos vs. sales of the Nash & DDP videos while you're at it."
"Nash & DDP are calling themselves the Insiders, which is a tremendous way to get the fans to chant for Hall without them having to open their mouth. Nash is pure genius, as the crowd knows to chant the name, he pauses to acknowledge and encourage it, but actually doesn't have to say his name. The funny part of this is that if Bischoff buys the company, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see him bring Hall back as one of his first moves. Unfortunately, put back in that environment, he could also wind up being the next Pillman."
"Reno beat Bryan Clark by DQ in 28 seconds when Brian Adams and Clark beat up Reno and wouldn't stop until Marie talked Vito into making the save. Vito walked out on his "brother" after. Weren't Marie and Reno boyfriend and girlfriend a few weeks back?"
"They had spent a ton of time all afternoon setting up the finish, where Sid would drive a police car into the building for the save with the lights flashing, get out and run-in. And he did all that, except the cameras missed the police car arriving in the back, its entire drive into the building, Sid getting out as the driver and only picked it up when he was already being held back in the ring. Seriously, how do things so regularly get this screwed up"
"Flair opened Thunder saying that Sid and Steiner were both sent home for their actions and that Steiner was suspended and stripped of the title. Fans live groaned at both Starrcade main eventers being sent home. A lot of fans left, which is a bad omen for viewers watching on TV if people who paid for tickets would react like that."
"The idea is to get people like Guerrero, Kidman and Misterio Jr. back in the cruiserweight title picture, although Kidman and Misterio Jr. are considering it a step down which is more a problem with the handling of the division for so long."
"There was an edict that the bookers got after the tapings last week that there can be no more mentions of allusions to Hall on television or else from Diana Meyers of WCW legal. Or else what?"
"Regarding the interview last week, nobody backstage gave Page & Nash any specific instructions of what to talk about so they just went into business for themselves. It was a production miscue when they played the Wolfpac music when the NBT's came out immediately afterwards"
"Because Flair, in his CEO role, has forgotten match stipulations and matches he's supposed to announce on his interviews, they are doing a deal where Tony Schiavone gets an envelope with the idea that after Flair's interview, whatever he's supposed to say and doesn't, Schiavone can claim by opening the envelope it is information that Flair has given him to release"
"The heat with Mark Madden and DDP is sort of legit. DDP was mad at Madden for making the line about his face being made of leather. DDP called him up about it and in the course of the conversation, Kimberly cussed out Madden. Madden apparently took it out by burying DDP hard on Nitro. Most likely this will either be dropped, or play into an angle at a later date but it didn't start as an angle"
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cjh
Hank Scorpio
Posts: 6,585
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Post by cjh on Oct 30, 2020 6:28:59 GMT -5
There was a narrative that went for years that top WCW talents were not under contract to directly to WCW. That seems to be false since it came out after WCW's closing that WCW's most highly paid talent and the wrestler most linked to that narrative, Hulk Hogan, was contracted specifically to WCW. WCW still operated after March 2001 as Universal Wrestling Corp. That is who continued to pay Goldberg, Kevin Nash, Sting, etc. As I mentioned, what was left of WCW after the sale to WWE was not closed for good until 2017. WCW did not operate. The name and most assets were owned by WWF. Time Warner created a new corporation to manage the leftover assets, mainly the contracts of a select few wrestlers like Goldberg. When you say they were operating what were they doing? Running shows with wrestlers Vince did not pick up? Making home videos and action figures? All it was was a shell corp to manage the last few contracts and amybe collect a few bucks from the last couple PPVs Yes, it seems they were under contract to WCW and not to Time Warner as had been previously thought. But after WCW was sold theiro contracts were being paid by Time Warner through the new company. Okay, I see the disagreement. I was looking at UWC simply as what remained of WCW, Inc. under a new name rather than a literal "new" company. I'd be curious to know why UWC wasn't officially closed until December 2017.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2020 7:12:42 GMT -5
I'm going to miss this thread. I both agree and.....disagree with this? The deep info dive I will absolutely miss. The painful part of the thread, just like with real life, was 1999 / early 2000 ..... now that we're reaching the end of 2000, it's just waiting to see this farcical WCW die from a mercy killing all over again.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2020 5:38:30 GMT -5
2000 December, Part 2
Dec 18, 2000"Brad Siegel addressed the department heads at WCW on 12/8 for a meeting that many expected to either be the announcement of a sale or the announcement of someone being put in charge of the company, neither of which happened." "It is believed that Terry Taylor, Johnny Ace, Craig Leathers and Tony Schiavone have all pitched to be in charge of the company. Leathers would be a disaster. Taylor and Ace have the wrestling knowledge but also would have detractors and supporters unless they were given full support. I just can't see Schiavone being able to send guys home and until top guys are sent home, nobody is going to take anything seriously anyway." "Unless someone is given full power to suspend wrestlers immediately who don't follow orders and exercises that power, running the company is a death position because the wrestlers will simply backbite whomever and ally with one of the others who will be sympathetic to their viewpoint and attempt a coup. We've been through this insanity for years now." "There is no done deal with Eric Bischoff's group at press time, but, for whatever this is worth, the feeling seems more positive that it will eventually happen than ever before because the AOL merger is expected to go through shortly." "Siegel said the costs of flying talent and production costs make doing live events cost prohibitive. Well, they are when nobody buys tickets. It's not the expenses that are killing the company, although no doubt one could cut back on those. It's the lack of revenue." "There was a ton of internal heat over the 12/11 Nitro from Bossier City not airing until the next day because of the David Copperfield special on TNT. WCW never mentioned the time slot change on either Nitro or Thunder, and virtually nobody in the company was even aware of the switch until 12/7. As the story goes, Leathers sent Taylor a memo back on 11/6 to inform him of the one week time change, but Taylor never informed anyone. If Leathers knew and he's in charge of production, you'd think they'd have done some inserts for the show telling the audience about the time slot change." "It's really sad when you compare one company where they have pride in the product they present and the rival company where people do as little as possible with no concern how the end product looks, and those who do have enthusiasm to present the best product, get shit on so badly and see the people who are the most manipulative and least caring rewarded the most, it's beaten out of them and they feel like marks for caring and ultimately, after a few months with the company, join the crowd and stop caring as well." "For Christmas and New Years week television, here is how things stand. Christmas was always going to be pre-empted for Nitro and the Thunder on 12/27 was going to be a "Best of Thunder 2000" highlights program. That may be intriguing to watch just to see if there are two hours worth of good or even decent stuff of the last 100 or so hours of that show. 1/1 Nitro was scheduled to be "Best of Nitro 2000" show, but then in the last week, TNT finalized the decision to air "Grease," the movie, in the Nitro time slot and pre-empt the show. The 1/3 Thunder will be taped on 12/22 in Memphis." "The fact that TNT is pre-empting the show three times in four weeks in its regular slot, basically giving up the go-home week for Starrcade and basically killing the promotion of the 1/14 WCW Sin PPV (which will only have one Nitro, airing live on 1/8, and two Thunders to get over all the angles), has led many to believe the deal to sell has to be all but done and Nitro's priority in the TNT universe has plummeted." "Santa took a bump. Smiley grabbed Santa's toy bag. The idea was he was to untie the bag and throw toys at Meng. It was hilarious because it was tied too tight and Smiley couldn't get it open for what seemed like an eternity. Anyway, he finally did and they had their toy fight until Santa hit the ring and threw powder at both guys. Meng then gave Paisley with the Afro wig the death grip. Crowbar was actually hilarious doing a deadpan on commentary with all this nonsense going on. Kwee Wee hit the ring. Santa unmasked as Terry Funk and laid out Smiley with some chairs to the head. Funk was protecting him but still hit him hard. Funk then started hitting Meng with chairs and protected him until really laying into him on the final one. He then clocked Kwee Wee, whose elbow was in the ring place and got nailed with a chair shot and he was hurting." "Funk called everyone perverts and challenged Crowbar for a hardcore title match at Starrcade. Crowbar agreed, since Funk was his hero and said it would be an honor. Funk then hit him in the head with a chair. Something about that was really funny." "Since Nash was doing the job, he actually hustled. He did a running clothesline in the corner that exposed that him moving so slow the last three years was his being lazy as opposed to his being immobile." "FA's put laxatives in the Harris Twins' sandwiches....FA's actually beat Jarrett & Harris Twins, but still looked like total losers. Big Ron had a big run and Heavy D had a Heavy D so they were history due to the laxatives. Jarrett went against all three. Now make some sense out of this one? One heel. Three faces. So what does the heel do with odds against him to get heat. Why he beats the hell out of the faces the entire match. It was an elimination bout, so he gave Konnan the stroke in 51 seconds. He then laid out Kidman with a guitar shot but Misterio Jr. finally got the win with a springboard sunset flip." "Sid magically appeared on the screen calling Steiner into the parking lot. Sid had beaten up a valet parking dude and got all his keys, and drove the cars into a circle to copy the gimmick WWF used with Shamrock and Blackman. Steiner came out with a pipe and kept missing Sid and breaking car windows. They brawled, and strangely, Scott was beating the hell out of Sid on a car as the show went off the air" "It wouldn't be a WCW show if Konnan wasn't punked out after cutting a promo like he's Steve Austin or some ass kicker beforehand so he comes off as even more incompetent." "The big story on Thunder was that Sid, who was just there a few minutes earlier for Nitro, was now lost, in his car, unable to get directions to the building and constantly calling in saying he's on his way. The people live must have been amused. That's the way to build a babyface for the crowd to get behind. Portray him as an idiot that can't even find his way to the arena on time." "Reno & Vito both attacked Bigelow, throwing coffee on him. Bigelow slipped legit on the floor because it was all wet from the coffee and may have hyperextended his knee." "Luger beat Dwayne Bruce with the rack. The original idea was for Goldberg to be the ref, and for both Luger and Bruce to double-team him and leave him laying. Goldberg nixed the angle. He wasn't against Bruce going heel on him, since that was the plan from the start, but thought doing so this week was rushing the angle. He was right, but sometimes bookers have to be able to be wrong and get their product out there." "Sid finally found his way to the building and just as the show went off the air, the idea was for Sid to leave Steiner laying by choke slamming him through the ring, which was gimmicked to collapse. Being that this is WCW, Steiner hit the mat, and the ring didn't collapse. Nobody would know any better unless they knew what was supposed to happen" "If they can't say Hall's name, they should just say cut, you can't mention Hall's name, and edit, like a real TV show would do instead of a zillion references, all sound edited out which only serves to make the company, which has a horrible image problem, look even worse. Nash's wandering eyes (I don't blame him in this instance) with the lights dimming in the middle of the interview and basically talking on their own show that he's leaving matter-of-factly only serves to bury the company that much more. And since Stevie Ray didn't know how to handle an interview, that spot where he got tongue tied and they all stood there, and it wasn't even edited off TV, that was amazing and it making air with that not edited out shows just how little the people producing the show care about production quality." "Page's side of the story is that Diana Meyers never told either he or Nash not to mention Hall's name on the air. They both had heard that nobody was supposed to say the name, but neither was ever told to their face not to say it (another WCW employee claims he was sitting there with them and they were all told in the same meeting never to say the name). He said that not only did production know ahead of time that Hall would be a focal part of the interview, but that they had planned to insert footage of Hall throughout the interview on B roll. The reason all the clumsy moments weren't cut and re-taped was because they had agreed that they would just show footage of Hall over all the parts of the interview that shouldn't visually air. After it was done, someone in post-production saw it and freaked out about all the Hall references, and production was then told no Hall footage could air with the interview and all references to his name had to be sound edited out." "Thunder also showed the wrestlers themselves don't even keep up with the storyline. Sanders made two references about getting at the MIA for his feud with Chavo Jr., not even realizing Chavo quit the team. And finally, Tony Schiavone, as Luger was racking Dwayne Bruce while he was wrestling Shane Douglas, said that Goldberg chose his friend over his career just as Goldberg was spearing, jackhammering and pinning Douglas which if we are dealing with logic said he chose his career because he was in there trying to win instead of leaving." "Monroe was originally scheduled to be Steiner vs. Page for the title. Page and Steiner have had problems due to Steiner making those backstage remarks on Kimberly, which led to her quitting, and never apologizing so it's been well known they aren't going to work together at this point but it was booked anyway. It was switched to Page & Nash vs. Perfect Event and Steiner vs. Sid since those were the TV programs. Nash was furious, because he had custody of his children for the weekend and wasn't scheduled to work the house show, and had planned on taking them to DisneyWorld. He got hot at being scheduled on the show because of the idea that people weren't doing business, leading to a card change, and him having to work on a weekend he had off." "Bill Goldberg is lobbying pretty hard for Rick Steiner to be brought back with a role. Goldberg has really only gone to bat for a few people (he got Robbie Rage, formerly of High Voltage, back in at developmental level) but Steiner has been one of his best friends since getting into wrestling" "Kanyon has been sitting at home, after going through a few family tragedies which kept him out of action, waiting for the call to come back. They've got no ideas for him. I got a good one. How about he comes back and jumps DDP, being that they built the damn thing up for months without ever doing a match since DDP was injured and later on the political outs" "Both WCW and Heenan are upset at each other by how the split went down. Basically, Heenan was being terminated at the end of the year due to his 90-day cycle, even though he was under contract for another year. Since he was being let go, he was given approval a few weeks back that he didn't have to do World Wide, his only job left, for the last few weeks since the decision was made. They had Larry Zbyszko and Scott Hudson do the show, but then when the decision was made to ax Zbyszko, they asked Heenan to come back and do the final few weeks of shows and he refused, so now there is talk of not sending him his last check." "By recent company standards, the 12/11 Nitro/Thunder taping in Bossier City, LA did very well, drawing 5,412 fans in a mid-sized market, with 4,204 paying $112,260." "Kristina Laum (Leia Meow) is said to feel she's dead if Bischoff buys. Combination of her biggest benefactor in the company being Terry Taylor, whose authority would certainly be in jeopardy with Bischoff in charge as the two haven't seen eye-to-eye for a long time, combined with the fact she filed a harassment claim internally against Rob Rechsteiner, who is one of Bischoff's best friends in the company" Dec 25, 2000"The anarchy that is the dressing room at World Championship Wrestling totally destroyed the last live Nitro show for three weeks on 12/18 in Richmond, VA. A series of incidents resulted in three wrestlers walking off the show, Sid Eudy, Page Falkinburg and Kevin Nash, all of whom had key roles in the show, resulting in both Nitro and Thunder shows literally put together on the fly and finishing with a Nitro main event of Jeff Jarrett vs. Lance Storm TV main event before a largely dead crowd." "The chaos started, and this clearly was not an angle, when Eudy had some sort of a problem with his role in the show. It isn't quite clear what the situation was. It is believed that Eudy expected the Starrcade match to be a double count out, but did agree to do the job in the end of Scott Steiner, and was not complaining about it after the fact. He was more upset about how he was asked, as when he came to the building expecting the double count out, he was given a piece of paper with his instructions for the show listing the actual finish. He was mad that Terry Taylor didn't come to him specifically to ask about the change rather than put it on a paper." "The plan was to use the TV, since Nitro is off until 1/8 due to pre-emptions, to build the show toward a main event on the Syn PPV on 1/14 in Indianapolis of Scott Steiner defending in a four-way with Rick Steiner, Jarrett and Sid Vicious. Vicious walked out before the show, after hearing what the plans were, and later claimed that his arm and shoulder were injured the night before." "After the first live match, in a segment which was set up to start with Ric Flair doing an interview talking about the main event, and Steiner coming out in response, Steiner asked if he could tweak the segment and go out first. When he did, he cut a promo on DDP. From a fan perspective, it looked as if it was nothing out of the ordinary, just building for a Steiner-DDP match as the TV main event. Backstage, everyone "knew" Steiner was going against the script of the show once again, and when he said that Page didn't have the balls to fight him, and talked about Page needing a sex change operation, everyone in the dressing room started looking at Page. Page got up in front of everyone and basically said something to the effect that enough is enough, and stormed downstairs." "When Steiner came through the curtain, they got into an argument and Page threw a punch, or Page simply sucker punched him, depending on the version of the story one chooses to believe. Either way, it wasn't a good enough punch, because Steiner recovered, took Page down with a bearhug suplex like move, and was putting a terrible hurting on him for a full one minute with Page helpless on his back. It took seven people nearly the whole minute before they could even budge Steiner, and it was said to be a scary scene as he had a death like grip on Page. They were pulled apart and started swearing at each other. In the fight, Page's face was all cut up and bleeding with a deep scratch mark all around his eye and his face puffy and bloody. Steiner was going for his eye as he was pulled off. In the fracas, Steiner injured his ankle and also had swelling above the eye from the punch, but he was able to go out and do his scheduled promo and show closing angle, plus wrestle Cat in the Thunder main event." "Why Steiner would cut a promo on Page at this point is a question, although he was known to be hot at him, and going against the script by the major stars seems to be a weekly occurrence on a show where nobody has authority over the actors. It is true that Page had refused to work with Steiner because Steiner had insulted Kimberly a few months back, some people pointing out that their problem took place in the same building, "right here, in Richmond, Virginia," which resulted in Kimberly quitting the company because management didn't have the guts to insist Steiner apologize for uncalled for remarks. Many of the wrestlers sided with Steiner because Kimberly refused to work any angles involving Steiner saying she didn't want a mad man to put his hands on her, feeling that Kimberly's attitude was bad and was taking up so much TV time because Bischoff thought he could make a major star out of her during a time period when everyone wanted the next Sable." "All of the bookers at this point don't want to piss off any of the major talent because nobody knows who will be in charge, but the talent will always get another chance with new management no matter what happens now, and the bookers are all uncertain about their future because none of a longstanding good relationship with Bischoff." "The fact the story that Page and Steiner wouldn't work together, causing a change in the main event of the 12/10 house show in Monroe, LA, had just come out, could have led to Steiner's actions, or also been something Page felt he could play on for a shoot angle, similar to his angle with Buff Bagwell many months back, which actually drew a 3.9 rating for a TV main event match before the angle was immediately cut off because it was getting over. Still, most, but definitely not all, believed it to be real, and that includes the ten percent or so who have seen through the shoot angles of the past that fool most of the wrestlers." "When it was over, Page walked out of the building saying words to the effect of "I'm out of here, f*** this place." Nash, surprising to some because he generally was one of the people who made fun of Page because Page takes himself and the business so seriously, left with him, causing more holes in the show since they were also to be doing an angle with the Natural Born Thrillers. Before Page left, Steiner said a few parting words to him, largely about his wife. Page & Nash told people on the way out that they weren't coming back until there was new ownership." "It wasn't the only backstage story involving Page of the night. Earlier, Page, who a week earlier vowed he would work with Mark Madden, but not ever talk with him outside of business, approached Madden diplomatically regarding their problems. One could speculate if he was trying to make amends with Madden all weekend, he may have tried with Steiner as well. Madden wasn't as forgiving, blaming Page for his being suspended on the Nitro nobody saw and claiming that Page had no reason to be mad at him, because it all started when Page called him to complain about his announcing and Page's wife Kimberly started swearing at Madden on the phone. Page denied having anything to do with Madden being suspended but Madden didn't believe him. When Page tried to shake his hand, Madden refused to shake in front of most of the dressing room putting his hands in the air and walking away." "The scripted ending of Nitro was that it would be revealed that Rick Steiner as the mystery third man in the PPV main event that was teased all show long by Ric Flair. However, due to a breakdown in WCW communication, Steiner never got the word he was supposed to be at this TV. So the show instead ended with Robbie Rage being put under a mask and pounding on Steiner as the mystery man, with the idea that probably on the next new TV show, which wouldn't be at this point until Thunder on 1/3 (unless changes are made and the "Best of Thunder 2000" is moved to 1/3 so the Memphis Thunder taping on 12/22, now scheduled for 1/3, is moved up a week because of all the problems), it would be revealed it was Steiner under the mask." "The saddest part of all this isn't the mess the company is in today because of this, but that the young wrestlers in the company who have potential to be big players in a few years are learning that this is how the wrestling business operates by how the experienced dressing room leaders do their business." "September of 1999 was only a little more than one year ago. But in wrestling, it might as well be ancient history because of how quickly the economy and the world have changed. WCW was already struggling then. We used the term free-fall over the previous year to describe it. Yet, when Vince Russo was hired, there was tremendous optimism. Whether WCW could beat the WWF was never the issue, although people seriously talked about it at the start. The issue was whether WCW could rebound and wrestlers, and fans, were ready for a real fight every Monday and the return of the two-horse race. Instead, so much damage was done that the company went from an estimated $15 million in losses for 1999 to a figure estimated at $60 million this year." "Three years is a lifetime in pro wrestling. The company on top of the world is anything but there today. A crowd of 6,596 came to the MCI Center, of which 3,465 paid $157,380 for Starrcade on 12/17." "Duggan came out with his 2x4 to a very big face pop. Duggan ran in to save Storm, changed his mind, put down the 2x4, then clotheslined Cat, who rolled over into Storm's maple leaf finisher. Cat actually tapped before Storm even got the hold on. To make things even more confusing, Storm & Elix Skipper attacked Duggan after the match, and guess who made the save? Cat." "Who knows who won with Kronik (Brian Adams & Bryan Clark) vs. Big Vito (Vito LoGrasso) & Reno (Rick Cornell) in that Reno pinned Vito to win the match in 8:18." "Is their anything sillier than putting Misterio Jr. and Kidman in a New Jack style match?" "Okerlund was actually getting some of the biggest reactions on the shows with his crabby old man lines." "Fans chanted "We Want Hall" with Nash acknowledging them. Nash also did a "Hey, Yo" after winning the belts, but he didn't mention the guys' name. The game is actually quite funny if the game is for the wrestlers to show insiders how inept the company is. Let's throw temper tantrums and go into business for ourselves on live TV and what's the punishment? The tag team titles." "Although it wasn't obvious to most people or picked up on by almost anyone, Palumbo was told by Nash and perhaps Page to wrestle like Hall with the idea that since they can't mention Hall's name, if it becomes obvious Palumbo is doing Hall's moves (they want him to start doing the edge as a finisher under the guise it'll get heat and get him over, which it will, but more to keep the "We Want Hall" stuff alive to guarantee crowd reaction to the team, and also, figuring Bischoff will bring Hall back, and there is no guarantee that's the case,) that Palumbo is set up as a natural feud to come back for the swerve angle where Hall comes back and immediately turns on Nash, who spent months trying to get him back. Can you imagine anything close to this happening in the WWF?." "Crowd was largely into it, except this one guy who was on camera most of the way in the fifth row who was sleeping." "One of the few bright spots in the company right now is, moral issues aside, Steiner can be a strong champion to solidify and strengthen the belt." "Wrestling viewership fell to 7.55 million on 12/18, the lowest figure in many years. At the peak of wrestling's popularity, on a strong night, as many as 12 million people combined were watching both Raw and Nitro. The new low figure was based on both companies drawing numbers at near record lows. Raw's 4.76 rating (4.36 first hour; 5.11 second hour) and 7.0 share was the lowest for the show in its regular time slot since 1988. Nitro's 2.26 rating (2.51 first hour; 2.01 second hour) and 3.2 share barely beat out the 7/3 show (2.24) as the lowest rated Nitro in its regular time slot in five years. That number, coming off the preemption, is even worse news since Nitro has two more consecutive weeks of preemptions." "Nitro on 12/12 drew a 1.71 rating (1.49 first hour; 1.93 second hour) and a 2.5 share, which would be the lowest rated Nitro in history. Funny thing is that the main event and post-match with Steiner vs. Awall and Steiner's brawl with Sid did a 2.22 quarter, which is a better quarter hour than most of the Monday night main events do. The huge ratings growth of the show as it went on was a positive, if there can be one on a record low show. It can't be overemphasized how badly WCW dropped the ball by never promoting the move of the show to Tuesday, and there is going to be so much momentum lost by the Christmas and New Years pre-emptions." "Sanders did this long interview where he had nothing to say because the idea was to do something with Page & Nash, and when that was dropped, they told him to just go out there and kill time." "Right now the writing is better, sans the real bad holes and the fact they can't get it out of their system to insult their audience which right now is the last thing they should be doing. The younger guys work hard, although they are inexperienced. But nobody cares about any of the characters that much." "There's a formula to show how effective your TV is, and that's what percentage of homes order the PPV. If WWF is getting 500,000 buys on five million homes watching Raw or Smackdown (that isn't the exact numbers, but not that far off), that is one in ten. If ECW is getting 70,000 buys on 700,000 homes (in the TNN days anyway), that's also one in ten. However, WCW's 2.5 rating for a Nitro is close to two million homes. If they could get one in ten to order the PPV, that's 200,000 homes and they'd be very happy to average that. But for all the reasons everyone knows, they are getting about one out of 33 homes to order, which is not the sign of bad ratings, but that the people who watch religiously don't care enough about the product and it's probably because they feel they've been ripped off for two years." "There was a joke going around at TV that DDP asked Sanders to deliver the line in a promo saying that DDP may be 45, but he looks 35 and wrestles like he's 25. The line wasn't delivered, because it made no sense for a heel to say that. However, it has been repeated backstage as a source of comedy, and Mark Madden finally gave the line on the PPV" "More lack of communication. On the World Wide show that aired this week, they aired the match from the 1997 Road Wild show with the Steiners against Nash & Hall. So after the ruling from upstairs that nobody could say Hall's name on TV, they put a tape of him on the air" "The only person left on the booking committee who liked the 70s guy gimmick for Awesome was Ed Ferrara, who is the head writer of the show. Everyone else was in agreement he needed to get out of it." "Dustin Runnels was at Starrcade, being called by management to return. Runnels is reported being paid $750,000 per year but the company isn't using him, and he's mainly wrestling for his father Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling group which runs sold shows in the Georgia smaller cities. When he got there, they told him they had no plans for him, and he went back home"
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2020 6:06:48 GMT -5
2001 January, Part 1
Jan 1, 2001
"There was no punishment for anyone for walking out of the tapings or for Steiner for cutting the promo against the script. Bischoff flew to Atlanta on 12/21 at the request of Brad Siegel and got everyone to work out their problems. He basically told everyone, or at least they were telling people at the show, that he is going to run the company and that everything was going to be fine again in 2001."
"Nash, the political animal that he is, walked out with Page even though he's been notorious about making fun of Page to the Page-haters in the company and siding with them because of the feeling that with Bischoff in charge, Page will have influence. Steiner and Page were together at the show and everything is seemingly worked out. Nash even told Mark Madden, when Madden refused to shake Page's hand at TV and Madden explained why he wouldn't because he wouldn't mean it based on what happened, that he should have anyway for that political reason."
"It's been pointed out by many how Luger refused to do an angle, was sent home, and came back in a stronger position, how Bagwell has been in and out of trouble all year, has tremendous heat in the locker room and comes back in a stronger position, how Page left and came back as tag champ let alone Steiner, and how Sting and Booker T will come back in stronger positions while being out with injuries while guys like Storm and Awesome are out there busting their ass, doing whatever is asked including Awesome hurting his career with a terrible gimmick, at points were getting over and having good matches, and having no upward push."
"There were people in management who felt it was necessary to punish several of those from Monday because you can't let walking out on TV go unpunished, but nobody can do that now because of the feeling that Bischoff wouldn't uphold it and since Page and Nash are going to be close with Bischoff, that anyone insisting on punishment would be the people who would get their own throats cut when Bischoff takes over"
"Bigelow pinned Vito clean with no interference. Johnny the Bull came out in a pimp get-up and went to hit Bigelow, who moved, and Bigelow threw him into the guard rail. Johnny and Vito then hugged in the ring. Good job of building babyfaces. They both look like monkeys in the fans' eyes, and then the fans are supposed to care they embraced and reformed their forgotten tag team."
"The man in the mask attacked Sid with help from Jarrett, and it was revealed he was Scott Steiner. And Rick Steiner was in the building. The 12/18 Nitro was supposed to practically be built around Rick Steiner as the surprise guy, but he wasn't there because they forgot to tell him, so then he is there on 12/22, and they never used him once. Instead of letting people know on 1/3 what the PPV main event for 1/14 is, they'll wait to 1/8. What a swerve, Scott is the man in the mask and he attacked himself on Nitro."
"Bagwell plea bargained based on the 5/9 incident in Springfield, IL where he punched one of the backstage employees. Judge John Mehlick ordered Bagwell to pay a $500 fine, be placed on probation for one year and perform 20 hours of community service work at local children's hospitals. The incident occurred when some of the workers were breaking down the ring and trying to take it through a door and Bagwell, Elizabeth and Lex Luger were blocking the door. When Bagwell was asked to move, an argument ensued and he allegedly punched 35-year-old Darrell Miller, who was carrying carpet to the back. WCW suspended Bagwell for 30 days after the incident, costing him approximately $45,000"
"After walking out on the Nitro taping on 12/18, Sid was apparently begged to return although nobody knows what booking promises were made to get him back"
"Chris Harris may be getting a small push based on his appearance in a country video that has gotten some play on CMT. They can't push the video too hard since Lawler also has a prominent role in a video by artist Clay Davidson."
"In a Miami Herald TV preview of Nitro, one of the characters listed is "General Erection." "
"12/22 TV taping in Memphis drew 2,547 in the building, which was 1,329 paying $29,045. WWF had Raw on 12/11 in the same city, drawing about 14,000 paid."
Jan 8, 2001
"There was plenty of controversy this past week over the firing of Mark Madden from WCW on 12/27. Madden was informed by Craig Leathers that morning he was being fired for making statements on the air regarding the sale of the company (a remark he made back a few months ago on one of the shows from Australia as a passing inside joke where he was told not to do so again, and hadn't since) and about Scott Hall, which he hadn't done in several weeks after being told not to, although Hall's name had been mentioned or alluded to on nearly every show by Kevin Nash, DDP and even Tony Schiavone on the year-end Thunder show since that point in time."
"Madden, 40, whose WCW contract was increased to $150,000 per year when he took over announcing duties on Nitro, taking Bobby Heenan's spot after Heenan missed his first shot with the company, and being kept on due to being more well versed on angles and storylines as having an equally quick wit than Heenan had showed in years. Madden had worked for the company doing the hotline along with doing articles for the web site and magazine dating back to being hired by Bischoff in the mid-90s. The contract is believed to expire in two more years. Madden will be getting paid through the end of January, when his 90-day cycle expires, although he's been threatened with not getting his last few paychecks because he did an interview after being fired which was against company policy because the company didn't authorize it ahead of time."
"Madden was at first told his firing was not for his announcing, but for disciplinary reasons, although perhaps recognizing that could put the company in a legal battle because of its strange (lack of) discipline record for similar offenses, Madden was later told those weren't the reasons for his termination. The decision was made before Christmas but not told to him until a few days later, and came off the heels of a one week suspension after his remarks about DDP, calling him Leatherface, on a live broadcast, which he defended by saying his role was to be a heel and a heel calls the faces name, but when he went on a web site and talked about why he did it, that was used to justify the suspension."
"Madden had routinely been the butt of unscripted actions by wrestlers going into business for themself, such as some, but not all, of Cat's remarks including one time when Cat started choking him (although Cat was very light with him) and another time when Lex Luger lost his temper because of the belief Madden called him fat (actually Luger one week said he was five percent bodyfat after being four percent for so long and Madden remarked he had added a percent bodyfat which Luger freaked over). Luger made fun of Madden's less than flattering physique the next week on television."
"It is believed that Bischoff didn't like Madden as an announcer, because if he had, he likely would have stepped in and stopped the move."
"The knock on Madden was that it was believed he was more into getting himself over than the wrestling product and he was very combative when criticism came his way. His work ranged from being abrasive at its worst to very funny at its best."
"Madden burying babyfaces was often justified by the weird not clearly defined role as to what a heel commentator should do, and he did have an admitted notable double standard for Nash, a babyface he'd treat with kid gloves because Nash went to bat for him years ago when the company was thinking of letting him go after hotline problems."
"For whatever this is worth, the latest timetable I was given for an announcement if the sale goes through (there are plenty of rumors it is already done but we've heard so many rumors that at this point I'm not going to believe anything until the announcement) is in the 1/15 to 1/29 time frame. A lot of people expected that if the deal was done, the announcement would be made on 1/8."
"Although WCW has been nixing its wrestlers for the most part working indie dates, including Jeff Jarrett in Puerto Rico for three main events on major shows, they are booking undercard wrestlers like David Flair, Bob Sapp, Omen, Danny Faquir, Ali, Scotty Patrick, Sam Greco, Kevin Northcutt, 3 Count and Chris Harris for dates with NWA Wildside this month."
"The Jarrett thing was a big deal since he was scheduled to work twice with Carly Colon for the Universal title, including the main event of the 1/6 show at Hiram Bithorn Stadium, which holds 23,000 fans, and work once with Abdullah the Butcher on 1/5 in Ponce, and had been advertised for a few weeks before WCW on 12/28 made the decision to not allow him to go. Jarrett was given approval for the dates by Terry Taylor, but then got called late in the week by Diana Meyers (who plays bad cop in the WCW hierarchy) saying it would be against company policy to have the wrestlers work indie dates because they don't want them getting injured working elsewhere. Jarrett was mad because he'd been given approval and because he's making far less money than he expected because he was switched to a contract where the base was lowered but he'd make a certain amount per house show date to even it out, and now the company isn't running hardly any house shows, so the new deal amounts to a pay cut."
"The final suspension toll from the deal a few months back when a stink bomb was let off on a flight is that ref Mickey Jay was suspended for one month, ref Mark Johnson for one week, and ring announcer Dave Penzer for one week"
"For those keeping track of such things, in 2000, WWF had five world title changes, ECW had five and WCW had 26. That's also the same number of world title changes the NWA had between its inception in 1949 and 1983."
"There have been negotiations to bring WCW PPV shows to England (not hold the events there, but have them broadcast, as currently UK fans only have access to WWF PPVs--and those are on free TV), but they've since fallen through"
Jan 15, 01
"Nitro set all-time record lows for both the opposed hour, unopposed hour, a record low for a live broadcast in the regular time slot and a record low quarter hour. The show ended up with a 2.08 rating (2.49 first hour; 1.66 second hour) and a 2.9 share, showing just how badly devastated the company has been with the holiday pre-emptions and lack of focus."
"Nitro's Steiner vs. Jarrett main event did the lowest rating in history for a main event and what may have been the second lowest rated quarter in history at 1.55. The prior quarter, featuring the last man standing match with DDP & Nash vs. Thrillers did a 1.48."
"Nitro is being pre-empted again on 1/22 for the movie "2001" and will air at 8 p.m. on 1/23. At least they got the word out two weeks ahead of time about the time slot change, but this shows just how little TNT cares about the show with so many pre-emptions, and this makes twice for 20 year old movies"
"TNT was going to switch its focus as a station, and this decision was made many months back and during that time the plan always was at some point, which was thought to be about a year from now, that Nitro would move to TBS. However, with the company divesting itself of wrestling and wrestling's decline both in ratings and as a priority to market, there is significant talk of when TNT drops wrestling, which may come a lot sooner, that TBS won't pick up the show and the Turner Networks will only broadcast one wrestling show per week."
"Flair opened Nitro, kissing up to the Minnesota fans saying how they'll own New York. He then proclaimed that WCW was the greatest wrestling company in the world. By this point the fans in New York must have thought he was out of his mind."
"Ron Harris pinned Cat. This is what I mean by WCW portraying its faces in a way that nobody could possibly like them. I mean, Cat is terrible in the ring, but he is pretty funny. Cat said he's no dummy, that as bad as he is, he can't take two guys of that size and didn't want to fight them. So what happens next? He starts fighting them and they beat the hell out of him. Who wants to cheer for an idiot. He might as well have gotten lost on his way to the building. Finish saw Ms. Jones distract the ref, why I have no idea, allowing the Twins do H-bomb Cat and Ron pinned him."
"Vicious pinned Douglas after a choke slam. Not as bad as you'd think. Then again, that's like saying you woke up before you hit the bottom after falling off a cliff in your nightmare."
"Luger & Bagwell attacked Bruce, taking off his cast and working on the supposedly broken arm. If you're wondering why Bruce was slapping fans with his bad arm, I'm still trying to figure out how on Smackdown that Regal was driven to the arena in a limo that didn't have a driver."
"The mystery man then made the save. Fans were barking, knowing it was Rick Steiner, but he looked absolutely horrid in the suit doing that obvious Rick Steiner punching and even worse no selling."
"Meng ended up laying out some refs, Dragons, Karagias & Knoble. Yeah, doing a four-star match at Starrcade really elevates you in this company."
"Main event was Steiner NC Sid when the mystery man ran in. Sid unmasked him to reveal Jarrett. Ha Ha. What a swerve. Flair ended up coming out with the real mystery man, who gets held back. It's angles like this that shows the swervers are actually the swervees because they are swerving people so well they don't buy tickets anymore."
"The marks in the business in the old days were thought to be the fans because the bookers would create fake angles and make them buy tickets. Now, the marks are the people who create fake angles that don't build up anything or pay off anything because they think they're still fooling the marks (a derogatory term for the people who keep the company in business) who are only wanting to see angles that build to something and make sense when the day is over, and aren't spending money on the product because the writers haven't figured that most basic aspect of wrestling out yet."
"In another of those mind-boggling deals, on the International version of Nitro (which didn't air in the U.S. on 1/1 because the show was pre-empted), which was the year in review on Nitro, among the things aired was a match with Sid Vicious vs. Scott Hall. Imagine the idea of telling everyone they couldn't mention Hall, and then airing clips of him themselves on both the Thunder and the Nitro shows."
"Pamela Paulshock was the latest firing in an attempt to scale back costs. It seems pretty obvious and Bischoff wants to eliminate most of the women, and really there are few who would argue that things wouldn't be better off if they just kept a few and tried to make them something. Of course the most marketable was Wilson, but since she had the highest salary, she was the first one out"
"By the way, it was only two years ago when Nitro drew 38,809 fans to the Georgia Dome on a night when the wrestlers like Nash were laughing backstage and Bischoff basically told Schiavone to gloat on the air because the WWF was so stupid as to make "that'll put butts in the seats, ha ha," Foley the world champion, because everyone knows, the world champion has to be someone that women want to screw and guys think is cool. And all those years I thought it was someone who knew how to work and talk in a way that would build up a program that people simply wanted to pay money to see"
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Post by Perpetual Nirvana on Nov 1, 2020 9:20:09 GMT -5
Ah, the Scott Steiner unmasked as his own attacker angle. I don't want to say this was when they gave up, because they gave up long before this, but it definitely reeks of "nobody is watching so who cares."
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cjh
Hank Scorpio
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Post by cjh on Nov 1, 2020 10:01:08 GMT -5
Ah, the Scott Steiner unmasked as his own attacker angle. I don't want to say this was when they gave up, because they gave up long before this, but it definitely reeks of "nobody is watching so who cares." I just watched it last night (on the Jan. 3 Thunder), and as soon as he unmasks, the announcers immediately acknowledge that Scott couldn't have been the same guy who was wearing the mask and outfit on Nitro two weeks earlier.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2020 4:18:07 GMT -5
2001 January, Part 2
Jan 22, 01
"After nearly a full year of various rumors, negotiations, and several near finalized deals, the sale of World Championship Wrestling by Time Warner to Fusient Media Ventures was officially announced on 1/11, literally hours before the announcement that the final step of the Time Warner/AOL merger had been cleared. Fusient Media Ventures, a one-year-old company headed by Brian Bedol and Stephen Greenberg, who are best known for starting up the Classic Sports Network, and then selling it to ESPN where it became ESPN Classics, for $175 million, is the parent company."
"The actual sale is expected to go through in 30 to 60 days, at which point the names of the various investors will likely be revealed. Change is expected to be gradual until the time the sale is finalized. Nevertheless, even days later, it was clear there was a greater emphasis placed on the cruiserweight division and on having a strong in-ring product with less run-ins, tables, garbage matches, and elimination of swearing as wrestlers were told specifically words like damn, hell and ass are no longer to be uttered on broadcasts. Bischoff described trying to get raunchy to compete with WWF as a failed experiment."
"Time Warner, which was wanting to make sure the new company would be funded well enough to last at least one year, is maintaining a minority interest so it can retain the television rights. Terms of the sale were not revealed publicly, likely because the number was embarrassingly low, as someone very close to the situation described the figure as, figuratively, "pennies." It is ironic just how far the company's fortunes has nosedived, as it was less than one year ago, when SFX was interested in purchasing the company, that the negotiations fell apart because the Time Warner asking price was $600 million."
"Wrestlers, some based on friendship with Bischoff and enthusiastic because a change of any kind would be a positive in a stagnant, dying company, and others based on fear for the future of their jobs, upped their in-ring work rate tremendously for the 1/14 Sin PPV and 1/15 Nitro."
"At this point, there is no deal with Hogan. Bischoff wants Hogan in the company, a decision that many have questioned thinking there is only a downside of Hogan's involvement. Until Hogan's legal problems with WCW are settled, it is doubtful he'll be back, and because his contract expires in two months, Bischoff said it would be suicide to put Hogan on television before signing him to a new deal."
"A plan to at some point in the near future, shut the company down for three or four weeks and build for a relaunch has been discussed and is a possibility. The final decision has yet to be made either whether to do it, or a timetable to do it. After this past two weeks, it seems less like a good idea. It is clear from crowd reactions at Sin and Nitro, that the crowds will recognize a good product and react quickly to it. It'll take time to rebuild it economically, but shutting it down may only serve to kill momentum if the company starts running a string of largely good shows."
"The 1/22 move will make four Nitros in seven weeks that either didn't air, or aired on a Tuesday. TNT will badly damage Nitro if it doesn't have a stronger commitment to its success. The future of Nitro on TNT has always been considered short-term, and as mentioned last week, while nobody is talking about it publicly with the sale, there has been talk of when Nitro is supposed to move to TBS, that TBS may cut back to only one prime time wrestling show per week."
"All but the top wrestlers, and a few guys whose lawyers pushed hard for it like Shane Douglas, have the 90-day contract cycles at which point the company has the right to terminate them and then negotiate to bring them back with a different deal."
"Bischoff is interested in doing business with Yoshihiro Asai (Ultimo Dragon) and Toryumon. Asai also has a lawsuit out against WCW. Bischoff had promised the company would take care of him after a botched surgery by a WCW appointed doctor resulted in his career ending prematurely, but after Bischoff lost power, he was then fired."
"Sid Vicious suffered one of the most physically graphic injuries in the recent history of sports. It was more sickening visually because of the angle the leg snapped into than even the famed Joe Theisman footage from another era which is something every sports fan who saw it will remember for the rest of their lives, and this isn't something anyone who saw it will ever forget. The injury ended up as a compound fracture of the lower leg, snapping both the fibula and the tibia, that required two hours of surgery the next morning which included inserting a 43 centimeter rod in his leg and will keep him out of action six to eight months."
"Bischoff went back-and-forth on whether or not to air the footage on Nitro but ultimately decided to."
"The cameras missed it on PPV since at that point the focus was on Ric Flair opening up the car door for the mystery man. When the cameras got back in the ring, Sid was strangely laying on the ground immobile. There was no explanation for Sid's condition by the announcers nor was anything said about it before the show went off the air."
"The show ended revealing Road Warrior Animal instead of the originally planned Rick Steiner as the mystery man, a decision made largely because the feeling was too many people expected it to be Steiner, but that kind of booking because one or two percent of the audience knows and changing stories for that reason is a Russo mindset that they need to get away from."
"The original plan was for Sid to make a comeback, have Steiner up for the choke slam when the mystery man would come down. Everyone would freeze and the guy would tell Sid to choke slam Steiner, but when he did, he'd turn on Sid and do something that would allow Steiner to make the pin."
"The only other possible negative on what was otherwise a strong show was the Goldberg retirement, after being pinned in a tag match with Dewayne Bruce against Lex Luger & Buff Bagwell due to being maced by a planted fan whose identity was set up earlier in the show. Fans didn't expect the finish so it had the shock going for it. The problem is, the fake retirement angle is perhaps the most passe thing in wrestling, particularly in WCW"
"Granted, they had to do something with Goldberg since the current angle was going nowhere, and they had booked themselves into a corner, but there is always justification for this stuff. The top babyface retiring and coming back was big business decades ago, but it's been bastardized so badly in the last 18 months to the point that the WWF's latest thought process is that even if Shawn Michaels is retiring, they won't promote a farewell match because they recognize that nobody will believe it anyway."
"If anything WCW needs to do now is create a bond with its audience by "playing fair." Don't advertise what isn't going to be delivered. The company has to consistently present good shows. They have to give the fans what they want ultimately in the storyline, that is, their favorites with whatever fans' today consider as cool qualities eventually prevailing over their enemies. Of course, enemies should build heat to lead to the end result, but the fans patience in waiting for the payoff has to be justified and there has to be an ending or fans will see it as the same old product that they turned away in droves from over the past two plus years."
"Eric Bischoff talked about eliminating foul language from the shows. The word retirement right now in pro wrestling, because of the sins of past bookers, should be considered foul language more than the word ass."
"A positive sign was the crowd. The crowd was hardly hot for the prelim matches with wrestlers that aren't over, but the workrate got the crowd into the show and fans enjoyed the good matches that were worked largely without gimmicks, and most without the interference that had been considered a staple of every match by the bookers. There was super heat once they got to the semifinal with Goldberg."
"Kaz Hayashi & Yun Yang (James Yang) beat Jamie Knoble (James Howard) & Evan Karagias (Evan Kavagias) in 9:21 in the show stealer. This was the Kaz Hayashi show, and if WCW doesn't realize that right under its nose it has its own Tajiri, they are really missing the boat....With all the new enthusiasm up and down, the fact is that none of these four wrestlers appeared on Nitro, nor were ever even mentioned on the show, nor was the match put over. This is going to lead to the same problems as before. If wrestlers don't feel they are being rewarded for putting forth extra effort and if great matches aren't worth being put over, it leads to that resignation factor that ruined the last group of young talent the company had years ago that in the end couldn't wait to leave for those very reasons."
"You knew it had to be WCW with the graphic reading Jamie Karagias and Evan Knoble as they came to the ring."
"The announcers still haven't realized about credibility. Schiavone said O'Haire was 6-8 and Hudson later said Palumbo was 6-7, and anyone watching just said, they are so full of it."
"Palumbo looked good, mainly doing all the Scott Hall stuff, although I don't think anyone has recognized yet that is what he's doing."
"Three years ago, WCW had better young talent than WWF. But that WWF young talent improved year-by-year until they became superstars. The WCW young talent stagnated, or went to WWF, the ones who could work at the top level became bigger stars in WWF, and the ones who didn't have the work ethic, Big Show as the perfect example, never made it as nearly as big a star in WWF as he was in WCW when he first started."
"WCW, for financial reasons, does have to restructure its contracts or run terribly in the red. Most likely, even with the restructuring, they are in for a long period in the red as every wrestler could agree to work free right now and because there are no significant revenue streams, the company would still lose a lot of money. But if anyone thinks changing the contract structure to incentive based is the answer to any of its problems, they have studied very little about pro wrestling. The answer to the problems of lazy workers is to push hard workers in the top positions and reward hard workers with career elevation and eliminate the lazy workers from the top, or preferably, from the entire system."
"Whether it was the tag match at Sin, the ladder match at Starrcade 2000 or Juvi vs. Blitzkrieg in 1999, when guys have ****+ matches on PPV and they get no praise on television the next day, and are still portrayed to the fans as the same jobbers they were the week before, there is eventually going to be talent that wises up and no longer has any, or at the very least far less, motivation for having those matches. If those guys after those matches were talked up on TV the next day the way the Dudleys, E&C and Hardys were after some of their ****+ matches on PPV, the fans would probably react better to their performances today, and they would have far more incentive to give performances again like them the next time they are on PPV."
"O'Haire in particular and Palumbo to a lesser extent are starting to get over as real players"
"Flair just showed up as a heel on Nitro as if everyone had read the internet and knew that he turned and he was the one who screwed Goldberg and it wasn't that Animal and Steiner conspired against Flair but that Flair was in on it. He did explain that much on TV, but he never explained to the actual fans why, although he did explain that it was a long-term plan."
"The problem is the last time Flair was commissioner (basic same role, just a semantic change as CEO) and went heel in early 1999, that was the exact period the ratings and buy rates started their free-fall under Nash."
"Flair is great at the mechanics of being a heel because of all his experience and as an actor in that role is, when inspired, phenomenal. The only problem is, nobody wants to boo him, because he's in his 50s and everyone respects what he's done. Whenever they turn him, they just castrate his value. In 1999, he, as a face, was worth about a 500,000 viewer bump in audience every time he was a focal point of the show. As a heel, his value to the ratings was tiny, and the overall show ratings plummeted during that period."
"The biggest problem with the Flair as a heel role not working is the person who doesn't recognize it more than anyone is Flair himself, and since he can talk with management so well, he always convinces them he's ready for his next heel run because technically in that role he can put faces over better than almost anyone, which is true. It's just that it's not what people want to see. Watch next week in Winston-Salem and see how dead it is when they come to see a product where they are supposed to boo Flair."
"Awesome, who had a professional trim (which doesn't mean a prostitute, it's a haircut) sets up a program with Kidman."
"Guerrero Jr. pinned Rection, who is now Hugh Morrus in a really long match when Sgt. Awall comes out, and of course swerves Morrus and choke slams him off the middle rope. Morrus actually kicked out and Mickey Jay, believing it was the pin, counted three. Lash Leroux helps Morrus. So double swerve. They built up that it would be Lash that would help Chavo and Awall that would stay loyal, so rather than follow it up, they did a double swerve to the fans on an angle that almost none of the fans thought or cared about to begin with."
"Lenny Lane and Jerry Lynn were backstage at Nitro in St. Paul. Lane was still getting a check from WCW until recently. He's had some contact with the WWF, which expressed concern about his similar look as Jericho, but he said he could change the look"
"The 1/22 Nitro is being moved to 1/23 so TNT can show a movie "Pretender-2001," not "2001: A Space Odyssey" as we had reported"
"Terry Taylor contacted Michael Modest, Tony Jones and Christopher Daniels over the last week as with the new ownership, the hiring freeze is over and at least he'd have the ability to recommend them. There has also been interest from the WCW side shown in the past few days in Tajiri, Super Crazy, Kid Kash and Joey Styles"
"Jimmy Hart was hospitalized with a kidney stone, which was dislodged when a female DJ gave him a low blow at the Minneapolis Nitro. He wanted to appear at the Nitro on 1/15 doing another DJ match but didn't recover in time"
"Beginning with this week in Australia, Nitro is going head-to-head with Thunder in Australia. Nitro's move to Wednesdays at 11 p.m. on the Fox Sports channel goes head-up with Thunder on C7 Sports"
Jan 29, 01
"Haku, the former Meng, a totally questionable hiring for the WWF seemed to serve no purpose than to be a slap in the face of WCW and Eric Bischoff for putting a title, however meaningless the hardcore belt is, on a guy that wasn't under contract and losing him without dropping it. This also may have been a favor to Rock, as they consider him family (isn't everyone?) and there was family pressure when he lost his WCW job to get him in here."
"There has been much talk regarding a potential shutdown and re-launch of WCW and at press time it appears likely to happen. Different scenarios have been discussed, but nothing was final as of this writing. The final decision was likely to be made before the end of this week. In an article on wrestlingobserver.com, we detailed how there was an 80 percent chance that something major would take place at the SuperBrawl PPV to lead to the angle shutting the company down after that show, and they would likely start back up on 3/12 in Knoxville order to promote the 3/18 PPV scheduled for Jacksonville. In that event, the company would undertake a major advertising campaign over the final week to hype the return of Nitro and Thunder and during the weeks that are dark, TBS and TNT would air non-wrestling programming in the usual time slots. There is a chance the shutdown could be longer or shorter, or even take place at another time."
"Others in the company have noted that deposits have been paid for buildings throughout March, but that no April calendar has been released, thinking that April is a likely time for a shutdown, particularly because the April PPV, scheduled for Easter Sunday, is being reconsidered based on the date and at this point no building has been booked for the show."
"If something is to take place in February, it would be considered a "soft relaunch," in that when the show returns, it would have some changes, but not a totally different look. The projection is that the show would eventually have an entire new look, with a new set, new graphics, new production and announcing changes no earlier that late March or early April."
"Thunder on 1/17 drew a 2.21 rating and 3.3 share, virtually identical with the previous week. The show actually lost some audience from its lead in of Ripley's Believe it or not, which, believe it or not, did a 2.5 rating."
"Scott Rechsteiner was arrested on 1/23 from an incident at the TV tapings the night before which ended up being edited off television. This was after he beat up Daniels and Modest and "broke their legs." They were doing a stretcher job deal and Steiner started kicking one of the EMT's, apparently thinking they weren't real EMT's and were just local indie guys. As it turned out, they used real EMT's, and the one who got kicked pressed charges"
"Morrus told Leroux to tear off his MIA t-shirt and that MIA is no more, and he went back to the Hugh Morrus gimmick except he doesn't laugh. Cool gimmick, the laughing man who doesn't laugh. They could do more gimmicks like this. The comedian who doesn't tell jokes. The Canadians who aren't from Canada (oh, they already have that). The gay guy whose gimmick is he's doing it with a hot looking girl. The CEO who is trying to bankrupt the company."
"There were 5,001 people in the building when Nitro started. When Nitro ended, estimates were as many as half the fans (and remember, most got in free) left and estimates were there were only about 800 in the building by the time the Thunder main event took place."
"Awesome beat Smiley. During this match, Glacier's music started playing. Awesome was killing Smiley while Glacier was slapping hands at ringside oblivious to everything. After Awesome left, Glacier did a run-in and acted like he wanted to fight Awesome. All done for comedy. Glacier then told Smiley he'd always be there to watch his back like he was tonight and then started posing in the ring while paying no attention to a struggling Smiley. Said to be hilarious."
"According to those at Fusient, all WCW contracts were assignable in the event of a sale including Hogan's (which is something of a moot point since it runs out in March and it's likely he wouldn't be back by then unless he'd make a surprise appearance challenging Steiner at the PPV to build for the March show) because they wouldn't have bought the company if the top guys weren't part of the deal"
"Bischoff has had a minor hand in the booking, through input to one member of the creative team (presumably Johnny Ace) for the past several weeks to start the direction he wanted the major storylines to go, as well as putting more emphasis on the cruiserweights over the past week. Ace's basic role right now is to book finishes that will keep storylines going from the TV so the conclusions will be on PPV rather than ending them, but at the same time having as many clean finishes on TV as possible"
"Some notes from an interview with Johnny Ace on WCW Live....He said he wants to work with New Japan or Pro Wrestling NOAH, because he doesn't think All Japan has anyone except Kawada that they could use, and thinks some Japanese wrestlers can be stars in WCW if they are positioned correctly. He was a proponent of winners and losers in almost every match and thought the finishes on both Nitro and Thunder last week with everyone running in was something he didn't agree with. He felt Hogan's name value to the company was still important and put over Douglas' promos. He said he'd love to get Tajiri in, and also put over Kid Kash, Super Crazy and Daniels. He said the swerves should be surprise clean finishes. He put over Van Dam strongly, said Arn Anderson needs to be used better and that WCW needs to improve production"
"There are numerous ECW wrestlers that WCW has at least some interest in, but because of the situation with Mike Awesome, Sabu, Chris Candido, Tammy Sytch and others over the past year, WCW won't make any offers unless they have a release in writing from ECW, which thus far, nobody has, even though Heyman had told wrestlers they could get it"
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Post by chronocross on Nov 2, 2020 11:14:59 GMT -5
The Glacier being oblivious to Norman getting destroyed by various heels was hilarious stuff.
I remember how weird it was that Flair showed up as a heel on Nitro the night after Sin, there was no "big moment" where he swerved a babyface like Sting or Sid that I can recall.
The Sid injury was gruesome and I'm glad he was able to eventually recover from it.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2020 11:23:31 GMT -5
It's stunning that the Sid injury news was buried like that in Dave's report. I read that this morning and my eyes glossed right over it; chronocross's reply is how I realized it was in there.
More stunning that the initial report said "he'll be out 6-8 months" when I'm damn certain most people at the time never thought he'd wrestle ever again.
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Post by jason1980s on Nov 2, 2020 11:59:42 GMT -5
I know it's hard to feel bad for a billionaire but I really feel bad for Ted Turner. Has there ever been a company where the inmates literally run the asylum? I guess some blame should be on him for not being in attendance at the shows and not being a part of hiring or firing but it looks like so many guys should be held responsible for WCW's death, even a little guy like Buff Bagwell and his attitude and actions at the time. It's easy to blame Bischoff, Russo, Nash and Hogan who probably deserve 75% total blame but the other 35 should be on the Buff's, Steiner's and others. As for the Kimona harassment allegations, it sure seems like Mama Steiner from Summerslam 1993 raised some good boys. Edit: Reading about Glacier makes me think of Renegade. Glacier came in to even more promotion and money (costume) than Renegade and yet both gimmicks failed and Glacier accepted it and was able to make it the last few months as a goofy gimmick based on the failure of Glacier. The failure isn't Ray Lloyd's fault just as the Renegade's failure isn't Rick Williams' fault. It's creative's fault but one made the most of it while the other sadly took the failure to heart. I personally thought both would be huge but it wasn't meant to be. I think if Glacier especially had been in WWF in the late 90s, early 2000s he may have been done fairly well even if they made fun of him week.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2020 2:40:26 GMT -5
2001 February, Part 1
Feb 5, 01"A story from the summer when Keiji Muto was working for WCW, there was a doctor examining the wrestlers and asking people if they were injured and where they hurt and how often. His response was, his entire body hurts, all the time" "Meng gave the WCW Hardcore belt to Barbarian at an indie show in Missouri where both worked for Harley Race the night before the Rumble. He was called by Jim Ross the Wednesday before the Rumble and offered a job. When WCW released him the first time, WWF showed no interest in him" "There had been talks all week back-and-forth with those in WCW as it pertained to both Tajiri and Crazy, and at one point both were offered try-out matches on 1/29 in Baltimore before Nitro. That offer soured both, in particular Tajiri, who felt insulted about being asked to try out. Tajiri also expressed to friends that he wanted to be a star in the United States and that nobody in WCW is a real star to explain his strong leanings toward the WWF. Later in the week, WCW officials told Crazy, when it appeared Tajiri was going to WWF, that they had already written television and had no spot for him. Crazy was willing to come to Baltimore and do a dark match and was waiting as late as the afternoon of Nitro for a call from WCW regarding that, but no call ever came." "WCW was also interested in David Cash (Kid Kash) for the cruiserweight division. Steve Corino, Pat Kenney (Simon Diamond) and Dawn Marie went to Baltimore looking for a job. Dusty Rhodes, who worked with Corino in ECW, put him over strongly to everyone and he seems to have the best chance of the group. Because WCW got burned by several wrestlers, including Chris Candido, Sabu and Mike Awesome, who said they had no valid ECW deal and then it came out they did, WCW is not going to sign anyone from ECW without a release to avoid the legal issues." "At press time, Eric Bischoff appears to have finalized plans for a several week shutdown which would take place immediately after the 2/18 Nashville SuperBrawl PPV. The belief is that some form of a major angle would take place at the end of the show, perhaps involving Bill Goldberg (many speculate Hulk Hogan as well), resulting in some sort of an announcement that the new owners are making changes and Nitro the next night would be announced as cancelled." "Exactly what the time frame of the shutdown is uncertain. TNT and TBS would fill the Nitro and Thunder time slots for three weeks, and that time frame is not definite, with other programming. The original plan was to spend several million dollars in mainstream advertising to hype the return of Nitro and Thunder starting on 3/12 with a taping in Knoxville, which would include the reappearances of as many major stars as possible (Sting, Booker T, Goldberg as well as other surprises including possibly Hogan although that still requires the two sides reaching a new long-term contract as they aren't going to put Hogan on TV if he isn't locked up and would have the chance to jump although there is a working plan for him to do a program with Flair for the fictitious CEO job) to build for the Greed PPV on 3/18 in Jacksonville. At this point, that still is the plan." "There will also be no PPV in April, which may not be so much another shutdown as much as the original date of 4/15 turned out to be Easter Sunday, one of those things that apparently wasn't noticed when the date was booked, and even before the sale there were thoughts of cancelling the date as the company was unable to switch the date. The plan is to come back with a major PPV on 5/6 from Las Vegas." "WCW only lost 78,000 homes, (the usual figure can be anywhere from 600,000 to one million homes) when Raw started with the angle featuring the return of Rhodes in progress. This was doubly impressive since the booking idea was for Dusty to make his run-in at 8:58 p.m. to keep viewers from switching, and instead they missed their cue and Raw already started when Rhodes did the run-in. The nostalgia of watching Road Warrior Animal and Ric Flair bump for Dusty's elbow and Dusty's return interview drew a 3.05 quarter hour, one of the highest opposed quarters Nitro has done in a long time, and nearly coming to within a point of Raw." "At this point, while the sale has been announced, the sale isn't going through for probably another month or two, so at this point TBS is still in control of the company and is trying to run it as low-budget as it can. Realistically, any changes when it comes to things that mean money being spent, aren't even going to start happening until the sale goes through and it'll probably be the summer before the look of the show and product are close to where Fusient wants it to be. Realistically, through this PPV, the best they can do is tread water." "Scott Rechsteiner was scheduled for a March trial date on the criminal assault charge stemming from appears to be nothing more than miscommunication in the case with the EMT, 34-year-old Randall Mankin, who pressed charges after Rechsteiner kicked him during a stretcher job angle on Nitro on 1/22 in Winston-Salem, NC, apparently thinking he was part of the angle and not a real EMT. Rechsteiner was arrested the next morning at the Greensboro Airport as he was leaving to fly home to Atlanta" "Before Nitro, Bischoff held a ten minute long talent meeting. His three main points were that if wrestlers have ideas for themselves or others, they can go to him, to Taylor or to Ferrara, but none of them have the authority to give them definite answers on whether or not the angle will be done. Taylor, himself and Ferrara will suggest the angle, but the guy with the authority on and to say yes or no is Ace. He said he was upset about the cardiovascular conditioning of the wrestlers and said that wrestlers who have bellies need to lose them. He also went individually to certain wrestlers outside the group and told them they needed to drop weight. He also was mad about how certain wrestlers dress while in public, like at the airports and wants the crew to dress and travel more professionally." "Several wrestlers have noted that the reason they get tired is because only working one match a week isn't enough to keep the rustiness away and ring conditioning up. You can jog a few miles or even practice kickboxing or ride the bike, and you can do those things to get rid of a big belly and drop weight, but you can still get tired in the ring if you aren't getting ring time in. The bad part of this schedule is that if wrestlers don't get enough ring time, they don't improve as workers nearly as fast, and instead of a guy getting, say 200 matches a year as in WWF and improving greatly in one year, in WCW on this schedule, it would take three to four years to make the same ring time and improvements which is a major factor in a company that desperately needs to create new stars, some of whom aren't yet ready to headline" "There was some consideration to moving the 3/18 PPV to 3/25 but it wasn't feasible and was dropped within a day" "Nitro from Baltimore was, with the exception of the return of Dusty Rhodes, a very depressing show. Actually the return of Rhodes, which got a huge pop, was also depressing because it showed the current audience cares more about the mid-80s than the current scene. Someone did point out a positive in that it shows that those people left (and granted, this was Baltimore, which was a city that had a strong 80s traditional base and was a strong workrate city, although cheering Dusty does seem to contradict that) going are long-time fans which may mean they can be satisfied with good wrestling, but whether that's true or not, we don't know, because they didn't get much of it." "DDP did an angle with a mock autograph signing. At least, unlike with the lame skits they did to not get 3 Count over, they were smart enough to make it seem like people cared about DDP and he was a celebrity. An unruly guy mouthed off (played by Air Paris) and DDP, being the great guy that he is, tried to be the peacemaker. The guy took an obvious dive. Totally a spoof on the Steiner arrest from the previous week. A.J. Styles was the other DDP mark doing the bang sign in the same skit." "Schiavone was waiting all day for the line talking about Misterio Jr. wrestling in Mexico, and then said, Mexico is bordered to the South by Guatemala, not Nicaragua, as everybody knows. For the other three million viewers who don't have any idea why he said this, it's because about 11 years ago, there was this guy who did a wrestling newsletter named Steve Beverly who had the ear of a guy at TBS named Jeff Carr. Carr made the call that WCW Saturday Night, or whatever the show was called in those days which had Ross and Schiavone as co-hosts, should only have one host, and it was Ross. Schiavone was so mad he went to the WWF, and has never forgiven Ross for the feeling he manipulated Schiavone out of the Saturday night job. He's hated Beverly ever since, and Beverly was always saying that Schiavone never stood up to the heels like Gordon Solie or Lance Russell. Anyway, last week on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," a contestant was asked what country bordered Mexico to the South and called Beverly, one of the world's most noted game show aficiandos, for a lifeline and Beverly said Nicaragua and his friend hesitated, but went with Beverly's pick, and was wrong." "Flair brought out a legend in a humvee, and boy was the crowd dead when it turned out to be the legendary Dustin Rhodes. Flair said Dustin had joined his Elite team and wanted him to sign a contract. Dustin refused and snatched Flair. It took Animal forever to do the run-in and Dustin held his own against both before the odds got too steep. Dusty came out to save the day and the place went crazy. He got a ridiculously good pop, far outshining everyone in the show, and his poor son basically disappeared behind me. Nostalgia is really cool, but after it was over, it was just said to see all these guys not get over with the crowd." "Rick Steiner beat Douglas in a non-title match with his new Steiner driver (a Goodfather-calibre death valley bomb) finisher. Absolutely awful. Steiner was told by Bischoff to wear a t-shirt with his wrestling outfit because he's too heavy. He looked so bad. Fans didn't care. Flair said that Steiner hadn't done anything to deserve a shot, which is an example of the truth hurting. They couldn't even do a hiptoss spot." "Nash beat Bagwell & Luger in the main event in just 3:53. Bagwell & Luger thought they were Edge & Christian doing the ripping on the local sports team. It makes Luger look so bad at 42, and looking older facially, trying to act like a 25-year-old. Bagwell talked about Ray Lewis' arrest. There were those who thought that using a legit murder case to get heel heat was in bad taste. Bagwell was also complaining about having to do a job in this match." "O'Haire & Palumbo beat Mamalukes in a non-title match. Said to be disappointing. Even though the champs won, making it non-title was Ace's booking philosophy from All Japan. The idea is to save the title matches for the big shows rather than make title matches commonplace by doing a ton of them on every TV show. From a theoretical sense, it's probably a good idea because title matches do mean nothing at this point." "They are adding time limits to TV matches with 10:00 for most matches and 15:00 for main events. The idea is to add the time limit draw to the list of TV finishes so they can avoid screw-jobs but not necessarily give away the pinfalls in big matches leading to the PPV" "Daniels was unable to lift his left arm even up to shoulder level and his left arm and shoulder were numb from the second minute in during his match with Modest on Nitro. He had a sore neck, arm and shoulder a few days later from a pinched nerve suffered when he landed on his head trying a quebrada." "An idea being floated is for Hogan to come back and feud with Flair over the commissionership, and when he wins and gets the position, to bring Goldberg back." "Kevin Sullivan's $300,000 per year contract rolled over for another year" "Funny story of the week. Bryan Alvarez in doing his monthly article for Penthouse Magazine, this time on women in wrestling, in his list of all the women in wrestling, mentioned Marie (or is it Maria) in WCW (remember, the one who was romantically involved with Reno and was Vito's sister, then later it turned out Vito and Reno were brothers and the idea she was involved with Reno was dropped and then...she was gone) and they were looking for photos of her and couldn't find any. They called WCW and the people they contacted claimed they had never heard of her" "Stacey Keibler is still under contract to WCW but hasn't heard a thing from management in a while, since before the sale. She was at the Super Bowl working for a Baltimore radio station over the past week because before being a TV personality with WCW, she was a Ravens cheerleader" "Speaking of the Super Bowl, Hulk Hogan wasn't allowed into the VIP parking lot at the game because he didn't have the proper credentials, which made local news" "The best in quality control for this week is that on the weekend World Wide show, they aired a match featuring Meng and put him over as the toughest man in the company"
Feb 12, 01 "Nash and Flair had a verbal duel. Flair invited Nash to come to the ring. Animal blocked the way and Nash treated him like he was Lance Storm or Alex Wright, blowing by him with two blows. He then treated Flair like he was Lance Storm or Alex Wright making him look like a fool. It's great for Nash, but what does it say for a company filled with fools? Nash pulled Flair's clothes off and poor Ric wasn't in the condition to be out there with no clothes on. Someone in the company needs to read this sentence to understand why the ratings have fallen." "Cat then ordered a bunch of silly matches with Steiner for the rest of the show including screwing up and saying the main event was going to be a title match (the plan was not for a title match but only for the CEO job at stake, but since Scott was going over anyway, once Cat had spoken, they decided against correcting him)." "Steiner beat Jung Dragons & Knoble & Karagias. That'll teach those guys to have the best PPV match of the last year. Steiner treated them like fools, putting three of the four guys in the recliner at the same time for the submission." "At this point, this first 45 minutes was actually worse than that horrible night where they spent the first hour with Nash and Torrie Wilson doing poorly acted skits and had no wrestling at all and killed the first hour rating from that point forward." "Schiavone in his silly statement of the week after Misterio Jr. did some flying move and then spun around, compared him with Bugsy McGraw, who for those who weren't around in that era, was just about the worst wrestler in captivity. It would be the equivalent of Ross comparing Kurt Angle to Tiger Chung Lee." "Bagwell went to a 10:00 draw with Adams which went 5:28. Actually it was one of the shortest matches on the show. It was booked this way so they could introduce the time limit draw as a new finisher and probably was short because it was late in the show and other things had gone long. It was booked to go 10:00. Sad thing is, who booked a Adams match to go 10:00 on TV?" "After drawing that strong rating last week, there was no mention of Dusty the entire show." "By this point the show was so bad I thought people were actually trying to kill the company. Adams then challenged Luger for Thunder. That didn't change my way of thinking." "Main saw Scott Steiner keep the title in a handicap match (you would think Ace at least would understand how to rebuild a dead title if he's the guy in charge) beating Nash & Rick Steiner. This was so obvious it was actually painful, as Nash power bombed Scott and then Rick dropped an elbow on Nash and Scott pinned him." "Bischoff was not at the show and the difference was said to have been like night and day. Everyone is on their toes when he's around and most of the guys work hard. With him not there, nobody cared, and there was no energy backstage and the content of the shows led to morale being horrible. What had everyone even more concerned is why he wasn't at the show, because one would think it would take something very important" "The general belief is that Hogan and Goldberg will be key parts of the angle where the company does the shutdown on the PPV (if there is a shutdown as the company is acting as if it's business as usual including buying plane tickets and still selling tickets to all the shows during the period they are supposed to be shut down), which means Hogan is probably two weeks from his first appearance. Don't know the angle, but it either could be Hogan returning with the old belt to challenge Steiner (that was the scheduled angle when they did the angle last year, for Hogan to return and challenge whomever the champion was, a few months later) or being hired by the "new owners" to be the new CEO and do a program with Flair once again" "WCW released five of the eight women on the roster, Tygress, Paisley, Major Gunns, Leia Meow and Daffney, leaving Ms. Jones, Stacey Keibler (who is not being used currently) and Midajah. Clearly Keibler was the most marketable of the group, but WCW hasn't figured out how to make it work. Some saw it as a sign of Terry Taylor losing power since he was also speaking up for the women when others wanted to dump them." "Tygress and Paisley are joining other former Nitro Girls Chae, Spice and Fyre in a girl band called Diversity 5" "There were more than one million women watching the Dusty angle, 102,000 of them college aged--keep in mind this was going head-to-head against a verbal dual on the other station involving Rock and Angle, as compared with 687,000 women watching Nash vs. Luger & Buff in the main event, of which 58,000 were college aged" "Rick Steiner's injury record is growing as besides potatoing Bam Bam Bigelow, he also injured the wrist of Douglas and the neck of Jarrett (doing the death valley driver finisher)" "Goldberg, while a guest on a Tulsa radio station, had a prank pulled on him by a local radio prankster, who called the show, said that Goldberg signed his son's head and that the son has been suffering from hair loss. Goldberg fell to the bait, and went crazy, thinking that the guy was setting up a bogus lawsuit, and even threatened to knock his head off." "A.J. Styles and Air Paris are expected to sign three-year contracts with this group this week after a hot try-out match on 1/26" "Heenan making the rounds on talk shows has been joking he was dropped from Nitro because Russo wanted a more MTV look so he hired Madden. It's a nice talk show joke but the reality was Heenan played himself out of his position. Madden was put on Nitro by Bill Busch and Kevin Sullivan, in between the Russo reigns, largely because Heenan's work had declined and they needed somebody new in the spot" "WCW won a default judgement against AWA Superstars of Wrestling permanently enjoining the company from using any trademarks or service marks listed as owned by WCW. This stemmed from an October lawsuit by WCW for advertising former Nitro Girl Fyre as appearing on the show, since Fyre is a WCW owned stage name for Terri Byrne"
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Nr1Humanoid
Hank Scorpio
Is the #3 humanoid at best.
Posts: 5,484
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Post by Nr1Humanoid on Nov 3, 2020 5:38:14 GMT -5
I know it's hard to feel bad for a billionaire but I really feel bad for Ted Turner. Has there ever been a company where the inmates literally run the asylum? I guess some blame should be on him for not being in attendance at the shows and not being a part of hiring or firing but it looks like so many guys should be held responsible for WCW's death, even a little guy like Buff Bagwell and his attitude and actions at the time. It's easy to blame Bischoff, Russo, Nash and Hogan who probably deserve 75% total blame but the other 35 should be on the Buff's, Steiner's and others. As for the Kimona harassment allegations, it sure seems like Mama Steiner from Summerslam 1993 raised some good boys. At least it took a 110 % effort to ruin WCW.
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Post by DSR on Nov 3, 2020 9:12:33 GMT -5
I love this story only because of how many dots need to be connected just for Schiavone to get even the slightest little dig in on this Steve Beverly guy.
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Jazzman
King Koopa
Trombone Shorty > Your Favorite Musician
Posts: 11,231
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Post by Jazzman on Nov 3, 2020 9:49:54 GMT -5
I love this story only because of how many dots need to be connected just for Schiavone to get even the slightest little dig in on this Steve Beverly guy. It's very much the perfect definition of walking around the block to go next door
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