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WRESTLING COLUMNS

Why the New Blood Angle Didn't Work
January 9, 2005 by Niels J.


Niels J. here again this time with my third column. This time I would like to talk about a special time in WCW. When I first started watching wrestling I was 9 years old and that was in 2000. All people say that WCW was a sinking ship in 00-01, but that time was were I became a wrestling fan so I don't like when people criticise that time. I thought the New Blood was a really great angle, but Russo and Bischoff just totally blew it and that was sad because it was a great storyline, but now I am going to take you through the good and bad of the New Blood Storyline:

In weeks before April 10th Tony Schiavone Mike Tenay and Mark Madden had been talking about Russo and Bischoff Returning and every WCW fan waited for it. Well finally it became April 10th and Russo and Bischoff made a huge impact. They showed up and talked about all the mistakes they had made: Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Kevin Nahs, Sting and Lex Luger. Nitro April 10th was probably the best Nitro ever, I did not see it, but I have a very detailed report about it. Bischoff and Russo stripped all champions, and on that Nitro they held a mini-tournament for who would be in the main event a Spring Stampede, it ended with becoming Jeff Jarrett vs DDP. Nitro was amazing and so was the PPV Spring Stampede. The titles ended up becoming: Shane Douglas and Buff Bagwell as the tag champs, Chris Candido as the Cruiserweight champ, Terry Funk as the Hardcore champ, Scott Steiner as the United States champ and Jeff Jarrett as the world heavyweight champ. The next Nitro 17/4-00 the day after Spring Stampede was a good enough Nitro, but not as good as April 10th. After that Nitro they had to many feuds going. They had: Lex Luger vs Chuck Palumbo, Shawn Staisiak vs Curt Henning, Norman Smiley (gees) vs Terry Funk, The tag team division feuds, Billy Kidman vs Hulk Hogan, Shane Douglas vs Ric Flair, Buff Bagwell vs Ric Flair, Vince Russo vs Ric Flair, Eric Bishcoff vs Hulk Hogan, Sting vs Vampiro, Kevin Nash vs Mike Awesome and DDP vs Jeff Jarrett. That was much to many feuds for Bischoff and Russo, if they had thought this a little more through it could probably have worked with these feuds, but as we can see now they couldn't. The next and biggest mistake of the New Blood was the tag match on Thunder where the World Title was on the line between: Eric Bischoff and Jeff Jarrett vs David Arquette and DDP, and Arquette won the title. The next they came up with was a Three Tired Cage match at Slamboree, witch was probably good enough, but still not so good that they started winning the ratings and it was especially because David Arquette turned on DDP during the match witch meant that the storyline with Arquette continued a week more. This New Blood thing had already totally been blown out of proportion, there was still a little chance of saving it, but instead Bischoff and Russo ended it a very stupid way. First of all Russo and Jarrett screwed Bischoff and the New Blood and formed an alliance with Kevin Nash and Scott Steiner, then Jeff Jarrett, Kevin Nash and Scott Steiner turned on Vince Russo. After that Kevin Nash and Scott Steiner turned on Jeff Jarrett and Kevin Nash became the world champion. Jeff Jarrett won it back at the Great American Bash. Russo and Bischoff disappeared from WCW television until Bash At The Beach where Russo gave a title shot to Booker T after that Ric Flair became the CEO and WCW continued having bad storylines (I didn't think that) until it closed. This whole New Blood thing could have saved WCW, but because of Vince Russo and Eric Bischoff it didn't.

by Niels J...


Brian Bertrand wrote:
I don't mean to come off as an asshole or anything but how in God's name could you say that the New Blood angle was good" I know you were 9 but even a 4-year old can tell that it sucked major ass. The New Blood was pretty much the real nWo 2000 since it had the numbers. The problem with the New Blood was, IMO, that they didn't have enough talent at all to make use of the storyline properly. Besides, when they had someone from the Millionaire's Club take on anyone from the New Blood it was like the nWo from 97 all over again with at least 10 guys running out and making the whole match (and storyline) look like complete crap.

One feud you forgot to mention was the in-ring shoot interview that Vince Russo did about Hogan. We all know that Vince Russo isn't much of a wrestling guru based on his shock and awe theory but he made some pretty good points as far as Hulk Hogan was concerned. Once he made those comments everyone looked at Hogan in a different perspective. The problem is that it sure as hell didn't help out with the New Blood in the least. Once that whole NB vs MC was over everything changed and then Kevin Nash became the new commissioner and then it was Flair and then everything was screwed. Even Eric Bischoff admitted that the New Blood angle wasn't a defining moment. It gave pushes to a lot of guys but it still didn't give the push that the nWo did back in '96. I think that it was a joke that they even did this because the only thing that made a great impact was the Triple Cage Match because they had the idea back in Ready To Rumble but that was from a movie and now it's not used because, even though it would be sweet to bring back (Mr. Bischoff please read here if you can bring this up at any time) the fans would eat up the Triple Cage if some big names were fighting in it like a 6-man Armageddon style match. Just because Vince McMahon didn't come up with it doesn't mean that it wouldn't sell. Other than Triple Cage everything was pointless. I, for one, am glad that it died when it did because it was an awful waste of thousands of Ted Turner's money.
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