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WRESTLING COLUMNS

The Demise of World Championship Wrestling
August 22, 2004 by Steven Richardson


Everyone knows WCW was WWF/E's only real contender, especially in 1998 and 1999 where they were the number 1 company but soon WCW's time would come to an end and the company begun to crumble

A Lot of people where said to be the blame for the extintion of World Championship Wrestling, but one person who got the most stick was Vince Russo, but he didnt deserve any of it, fine he was one of the main men in charge as the demise happened but the company was already shattered, maybe AOL and Time Warner are to blame but i think the person who should take the stick for it was Eric Bischoff.

Eric Bischoff, the man who is known for being the one man to stand up to Vince McMahon and the man that made Nitro beat Raw in the ratings for 80-90 weeks, but he is also the reason they were getting only 2.2 ratings for Nitro in late 1999, there was no turning back from there, now im not saying Bischoff meant to do this and he was good for the company but Ted Turner should have got rid of him earlier, one of the reasons Bischoff lost the fans was because if the lack of stars coming through, Bischoff stuck with Hogan, Flair, Piper, Savage, Nash and Hall maybe this was favourtism but although all were good in their day and got great charisma people were looking for something new, WWF/E realised this Vince started to produce new stars, Stone Cold, The Rock and thriple H prime examples. wrestling was changing, but wrestling left WCW behind

Bischoff used the "old guys" as bookers aswell which was also a bad move, Match writers were hired for this not to watch wrestlers take control. I also feel Eric failed to realise what the fans wanted, fine he had the cruiserweight division but they wasnt given enough TV time, Bischoff wasnt willing to drop the nWo when by early 2000 there was as many different types of the nWo as there has been Terry Funk retirement Shows. Another example is the band KISS, they were hired to do Nitro once but there was no reaction from the fans, so what did Eric do he booked them again for the next week, then he spent all this money in endorsments that failed like the KISS based character Demon played by BORING BRIAN ADAMS who was again good in his day but surely had to go.

Finally Bischoff had his presidential powers taken from him with Russo and a couple of others coming in, though bischoff stayed around, I dont think russo is the blame when he took over, WCW had already gone too far down the ladder to be saved, and i know the new blood idea didnt work well it was a good idea, giving the younger generation a chance, but Kidman vs Hogan isnt going to work, especially when Hogan is known for keeping others down, this is just my opinion however and its up to others to make up their own minds

by Steven Richardson..


XtremeFalls wrote:
Bishoff can't be blamed for all of that he made a lot of mistakes but Russo isn't smelling like a rose. I mean He got the Company while it wasn't a peice of Garbage, It still wasn't going into the crappy yet. Russo is the guy who started doin all of theses stupid things. He made Hacksaw Jim Duggan turn against AMerica i mean come on. Buzz Kill, Demon, Giving Jeff Jarrett title runs, pissing off HOgan and other big name stars. him winning the Heavyweight title, David Aqquette winning it. Russo was supposed to put some life into the product but all we got was crap. Russo the last part of the big crappy Puzzle, and Russo him self brought back the NWO again. He claimed to be great but he really wasn't
Nick Sparrow wrote:
I just want to say, that was a great article you wrote Steven. I as well agree that it was to late for WCW by the time Russo came in, and I believe he knew it was going to fall eventually. So I think he had fun while running WCW, he didnt have that competiveness pressure, as Vince McMahon did. Now it was a poorly managed company, because again Russo didnt have that competiveness to compete at a level with WWE. Bookers, agents, even Russo and Bisoff didnt know what they were going to do on the day of the shows.

I feel maybe the fans demised WCW, because they got tired of what they were seeing, and taking notice of what the WWE offered. As for Russo, he may have been part of the demise, but he should not take the blame for it.

Everyone says WCW never pushed anyone, except Goldberg, well I disagree, in 2000 and 2001, they pushed Booker T. and Scott Steiner, who they were in the mid-card division, that finnaly got their push. Benoit was getting the push, but he left to WWE, where the company was ran right.
Chosen1Two4Zero7 wrote:
There were so many problems with WCW, that you really can't put the blame on one person. First off, when Turner purchased GWF he really didn't care about wrestling. He told Bischoff that he wanted to be the number one wrestling in the world and gave Bischoff all the money he wanted to spend. With over millions to spend, Bischoff went crazy, purchasing all of the main eventers from WWF. Everything that we were watching in WWF between 1992-1994, we were watching again in WCW. McMahon saw his company crumbling, and then pushed all of his mid-carders and made them main eventers.

Bischoff saw this and then purchased Bret Hart. It didn't really hurt the WWF, because I believe that they were going to get rid of him anyway.

The nWo angle went on way too long. They should have never split it up. That Wolfpack shit was awful.

Turner saw that his company was failing, and he got rid of it. AOL Time Warner had no real intentions for WCW. By the time Russo came in, AOL/TW told him that he had 90 days to turn it around. We all know that wasn't going to happen. Russo really had no ideas for WCW, all he wanted to was destroy Hogan's name. Pushing Jarrett was the right thing to do. He wanted to in WWF, but Austin said no. (Remember when Austin gave him 2 stunners on a certain Raw")

The same that happened to WCW may happen to WWE. Currently, the WWE is dry, and they are not about wrestling. The fans today love it because they don't know wrestling. WWE isn't getting big numbers because the old fans are not into entertainment. Plus, the WWE has way too much backstage politics with Triple H, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, and many others.

The one reason I feel that the WWE will be around is basically because Vince loves the business, and Ted Turner didn't. You can't blame one person, but we all know that Ted Turner was the real problem.
UnkLBob42 wrote:
Sure, you can cite the individual gimmicks, but really what happened was it became mostly NOT ABOUT THE WRESTLING. Each time that happens, be it WCW, WW(W)F/E, or ECW, all of the critics howl and the ratings drop. My take on the cycle is that first , a good, well-integrated dramatic plotline adds to the traditional athletic drama. The fans enjoy it, the promoters & staff notive it and MISTAKENLY assume that it's the additional drama that has grabbed the ratings and should be featured more prominently. In the short term, the best plots that have been thought up are successful, but as time goes on the plots & gimmicks wear thin.

And that's how we get to things like NWOs ad infinitum as well as a whole mess o' Stings and Doinks and Hebners (actually that one was pulled off nicely), Mae West/Mark Henry's bouncing baby glove, Vince's KMA Club, et cetera. The reality is that wrestling fans like to see some semblance of athletic competition, and a good plot device to explain why it's happening, NOT a convoluted plot that happens to break into violent confrontation on Monday nights. That is one good thing that HHH brings to the current scene - his character is driven to be the champ and he'll confront anyone in the ring to get it.
TNAfan169 wrote:
I think the people to be blamed for WCWs demise is the fans.They jumped to watching WWF programming.I was a loyal fan.I stuck with WCW till the end.If the fans would have stayed watching and gave WCW support than maybe TNA wouldnt be around today and Nitro,Thunder an Saturday Night would still be on.I think if WCW would still be around,it would have pulled through.ITS THE FANS FAULT NOONE ELSES.thats the bottom line!

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