TLF Tackles Who Killed WCW Episode 2

And welcome to our second installment of TLF tackles Who Killed WCW, the series
from Vice TV. It's our companion pod here on the show on the lapsed
fan to the series, and episode two is now in the books and with
us to talk about it is I think you could say the guy who kind
of wrote the book that started it all in many ways, that being,
of course, the debate over how and why WCW collapsed. Brian Alvarez is
the co author of the Death of WCW, which was first released in two
thousand and four, with a revised and expanded edition coming out in twenty fourteen.
He's also the co proprietor and podcast host at Wrestling Observer Figure four online,
and he chronicle ww's rise and fall weekly in his Figure four newsletter.
It's also he's also author rather pardon of one hundred things WW fan should Know
and Do before they die. Still alive, Brian, So I'm still working
on the list, but really grateful that you joined us here to talk about
this series. Yeah. Thanks for Yeah, this is great. So we'll
start with the same question for you that we'll have for all the guests.
Who Killed WCW. Go a bunch of people killed. You know, I
can't believe we're talking about who killed WCW in twenty twenty four. It's like
there's part of me that's just a gast that we're still going back to this.
But I actually received a royalty check yesterday for death of WCW, which
is still selling copies. And so from that perspective, I'm glad we're still
talking about it. But other net is like, do we have nothing else
to talk about in wrestling that what killed a company twenty five years ago?
Apparently not. I mean, there's so much interest, and you know,
the thing is, as you know, so many of the key players that
were I don't know, kind of tucked away in obscurity or just not talking
back when you first started working on the book have come out and offered,
you know, narratives counter narratives. So much has come out and I wonder,
as you know, I've heard it from Turner executives going on the record
that we hadn't heard from before since the book came out, and we've heard,
of course from Bishoff and everybody else who's come out with podcasts, everything
that's come out since you came out with the book has at all changed your
sense that WCW had a shot to survive, no matter if the creative was
good or bad. You know, did you get these sense did you develop
the sense at all when you hear all these people talking that, you know
what, maybe WW was fucked no matter how good the creative was. I
don't believe that. I don't know if they would still be around today.
But you know, I wrote the first book in two thousand and four,
and then we did the ten year anniversary edition ten years later coincidentally, yep.
And you know I went through and we read. I can't say we
read wrote the book when I first wrote the book, the original book that
already and I wrote already, Reynolds, right, It was actually closer to
the tenth anniversary edition than it was the original because we wrote so much stuff.
And this was during a period where wrestling books were starting to sell.
But like you know, prior to Mick Foley's first book, you couldn't sell
a book on wrestling. You know, it's like a it sounds silly and
it sounds like a cliche, but you know, they believe that wrestling fans
couldn't read or wouldn't read, and then Foley's book came out became a new
I thing, couldn't exactly right, couldn't just a good way? People in
the documentary that would agree with that, or at least purport to know people
who would agree with that. Yes, yes, So you know, we
wrote the first one and it wasn't the books that started coming out, so
they were like, okay, well these people can't read, but like,
I don't know they're going to read that much. So we were limited to
like eighty thousand words to cover the rise and the fall of w CW.
And it was it's it was very difficult to do it, so we just
chopped so much stuff out. Well, we still had it, so when
it was time for the tenth anniversary edition, it was kind of like,
okay, we can put all that stuff back in, So we put it
back in. And then obviously, you know, I read the entire book
again with fifteen years of hindsight, and you know, we fixed a few
things that had been errors in the first book, et cetera. But I
can't say that when doing the ten year anniversary edition, I can't say that
like anything really changed in terms of what I believed about the rise and Fall
of WCW and now here we are ten years after the ten year anniversary,
and there have been other books coming out, there have been other people talking
about it, and I can't say that I feel any differently than I did
when I wrote the original book. And then on top of that, you
know, I won't say I'm the only one, because there are other sad
individuals in this world. I willingly watched the Monday Night Wars twice. I
watched the entire Monday Night Wars that's right, live podcast, yeah, the
ninety and then you know, starting in twenty fifteen or whatever, on the
Brian of any show, we went back and we did nineteen years ago in
WCW and WW like we watched them raw and Nitro from nineteen years ago this
week, every single week, all the way through the end. And when
I finished watching the entire thing a second time, you know, my thought
was, if anything, if anything, I was too kind. If anything,
this thing was so much worse than I remembered. And granted, you've
got you know, we've lived through a lot since then and everything, But
you know, I can't say that I have different feelings about it. I
can't say that any thing that I wrote in the in the original book,
I would massively backtrack on. I can't say that anything I thought about the
money that was I was wrong about. You know, there were some things
I learned a lot more watching it twice and writing the book a second time,
but you know, nothing where I could go. And I don't know
what I was thinking back then. They they you know, it just it
was. It was a It was a company with a great rise, a
spectacular fall, and incredible amount of incompetence and uh, you know, a
bunch of excuses from a lot of people. Yeah. I think one of
the things that the book really does well and holds up to this day is
it really replicates the feeling of being a fan watching WCW and is that the
years have turned, it's become really a thing of you know, who can
come forward with new intel that we didn't appreciate about what was going on on
the scenes, turner broadcasting in ww's offices, those kind of things, all
fascinating stuff and stuff that's worth folding into the mosaic of understanding the question at
hand. But when I when you read that book, you your your book,
Brian, you really remember just how how laborious it felt to force yourself
to watch Nitro and Thunder every week, and I could never no matter how
much I learned about Adic Cheatham, who's in the documentary Unvice talking about how,
no matter how well we did Turner, folks wouldn't want to sell wrestling
to generate advertising revenue such that, you know it would appear to be a
viable enterprise. Brad Siegel talking about how, yeah, we clearly underpaid a
license fee at WCW based on what we you know, would have paid a
company drawing those kinds of numbers for our network, And then he takes a
pregnant pause and a pregnant cough and says that was was not my decision.
I'd love to know whose it was. But what can't get lost in the
doc and in part two touches on it, Brian, we can't get lost
is just how tough it was to watch WCW television and some of those nitros
that end with you feeling like, how could they possibly expect that that intrigued
me to come back next week? I think it's easy. Unless you do
the kind of work you did, It's it's easy to lose sight of that,
Yeah, it is. And if you if you never watched the Monday
Night Wars, I mean, it's one thing. If you watch them once,
it's one thing, because you know, it's it's hindsight. You know,
the people don't only watched it one time. It was you know,
ninety five to two thousand and one. That's a long time ago, and
memories, memories can change over the years. But you know, watching it
a second time, just you know, a few years ago. Up until
a few years ago. I mean, I watched that documentary last night,
and everybody had every excuse in the world except it was fucking terrible. You
know Bischoff. Last night's episode was, oh, you know Eric, he
just had everything working against it. It was like trying to babyface Eric Bischoff.
And you know, the show literally ends with everyone going, you know,
he actually was fantastic what he did, and he was a visionary And
I'm like, okay, listen, I'll hand to Eric. Okay. Ninety
five Nitro was awesome, ninety six Nitro was awesome, ninety seven less awesome,
especially at the end of the year. And dude, I don't care
what they say in that documentary. The early the first half of nineteen ninety
eight was already I mean, it was starting to suck and they were still
doing good business. But you know, you can ask Dave. I mean,
Dave remembers this as well as I do, because we both talked about
it the exact same time. I wrote a cover story for Figure four Weekly
in like March of nineteen ninety eight, and they'd had I don't know,
I can't remember the number thirteen fourteen straight sellouts, and I wrote this big
thing about, you know, they're having all these sellouts, but dude,
the wheels are falling off this wagon. And they got it. They got
to make some changes. And you know, people talk about ninety nine and
two thousand, Dude, things were things were going south way before that,
way before that. And I think the discovery of Goldberg gave him an extra
release on that life in terms of, like, you know, that huge
January number, would he beat Togan? But yeah, that was sort of
like a lat that was a a life raft to something that didn't show the
signs of having a I don't know, like a second a second lease on
life after the nWo petered out. JP We've talked about this endlessly, including
with Dave on the star Cast series. We did, but I mean,
you know, after Sting beats Hogan and we know how how you know that
was portrayed in episode one of the Vice series and how poorly that all came
off, And then Sting comes back in February at Super Brawl, and no
one, no one really, no one really seems to be receiving Sting the
way he ought to have been had he bulldozed Hogan. And I think that's
the story of ninety eight. And then they realize, oh my god,
let's just do another nWo into Eric's credit and others. In episode two the
Vice documentary, they do say that they they went to the nWo too many
times and how could you deny it? But there wasn't a lot of equivocation
on that, and I expected that. I mean, the red and the
red and black stuff was just you know, I don't know it just if
you were a WCW fan in ninety eight and you were watching JP, I
mean, it's just, well, you gotta agree with what Brian's saying.
I I mean, I want to say one thing too. It's fascinating,
you know, I don't think I ever really kind of touched upon it until
what Brian just said, talked about how everyone was celebrating Bischoff and then talking
about how creatively, as early as early ninety eight things were going south,
but numbers were still good, and it's like, yeah, that's it right
there. You know, as long as you're doing okay, you're a genius.
You know, we've talked about this kind of with you know, we
just did it with the James Bond movie with Harry salt when we were talking
about Spyo Love Me on under the Cinemat, when we were talking about how,
you know, Albert Brockley is the genius. He's the one who's the
genius because he's the one who still made money. He's the one who was
still successful. Harry Saltzman petered out and he died off and nobody cate,
Nobody cared when he died. You know. It's that kind of same thing,
like you're a genius as long as you're as long as you're got numbers
up there, as long as you're making money, as long as you've got
people watching. It's like it doesn't matter the quality, but you still you're
the genius. You're the the the Eric Bischoff visionary, which I think is
so funny and it's a weird it's like a weird phenomenon anomaly of people in
general. But go ahead, please. Oh but in regards to you know,
I was during ninety eight, I was definitely you know, not watching,
not not flipping back and forth. But I remember I can remember turning
on Nitro one time and seeing Sting having no idea what it happened. I
turned Nitro Sting wearing the red face paint and joining up with with with Nash
and Luger, and I'm like, what the fuck just happened? Like what
the fuck is going? Like where did this come from? Like I was
like three months ago, probably the last time I watched Nitro it was like
this was it was like, no, not, none of this would have
happened. Everyone was against Nash and all these what happened? It's yeah,
it's I think that they they took for granted the you know, any sort
of logic, at least from a fan standpoint, like any sort of logic
that would clearly tell you that this shouldn't happen. It should never happen.
It's a bad decision. Show me that. I mean, you're talking about
not watching for three months and tuning in and not know what's going on.
I watched every fucking show, and I would go from Nights out of Thunder
like literally the next show, and I would sit there going, what is
happening here? Like what is happening? And you know, I want to
go back to Eric for one thing, because I was I was like sickened
by the everybody putting over Eric Bischoff as this this genius that got screwed by
the whatever. But one thing that like nobody actually does give Eric Bischoff credit
for, which I will be the first to give him credit for, is
if you watched episode two, I mean it was very very clear that everybody
wanted to cut the legs off Goldberg. And yeah, I shouldn't say everybody,
but like there were a lot of people that wanted to cut the legs
off Goldberg. And if they didn't want to cut the legs off Goldberg,
like you could see Conan, he recognized at least that everybody else wanted to
cut the legs off Goldberg. And I think that, to Bischoff's credit,
one of the one of the main things that you can give him credit for
is he didn't cut the legs off Goldberg. I mean, everybody wanted to
beat that guy, and he got all the way through Goldberg, beating Hogan,
the Georgi at Ome and uh, and he didn't screw it up.
It's it's actually when you when you rewatch WCW, it is a miracle.
It is a miracle the rise of Goldberg when you look at how they messed
up every everything, and like the one thing they didn't mess up was Goldberg,
which I mean it was amazing the first time, it was even more
amazing the second time. It's like, man, they never beat the guy,
I want, not once until until it happened obviously, But I mean
I got to give the guy credit for that. He kept his he kept
Goldberg strong until Jullian. Yeah. But you know, as Kevin makes clear,
Bell's a mark, it's Bill's a fan. Hey, it's a television
show. All that's then there. Man, this guy is like he has
not moved off his position at all on star K ninety eight. And I
don't know, Brian, how do you look at star K ninety eight?
Was it was it was the book already written or because the thing is,
I don't think anybody with a straight face can say that there wasn't more money
left in Goldberg campaigning as the world champion. Well, of course, I
mean I'm sitting there listening to Kevin Nash stage. There's no money in a
babyface champion? Yeah, do you want to want to start the list?
Now, let's see what are you talking about? Let's go. He's been
the champion for too long. I'm like Bruno, Hogan, Austin, Sina,
Rock Cody. Hey. Yeah, he's saying that during a period where
like Steve Austin was on top on the other channel kicking their ass. The
babyface must the money is in the chase. Yeah, initially there is money
in the chase, but if you're competent, there's money in the title run.
Like that's the story of wrestling. So anyway, and then he goes,
ah, man, he just he just sucked, like you know,
And my thought is, well, first off, he didn't suck, and
I could talk about Goldberg for hours. He wasn't. He wasn't a smooth
worker. Okay, but like, if he's the guy that is that is
making money, if he's the top guy that's drawing money, that nobody else
is drawing right now because this thing is sinking. I don't give a fuck
if he can work or not. Your job. Your job is to get
him over, not go out there and go, well, you know,
he's making the most money, but god, he can't work. So like
we got to put the belt on someone who can work. Like this is
Kevin Nash by the way, saying this Kevin Nash, So you know,
I don't know, man, that that starcade, you know, and they
even kind of mentioned it. It's like, okay, we're gonna beat him.
Even Kevin Suliman was like, I wanted to beat him clean. And
we'll never know what would happen if he would have done that. I mean,
who knows. But it's not even it's not even what the finish was,
you know, it's it's what happened afterwards. Like it's it's always the
follow up and the follow up to Goldberg getting tased, and then you follow
that up with a finger poke of doom and you know, and don't forget
that Georgia on Nitro Jenerary fort ninety nine, that was that was supposed to
be the rematch between Goldberg and Nash that everybody wanted to see. That's what's
always forgotten about that finger poke. It wasn't supposed to be Nah Hogan until
the last second. Everyone was excited to see that rematch, and that's where
the Georgian homes fall. They promoted it the week before that. That's what
hurts so much about that finger poke thing, is it is it just completely
obliterated confidence that they were going to, you know, lean into what was
electric about that night at Starcade. Well that and it's just like, Okay,
if you're gonna put the belt on Nash, gonna be Goldberg whatever,
Okay, you got to go with Nash then, and you've got to have
some sort of follow up with Goldberg. Yes, Instead, it's like,
okay, Nash wins with a taser and then he does a phantom fingerpoke of
doom with Hogan and they put the belt on Hogan. And then the whole
explanation is, well, we wanted to keep the belt in the family.
It's like it's already in the family. Like nothing about it was good.
Everything about it sucked. He was under questioning for follow up. Everything it
all sucked. And and the issue is people were already getting irritated. People
are already getting pissed off. And when when your fans are already irritated and
you're already starting to lose some of those fans, the last thing you want
to do is accelerated. And you know, it's the same thing throughout the
years in every company. When when you're hot, hey, you can do
a bunch of stupid stuff. You're hot, when the decline starts, hey,
I mean you got to do your best. Because even even doing your
best, when the decline starts, it's very, very difficult to turn that
around. And by ninety nine it was like what they needed was everything to
be I don't want to say perfect, but like at least good well,
and instead it was like they were on a decline and everything just got worse
and worse and worse. Yeah, yeah, it did because they didn't have
another gear. They didn't they had they had laid the foundation for nothing.
If if Hogan's program stopped working, I mean, that's that's the broader narrative
of WCW and in the boom period, in the downfalls, if Hogan's program
isn't working, WCW isn't working. It's very simple. And you know,
as we learned about the nature of his contract later that's probably just as well.
But but to be setting up a setting up a situation where you have
all the guys that go on a headline throughout the two thousands in WWF under
under your roof, you know, from Jericho to ben Wada, Eddie to
Ray to the rest of them, who proved that they could draw over there
and and not activate any of those plans? Is that's your answer right there?
They had no other gear to kick into. But you know what you're
missing, Brian, I think about the finger poke of newm is this Kevin
puts it in the documentary. You know, you know why people hate that
so much because it got him. What did you think about he says?
He says, quote, look at the crowd, they don't know what the
fuck they've seen. I would agree with that, but they got him.
I don't know. I've never gotten his line of reasoning on that one.
Well, I mean, it's the same thing you to hear in all of
episode three when you when we cover Vince Russo, which is basically, you
know, you got to surprise, you got to swerve the people, you
got to surprise them. And you know the thing with the fit. We're
getting it to Russo now. But I mean, yeah, you don't have
to do that. Don't worry about that. It goes back to Nash.
But I mean the whole thing is it's okay to have a swerve in wrestling
as long as the swerve is a swerve that it makes sense where Okay,
I didn't see that coming, but I get it. That makes sense.
You swerve for the sake of a swerve. It's like, the reason fans
are angry is because, yeah, you got him with some really fucking dumb
why don't we do that? That's what irritates people about a swerve. I
mean there have been swerves in the history of wrestling that were like good swerves.
Oh I didn't expect that, But you know what I look back at.
You know, this seed was planned here, this seed was planning here.
You know, that's been the plan the whole time. And God,
they got me. But the finger proke of doom is not they got.
The finger pok of doom is you came up with a really stupid idea and
you did it, and we hate it and we'd rather watch the other show
where stuff is like good now, yeah, yeah, and JP I mean,
you know what it set up was all it was was a facility to
get the bat belt back to Hogan. Yes, after that you know,
short lived retirement ninety eight in the presidential run and all that show, it's
like Hogan's gonna have the belties back. And he was back and he was
champ and they did the Flare series in the ninety nine pay per views up,
you know, uncensored in super Brawl Dude, section section eleven, sub
paragraph e, brother speaks to why featured performer, Dude, I'll be a
feature performer, brother, And you know, further in two thousand, he
extends his deal and he's you know, for Nitros and thunders. He's on
that do between I forget what it was, two hundred and three hundred thousand
dollars at the gate. He gets one hundred percent of the gate receipt.
They further sweetened this insane ninety eight deal that's been circulated, as we learned
when we pulled documents for the Batch of the Beach two thousand episode that just
like it didn't get any better, they doubled down on contractual arrangements that that
weren't working for them already. So you can't. I mean I heard too,
I heard too that that even at one point in two thousand there was
negotiation in the contract that Hogan was going to own Turner. Is that what
you're heard? Yeah? I wonder if propagated to that one. Oh,
Brian as a book. Yeah, that's the thing. We're all waiting for
that one thing to come out where it's like, oh, let's reconsider everything
we thought we knew about WCW and the series will play around with some of
the wwfwcwcl rumors. I mean that's clear. Well, we'll see what they
have to say on that. But Brian is a worker yourself, you know,
you've wrestled for years. What do you make of what Brett Hart has
to say about Goldberg? It's easy to, you know, lean in on
Nash's sarcasm about Goldberg, but Brett hates Goldberg for a much different reason.
But it's not too different in that, you know, he's he's he's calling
into question whether he should have been in that position based on his ability to
work safely. Well, you know, I'm a gigantic, gigantic Brett Hart
fan, and uh, I I got to say I was I was a
little confused when I when I was watching it, because I mean, I
don't know, maybe he's maybe he's to undred person accurate, but you know,
when he's describing what happened with the kick, I mean, what he
what he says is Goldberg said watch the kick, and I was I was
confused, like there was no there was there wasn't supposed to be a kick.
And all I could think was, dude, this guy's one of the
greatest workers of all time and he didn't go into the ring, and like,
choreograph is matches. I mean, is he trying to tell me that
this match was choreographed start to finish, Because a normal match, if you're
going in there and calling it in the ring, I mean, that's exactly
what Goldberg would do. He would say watch the kick, and he would
shoot you off, and then you watch the kick, and that's exactly what
happened. And obviously, you know, Goldberg kicked his head off, and
you know he's still I think that I don't know, Man's it was obviously
an accident. You know, it sucks. I had a guy break my
orbital bone once, you know, with a kick, and it was an
accident. I hold, no ill will towards him. I think part of
the issue is that, you know, for a long time, Brett felt
that Goldberg was not remorseful about it, and I think that what probably happened
was, you know, Brett was expecting him to be more remorseful than he
was, and Brett got mad about it, and then Goldberg got mad that
he was mad because he didn't mean to do it, and he probably apologized.
Brett probably felt it wasn't a sincere enough apology, and like, over
the years, it probably just snowballs. Not These two guys hate each other,
and you know, Goldberg admits he still feels bad about it, but
at the same time, it's like, shit happens, dude, Like now
he's kind of mad about it, and of course that makes so at the
end of the day. You know, the thing they didn't mention also was
they did that match, and you know, Brett talks about how, you
know, I got kicked in the head and I knew my career was over,
you know, was I got concussed and everything, but that was not
his last match, and there's a there's a I don't know, I shouldn't
say, a very good chance, but you know, people got concussions regularly,
And the difference here is that he did not get kicked in the head
and then take time off until he recovered. He went right back on the
road and he had a series of matches with Terry Funk, which were hardcore
matches, and this dude was getting waffled in the head every night. Yeah,
and you know what really happened was he got kicked by Goldberg, got
concussed, and then went out and just got concussed over and over and over
and over again. And you know, it was all of that that ended
up leading to his actually first retirement because he had come back with we.
But you know, it was an unfortunate situation. It was obviously an accident
both guys admitted, But I think that both of them have so much pride
that they just dug in their heels and at the end of the day,
it made the situation significantly worse, at the point where they now hate each
other. Yeah. When we did our like full career watch along on a
lot of Terry Funks highlights, we touched on that match only because it's exactly
what you're saying, Brian. You know, you see it. There's a
match they have on Thunder in particular, where Funk loads him into a laundry
basket and rolls him down the ramp as Funk would do right, and then
he hits like it seems like a snag in the carpeting in the rampway or
maybe the mats around the ring, and Brett tumbles out of the laundry basket
on the top of his head at an angle that was hard to control,
and he comes up loopy. And Brett had amazing admiration for Terry Funk,
so he's not going to put him on blast for it. Funk expressed a
fair degree of you know, sympathy for having done that. He felt badly
about it, but he didn't lean into it too too much. And then
Brett just went in on a goldberg as the years went on, because you
know, that's where he sort of cites it as the you know, as
the genesis. But it's so true that that's that's that's something you get from
watching ww back week after week as you realize that these flash points that that
fit the narrative, they have these they have these precursors and these moments of
follow up that really explain, like the full scope of insanity going on,
and how little people were sort of pausing and thinking, well, well,
maybe this isn't the right thing to do, or like what are we even
doing until it's way too late for anybody to even make constructive suggestions. I
mean, Bischoff has talked about Terry Tingle, who was an executive at ww
in ninety eight, when he when he kind of lost his grip on everything
coming to him, and you know, they're trying to counter the ww F
raunchiness and saying like, we need scripts, and he's like, you can't
do scripts, and it's like, of course, you can't do scripts because
you don't know what you're doing if you get to the building. Well on
part of this way, you don't know what you're getting till Terry gets to
the building. That is Terry Bala. Of course you can't submit scripts.
But you know, with Brett Brian, one of the things that was huge
at the time, and you really hone in onto the book that they kind
of breeze over a bit in the dock, which, look, that's not
a criticism, that's just what you have to do. You have to make
these decisions to fit forty four minutes but people forget I think how rich the
opportunity was to make Brett the top baby face in the company if people with
influence were willing to countenance it. Because Wrestling with Shadows had just come out
on Ane and the whole country son it did incredible ratings, and they could
have really run with the Brett is here, you know, to get justice
for the injustice and prop up the you know, the competitor to the company
that did him so wrong. And the way they ran away from that and
tried not to talk about it is really symptomatic I think of what was wrong
over there. Well, yeah, when when Brett laughed, it was like,
my god, you just got theF champion and he got screwed in Montreal
and it really, I mean it was one of many turning points. But
you know, Montreal led to Austin McMahon, okay, and that was you
know what skyrocketed WWE to where they are today. Really and at the same
time, Brett went to WCW and they totally squandered it. And you know,
the original idea behind that starcad finish, which I think everybody knows,
is that it was supposed to be an actual fast count. You know,
Nick Patrick was going to do a fast count on Sting and then Brett playing
off Montreal was supposed to say, which he did actually say, but it
was stupid because it wasn't a fast count. You know, I'm not going
to allow a screwjob here, restart the match, and away we go.
Now, I don't know if if Nick Patrick would have counted fast and Brett
would have done that, I still don't know if that would have made any
difference whatsoever, because because I saw the follow up to Sting's title win,
right, and even if he would have won with a whatever, I mean,
they still were going to watch the follow up, so it probably doesn't
even matter if it's a fast count or not. But I don't even think
that, Like, I get what you were doing with Brett to play off
the screw job, but why is he there to play off the screw job
as a referee, and why are you doing it in the biggest match you've
ever booked? Yep, And what is your follow up to him doing that?
If you recall, like they had a Brett hart Rick Flair match which
actually did remarkably well, which was a problem apparently, and then they vanished
they like totally vanished. You know. There was just one thing that also,
you know, since we're on that subject, that was not mentioned enough
in the documentary, although it was mentioned, you know, kind of in
passing, was that this was a double whammy for WCW in the sense that
they went from you know, winning kicking WWE's assafsasas and having far better shows.
I mean, ninety five ninety six, it was way more fun to
watch WCW than it was WWF. But by the middle of ninety seven,
i mean, WWF was starting to turn around. And by the time we
hit ninety eight, it's like you had a combination of not only were they
doing everything wrong in WCW, but they were doing everything right in WWF,
And so you had the double whammy of not only are you fucking everything up,
but the alternative is doing everything right. And so, you know,
had WWF still been you know, nineteen ninety four, new generation, et
cetera, et cetera, it's possible the decline of WCW would have been slower.
But because they turned everything around, it was like both companies turned everything
around at the same time, and so it helped the rise of WWF.
Because WCW was so shitty and it sped up the decline of WCW because WWF
was doing so great. Yeah, but meanwhile the show was all about oh,
you know, corporate Turner. They didn't want to do whatever. It's
like, there's so many excuses from everybody. He's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast
with Jack and carn Seo and JP Soro. He's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast.
Well, I'm glad you cued that up because the thing with Brad Siegel
was key to me because he's always pointed at and perhaps rightfully so, as
someone that would just have easily have killed WCW then kept it alive if it
wasn't his remit to keep it alive. You know, he's a guy that
obviously had a bit of disdain for the for the wrestling fan didn't, but
he but he was. He was there watching the Nitro explosion and the demos
it brought to TNT and then later TB. Yes, and he saw the
play it. You know. The thing about it is, and we heard
from somebody who listens to the show, who's who's been involved in pitching TV,
and you know, Brad Siegel comes in and wants to know what the
next big idea is. And he was kind of faulted for that by JJ
Dillon in his book and some others for you know, expecting there to be
this this spark that was going to turn anything around. But you always always
need to have the next big idea in television. That that's a creative's job.
You always have to be able to progress to the to the next thing,
you know, pointing out that, you know, Nitro is not the
first number one show whose network executives hated it. You think of Married with
Children, Fox hated it, CBS hated Survivor. You know, he hated
it. In that they it wouldn't have been their their prime choice is their
calling card. But the job of the television executive is is to lean into
what's working and then run as fast as you can as soon as it stops
working. You have to know that as the rules of engagement. You can't
be surprised by that, and you certainly can't interpret it as a betrayal.
I mean a betrayal. I mean you can interpret it that way, but
then history won't really be on your side when you look at how how it
all works. You know, Reality TV's explosion generated great revenue from advertising,
but it has a short shelf life. The advertisers stop thinking that something that
kind of fleeting as a phenomenon is something to lean into, as opposed to
Gray's Anatomy, which is on the air for twenty years and you know,
doesn't do the ratings that used to do, but advertisers see it as a
proposition that they can pile into over and over again. And this is all
to say that Brad Siegel says on the show, on episode two of the
Vice series that Goldberg was the key. He saw what was after the nWo,
he saw what the next acceleration was. He talked about it. He
said, you know, I felt that Goldberg was really the phenomenon that could
bring advertisers and all the other stuff that they're buying or that they're consuming as
they were trying to push in a more family friendly direction. So can you
imagine Brian A. Brad Siegel observing this, watching coldly the television numbers,
seeing this Goldberg phenomenon explode, seeing the licensing opportunities it created, and then
by the end of nineteen ninety eight, Goldberg is kind of not washed,
but not not the biggest concern in WCW anymore. You know that that's the
problem is is even if the executives did put their finger on something to keep
WCW going and a live and vibrant, it might not have happened once it
trickled down to the wrestling operation side of things. Well, yeah, and
that's another thing we're going to learn about in the in the Vince Russo episode.
Is you know when you talk about advertisers, I mean, you know
they talked about it on the show. The amount of money that you're going
to make from advertisers on pro wrestling is is a I mean, it's it's
nothing compared to what you would make for a survivor, for example. So
if you've got a if you've got a wrestling company and you're trying to sell
advertising for a wrestling show, and you're getting a fraction of what another show
might get, Well, what does that mean? That means that how what
is the what is how does this thing make money? Okay, it's obviously
not going to make the kind of money a survivor would make on ads,
So you know, part of it is it's got to make money like a
pro wrestling company makes money. You know, during their peak on hundred and
twenty five million dollars in revenue, you know, one hundred and twenty five
million dollars. At that time, it was the most money any wrestling company
ever made in a year. And it wasn't because of ratings, you know,
it was because of pay per view numbers and ticket sales and merchandise and
everything that a traditional pro wrestling company how they made their money. So the
one of the biggest problems with WCW is when things started to collapse, you
know, and when they stopped winning the Monday Night wars the Monday Night ratings,
they fixated on we're losing this ratings war, and we've got to bring
the ratings up. And if you look at the entire rain of Vince Russo,
it was all focused on one thing, which was trying to bring the
ratings up, and in doing so, you know, their ticket sales collapsed,
their merchandise collapsed, their payper reviews absolutely collapsed. I mean, their
pay per views were like a tenth of what they were a year earlier.
I mean, they just stopped making money. They just stopped making money.
And on top of that, even if Let's say he had drastically increased the
ratings, Say ratings had got up twenty five percent across the board on Vince
Russo, which they didn't. But had they how much more money were they
going to make from those advertisers they didn't want to buy ads in a wrestling
show. And meanwhile, you've destroyed every other revenue stream because you're worried about
beating WWF in this ratings work. That's the death of WCW is they stopped
generating revenue. And when you're no longer generating revenue, all this talk about
corporate and mergers and all this bullshit. If they had been generating two hundred
million dollars a year in two thousand and one, I don't think there's any
chance, no chance they're being canceled, really, But instead their numbers were
down. They were losing sixty two million dollars in a year. They're not
making anything off advertising because the ratings have fallen. They were making anything when
the ratings were good. I mean, what is it You already have an
organization that doesn't really want wrestling. All you've done with all of this atrocious
booking and killing every revenue stream is making it easy for them to go goodbye.
That's right. It served them up on a silver platter all the reasons
they needed to act on those instincts. They no longer had countervailing revenue figures
and ratings to tell them, well, maybe this isn't the time to be
so aggressive now the merger, and they don't even mention. I mean,
they mentioned on the show, but they didn't tie it together, like throughout
the show. They're talking about this during the Eric Bischoff era. They don't
want wrestling, they're not fans of wrestling, you know, they'd rather have
some they're talking about all of this, but as they're talking about this,
it's still on why Because it didn't matter whether they wanted it or not.
The thing was generating tons of money. Yeah, and so okay, well
you know I like WCW. Well they're making out of twenty five million dollars,
you're gonna get rid of that? Well? No, right, but
it's much easier to do that when I don't like wrestling. How's it doing
last sixty two million last year? What get rid of them? And when
you quibble with that loss figure? And we talked about how Brad Stiegel,
in a sworn deposition in the two thousand WW lawsuit puts the exact you know,
on the record, sworn losses on the books. It's pretty similar to
what everyone is said about ninety nine and two thousand. That aside, then
you start leaning into well, you know, once it became clear the WCW
wasn't I didn't have a very bright future in this new merged environment. We
started putting more losses on their books for things that they weren't necessarily responsible for
to make other divisions of Turner Broadcasting and Time Warner look better. And while
that may also be true, is anyone suggesting that they would have been profitable
under any method of accounting. WCW is a unit even if all of those
losses weren't piled on to their books. I mean, these are staggering numbers
we're talking about. And when people mention a sixty two million Brian or eighty
million, and you well know the I think the defensive thing is to lean
in and say, well, actually that loss isn't what it appears to be,
but it wouldn't have been a profit. And that's what's key here.
We're talking about revenue. Were talking about money in the door. We're not
talking about profit on the other side, when you play all the accounting games
to make it look like you actually lost money when you maybe the figures are
there year over year in the same markets. They're coming back to buildings and
doing half of what they did year before. It's I know that, But
think about this. Okay, let's say that WCW was generating two hundred million
dollars a year. Okay, two hundred million dollars. Yeah, and okay,
other divisions in turn are not doing so well, so we move a
little bit of money over to bolster up those divisions. So WCW is now
on the books making one hundred and ten million and ninety million of that is
going to help bolster other whatever. Okay, you're gonna get rid of WCW.
I don't know. I mean that. That's no, that seems to
be the claim that everybody's making. Maybe, like my god, this thing's
making a one hundred and ten million plus we're being able to move some money
over to make some other divisions look good. Right, No, you don't
get rid of WCW. You get rid of WCW when it's that big a
sixty two million dollars drain, and it's a drain because of Creative. You
can talk all day about everything else, but it's a drain because they made
the wrong decisions on who won, who lost, and who was featured.
I'm not saying WW would have survived forever if they pushed Chris Jericho in nineteen
ninety nine, but I am saying that everything comes back to what the numbers
reflected because of the decisions you made. Sorry, Yeah, I think that
that we'll never know, obviously, unless we can find our way to another
timeline. But I think that had they had they not collapsed. Honestly,
I think they might even still be around because the ashes of WCW or TNA,
which has managed to stay around. So I think that in some form
or fashion, we might still have a WCW today. And you know,
history is in pops possible to you know, look at WWE, I mean
super Hot and then WCW died and they didn't collapse because they found ways to
generate revenue in other ways, but they did drive off fans for you know,
quite a while, and they hit you know, a creative absolute down
period in twenty nineteen, and you know, in twenty nineteen they weren't as
bad as WCW, but they were seeing year over year double digit declines in
a lot of different areas. And they turned it around and today they're bigger
than they have ever been. I mean significantly bigger than they ever were in
the Monday Night Wars, not as many people watching, but I mean way
television is now, it's impossible for that to happen. But I mean,
you know, WCW, maybe if they hadn't died, they could have turned
it around. But you know, they they collapsed in such a spectacular way
that I mean it was inevitable they were done. And as they bleed over
on episode two in the nineteen ninety nine and Bischoff's departure in September of that
year, basically Harvey Schiller sending him home and that's how the episode ends.
We do miss that that key moment. JP. We've talked about this and
Bishof will be the first person to say this was in a disaster. No
one defends this. The rebranding campaign in April of ninety nine, I mean,
what a component did you talk about sucking the life out of the esthetic
And I mean who enjoy WCW with that logo and that gray apron. I
mean, I remember part of this. I remember the first time I saw
that logo and I was just like, what the fuck is that? What
is that abomination? That's I don't even know what that was like. It
took me, I think it took me until maybe we started doing this podcast
to figure out how the WCW was actually formed in that in that bizarre splotch
of a logo. Yeah, and they did a new set and they booked
a lot of stuff that that was sort of back to the future in terms
of like, you know, suddenly Hogan's back beating Savage for the world title.
He's wearing the the white and black, but he's basically back to red
and yellow Hogan in terms of uber babyface. I remember that nitro that he
did that he would be back in and by mid ninety nine anyway, Yeah,
and then when when he went back to the yellow tights forget about It's
like, Okay, we really don't have a plan here. I'm not saying
that people hated it when he did that, which they did in terms of
voting with their wallets, but it was like, Okay, we really don't
have anything here but what Hulk wants to do in any given month. Brian,
what do you remember about that rebranding campaign? Do you look back on
that version of WCW is just hopeless. I just I can't help but mark
that as I jumped the Shark's funny about it is like throughout history I've heard
from people like within companies and particularly production people, and they get so excited
about these rebranding like we're gonna have a new logo, and we're gonna have
a new set, and we're gonna have and you know, it's like fans
don't give a shit. They never do. It's like no one cares except
for the people that are like building the set. Remember it, same thing
with like Dynamite. Remember they we'd have like a new set and they were
going to remember Impact. Remember that. Yeah, it's like it's like none
of it. Well, Actually, the TNA rebranding for that one show did
really well because for reasons I cannot fathom, having also watched some of TNA
over again, I mean, why do people romanticize about this? What's wrong
with them? But that would work, But like for a day now it's
right back. That's it, so you like WCW is like, Okay,
we got some big problems. The booking fucking sucks. We got no stars.
Everybody is turning out in droves or watching the other you know what,
Let's rebrand, Let's have a new set. Yeah, and you know you
just watched the new set and it's like, okay, I mean you cared
about it way more than I did. I was busy watching the horrible show
that was wrapped around. Well that's yeah. Maybe it's just I associate the
two in my mind because things you probably do did get much worse. Yeah,
yeah, because it was they were out of ideas. I mean they
had they had lost the plot in so many ways, and me ww F
had been kicking their ass for a straight year. At that point, Austin
was hotter than ever, just wasn't wasn't going well. So maybe that's I
want to say before we have to wrap it up. There's two things I
want to say, Oh please do I don't have time to like really go
into it because it would take me like an hour. But you know we
were talking about earlier. What did you you know, would you rewrite the
book or write anything different or what did you learn it. There are things
that I did learn that are not even in the tenth anniversary edition because I
learned them afterwards doing the rewatch. The first thing is that if you want
to know when the wheels first started falling off this wagon, like the very
first time that in rewatching it, I went, Okay, what the fuck's
going on on the show? It was when Eric joined the nWo one.
So I don't know if that was like late ninety six or early ninety seven
or when it was, but he joined the nWo when he started coming out
with him every week and literally that was right when all of a sudden it
was like, wait a second, you were going to do this, and
then you did that. And I think it was when he became a character.
Then he was so concerned about what he was doing on TV as a
character that the effort that he was putting into actually booking the show started to
falter. Interesting, So I could talk about that and the other thing that
was late ninety six, by the way, before we move on from it,
that was late ninety six. Yeah, that was when we first watched
the shows and it was like this show, some weird's going on in this
show. That was the first time was when he joined the nWo. And
then the other thing I want to mention is, since we're talking about Goldberg
and Nash and Nash complaining about Goldberg, what I really noticed when I watched
WCW the first time, I also thought, you know, this Goldberg guy
is green, not very good, kind of sucks. But when I watched
his second time, it really hit me that Goldberg's strength was that he was
green. Goldberg was a phenomenon because when he came out, it was unlike
anything else. It was not just that he never lost, because we've seen
a million member Crimson. I mean, you could go through a history of
guys they tried to make Goldberg and their solution was he just never loses.
But what Goldberg had was the same thing that brock Lesner had, who also,
by the way, was one of the biggest stars in draws, you
know, WWE ever had when he was in his you know, they were
wild animals and when they came out, it was like, oh my god,
like somebody could die in this match. And obviously the downside is a
lot of people did get hurt. But you know, you would watch those
shows even in ninety eight when Goldberg would come out and murder somebody. It
was like you would watch this show and it would be terrible, hokey,
angle sucked, matches were bad. But then all of a sudden, this
Goldberg would come out and it felt like you were in ninety six again because
the crowd went nuts for this guy and he would just get in the ring
and he would maul somebody, and it was like it was like watching a
UFC, almost like an early UFC where I don't know what the fuck's gonna
happen, and he just like even when the thing was terrible, like he
had that feud with Tank Abbott, that feud was fun. You know,
Goldberg his strength was that he was a wild animal. And if he had
been like a good technical worker, everything smooth, he wouldn't have been Goldberg.
So I really learned that watching the second time, that as much as
people complained about how he sucked and he couldn't work and he was sloppy and
this and that, that's what made him work. That and being undefeated was
what made him work. And can I suggest that even if he was the
best worker in the business with that exact same winning streak, he would have
had the shark circling. He would have had the shark circling. That was
just you know, that was the reason served up to reposition things because here
was a guy that was gonna be the cash cow. Here's the guy JP.
Just listen to Brad Siegel. You know, if you're gonna put the
blame at Brad Siegel's door for not resuscitating WCW when he took over in nineteen
ninety nine after the departure of Harvey Schiller, as I'm coming around to that
thesis in terms of like, if you have to say one person, it
might be him, because he didn't lean into improvements. He leaned into going
back to what didn't work, and he was the one with the ultimate decision
making authority in terms of the Turner hierarchy. He just said it in the
documentary Goldberg was the play that that's the answer. They shifted away from Goldberg
at a time when that made the most sense up and down the corporate ladder.
Yeah, I mean that that's I mean, that's not uh uh,
that's not news, you know, Like I mean, I think that's that's
the that's the thing. Like it they you turn away from your hottest I
mean, it's the dumbest thing. It's like, it's like you're selling a
you know, it's like selling a new the brand new you know, uh,
like iPhone that you can you know, not only does it does it
take these incredible photos, but also it can do your taxes, It can
clean up your kitchen, the whole, the whole fucking kaboodle. But you
know what, we're gonna take it away from you. Can't have it,
can't have it because one day he might get booed more than he gets cheered.
But instead of waiting for that day, we'll act Brian like that day
is today. So they close with Bischoff, as you've said, and we'll
close our episode here with him sort of looking out on the Wyoming wilderness.
And he mentioned this thing where he was accused and I guess is exonerated of
misuse of funds. Schuler calls him into the office. That was new to
me that he was he never heard it. There was so much gone,
so much swirling around back then. It's like, but to me, I
can't escape this, and I'll leave with this is because we started talking about
Bischoff. The episode starts talking about Bischoff and ends talking about Bischoff. There
was a point when Bischoff pitched that he disappeared on a plane. Okay,
that was the angle We're gonna get buzz thinking that Eric Bischoff has died in
a plane crash because he has a he has a pilot's license, or at
least he's he's disappeared into you know, the vortex. I mean, what
does that say says this is a bad idea. But amazingly he didn't do
it that well. They did would let him. I mean, according to
what Schiller said in the Nitro book and what others have said about that idea,
they just didn't. They he came back, he tried to do it
again in ninety nine. That was just but to me, like you can't
underestimate how much Bishoff became sort of a I don't want to say desperate,
but it just it just became abundantly clear that there wasn't another well of creativity
to reach into when the nWo stopped working. And I think, I think
that's it. So Brian, keep in touch. We're really happy that you
took the time to revisit this. I know it's a painful, yet,
as you said, profitable subject for you, So not a problem. But
what do you hope for the rest of the series. I mean that there's
a couple of episodes still to go. I got to watch the Vince russ
one next week. I'm not looking forward to it at all. I'm not
looking forward to it at all, dude, Very quickly, this week was
all about how everything in WW that was great man, Eric was a visionary,
my man, everything that went wrong was somebody else's fault. And I
mean there were a couple of things where like he couldn't help but say it
sucked. But I mean, you know, he's a carnie, he's a
worker. You say, oh, and I knew that kind of thing sucked.
So you take a little bit of blame and then you can shift the
blame to everybody else. But I'm not sure I can handle an hour of
Vince brus Will blaming everybody else for his shitty booking. It'll be interesting,
that that's for sure. That that's why we're still talking about it. So
next episode coming, we'll be back with you to talk about episode three.
Brian Alvarez, thank you so much for being with us here in episode two.
All right, thanks for having me. We'll see you next time on
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