BreakingDown Who Killed WCW?

 Written By: Danny Albers 

Who Killed WCW? If you watched this 4 episode docuseries, then you’re probably farther from answering that question than you were before. What is it about WCW that intrigues people so much that nearly 25 years after it was bought out by rival WWE, it still has people covering the product in detail. Poor booking, the Finger Poke of doom, inmates running the asylum, Vince Russo, Eric Bischoff, Ted Turner. There is so much behind the downfall of WCW that it’s hard to narrow down one thing. In his article I’m going to try to clear some suspects, and hold certain individuals accountable. The goal is by the end of reading this article you have a better understanding of who killed WCW? 

Not a Suspect: Eric Bischoff 

Let’s start with who didn’t kill WCW, and that’s Eric Bischoff. As this documentary really harps on the financial decisions by Bischoff, or lack thereof. As Bischoff admittingly states “I was spending a billionaire's money” hinting that he didn’t care what it cost to pull in stars like Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and Bret Hart. He’s solely responsible for the unfair pay of some stars whilst some became very rich. But if there are no questionable financial contracts, there is no Hogan, Hall, and Nash, and therefore, there is no NWO. Simply put, if Eric Bischoff didn't step in and take the fight to Vince McMahon and the WWF, there would be no WCW by 1996. There is no Monday Night War. There is no “The Crow” Sting. Bischoff is the man that created the product that beat Vince McMahon in the rating for 83 weeks. Nobody has done that before or since. As McMahon was buying out territories and his competition, and suspected to be aligned with ECW, WCW was a major problem for the WWF. It was innovative and cool under Bischoff. When Bischoff was fired, the company began to slide much faster than it was when Eric was in charge. He’s the only person in this documentary that the former WCW stars seem to have respect for all these years later. As the documentary states, prior to Bischoff getting creative control of the product, WCW was failing at a concerning rate. What likely happens without Bischoff taking over is some of the top stars jump to WWF and ECW, and WCW falls underwater or gets bought out by one of their competitors. This blog post, and this documentary don’t exist, so we will drop the charges against Eric Bischoff. Next Suspect! 

Suspect: Vince Russo 

“I was better than 80% of the talent…bro!” The fact that there is a documentary on Netflix talking about how this mumbling dipshit convinced people he can be in charge of a television program and wrestling product when he was part of a writing team is crazy. So many times people talk about “The Attitude Era” being what saved WWE. That is where the legend of Vince Russo is born. But I will argue that it wasn’t necessarily the content of the Attitude Era that allowed for WWE to flourish, but more so the lack of rules that limited the stars to really come into their own. Russo had nothing to do with Rocky Maivia becoming the Rock, or Mankind connecting with the fans who followed Mick Foley’s career, or Steve Austin finding the Stone Cold character. He didn’t specifically write the Undertaker and Kane saga. So can somebody please tell what Russo created for people to think he can save a struggling wrestling product? I don’t think anything in the late 90’s that WWE did could hold a candle to anything WWE did from the WCW Invasion angle throughout the Ruthless Aggression era. What I’m saying is the WWE product got better after Russo left. Anybody who watched WCW while Russo was working for the company really needed to hold this man accountable for his crimes. WCW sucked with Russo at the helm, and the arrogant and inflated ego makes me think he just flat out sucks. 

Not a Suspect: David Arquette 

Let’s get one thing straight, David Arquette did not kill WCW. Not one creative decision can kill a product. WWE didn’t fall apart when Kevin Federaline beat John Cena. Is it a dumb idea to have your World Title on a non-wrestler, yes. But Vince McMahon had won the WWE championship, and they did just fine recovering from those awful decisions. Blaming Marquette for WCW’s problems is stars like DDP, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, etc. egos not allowing themselves to face the reality that they’re not as good as they think they were. Not one guy on this program says “Stone Cold was cooler than me” or “The Rock was the best thing on TV” or "Triple H and Undertaker were doing amazing stuff.” This entire documentary is just these older stars refusing to face the truth that the younger up and coming stars were doing something much more special than they ever accomplished. I love how all these guys talk about how defiant and insubordinate they were, but when it came to putting the belt on Arquette everyone played along because it was their job. When did that ever stop any of these guys from doing what they want?  

Willing Suspects: The Radicalz 

People need to hold these 4 men accountable. They jumped ship because they were unhappy at WCW, and Benoit wasn’t going to let Kevin Sullivan book him creatively. These 4 guys were instantly used way more prominently on WWF television. Malenko won the Light Heavyweight title, and wrestled on a couple pay per views. Saturn got featured for a while until his questionable character ruined things for him. Eddie Guerrero won a couple different championships before his incredible run in 2004. Chris Benoit was a star player for WWE until his death in 2007. I’m sure seeing the success these guys had made wrestlers like Rey Mysterio, Chavo Guerrero, Booker T, and Raven think that they could make a name for themselves in WWE. It wasn’t just existing stars being featured in WWE, but many guys from other promotions were finding success like The Dudley’s, Steven Richards, The Hardy’s, and Edge & Christian who worked as jobbers before finding their spot with WWE. This significant moment pictured above has to be looked at as the downfall of WCW. Four of their talents showed up on WWE television, and then shitting on the WCW product with Mick Foley in a backstage segment. 

Not suspects: Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Hulk Hogan

I’m going to stand on the opinion that these 3 men didn’t kill WCW because without them, there is no NWO. Similar to Bischoff, WCW doesn’t find a way to survive without Hogan, Nash, and Hall. Did these guys have too much creative control and get paid too much, yes. But they’re talked about like they deliberately sabotaged the product. Saying these guys killed WCW is like saying LeBron killed the Los Angeles Lakers. Without LeBron, no free agents come to LA, and nobody watches the product regardless of his crazy contract. Tthey spoke about Nash beating Goldberg with the taser. It wasn’t a great decision but it wasn’t the first time a booking decision pissed people off. I was just screaming about Sami Zayn pinning Bron Breakker. The finger poke of doom stinks, but again, it’s easy to look back after the collapse of the company and say one decision killed the company. If WCW was still alive, people wouldn’t be talking about it. It was a dumb decision, but it didn’t kill the business like some of the people in the documentary said. Long story short, these 3 guys did a lot more for making WCW a watchable product then they did killing it. Winners write history books, and WWE wrote these guys as traitors. That reputation would follow them for the rest of their careers. WCW did just as much to damage Hogan, Hall, and Nash.

Suspect: Time Warner Cable Company (Ted Turner) 

Time Warner had a big hand in killing WCW. The show talks a lot about how the office put out restrictions on the type of content that Bischoff was allowed to produce. They were telling WCW to have a clean product whilst WWE was doing anything they wanted with all the creative freedom in the world. Because WCW was owned by Ted Turner, WCW wasn’t free to walk away from the partnership which held the company hostage. In the end, it’s pretty clear that execs at Time Warner wanted the company to go under, and sabotaged WCW for that to happen (employees all but admit as such during the show). If Ted Turner and Time Warner was to sell WCW when it was hot to a company who was more invested in WCW, the brand could have cleaned up certain business aspects and found a way to thrive. 

Suspect: The decision to sign Bret Hart 

Bischoff and WCW put their faith in a guy who clearly didn’t believe in the product. Bret didn’t have one good thing to say about WCW. And after he suffered a bad concussion when Goldberg kicked him in the head, his career was over. There is no doubt Goldberg was at fault for the botched kick that ended one of the greatest careers in the history of wrestling. Somebody could have been more engaged with helping Goldberg improve in the ring. It was revealed that Goldberg’s plan was to hurt people when he got in there to build credibility. The fact that he was allowed to carry himself like that in the ring without any authority figure stepping in is baffling, and look what happened. He inadvertently put the nail in the company when he injured the top free agent signing that was supposed to save the company. But the idea that signing Bret instead of developing the talent you have was the part that hurt WCW. They had a roster full of talent, yet went with another older wrestler who struggled to connect with the audience. 

Suspect: Sting VS Hogan Ending in a Dud 

They built this as the biggest match in the history of professional wrestling. So much so that WCW built this match for an entire year. The fans were into it. But the fact that this documentary revealed that they were never set on a finish to the match and the feud is baffling. It makes sense when you say how bad WCW dropped the ball on this match. Sting and Hogan should have been the match that transformed wrestling. Instead, it fell short and was a sloppy mess, and WWE was able to recreate a similar feud with The Rock and Stone Cold that changed wrestling. The fact that nobody talks about this match all these years later when talking about the greatest matches of all time is a shame. Bischoff and WCW should have had their shit together and given us the Sting VS Hogan finish the fans deserved. That didn’t happen because Hogan had creative control, and Sting didn’t trust that he wasn’t going to get screwed by Hogan (in real life, not in a storyline). 

The Final Thought 

There are a lot of things that ultimately contributed to the death of WCW. No one thing is to blame and no one person is to blame. It was a poorly run production with little to no business resources dedicated to helping the product flourish by its ownership. They took a sales guy (Bischoff) in his 30’s and said figure it out. When he did, Time Warner did nothing to help Bischoff besides occasionally throwing money at Bischoff to sign talent. WCW was doomed because the people in charge never wanted to carry it into the 90’s, and it was dead before Bischoff made it the top television product. He only prolonged the death of the company that never was truly as lucrative as it should have been for Time Warner despite its popularity.