What were the other options?
By Scott Keith on 21 June 2024
Scott,
Going into the wonderful booking history of WCW:
If not Ole Anderson in 1990 who should have been booker?
If not Dusty Rhodes in 1991 who should have been booker?
If Vince Russo was not hired in 1999 who should have run creative?
If Russo and Eric Bischoff are not brought back in 2000 who was there to replace the awful booking committee?
Multiple bad decisions were made by WCW. Multiple. But, were there actually any other viable options?
I do not consider bringing back Dusty in 1991 to be bad at the time of hire but 1991 WCW.
The thing with Ole is that he wasn't really the “booker” as such, as the booking was mostly done by the committee of Jim Ross, Ric Flair, Jim Cornette and a couple of others and Ole was more on the talent relations and Eric Bischoff role rather than directly making booking decisions. I know a lot of stuff gets rolled into “Ole did it” but we might as well be fair about things. So that being said, was there really anyone outside of Ole and/or Dusty in 1991 who could do anything within budget and get around the mediocrity of the literal “booking by committee” of those years? I don't think so. Maybe if you brought in Bill Watts two years earlier. For me, although it would have never happened in a million years, I would have liked to see the team of Paul Heyman and Eddie Gilbert being given a shot in 1990 to see what they could do. I think another outside shot would have been Gary Hart but I don't think he would have been interested.
As for Russo in 99, the booking committee was a complete disaster in between Bischoff and Russo, so they needed SOMEONE. Obviously the guy who should have been put in charge in a perfect world was Paul Heyman, but that would assume he could get 100% control and get along with Turner execs and also abandon ECW. How about Jerry Jarrett? We know he could stay within budget and lord knows he wasn't doing anything important in 1999 anyway. Maybe give him a shot.