The SmarK Rant for Who Killed WCW? – Episode 1

The SmarK Rant for Who Killed WCW? – Episode 1

Apparently this is indeed airing on Crave up here, although I’m still somewhat confused about who this is actually aimed at. I mean, talk about taking territory that is already well-trodden and trying to scrape a little bit more off the bottom of the barrel. There’s already literal DVD sets about the death of WCW, multiple books, and a WWE-produced series that spanned dozens of hours. But hey, what’s one more?

“Where The Big Boys Play”

We get soundbites from all of the major players we’re going to meeting this season, like Eric Bischoff, Konnan, Booker T and Goldberg.

Eric Bischoff talks about how WWF was the only name in wrestling for decades, and everyone was happy to be #2 behind them, except for him. Oh we’re already starting with the nonsense, I see. Everyone else then throws blame at each other to set the stage for the series.

Back to Bischoff, who thinks the internet kind of decided that he was the person who was primarily at fault. Eric says that before he got into wrestling, he didn’t know what WCW was because he was a sales guy and not a wrestling guy. But then he and Sonny Onoo got involved with the AWA while trying to sell their Ninja throwing star game. And Eric got talked by Verne Gagne into working for the AWA as a sales guy, and Verne started bouncing cheques at the end. So Larry Zbyszko went to WCW and brought Eric with him in 1991, where he became an on-screen personality.

Next up, we meet Kevin Nash, who did the Ninja Turtles movie and then “Dusty Rhodes took acid and told him he could be Oz”. Kevin: “Oz is the geographical region. It’s the WIZARD of Oz.” Dusty: “No baby, you’re gonna be Oz!” So the kids’ stuff like Robocop and the Chamber of Horrors didn’t really work. Really, the only person who believed in wrestling was Ted Turner, but he was the most important one.

So Ted’s son does a quick history of Turner’s connection to wrestling, and we jump ahead again to 1993, with guys like Scott Hall and Kevin Nash jumping to the WWF while WCW was perceived as the long-suffering #2. All the network executives hated the company despite the TBS parent company owning them. So Turner (according to Eric Bischoff) decided to give WCW one last shot before shutting it down, and hired Eric as Executive Producer, with a goal of taking it from a wrestling company to a television company.

Eric’s plan was to move tapings to the Disney studios so he could control the look of the audience instead of turning down the lights on the small crowds. That’s a weird flex but OK.

Next up, a discussion of that Hulk Hogan guy you may have heard about before, and Bischoff bumped into Hogan while he was shooting Thunder in Paradise in Orlando, and portrays it as Hulk “being out of wrestling for quite some time”, which is blatantly untrue. But then Hulk gave him a meeting and suddenly he was signed. Hulk had creative control, which becomes important later.

Up to 1995, Eric gets a first-ever meeting with Ted Turner, who wants to know what WCW needs to do to compete, and Eric panicked and asked for a competitive timeslot on Monday nights. So Ted apparently gave him two hours every Monday night, although he’s actually a year early with that. Surprised they didn’t catch that in editing, because that’s kind of a huge gaffe. So Eric’s summary of the issues were that WWF had “cleaner and more thematic storytelling” and WCW was basically trying to catch up to the wheel falling off all the time. They use a clip of Shockmaster to illustrate that, but that’s pretty disingenuous because that was two years before Nitro. Also WWF was basically at a low point in their history and putting out a weekly product universally regarded as terrible, even by WWE themselves these days. We’re already had endless documentaries, produced by WWE, about how their were pushing wrestling clowns and garbagemen and all the same stuff we’ve heard, but now they were dominating the sport, apparently.

So Bischoff was having trouble with ticket sales for the first Nitro, so he decided to run the debut of Nitro at the Mall of America. And then Lex Luger showed up and Madusa throws the title in the garbage can, although that’s presented without much context here.

This leads into a discussion of Hulk Hogan, who wasn’t moving ratings anymore by 1996, so we get the invasion of Hall and Nash, and Eric admits now that he may have alluded to them being part of the WWF. Bischoff says that he went to see Hogan, and Hulk volunteered to be the third man, which directly contradicts pretty much everything I’ve ever heard about Eric and WCW brass nearly having to beg Hulk on their hands and knees to turn. But then he did come out and turned and everyone threw garbage at him. Bischoff discusses shooting the nWo vignettes in black and white, and Rock pops in for some reason and gives his opinions so he can say “Fuck” on TV I guess. My immediate reaction was:

Like, hi, Dwayne, you’re an awesome guy but stay over on your side of the Monday Night War, ya know? We good here.

Eric notes that ratings were basically even between the two shows up until the nWo debuted, and then things started swinging. So we chat with Neil Pruitt, one of the producers at the time, who discusses an alteration of the camera shots and lighting to make the product look more realistic. Nash relates Rey Mysterio asking to be thrown through the window of the trailer. Nash: “No dude. It’s a window. You’ll die.” So they comprised and Nash threw him into the wall instead.

Brad Siegel complains that Eric was always chasing ratings and cared about beating the WWF to the point where he neglected advertising dollars. Eric admits that he may have went a bit over the top with it. So then he discusses how Vince supposedly planned out his stuff a year in advance (yeah, Vince McMahon, well known for his long term planning) and came up with his own 18 month story in the form of Sting. Not actually what they planned but it’s a cool story here. Bischoff discusses how the finish of Starrcade 97 got a bit messed up and convoluted. Bret Hart pops in and complains how awful and stupid the booked ending was, and how Eric told him it was going to be awesome. Bischoff bitches about the internet again, and how they hated the finish and were armchair-quarterbacking him. So Bischoff then blames Sting because “Sting’s head wasn’t right” and “Hulk wasn’t feeling it”. Doesn’t work for him, brother. Bischoff thinks that Sting actually psyched himself out because he thought Hulk was going to screw him over and manifested it onto himself.

But meanwhile, the WWF was changing direction and trying to do more of what WCW was doing, and they brought in Mike Tyson. Konnan and Disco thought that Austin and Rock were cool, and the show was better than Nitro. Everyone points out that Bischoff basically became Hogan’s puppet and Yes-man. And Bischoff shifts the blame back to Turner executives to set up the next episode. So I guess the overriding theme is that ERIC BISCHOFF KILLED WCW.

Or DID HE?

Well I guess we’ll find out more on this nuanced topic next time.

I dunno, at the very beginning of the show they literally said that everyone in wrestling is a bunch of pathological liars, and then spent an hour letting them bullshit and throw each other under the bus. There’s something fun to be had there if you play it a lot less seriously than this show did, but that wasn’t this show. This show was SERIOUS BUSINESS with SERIOUS PEOPLE. You had occasional glimpses of hilarity and self-awareness from Kevin Nash (as usual for these) and occasional flashes of actual honesty from people like Brad Siegel who no longer give a fuck about making themselves look like a TV star, and everyone else was just kind of airing their decades-old grievances and rehashing the same stories we’ve heard a million times now. You’d think after nearly 25 years some of these people would gain some actual maturity and perspective, but NOPE, here’s Eric Bischoff pretending that everyone on the internet was a bunch of whiny incels who hated everything he did with no reason.

This was really, really disappointing and underwhelming so far. Hopefully it gets better or at least funnier.