The SmarK Rant for Who Killed WCW? – Episode 2

The SmarK Rant for Who Killed WCW? – Episode 2

“The Streak Is Over”

Although I wasn’t a huge fan of the first episode, the rant was a smash hit here, so might as well do the whole series.

Also that’s a pretty goddamn clever double meaning in the episode title. Hopefully this one can live up to that wit.

Previously on WCW: We’re pretty sure Eric Bischoff was the one who killed WCW, but we’ve got another three episodes to go.

Eric Bischoff joins us to start and brings up the 83 weeks again, and then one day he gets a phone call from Harvey Schiller, with Ted Turner wanting another 2 hours of prime time TV to further cash in. Eric thought this would be a terrible idea but didn’t wanna be that guy and tell Ted no. So that’s the secret origin of Thunder! TBS refused to pay for the show, so it came out of WCW’s budget instead. Also, they needed a top star, so Eric decided to get Bret Hart.

Bret Hart joins us, and talks about leading the WWF to great things with Steve Austin. And then they bring him into WCW, and go long stretches without using him, while he sits in the dressing room cursing Eric’s name. Everyone talks about how disorganized things were getting due to producing all the TV, and they started getting lazy. nWo factions for everyone! Bret points out that all the finishes were the same in every show and everything was just run-in finishes over and over and repeating the same stuff over and over.

RAW finally beats Nitro in April of 1998, and WCW execs decide that Goldberg is the guy to fill the void as top babyface in WCW. So we meet Goldberg, who thinks his character worked so well because he was literally the character. Kevin Sullivan takes credit for creating the black tights / black boots look and booking him like Mike Tyson. I think Bischoff has also taken credit in the past, comparing him to Ken Shamrock. So they stick him on TV every week squashing people and it kept working, so they kept doing it. Nash and Bret double-team him on soundbites, complaining that Goldberg apparently thought it was real and not a TV show. Konnan sums them up as “a lot of jealousy from guys who thought Goldberg didn’t love the business like they do.” True dat.

Brad Siegel talks about marketing the shit out of Goldberg because the kids loved him. And then Hulk Hogan calls up Eric Bischoff and offers to put over Goldberg clean in Atlanta, I guess because he’s just such a selfless and generous guy. Goldberg: “That was the coolest shit ever”. Bischoff notes that he was criticized for giving away a PPV match on TV, and Brad Siegel piles on with the lack of ad revenue from focusing so much on TV ratings. Also not helped by advertisers not wanting to advertise on wrestling.

The Rock pops in again to share his opinions and insight on a period where he was jerking the curtain in the other company. Bischoff doesn’t recognize the “Attitude Era”, instead calling it “The Nitro Era” because WWF was stealing all their cool stuff from him. And it introduced him to a different corporate structure than he was used to, with TV execs now telling him how he was going to run his wrestling company because they wanted a piece of that WWF ratings success. Kevin Nash: “Our rebuttal was to give the guy an nWo shirt”. Bischoff was offended at being told to take the business back to a time when they weren’t even a distant #2 with all the family friendly kids stuff.

DDP notes that when you’re winning it’s a lot of fun, but when you’re losing, it’s a lot less fun. And Bischoff admits that he was running out of gas after getting endlessly chewed out by TV departments he’d never even heard of before. So Kevin Nash offers to step in and take over the booking while Eric took a break. Kevin: “I should have said let’s go to a strip club.” This is also an interesting bit of revelation because Big Kev spent YEARS denying that he was ever the booker at this point, basically calling it dirt sheet conspiracy nonsense, so it’s nice that he’s actually being a bit more honest now. Anyway, the talking heads all agree that the monkeys running the zoo is not the best idea. Nash denies that he had any problem with Goldberg, but thinks he had the belt too long and hurt too many people. At this point, Goldberg realized that forces were aligning against him, and he started dramatically smartening himself up.

Kevin Nash talks about the babyface chase always being the bigger draw than the babyface title reign. Except when it’s not, I guess. Like when Goldberg was drawing millions and pulling huge TV ratings in 1998 and then they took the title off him and the company went down the toilet and never recovered. So we move to the Nash v. Goldberg match at Starrcade, and Kevin Sullivan thought that Nash should just beat him clean, but then they added all kinds of bullshit with Scott Hall. Bischoff laughs that off as a huge mistake, but Nash is still under the impression that it was a good idea because it got a big pop. Guy Evans pops in and points out that there was clearly no plan for Goldberg moving forward.

And so we come to January 4 1999, as they were in the Georgia Dome again, but the advertised Nash-Goldberg rematch somehow ended up with a Nash-Hogan match, ending in the FINGERPOKE OF DOOM to put the World title back on Hogan and reform the nWo. Again. Kevin Nash thinks people hated it so much because “it got them”, as though that’s a good thing. Bischoff has apparently come around on the finish being shit and wished it was a clean finish instead. So then Bischoff gives away the RAW main event result, and it backfired on them even more spectacularly than the Fingerpoke finish did. Eric at least seems honest and understanding of his mistakes here. Nash: “My cheque didn’t change.” No I guess it didn’t.

Brad Siegel talks about how there’s a huge difference in running your own wrestling company and having a wrestling company be part of a larger conglomerate. Brad notes that there was a lot of revenue challenges that came with being a top show on a top cable network. Bischoff accuses TBS of cooking the books to shift revenues to the network while the losses were dumped on WCW. And the rights fees were kept deliberately low, which Brad Siegel admits.

Next up, a discussion of how all the stars got gigantic amounts of money, many of whom weren’t being used. Bischoff tells a story about getting called into the office and told about a “forensic investigation” that was being done on his use of Turner money. They admitted that they found nothing, but Bischoff had enough of dealing with them and decided to step away.

Bret Hart talks about finally getting a shot at the top and facing Goldberg at Starrcade 99 (which is admittedly jumping ahead a lot because we’re into the Russo era now). And we get Bret and Goldberg sniping back and forth at each other as Bret is firing with all guns loaded and Goldberg talks about how he’s remorseful but can’t do anything else to change it.

Meanwhile, Ted Turner is getting phased out of his own company by the Time-Warner merger, and Ted could no longer protect ATM Eric. And finally, in September 1999, Harvey Schiller pulls the plug on him and sends him home. Really Bischoff was going to completely self-destruct and it was for his own good. Dick Cheatham jokes that he’s surprised Eric didn’t blow his own brains out before they fired him, but I don’t think it’s much of a joke. Bischoff was in dire need of a change and wasn’t going to last much longer in that role given the ridiculous pressures on him.

So the killers for this episode appear to be Turner Network suits. Hard to argue that one much.

And so we bid farewell to Eric Bischoff for now and next time we say hello to…Vince Russo.

Oh man, this was like a THOUSAND percent improvement on the first episode. Whereas the first one was all these stories we’ve heard a million times before, this one had viewpoints from executives we never got to hear from back in the day, and people actually being honest and offering differing viewpoints on things. It also made Kevin Nash look like exactly the kind of wrestling carney who never bothered to learn the lessons of the past unless they justified his own push. It even made me feel a little bad for Eric Bischoff and had a pretty distinct timeline and story to tell instead of meandering all over like the first one. Also Bret Hart being salty as fuck, which is awesome. Hater of the year award winner and lifetime achievement award 25 years running, no end in sight.

Thumbs up!