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15 Years Ago today, WWE brought out WCW
- Thread starter mreddie
- Start date
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Worst thing to happen. There's a ton of WCW fans that literally tuned out of wrestling and never came back.
also, historically, the most botched and dropped money in history. If Vince could have gotten over his ego he probably could have made enough money to run the company for the next 20 years off Invasion buys.
also, historically, the most botched and dropped money in history. If Vince could have gotten over his ego he probably could have made enough money to run the company for the next 20 years off Invasion buys.
funkystudent
Member
16 years since Vince McMahon completed his dream of uniting the world of professional wrestling!
I don't know WCW got really really really really really really bad
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
It did near the end, but I'm talking about even the 93-99 time period.
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
You are underestimating how greedy some of those guys were. That might seem like the smart thing to do, but after what happened to WCW in the end, they choose to not work until their contracts were up.
ryutaro's mama
Member
Only when they handed over the booking to Vince Russo in the end. Everything from around two years before the Hogan heel turn to the Goldberg streak was great.
My favorite era of wrestling.
RecRoulette
Member
It's fucking bizarre how much things went to shit/I stopped caring about wrestling.
This happened shortly before WrestleMania 17, almost unanimously the best WrestleMania of all time. Between then and next year I completely fell off. Just a catastrophe.
This happened shortly before WrestleMania 17, almost unanimously the best WrestleMania of all time. Between then and next year I completely fell off. Just a catastrophe.
Once Starcade 97 happen that was the beginning of the end of wcw.
ryutaro's mama
Member
Yup.
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
Even before Vince Russo joined WCW they had a booking problem with how they handle NWO. Look at what happened at Starrcade 97 for a good example of what happened.
I guess it depends who you ask. One side says Vince didn't want these expensive top guys because once they were in, he'd ave to resign them for big money contracts, and he thought if he kept them out of a ring they'd be desperate for work and sign a new one for less. The other side says the top guys turned down offers from Vince because they were content to sit back and collect checks for doing nothing.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Kind of true. It was still really good for a time after, but did tail off.
Fox Mulder
Member
I loved both companies, but seeing Vince bury wcw and botch a huge angle just gutted me. I fell off wrestling around after this and only ever casually check in once every 3 years or so.
The Albatross
Member
They simply should have been booked strong. They should have been booked the way Hall and Nash were booked coming to WCW. Hall and Nash intro to WCW booking is one of the best booking jobs of any two guys ever. Of course, the guys WWE got from WCW weren't on HAll and Nash '96/97 levels, but the ECW guys w/ Heyman could have been super over, with Heyman doing the talking and having guys like Storm be booked as legit shit kickers who can take punishment and dole it out. And yet, in Mike Awesome and Lance Storms' first WWE match they went against Kane in a handicap match........ Sure, it was a shmozz in the end, but it's just so stupid. Let them come in and destroy some jobbers, run interference, and take time. Within 2 weeks, the WWF guys were all being booked over the invaders.
If you ultimately want to put your guys (WWE guys) over the heelish invaders, the heelish invaders need to look strong. They don't have a "Million Dollar Corporation" to fall back on that you can do when booking weak heels. If your guys go over some guys who have been booked to look shitty, then neither your guys nor the invaders get over.
Vince just could never accept any possibility of guys coming into his organization and looking good right away. And he still doesn't. It's just the difference between how Vince has always booked WWE versus how other territories would have done it, where a star from another territory can come in and be booked to be a star to sell tickets, and ultimately (usually) the hometown hero eventually goes over on him and everybody makes money. It's just not in Vince's DNA to allow that to happen, but it's heavily in the NWA-WCW dna, which is why WCW could book an amazing invasion angle of Hall and Nash, and WWE could never book an invasion angle to save their lives (or the business).
If you ultimately want to put your guys (WWE guys) over the heelish invaders, the heelish invaders need to look strong. They don't have a "Million Dollar Corporation" to fall back on that you can do when booking weak heels. If your guys go over some guys who have been booked to look shitty, then neither your guys nor the invaders get over.
Vince just could never accept any possibility of guys coming into his organization and looking good right away. And he still doesn't. It's just the difference between how Vince has always booked WWE versus how other territories would have done it, where a star from another territory can come in and be booked to be a star to sell tickets, and ultimately (usually) the hometown hero eventually goes over on him and everybody makes money. It's just not in Vince's DNA to allow that to happen, but it's heavily in the NWA-WCW dna, which is why WCW could book an amazing invasion angle of Hall and Nash, and WWE could never book an invasion angle to save their lives (or the business).
Host Samurai
Member
Was so hyped at first to see all these dream matches take place like Austin vs Goldberg. Can't believe Vince fucked up so bad when everything was going so well.
CaptainofIndustry
Member
This is pretty much me as well. I kind of feel like wrestling went downhill a few years after this happened although WCW was not doing so hot at the time.
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
That had one good year left before it went to hell. It was in 1999 when people started to jump ship to WWE.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Exactly. I think a year qualifies as "for a time after."
FallingEdge
Member
Still crazy to think about it. That being said, wrestling is better today than it ever has been. With the internet and streaming services, you can pretty much any style that you are interested in.
Not really, 98 not good and not to mention they losing so much money.
I don't think WWE needed the top WCW stars from when it died. They already had most of the top talent from WCW and ECW on their roster. After Austin turned all they had to do was create paranoia about which former WCW/ECW wrestler was gonna flip next while Angle and Undertaker (his WCW days were a past life) led the WWE originals. Paul Heyman laid out the motivation with his "I hate your stinking guts" "shoot" promo for Survivor Series. Vince just had to let WWE look like an underdog, but he wouldn't do it. WWE fans would have started looking for saviors and putting guys on pedestals like what happened with DDP and Goldberg.
Pupperbabysassy
Member
I always preferred WCW/NWA due to the in ring product was more realistic than WWF. I liked both shows though.
ryutaro's mama
Member
No lies detected.
Once the wCw decided to get into a direct arms race with the Attitude Era, it was a done deal. The combination of ex WWF wrestlers and a solid heel stable (nWo) made for a fun brand. That shit went downhill fast in 1999.
TheTylerRob
Member
WWE is now all the things that people hated about WCW back then.
crimzonflame
Member
I only watched WCW for Jericho.
ryutaro's mama
Member
That's the day I stopped watching wrestling. I grew up on WWF, never really cared for NWA/WCW, but then switched to mainly follow WCW just before the nWo era. The nWo are was probably my favorite in wrestling. The Monday Night wars made for entertaining wrestling. RIP wrestling.
Premium Quality
Member
Like others have said, this was around the time I dropped off. The story lines weren't good and there was too much wrestling on TV to keep track of.
Yeah I loved the hell out of both back then. Looking back, it's crazy how much wrestling I used to watch. Like, Mondays consisted of:
-Watch 1st hour of Nitro
-Switch to Raw when it came on
-After Raw ends, switch back to the Nitro replay to watch the last 2 hours
Then the rest of the week was Thunder, WCW and WWF syndicated shows, 2 PPVs a month, plus whatever ECW tapes I traded for.
Trying to imagine watching that much today would make me want to kill myself, especially if I had to do it without DVRs/fast forwarding like we had to do in the late 90s.
Host Samurai
Member
They should have waited a year or two for the Invasion angle. It's not like they were hurting for talent at the time either as RVD debuted shortly after mania. They should have stuck to the status quo and threw in some fresh ECW guys before going all in. Not even a year later everyone shown up. The storyline should have culminated with the NWO being rogue and fighting both WWF and WCW so WWF/WCW team up to beat the NWO at mania 19.
Godzilla's Left Toe
Member
The bad guys won.
Stallion Dan
Member
Lack of competition saw WWE worsen over the years after. Also an excuse for WWE to stop broadcasting the PPVs for free in UK, which killed a lot of interest, just like when they tried in early 90s.
DontBeThatGuy
Member
I thought it was crazy and cool as it was happening (WCW was almost a non-entity to me at that point) but It wasn't much longer after that I pretty much abandoned the whole thing (for the most part).
Violence Jack
Member
Thus ended the greatest rivalry in wrestling history. And to think we got to see Eric Bischoff run a WWE show.
Lack of competition has made WWE into a mostly terrible product. Too bad TNA got so cocky and was dumb enough to give Hogan creative control.
Lucha Underground and NPJW are still the best wrestling programs out there currently as far as match quality goes.
Lack of competition has made WWE into a mostly terrible product. Too bad TNA got so cocky and was dumb enough to give Hogan creative control.
Lucha Underground and NPJW are still the best wrestling programs out there currently as far as match quality goes.
The Main Event
Member
And ROH...
not really, it was more of a broadcaster decision as PPVs were expensive and people actually bought said PPVs so the rest was history
Killing_Joke
Member
It's weird a ton of people don't realize WCW was going to die regardless if Vince bought it or not. Shitty invasion storyline aside it's nice to have all the library in one nice cheap package.
Into the Light
Banned
The Albatross
Member
Yeah, WCW was going to shut down regardless, they were tens of millions of dollars in debt, and Turner did not want them anymore after the AOL-TImeWarner merger.
But, still if Vince didn't buy WCW, it could have come back a couple of years later similar to a TNA but with more investment and solid ground, and to simply have a major American promotion to counter WWE, even it's always much much smaller would be good for business.
If there's one good thing about the WWE purchase, it's that WWE Network will preserve the WCW Tape library. It also lets WWF do decent documentaries and focus on both WCW/WWE/NWA wrestlers with a big tape catalog. If WCW closed, the footage could have been lost.
One good thing now is the strength of the indie scene. THere's great independent wrestling all over the US and most are starting to get good with putting footage online now.
GillianSeed79
Member
WCW actually forced WWE to be on its A game to be competitive. Without the competition, well..... yeah I haven't actually watched wrestling regularly since the buyout.
x24hrs2livex
Banned
TheMagician
Member
The drop in quality was a result of these things during that period -
The death of WCW
The death of ECW
The Austin heel turn
Rock going Hollywood
Stephanie taking over as head of creative
The death of WCW
The death of ECW
The Austin heel turn
Rock going Hollywood
Stephanie taking over as head of creative
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