The Importance of…11.14.08: WCW, Part 2 of 2… What Not To Do

-While I am a relatively young man, I’ve been watching wrestling for twenty-plus years now. The more time goes by, the more I get to feeling like an old man—unable to appreciate the current product for all my golden memories from years past. With that being said, I really appreciate WWE’s recent move toward resolving programs in meaningful ways. In recent years, I feel like more than a few programs have slipped out of memory without anything resembling a blow-off. While WWE still has it’s dropped stories—make no mistake about it—it was pretty great to see final showdowns happen this Monday between Rey and Kane and HBK and Y2J. A true resolution to the feud is what the fans deserve, and it’s good to see it happen—not to mention the fact that we got it on free TV.

-Speaking of old school, I have my hopes for Survivor Series, specifically around the elimination tag team matches. As I write this, only the HBK-JBL team match has been announced. The tease has long been out for an Orton-Priceless stable. During the Batista-Rhodes match on Monday, I couldn’t help having visions of Orton, Manu, Rhodes and Dibiase taking on Batista, CM Punk, Kofi Kingston and a fourth face (Rey? Shane McMahon?). I like the idea of it because it would be a Survivor Series match born out of a legitimate multi-man feud—not just a thrown-together team contest like we’ve had in recent years, or like HBK-JBL will be. We’re still a long way from seeing this come to fruition, but I have hope.

On to our regular column…

A strange thing has happened as of late. I’ve found myself pining for the old days of WCW. This is strange because I grew up a WWF fan, and by the time WCW keeled over and died I had stopped watching their product altogether. And yet, there are certain pieces of WCW that were so unique, and so memorable. There were pieces of the company that helped revolutionize the business, and the after effects are still on display to this very day. Today, it’s easy to laugh off WCW as mismanaged promotion, that failed every turn, and whose fall was, in the end, quite inevitable. With each of these perspectives in mind, I’ve decided to devote a two-part column to WCW. The first part, posted last week, documented how the company demonstrated what a wrestling promotion should do, this second part explains how WCW set an example for what not to do.

One of WCW’s largest failings was its status as part of a much larger corporation that really didn’t care about it. True, in a sense, being a part of the Turner empire gave WCW far more money and media resources than any wrestling promotion before it, or any likely to follow. However mergers and changes in leadership ultimately put WCW on the outs. In his book, Eric Bischoff cites directors making decisions about WCW’s fate who couldn’t even identify what night of the week the show aired on. While there are two sides to every story, WCW had to answer to higher-ups that most wrestling companies do not need to worry about, and ultimately had to meet a bottom line that was not their own to set, but rather, up to a larger organization, which opted to sell off the entire promotion when the going got tough enough.

Beyond the business end of wrestling, WCW also had a number of booking decisions that demonstrated how not to run a company. For one, there was the mistake of letting one angle dominate the entire show. Don’t get me wrong, because I loved the NWO angle when it started, and some of the early booking went a long way toward redefining what a wrestling angle, a stable, a heel turn and a marketing campaign could be. The NWO was, quite rightfully, a celebrated a group, and justly had its place at the top of the card. Problems came in as the group expanded from an elite three to a group swelling to near 20 members. When the group grew that large, it came to a point where virtually every match was WCW v.s NWO. Then you factor the second NWO faction in the face Wolf Pack. Later, the groups reunited, then faded. Then there was the NWO 2000, starring a different cast of characters. As great as the angle began, the NWO was simply around for too long, and grew painfully stale by its last run.

In line with the excessive NWO run was the ongoing problem of WCW giving its on-air talent too much creative control. It wasn’t new or unique for someone on the active roster to be a booker, but it was especially problematic in WCW, where egos ran wild, and far too many performers had creative control clauses in their rosters. As a consequence, there were blow-offs that never happened, booking patterns that made little sense. The most high profile example would be that of the Sting-Hogan showdown at Starrcade. To this day, no one is quite sure of who messed up what, and how much was intentional. Regardless, what should have been a decisive victory for the Stinger turned into a convoluted mess in which Hogan won the match, Bret Hart arbitrarily restarted it and Sting picked up a very dubious victory after that.

In giving creative control to certain performers, it made it all the more difficult for new stars to break through. Many WCW critics will exaggerate, and say that Goldberg was the only new main event star to emerge from the start of Hogan’s run in the company on. Others, most notably, Paul Wight, Booker T and Scott Steiner did break through. However, it is true that many guys who probably should have been elevated were not. Steve Austin, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Jericho and Rey Mysterio are all obvious picks because, years later and past their primes, they arrived at world titles in WWE. Prior to the NWO angle, Hogan helped set this tone in the company when he and a cast of WWF alumni took over the top of the card in the mid-1990s. Where WCW once had a celebrated up and coming mid-card, including faces like Austin, Dustin Rhodes, Steven Regal, Brian Pillman and more, it became a show starring The Honky Tonk Man, Jim Duggan and five or six personas of Brutus Beefcake. While WWF elevated guys like Austin, The Rock, Triple H, and Mick Foley, WCW depended almost exclusively on guys who had already been on top—refusing to take chances, and ignoring the future of the business. This combination of not pushing new talent, and not rewarding loyal employees set WCW up to be a tired product.

The worst thing for a tired product can be overexposure. From a business perspective, if you have a successful product, you want to get most you can out of it. It’s the thinking behind five generations of Star Trek shows, and an ever expanding Law and Order franchise. When it came to WCW, there was simply too much. Three hours of Nitro meant too much time to fill with quality programming. Two hours of Thunder on top of that meant a whole show’s worth of filler, without enough big names or sound booking ideas to go around. Throw in the weekend programming and monthly PPVs, and it boggles the mind how this company could hope to fill its time, and sure enough, the watered down programming grew less and less entertaining. To make matters worse, the WCW did not have a brand extension to fall back on, to logically divide its stars. In the end, Nitro was home to all of the major players, while Thunder became a glorified (and longer) equivalent to Sunday Night Heat.

There were many more failings to WCW—the mistreatment of Ric Flair, despite his status as the most over man in the company; embarrassing moments like The Shockmaster’s debut; an odd inclination to partner with unrelated media like Nascar and the band Kiss; the decision to make David Arquette a champion. Taking everything into consideration, it’s not difficult to see why WCW fell apart. These mistakes stand out as a part of the promotion’s legacy—a promotion that innovated and achieved, but just as ably failed, and demonstrated important lessons from which every wrestling company that follows should learn.