The 411 Wrestling Top 5 3.11.09: Week 13 – Causes of WCW’s Death

Hello everyone and welcome to 411 Wrestling’s Top 5 List. What we are going to is take a topic each week and all the writers here on 411 wrestling will have the ability to give us their Top 5 on said topic, plus up to three honorable mentions. At the end, based on where all these matches rank on people’s list, we will create the 411 Wrestling Top 5 list. The scoring is very similiar to the Wrestler of the Week as it looks like this:

THE TOP 5 CAUSES OF WCW’S DEATH

Let’s face it, WCW was the number one promotion around ten years ago during the height of the Monday Night Wars. However, eight years ago to the month, the WCW was bought out by the WWE and Ted Turner was out of a promotion, leaving him plenty of time to bury the Atlanta Braves. And as much I enjoy watching that horrific baseball team squirm, I was just as shocked by the end of World Championship Wrestling. But for many a fan, there came a point in time where we just turned off TBS and went to the USA network, basically telling WCW to shape up or ship out. And in March 2001, they shipped out for good. But when examining why WCW died such a quick and painful death, a multitude of choices were given.

So what did our great group of writers select? Let’s find out…

SCOTT RUTHERFORD

HONORABLE MENTIONS

David Arquette – World Champion – Because the sure way to legitimize your title is putting it on a crap actor. FEEL THE RATINGS!

Short Sighted Talent Releases – Austin, Jericho, Foley, HHH, Benoit, Guerrero, X-Pac, Goldust, The Undertaker, The Big Show…put hundreds of millions in Vince’s pocket because he used to know how to use talent.

The Complete Misuse of Bret Hart – Take one of the best wrestlers ever and the biggest WWE stars for most of the 90’s who’s coming off one the biggest wrestling moments ever and completely flush a complete no-brainer down the shitter.

5.Vince Russo as Booker – Without McMahon, Russo was a man with too many ideas and no restraint. I don’t blame the man personally because he was hired to do exactly what he did, shake up WCW and make it a viable alternative to WWF. Without a firewall however, WCW became a mess and people turned away in droves. Chaff vs wheat…only WCW would ignore that cliché.

4.The Continual Burial of Ric Flair – Flair made money right up until his 2008 WM retirement. People LOVE Flair and a 50/50 feud with The Horseman and the nWo could have saved WCW from a lot of pain. But I guess personal vendettas make better business sense. Even before that he could have made WCW financially viable if Hulk Hogan let himself lose once and a while.

3.The nWo – It’s funny that usually what makes one strong is also their biggest weakness. The nWo should never had run more than 18 months but the men in charge saw $$$ and completely threw out all common sense and flogged the horse way past death and pretty much into necrophilia. It’s hard to say when it jumped the shark but the advent of the Wolfpac would be a likely moment. Almost a 1/3 of the roster wore the black and white, which hardly makes it elite when you have Hogan and Konan sharing space.

2.The Whole Main Event Starcade ‘97 – As was WCW’s way…take a no brainer and completely fuck it up. Common opinion says Sting murders Hogan and rules WCW for a nice extended reign. Backstage Hogan politicking, paid off referee’s and pointless Bret Hart interference provide the obvious tipping point that proves WCW’s creative team were pants, mmm that’s not right, probably more like assless chaps worn by a disease riddled homeless man.

1.Creative Control for Wrestlers – Take some of the biggest ego’s in the history of our business and give them a legal reason never to lose a match and keep pretty much the entire mid-card under a glass ceiling. The amount of talent that left during this time that became massive superstars for Vince is staggering and one wonders what would have happened if guys like Eddy, Austin, Foley, Rey and Jericho were given the rub by some of the biggest names in wrestling and what would have that done to the bottom line. But that’s why Vince is still in business and WCW died a well-deserved death.

Julian Bond

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Misuse of Ric Flair – Wow…I’m behind on my Ric Flair history cause’ I never watched the man growing up as a fan, but as I’m catching up on it now with the watching of many DVDs. So with what I know now…wow…WCW REALLY dropped the ball on his use in the “Bischoff Era”. For shame.

Misuse of Bret Hart – You would think that by gaining of one of the biggest and popular wrestlers of all time WCW would easily figure out a way to use Bret Hart to his fullest potential…again…for shame.

No Big Money Matches/Storylines – I only really started watching WCW hardcore leading up to the epic Sting vs. Hogan match at Starrcade 97′ and with the sad mess-up of that entire thing, it seemed that the company never fully recovered due to their lack of big-time matches and storylines that would really entice someone to easily throw down the 30 bucks for their PPVs.

5.Crappy Booking – Some people may blame Russo. Some may blame Hogan and Nash. But it doesn’t really matter who the blame falls on the hardest because overall it seemed like WCW couldn’t get any constantly good booking together. With every good booking decision (i.e. Benoit/DDP/Raven, quantity of cruiserweight matches), there would be 2 or 3 other horrible ones trailing behind that would make one shake their head in frustration (i.e. too much NWO, lack of pushes for undercarders, attempts at mainstream media attention…David Arquette….Master P…). If they had made better booking choices and didn’t piss so many people off with the bad ones, the company definitely could’ve attracted more viewers.

4.Lack of Stable World Champs – In my time of watching WCW from 97′ – 01′, I personally only remember three people holding the World Title for more than a couple of months: Hogan, Goldberg, and Scott Steiner. There has been TONS of people who won the belt in between those times (Sting, Flair, DDP, Booker T, Jarrett, Hart, Sid, Benoit, Nash, Savage), but none of them seemed like they held the belt for a significant amount of time. I think instead of playing “hot potato” with the title, if WCW had a few more establishing champions that held the belt for more than 15 seconds, then the fans would have stuck around longer to see who would be the one to finally dethrone the champ at the time. Sadly viewers were instead treated to the “Flavor of The Month” when it came to seeing who their Heavyweight Champ was.

3.Burying of Good Talent – I believe that this is definitely a massively agreed-upon reason by many fans. The countless names of wrestlers who were bigger drawing stars in the WWE, but yet not here: Jericho, Benoit, Guerrero, Mysterio, etc, etc. Some may think that these specific stars didn’t get a bigger push because they weren’t ready, but as evidence from their successes in the WWE, it was obvious that they weren’t getting the fair shake around WCW. Looking at the money the WWE has made just by properly promoting these four mentioned names and giving them their dues, WCW lost big time by not treating them right when they had them all nice and secured.

2.NWO Overkill/Eric Bischoff’s Ego – The New World Order faction started off as one of the greatest things to happen to professional wrestling. Awesome gimmick, nice established stars (Nash, Hall, Hogan), and a good basic storyline (NWO vs. WCW) that have everyone hooked. But then the success of it by creator and WCW owner Eric Bischoff was getting to everyone’s head. What was once something unique and great became tiresome and frustrating to watch. To see the original group of 3 explode to over half of the entire WCW locker room was messed up because it was extreme overkill. Add to this, Bischoff’s arrogant cockiness that the company due to the NWO “didn’t have any real competition” and these elements ultimately cost WCW in the end due to not knowing what to do post-NWO.

1.Ted Turner buying WCW/Bad Management – Ironically, if billionaire Ted Turner never brought WCW, then the company possibly wouldn’t have gotten their major TV deal and the WWF/E wouldn’t have any good competition to make their product better. But on the other end, if WCW was brought by someone else who actually had a true passion for the wrestling business, then all of the tons and tons of management troubles and backstage drama may have not happened so frequent and out of control. Turner seemed like he was strictly in the business only for the money, while McMahon, aiming for money as well…of course, at least also had a deep desire to make an overall good wrestling/”sports entertainment” product. Point blank, if the company was owned by someone who didn’t just treat it as “just another investment” (i.e. McMahon, Dixie Carter), then WCW may be still living today.

Mathew Sforcina

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Starrcade 97/Unmasking Everyone/The Mini-Movies – All boneheaded booking moves, some more disastrous than others, but WCW had bigger problems then just one off choices.

5.Misuse of Talent – I tend to lump together Flair, Bret and everyone else WCW had who was talented and not used properly together, because they all stemmed from the central theme of Bischoff and his later successors/bosses not having the balls and/or brains to realise that you can’t just treat ‘name’ wrestlers well and everyone else like crap and make a go of it. Wrestling is all about building new stars. WCW never realised that. Well, except for…

4.Goldberg – Not the man (who while strongly opinionated does appear to understand the business to some degree AND is great with kids), not the character (it worked, ergo I can’t argue against it, outside of the heel turn maybe), but the usage of same. WCW managed, after an initial stumbling block, to make their own, brand new, loyal, Hogan for the new era. But they still had the old Hogan on staff, as well as Nash. And both had control backstage and didn’t realise that the business needed, and always had, and always will, change. So Goldberg, the greatest resource WCW had, was squandered. WWE did that as well, but this is about WCW, not WWE.

3.Celebrities – Celebs have a place in the wrestling world. They can, if used right, nab you some attention and give you some different stories to play out. And if they are physically gifted, if they are a football player, or a legit tough guy, they might be able to deliver in-ring to some degree. But WCW’s usage of celebs overall was abysmal. Leno, Rodman, Malone, Kiss, No Limit, Arquette… WCW didn’t have a clue what the hell they were doing. And so paid dearly for it.

2.Russo Unleashed – Russo in WCW was a major problem, albeit for different reasons depending on your stance. If you were a loyal WCW supporter, chances were that the Attitude WWF/ECW was not your cup of tea, hence why you were loyal to NWA/WCW which, even during the height of nWo, still had the best in ring work in the opening matches. Russo coming in was to you a major problem in that you wanted wrestling to be about, well, wrestling, and Russo was the exact opposite, even if he pushed new guys (so badly that they ended up in worse shape then when they started). If you were a WWF/Casual fan, then at first Russo going across seemed to mean that you’d follow, since Russo brought you in/kept you entertained. But Russo in WCW was a Russo (and Ed of course, but Russo was the head guy after all) without a master, without control. And Russo is, like Ted Turner, a 9 horrible ideas/1 good idea ratio kinda guy, who doesn’t understand how wrestling works. And without a Vince to knock back most of the crap, you got pure Russo. And Pure Russo is poison.

1.Jamie Kellner – We can talk all about the creative problems, the egos, the guaranteed contracts, so on and so forth, and they all played a part, they were what turned WCW into a money loser. But the death of WCW is not due to anything that happened on screen, as part of the show. Jamie Kellner was put in charge of the new Turner Broadcasting unit during the AOL/Turner merger, the new TV division of the AOL/TW conglomerate, March 6th, 2001. 11 days later, he cancelled all of WCW’s TV. THAT is what killed WCW. Russo, Hogan, Nash, all the suits, they all had their part in stabbing a knife into the body, but Jamie took the shotgun and shot WCW in the face. And then the chest. Then both legs. Then the face again. Kellner killed WCW. Case closed.

Larry Csonka

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Giving up Too Much Talent – Scott listed a long list of people that were let go and shouldn’t have. Bishoff’s long list of releases helped Vince in so many ways.

Bullshit Celebrities – Jay Leno wrestling. Karl Malone dressing like DDP. David Arquette WCW World Champion. Fuck you WCW.

The Finger Poke of Doom – People aren’t stupid. They got pissed at this, and it was another nail in the coffin when you look back on it.

5. BERRYING Ric Flair © – Eric Bishoff’s personal issues with Ric Flair was a constant detriment to WCW. Whether it was poor booking, their legal dispute or just flat out BERRYING him and the Horsemen, the way Flair was treated was no help to the WCW Product.

4. Starrcarde 1997 – Starrcarde 1997 always draws controversy. It seemed like a recipe for success, but unfortunately, people remember it for the shit of a main event. A horrible match, bad booking, the “fast count”, Bret Hart, BULLSHIT!

3. Pissing Away Bret Hart – When Bret Hart left WWF, he had all the heat in the world due to the screw job, and WCW could have turned that heat into cash and a lot of it. Unfortunately they pissed it away, and Bret Hart’s “WCW Career” is only remembered due to the way his career ended, which is a shame on many levels.

2. Bishoff Abuses Billionaire Ted’s Wallet/Offers Creative Control to too Many People – What is a sure way to hurt a company and send it into a HUGE financial loss? The first is to overspend out the ass. Sure it is great for the guys that got the money, but it hurt the company. The second was the handing out of creative control like it was Halloween candy. Besides Hogan’s ability to cash in and veto anything and everything he didn’t like, you had guys refusing to work house shows when they were advertised. I remember attending a house show when the Outsiders vs. The Steiners were the announced main event, and I got Konnan and Bobby Eaton vs. The Steiners. Now I loved Bobby Eaton, but come on! You should have seem the refund line…

1. Jamie Kellner – When discussing the death of WCW you have to mention Jamie Kellner, you have to. Eric Bishoff and his investors were set to purchase WCW, the deal was as close to being finalized as it could be. But when Jamie Kellner cancelled all WCW TV on the Turner Networks; that was the deathblow. Without a TV deal in place, WCW essentially became worthless to everyone NOT named Vince McMahon. I fully agree with Mathew, we all will likely list great causes that led to the company becoming a big old money losing pile of shit, but Jamie Kellner gets credit for the KO here.

Aaron Hubbard

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Jamie Kellner – Technically deserves credit for kicking them off of television and out of business, but really, wouldn’t you rather I roast WCW in the top 5 instead of crediting a man who had good business sense?

Talent Releases – The most serious was Steve Austin, who helped bring in the attitude era that crushed WCW, but Jericho, Guerrero, Benoit, Foley, and Big Show all deserve mentions.

Goldberg – The one major star that WCW TRULY had, and they had him be tazed before losing the title to a past-his-prime Kevin Nash.

5. Poor Bookers – Vince Russo is the obvious guy to mention in this blurb, but lets not forget people like Ole Anderson or Jim Herd. Anderson, besides being uncreative, had the gall to think that Ric Flair had no value after losing to Curt Hennig on RAW. Herd went so far as to say that Flair was stale and needed to be repackaged as Spartacus. Let’s not forget the Ding-Dongs or Big Josh and his dancing bears. Even Bischoff, WCW’s most creative booker, used politics to put everyone at odds. WCW had bad booking LONG before Russo showed up.

4.Misuse of Bret Hart – Here you had the guy who was WWF’s main draw for at least five years, who can still go in the ring and has just come off the most publicized controversy in wrestling history. Instead of having him wrestle and become a big star, they have him cut promos, side with the nWo, then turn against them, and never really accomplishing anything or having memorable moments. The horrible booking for one of the top stars in the industry would have been inexcusable no matter what, but when you add in that they were paying him more than he was worth (and he was worth A LOT), and it’s just baffling.

3.David Arquette & Other Celebrities – I really don’t mind celebrities that much. Used right (Mr. T at ‘Mania I, Lawrence Taylor at ‘Mania XI, Floyd Mayweather at ‘Mania XXIV), they can be entertaining. However, WCW oversaturated their product with c-lebrities who had no athleticism (like Leno) or no promo ability (Rodman). And then they go one step further by making a d-list celebrity the World Champion. Frank Gotch, Lou Thesz, Harley Race, The Funks, Dusty Rhodes, Ric Flair, Sting, Hogan, Savage and….David Arquette? One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong.

2.Creative Control Clauses – To quote Randy Savage “WCW had too many chiefs and not enough Indians”. You have Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, Randy Savage, and several others that all have creative control of their characters, including “veto” power in some cases. The disadvantages of this were numerous, including a glass ceiling, a stale product, and loss of money, both from the contracts to these men and from the fans realizing that WCW was no longer entertaining. If you are stale and not making money, then you are failing as a business.

1.Starrcade 1997 – Or more specifically the main event of Hollywood Hogan vs. Sting. I remember this vividly because it was the biggest dream match with the longest buildup in years. Ever since the nWo formed in July 1996, the build for this show and this match had been building. This was to be the culmination of the storyline that made WCW the #1 Promotion in America. What did we get? A horrible match, Hogan winning, a screwjob finish that made NO sense, a pissed off audience, and the nWo storyline continuing seemingly forever. There are a myriad of other bad things that WCW did, but the inability to properly payoff the biggest storyline and their company’s history is the most grievous sin.

Stephen Randle

5.Obsession with WWE – Now, on one level, WCW’s obsession with beating WWE led to some of the best competition and best television in wrestling history. But at the same time, it got to the point where everything, absolutely everything WCW did was focussed on taking another shot at Vince’s company. Meanwhile, while Vince took his share of shots, at no time did he load up his entire show with segments that served little more than to give the competition free publicity. And when WCW started going downhill, they ramped up their snide remarks and open potshots, while WWE simply ignored them. Basically, the fans didn’t care about Eric Bischoff’s private little war with Vince, they wanted to see good storylines and good wrestling, and if WCW wasn’t going to give them it, choosing instead to waste time challenging Vince to fist-fights and such, well, then they’d go somewhere else.

4.Talent Mismanagement – The list goes on and on. Bret Hart never even got started. Sting sat out eighteen months and never got his payoff. Steve Austin was told he’d never draw a dime. Foley was dismissed and forgotten. Flair was buried at every turn. Vader was sacrificed to Hogan. Benoit, Guerrero, Malenko, Jericho, The Giant, Raven, all left the promotion rather than deal with the insanity. Hell, there’s a guy with the only undefeated streak in WrestleMania history who never rose above tag team jobber in WCW. I think the bottom line is, WCW management never realized that literally anybody on the roster could be your next massive superstar, and by sticking with the guys who had “always” been on top, they passed up on a truckload of guys who could have been their saving grace, if they’d only been given a real shot.

3.Starrcade 1997 – You know, it was bad enough that Sting failed to get the decisive win that he’d been waiting eighteen months for and ended up looking like a complete chump. It’s disappointing that the hottest commodity in wrestling, Bret Hart, was on the show only as a special referee and interfering crusader in the main event. But then you look at the rest of the PPV, and you realize that, on a show that was supposed to be the ultimate victory for WCW over the tyranny of nWo, every single WCW wrestler lost their match against nWo wrestlers. Thus, rather than being a show full of victory, it was a show where every single possible threat to nWo dominance was turned into a loser, and this may have been the first sign that from that point on, nothing in WCW would ever change.

2.Jamie Kellner – A lot of people overlook the fact that WCW could have survived post-AOL/Time-Warner merger. The TV ratings, while nowhere near what they had been, were still pretty good for cable (and still better than TNA draws now). There were at least two other groups attempting to buy the brand besides Vince, and Eric Bischoff’s group was so sure that they would end up with it, they started running a storyline about it on television. But when Jamie Kellner decided to unilaterally cancel Nitro, Thunder, and Saturday Night, the value of WCW, as a worldwide wrestling brand with no ability to get their product to a worldwide audience, was near zero. Consequently, Vince was able to buy WCW for a song, and then bury it for good.

1.Fingerpoke of Doom/”That’s Going To Put Butts In The Seats” Double Shot – You can point to other people, other factors that had a hand in actually destroying the product, but I feel that this night, more than any other, was the night when wrestling fans truly voted with their remotes, and showed that Raw was now the cutting edge program, while Nitro was just stale television. On one show, the formerly undefeated Goldberg was screwed out of a title shot in favour of the infamous Fingerpoke, proving that WCW would never, ever give up on the nWo, no matter how stupid it became. Meanwhile, on Raw, WWE showed that they were willing to give their biggest title to a man who had earned respect of fans all over the country for his hard work and dedication, even if he didn’t fit into their traditional definition of a champion. Toss in the well-known Schiavone derision of Foley’s title win that was actually shown to cause thousands of viewers to change the channel from Nitro to Raw, and you have the shining moment when it became obvious to everyone that WCW was no longer the place to be, and it never would be again.

John Meehan

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Overconfidence – This week’s top five was my toughest yet. Not because there’s a dearth of viable options, mind you — but simply because there are just SO MANY things that went wrong with WCW by the end that it almost becomes impossible to single out just a few. That said, I can’t help but believe that so much the company’s fate was sealed by its underlying issues of overconfidence. With just a few errant remarks, a few thoughtless firings, and a few poorly made booking decisions, Eric Bischoff and company learned the hard way just how important it is never to take one’s opponent lightly. WWF may have been outgunned and outnumbered, but their reluctant role as wrestling’s underdog meant that they had to stay sharp so as *never* to find themselves outwitted. When you spend the better part of two years fighting for the very survival of your company, complacency just isn’t an option.

Starrcade 1997 – Hogan and his nWo cronies had spent a year running WCW into the ground, and Sting was seen as the last great hope for good to triumph over evil. Thanks to an overbooked ending (that winded up botched on top of it all), WCW’s great white hope only managed to look like the ultimate choke artist, while the industry’s hottest free agent simply turned out to be nothing more than an embittered crybaby.

January 4, 1999 – To wrestling fans the world over, this was the night where the tide *finally* turned in the longstanding Monday Night Wars between WCW and WWF. From inadvertantly sending thousands of viewers over to RAW (to watch Mick Foley “put butts in seats”) to devaluing the WCW World Heavyweight Championship by having Nash lay down for The Hulkster, this was probably WCW’s last true chance to learn from the past in order to redeem their previous mistakes.

5.Vince Russo Runs Wild – For as “shocking” and swerve-filled as his brand of storytelling may well be, Russo’s work in the WWF (and subsequently in TNA) has always lacked long-term focus. Shocks, gimmicks and swerves might pique a fan’s interest on any given night, but winning repeat viewers in a promotion that’s rife with overgimmicked nonsense while completely void of any real or meaningful long-term storylines has always proved to be a much taller task. Sure it didn’t help that Russo (and Bischoff, and Nash, and…) ended up subbed out of “The Powers That Be” at the drop of a hat when ratings didn’t improve, but simply put? WCW was *well* beyond a quick fix by the time that they signed Vince Russo, and the guy was never going to be the savior that WCW was looking to find.

4.nWoverload – Just how bloated had the nWo become by the death of WCW? Looking back and putting the group’s “shocking” formation in perspective, you’ll see that EVERY PERSON INVOLVED in the Bash at the Beach 1996 main event ended up joining the nWo by the time the angle had run its course. Hogan, Hall and Nash were supposed to be seen as traitorous bastards — but even such longtime WCW torchbearers as Lex Luger and Sting eventually saw dollar signs in rulebreaking and jumped ship to be a part of their heelish fold. And that’s to say nothing of the onscreen B-teamers like Stevie Ray and Vincent. When your promotion eventually ends up split nearly 80/20 in favor of (nominal) heels IN THE EXACT SAME STABLE, you’ve pretty much painted yourself into a “creatively bankrupt” corner with nowhere to go but out of business.

3.Ted Turner Wastes Too Much Disposable Money – There’s an old saying that you can’t simply tear someone else down in order to build yourself up. Such was the case when Ted Turner decided it’d be fun to try and scare Vince McMahon out of the “rasslin” business simply by throwing his ample supply of good money after bad. As a result, WCW honcho Eric Bischoff became the spoiled little rich kid whose daddy had bought him so many toys that he simply didn’t even have time to play with them all, spending the better part of a decade taking full advantage of Ted Turner’s deep pockets in order to lure away some of the industry’s most well-recognized stars (and crossover celebrities) — all without any real long-term plan in place as to just how, exactly, WCW might go about *using* their newly purchased (and ridiculously expensive) “human action figures.” This created all SORTS of problems ranging from backstage resentment, roster overcrowding, last-second show rewrites, and every manner of confusion in between.

2.Uncle Eric’s Hens Come Home to Roost – When Ted Turner’s money alone wasn’t enough to do the talking (strike one), Uncle Eric decided it’d be in his best interest to buddy up with “the boys” in order to further ingratiate himself to his company’s top talent. Strike two, of course, is that Bischoff thought he was actually making friends while a good chunk of his pro wrestler buddies were really just kissing ass in order to secure for themselves a bigger onscreen role. Strike three? Bischoff even went as far as to loan out creative control clauses to some of his highest-profile signees. Sadly, it didn’t take long for Hogan, Nash, Goldberg and the rest of the top-tier talent to realize that more onscreen losses typically translated to smaller royalty paychecks. And once the inmates run the asylum? Your company is pretty much sunk.

1.Jamie Kellner – Being the “suit” responsible for hammering the final nail in the company’s coffin, it’s simply impossible (and historically inaccurate) to pin the precise cause of WCW’s death on anything *other* than the man who dealt the company its killing blow. Though WCW had long since hit its peak by the AOL/Time Warner Merger of 2001, the company was still chugging along and ratings were still decent enough (by TBS standards, at least) to draw a respectable audience. Unfortunately for WCW fans however, Kellner determined that the type of advertisers who were willing to promote their products on a slumping-profile “rasslin” show simply weren’t going to command enough coin in order to justify AOL/Time Warner continuing to throw good money after bad to sustain the once-unstoppable company’s existence. In fairness, though, Kellner’s mind (and those almighty ad dollars) may have been swayed if WCW was still drawing the monster ratings it had once garnered during the height of the Monday Night Wars.

Chris Lansdell

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Jamie Kellner – Sure, he was the guy who actually ended it, but to my mind his role was on a par with the guy who approved the purchase of the chair that WWE bought that was used to give that one last chair shot to Benoit that scrambled his brain and made him snap: sure it was technically part of the chain, but it was bound to happen anyway. If it hadn’t been him it would have been someone else.

Lack of ability to create stars – Bischoff and company knew how to buy talent. They had no idea how to spot potential or turn it into money. For every star that Turner’s money brought in, Vince created a new one.

nWoH MY GOD WILL IT EVER END! – White and Black. Black and Red. B-Team. Elite. 2000. The one good idea that WCW had got beaten into the ground, and by the end was a parody of itself.

5. Flair? Sting? Hart? These names mean nothing to me! – All three of those bona fide top-tier talents were horribly mismanaged in WCW. Bret Hart came into WCW on a tidal wave of controversy, and they did precisely nothing with it. Sting spent months on the sidelines for no good reason, and to make it worse they ran a god-awful impostor angle. Flair was the biggest star in WCW, iconic in the way Hogan was to WWF, and they make him a lunatic, bury him in a desert and have him strip in the ring.

4. On-air appearances by the WRONG people – Jay Leno wrestles. Karl Malone wrestles. Ed Ferrara as Oklahoma winning the cruiserweight title. Vince Russo making Stacy Keibler pregnant. Thank God Robocop and Chucky were before all this. You can make an argument for Malone to some extent, and Leno would have been fine in a non-wrestling role, but…damn.

3. David Arquette, WCW champion – When the man himself tells you he doesn’t think he should win the title, you should probably listen. I remember for at least a year after this happened, my wrestling buddies and I would find any excuse we could to mention him, in a fashion such as this:

Buddy: You see Friends last night?
Lansdell: I did. It features the wife of David Arquette, former WCW champion

It remains a source of mirth to this day, and we often refer to it as the middle of the end.

2. Starrcade 97/Halloween Havoc 98 – Impossible to separate these two. Starrcade 97, as almost everyone has mentioned, was home to Sting-Hogan, a true dream match if ever there was one, that ended…well, horribly. But in my mind Havoc 98, which was SUPPOSED to have the much-anticipated Flair-Hogan rematch (allegedly) ended up being home to one of the worst matches ever (Hogan-Warrior), another sign that egos ruled WCW.

1. “That’ll put butts in seats!” followed by the Fingerpoke of DOOM~!

How do you lose viewers? First, you tell your loyal fans that someone they followed for years was about to win his first ever world title on the rival show. Then, you treat your remaining fans to the amazing spectacle of Nash jobbing to a poke in the chest from Hogan. The ones who stuck around were pissed off, the ones who left were happy. Sounds like a formula for FAIL to me.

Michael Bauer

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Too much nWo – Yeah, there definitly was some freaing overkill here.

Jaime Kellner – Yes, this was the final blow, but without my Top 5, this would have never happened.

5.Ric Flair’s misuse – You have the biggest legend in WCW history coming back and what do you do to him? You make him a fucking joke. It would be like Patrick ewing coming out of retirement just to be an equipment manager for the Knicks. You just don’t do that to the greatest wrestler you ever had… yes, better than Hulk Hogan.

4.The Glass Ceiling – In other terms, look at all the talent who left WCW for the WWE between 1998 and 2001. Paul Wight (The Big Show), Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Perry Saturn, and Eddie Guerrero are the most noted, but it also shows that when four future WWE World Champions defected from WCW in this period… something must have been wrong. And yes, Benoit was given the WCW Title, just for him to show up on Raw the next night. Add in X-Pac coming back to the WWF while a part of the now to join DX and ECW was hurt by the big names never wanting to put anyone over.

3.Bret Hart = Free Agent Bust – Bret Hart made the worst career move of his life when he went to WCW. Back in November 1998, nobody would have thought that. He signed a multi million dollar contract that far exceeded what the WWF would pay him. But then with the Montreal Screw Job, everything turned downward. By the time I stopped watching, I couldn’t remember if he had even fought a match and apparently it never got much better than that.

2.David Arquette: WCW Heavywight Champion – When I heard this, I thought it was a joke. I was laughing really hard… then I checked the internet. All I could do was put my head I my hands and cry for all the past champions who truly deserved to be called champion. This was simply more of a disgrace than Harvey Whipleman being the WWF Women’s Champion.

1.January 4, 1999 – Let the records show that this was the offical date that Michael A Bauer stopped watching WCW for good. I almost turned off WCW Nitro with the “spolier” announcement that Mick Foley was winning the WWF Heavyweight Title. But I was so interested in seeing Nash kill Hogan that I kept the television going back and forth. That would end when I saw Hulk Hogan poke Kevin Nash and cover him for the WCW Heavyweight Title. I was so disgusted as a fan that I couldn’t bare to watch WCW ever again. This was the night that led to everything else that was mentioned by everyone else. Sure, one man pulled them off of television, but to partily quote The General’s Daughter

“You killed her.”
“What?”
“You killed WCW.”
“Jaime Kellner killed her.”
“No, he just put her out of her misery.”

So with all said and done (and after hours of trying to get these thoughts back out of my head), here is the 411 Wrestling’s Overall Top 5 Causes of the Death of WCW.

Please note: Due to how similar many of these answers were, some were grouped together in a way which may have caused votes to be counted mutliple times. If this does occur, it will be noted below as Inclduing XYZ.

5. January 4, 1999 – The Finger Poke of Doom after the Mick Foley Spolier – 15 Points (3 1st place votes and 2 Honorable Mentions

4. WCW’s use of Celebrities, Inclduing David Arquette as WCW Champion – 15 points (1 2nd place vote, 3 3rd place votes, 1 4th place vote, 2 Honorable Mentions)

3. Starcade 1997 – The Epic Failure of Sting vs. Hulk Hogan – 18 points (1 1st place vote, 2 2nd place votes, 1 3rd place vote, 1 4th place vote, 2 Honorable Mentions)

2. Jaime Kellner Cancels all WCW Television Programming – 19 points (3 1st place votes, 1 2nd place vote, 3 Honorable Mentions)

1. Eric Bischoff Giving Creative Control, Inclduing the Creation of WCW’s Glass Ceiling – 24 points (1 1st place vote, 3 2nd place vote, 1 3rd place vote, 2 4th place votes, 4 Honorable Mentions)