re: Was WCW Sabotaged?

Wrasslin's serious business, brah.

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ETA: the worst, however, was the WCW "invasion" of WWEafter vince bought everything. Just terrible. I stopped watching wrestling around that time.

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It would have been good if they had approached it different. JR and Jerry Lawler totally went the route of burying them on commentary. I get what they were doing, but they were shooting themselves in the foot because those guys were their new talent.
Really took all the air out of it. I was a loyal wwf fan, even during the low times of duke the dumpster, doink the clown, etc.

But wcw had talent, just needed to use them right. The guys they were pushing silenced the talents of guys who were ready. But they totally screwed that invasion up by downplaying it themselves.

WGAF

I remember always wanting to see a pre-crow sting vs Bret Hart. Another guy wcw dropped the ball with.

The Monday night wars took on a life of their own. Seemed like Eric was more set on making it an event at a wrestling show. Having concerts, actors, etc they treated their championship as a prop.

Vince used the talent he had to make the event. Vince was just so much more of a boss, businessman, promoter and personality than Eric.

Nash and Hall, The Outsiders

Remember the announcers called it a "hostile takeover"

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All you have to do is watch how the WWE took Chris Jericho from being looked at as nothing but a Cruiserweight and the unmasker of luchidors, built him up over months with a countdown and then trotted him out in one of the greatest (if not the greatest) debut in WWE history.

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That's a great point. Seems like star wrasslers need either kick arse presence (Undertaker) or charisma. The best have both. Jericho had monster charisma and it shows the management prowess that they could recognize that and turn it into something huge.

Meanwhile WCW kept pushing clowns like Disco Fever and others with little presence or charisma.

Russo definitely killed WCW with the clown storylines.

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But no way did the nwo need a 40+ man stable, then there was the lwo and whatever else wo. The ball got dropped a lot in the 2000's.

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Unfortunately, the main components of the nWo were opposed to wrestling in anything but pay-per-views. Nash has gone on record multiple times saying they knew their contracts inside and out and were going to do the minimum required to get paid.

The WCW had to get the nWo into matches since they had 5 hours of live programming a week to fill. So guys like Buff Bagwell, Scott Norton, Vincent and Scott Steiner had to fill the time in order to push the nWo angle, which was so huge at the time.

Hall, Nash and Hogan basically showed up every couple of weeks, did run-ins in order to "push" a PPV match and then they disappeared.
It eventually got so bloated that the "exclusivity" that the nWo boasted of was basically dissolved.

It became the Discover Card of wrestling factions.

The inside man.

The problem I have with WWE, is that they are struggling to get a true super star headliner to replace Cena. Cena has run his course, fans are not buying his story anymore. So they bring in Lesnar, who isn't going to be there week in and week out. He's just going to show up at a few Raw's and probably a couple PPV's. That sucks. Daniel Bryan will never get the belts back, so WWE is going to get really shitting at the top for a while. Get ready for more of the authority shite, and more of the bella twins shite. The only bright side to it is there is still the Wyatts, but they are starting to get boring and repetative.

Time Warner had the majority of shares of WCW, Ted Turner was on the board of directors at the time the Vince purchased it. I think a TBS (also owned by Time Warner) executive said no more wrestling on TBS and that was the end of WCW.

There was also another buyer, Jeff Jarrett, if I remember correctly he had all his stuff together and made an offer but was told to frick off. Then he went off and made TNA.