The Decline of WCW...What Happened?

The WCW used to be pretty awesome. Many would consider it among the most important wrestling promotions ever to exist. This video attempts to explain how it became so popular and what caused its downfall.

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Company Declines:
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[carloscampos]

Never imagined that you would cover WCW, im gonna enjoy this.

[LunaticFringeReviews]

The AOL/Time Warner merger, the existence of Thunder, the hiring of Vince Russo & Ed Ferrara, the nWo storyline being ruined, backstage politics, wrestlers having too much creative control, and about 20 other things contributed to its downfall. It's unfortunate, because they had all the answers to the test & still managed to fail

[areasevenpro]

Fun Fact: When Vince McMahon sold WCW to Jim Crockett Promotions, he used the proceeds to produce WrestleMania I in 1985. The success of WrestleMania resulted in professional wrestling reaching new heights never seen in mainstream media.

[RatedRMario]

A huge factor of WCW's decline was letting young rising stars leave for WWF. Mean Mark Callaway (The Undertaker) Stunning Steve Austin (Stone Cold) and Cactus Jack (Mick Foley) are prominent examples

[bradwolf]

The Monday Night Wars was huge for me. This one hit me in the nostalgia

[Breanna_monique]

As a lifelong wrestling fan, this video hits very close to home. A lot of my friends stopped watching wrestling when WCW folded. Not because they thought that WCW was better than the WWF, but because it signaled the true end of the ratings war. Even though it clearly had been over for a while at that point, WCW going out of business, coupled with Austin turning heel, was the end of wrestling being fun for a lot of them

[clos]

As a kid switching back and forth between raw and nitro was the best thing ever. Don’t forget ecw at night was also great during this time. The late 90’s was the best time to be a wrestling fan.

[Makoto]

I was a WCW kid in the 90s.
My dad showed my Ric Flair talking on a random episode of Monday Nitro as a kid and it got me hooked on the exciting drama of pro wrestling. I was sad to see WWF buy it out but that promotion had really gone so downhill in its last years. :(

[blackcomicnerd]

What's crazy is that even though WCW was losing to the WWF in the ratings, Nitro was still doing about a 2.0 rating every Monday night. The last 3-4 months of WCW's existence they were actually getting better. That had a lot of good young talent like Elix Skipper, The Natural Born Thrillers, Kid Romeo, Jung Dragons, etc.

[zero]

One of the big factors of the fall was acquiring Hulk Hogan. One of the biggest reasons why they got him was because of his contract, specifically his creative control over the product. Probably not a good idea to have your top guy being able to decide who he fights, and who he beats, or doesn't. Don't forget that they spent a lot of money bringing all his friends into WCW, as well as bringing in Ultimate Warrior so he could essentially get his win back over him from Wrestlemania 6.

[neighslayer]

One thing to note is how WCW's fall inadvertently caused the second decline of the WWE. Ratings fell by more than half and have never risen to the heights when they had competition. While they were never in any financial trouble, they lost relevancy and consistency. Iron sharpens iron. And with no WCW, WWE's iron became dull. Even now when they're making more money than ever, ratings are still low, even after factoring in the overall decline of cable. And they have no where near the pop culture status they did 20 years ago.

[whiskeybravo]

I think the cruiserweights/Luchadores also gave WCW a huge leg-up in competition. WWF had absolutely nothing that could compare to the Luche-wars

[Regel]

After all these years I didn’t expect for you to cover WCW let alone wrestling. You covered all the right point for those who don’t follow wrestling. But for sure that AOL/Time Warner merger was a turning point as well. As for the Mankind title win. Nitro was live and at the time RAW was taped. I do appreciate this video.

[SphericalThinker]

Alright, I just finished the video.

First off, great job touching on most of the facets. I think the handling of Sting was a big reason for people defecting (moreso than the “finger poke of doom”) but you hit the important notes. Here’s my analysis as to what killed WCW:

- The AOL Time Warner Merger: Yes, this ultimately was number 1. As stated, Turner was no longer in charge and could not “save” WCW from Jamie Kellner from cancelling a show which he didn’t see as a sport, but rather a TV series that ran past its lifecycle and was hemorrhaging money.

- WCW’s handling of the Hogan/Sting angle: Starrcade ‘97 was supposed to be WCW’s coup de grâce to the then-WWF. Vince McMahon’s decision to “screw” Bret Hart was wildly unpopular with the wrestling community (who, even in the pre-internet era, still had access to local dirt sheet phone numbers and newspaper articles.) Meanwhile, Starrcade ‘97 was supposed to be Sting finally delivering the comeuppance to the nWo for all their villainy. So what happened? Hogan visibly beat Sting clean as a whistle in the middle of the ring before Bret Hart grabbed a house mic, mutter something about how this wasn’t supposed to happen again, and then inserted himself as a special guest referee to restart the match before telling everyone Hogan submitted (therefore awarding the title to Sting.) There was a rematch on Nitro a week later where Sting was supposed to beat Hogan cleanly, but even that match had too many run-ins to see Sting as the rightful winner and instead saw him as someone who needed his cronies to defeat Hogan. Meanwhile, Stone Cold Steve Austin defeated Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 14 to finally claim his rightful place at the top. That’s when the momentum shifted in the WWE’s favor.

- The Fingerpoke of Doom: The only person who WCW build up that could challenge Austin’s popularity was Goldberg. He rose up and defeated everyone in his path to defeating Hulk Hogan for the title. Then, at Starrcade 98, Goldberg lost to Nash after some shenanigans, which set the date for a rematch on January 4, 1999… A rematch that didn’t happen. Goldberg was arrested after Elizabeth (most famous for being Macho Man’s valet) made a false police report against him. Once Goldberg was released, it was too late - Hogan poked Nash, Nash took the pin, and the nWo reformed once again. By the time Goldberg made it back to the ring, he was beaten down and spray-painted to be just another geek on the roster. This leads to…

- The booking of the nWo: The Spongbob analogy was perfect - First it was great, but by the end, everyone was annoyed. The nWo took over, but then collected everyone and went from being a group of elite wrestlers to becoming a stable where even perennial undercard guys could work. This also led to off-shoots like nWo Wolfpac and Latino World Order. In the end, they overstayed their welcome and made the home roster guys look like lesser wrestlers as a result - Compare this to WWE’s D-Generation X, who kept their membership concise and knew when to take a step back and let someone else shine.

- The inability to set a consistent booker: In WWE, the buck stopped with Vince McMahon. In WCW, the inmates ran the asylum. Eric Bischoff, Vince Russo, Kevin Sullivan, and Kevin Nash all had booking duties at one point or another, which led to severe inconsistency with the storylines. Too many non-finish matches met with poorly executed “worked shoot” storylines left the TV product laborious to watch. Editorial note: There was a brief period of time where I was watching WCW over RAW in 1999 going into 2000, but that was only because my then-favorite band The Misfits were being booked on TV, which brings me to…

- WCW’s penchant for throwing money away: WCW had a horrible knack for signing wrestlers who they had no use for other than to appease certain stars or to give themselves a pop. This meant signing Macho Man’s brother to a contract where he never wrestled, hiring bands such as Misfits, Megadeth, Master P, or Kiss to be part of the festivities to diminishing returns, signing celebrities like Dennis Rodman and Jay Leno to appear as in-ring talents despite not having the aptitude to compete, or booking money-losing events that were very costly in the end. Speaking of entertainers who lack in-ring aptitude…

- WCW’s handling of the world title: Now, not all titles are created equally, and having lower-card titles change hands frequently could be a good way of getting lesser-used wrestlers more over with the audience. But when it comes to the main prize, the title should be guarded by the face of the organization. By the time the WCW went under, the World Championship was “hot-potatoed” so much that it was essentially meaningless. Once David Arquette and Vince Russo had reigns as champions, any remaining prestige was effectively destroyed.

20 years later, Turner’s stations have started airing programming from WWE’s first true domestic competitor in years: All Elite Wrestling (AEW.) To their credit, their world title seems fairly protected, they don’t push storylines that insult the intelligence of their audience, and non-wrestlers are used judiciously (I doubt we’ll see Jimmy Kimmel put Jon Moxley in an armbar anytime soon.) But they are starting to demonstrate a penchant for signing more talent than they have TV time to push and are now in the crosshairs of another Warner merger - This time with the Discovery network. Will they manage to survive? Time will tell, but this wrestling fan certainly hopes so because if WWE’s recent shakeup has shown me anything, it’s that competition creates creativity, creativity used in the right way can create controversy, and controversy in the wrestling business usually creates cash 😄😄😄😄

I love all the Company Man episodes, but this one hit home the closest to me. Fantastic job once again.

[jefferyjones]

As a kid, I stuck with WCW until the bitter end. I go in and out of watching WWE but it’s always great to have alternatives. I’m glad AEW exists for an option.

[Anubis]

Attitude era was heavily influenced by a third wrestling enterprise that was popular in the 90’s…ECW. Sandman was entering ring matches drinking beer long before stone cold. Without ECW there would be no attitude era.

[IrishKyokushin]

Eric Bischoff repeating the same mistakes he saw kill the AWA (pushing older talent that the crowd was tired of seeing over younger talent. Copying WWE storylines) killed WCW. The fact that he repeated these same mistakes in TNA proves he still hasn't learned anything.

[AlbumAnarchy]

As someone who has been obsessed with knowing why WCW failed, I have read books, watched documentaries, listened to podcasts, read fan theories all about why they failed. Your points, especially for the goal of keeping it short and informative, are spot on. Two books worth reading for more in depth information about it are Fools Rush In by Nina Munk, which talks about the disastrous merger of AOL and Time Warner, and Nitro by Guy Evans. Good job on this and yes there are many other factors that caused the downfall such as creative control of some big names, and over saturation with Thunder. Always love your videos and this one totally gave me a "swerve" hehehe 😉

[spoonyluv]

As a wrestling fan it makes me so happy you covered WCW and how it went down.

[tylerleggett]

As a wrestling fan with an MBA in accounting, this video covers two massive interests. I'd definitely like the video twice if I could.