>>19695686
If it wasn't a bad TV show and actually made enough money that it could overpay anyone and remain strong they wouldn't have collapsed

>>19695686
You have to understand those here posting about shit like that never fucking watched WCW and didn't exist when it aired otherwise they'd know even in its dying days they had just as many solid wrestling matches as dumb fucking nonsense. WCW was the program you watched for the first hours and laughed at the main event stories in for the most part.

The problem is that this board is full of zoomer retards who have only grown up with WWE propaganda all their lives, never watched the thing, and think it was just the '90s equivalent of AEW.
WCW was pretty much what everyone around here bitches about modern pro-wrestling not being. It wasn't perfect but I laugh my ass off at zoomers who come in here saying, "What about this angle/incident," when they've never been told about all the cringier shit WWF was doing at the time because WWE never bothered to tell them about that stuff.

>>19695686
Even the death of wcw, which isn't exactly favorable, has multiple pages explaining this anon. It's not some big secret
>>19695693
ted turner held them back for a while. once he was gone and wcw stopped making money, they took a pretty not great deal from vince. even some devout critics of late stage wcw admit they could have saved it. Wrestling comes in waves they just needed to scale it down and focus on future talent

>>19695696
>>19695717
In the future 90s wrestling will become even less relevant to wrestling lore and the story of bad creative being the reason it died will just become stronger and stronger

>>19695693
The company didn't collapse, it was sold to Vince for pennies on the dollar because its parent company, AOL-Time-Warner, didn't want to be attached to wrestling after Ted Turner was out. It was considered low brow entertainment and brand-tarnishing.
The company didn't fail on its financial merits. Stop falling for WWE propaganda. They highlight the goofy shit WCW did back in the day but you never hear about the fact that WWF was doing way goofier shit at the time.
WWF was closer to being "AEW" than WCW was.

>>19695696
attitude era had the more attention grabbing meme angles like beaver cleavage and mark henry with mae young, but wcw has the true kino lunacy.

stuff i remember like tank abbott and 3 count, norman smiley's screaming hardcore gimmick, positively kanyon, fat chick thriller, steve ray and juventud doing hilarious guest commentary. i made fun of how bad it was at the time, but those were fun shows to watch because they seemed unpredictable. lower stakes that when the nwo was in full swing, but they were a lot of fun.

crazy how any faggot can have strong opinions on a wrestling company they've only seen clips from and how stupid the people booking were compared to them.

>>19695750
Which is a shame because WWF at the time was way more cringe.
Again, WWE never mentions that part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rYXdI9ZN2g

>>19695761
WCW had absolute nonsense going on and I loved it. When they were doing the 3 hour nitros you could tune in at 8 for actual wrestling and serious stuff, 9 for some random ass comedy and luchador shit, then 10 for whatever the fuck the NWO was up to that week and whoever turned face then heel then face again before the ppv. Shit ruled.
The closest to WCW's absurd blend of situations and workers was TNA back in the day. Same kind of thing where the main event scene might make no sense and the stories going on are bleh but you knew for sure you were going to see some solid wrestling and get a laugh or two.
>crazy how any faggot can have strong opinions on a wrestling company they've only seen clips from and how stupid the people booking were compared to them.
But my podcast man on youtube told me it was bad!

>>19695784
seeing what this anon wrote makes me realize how much i missed wcw. people said it was because russo was so stupid and only worked because vince was his filter, and i get it wasn't for everyone.

it could be so silly and nonsensical sometimes, but that also be a format that allows people to be entertaining. and a wrestling show is made up of different segments with so many different characters that it's easier to do tonal shifts and have something be more serious when you want it to be.

now i'm bummed they never went anywhere with raven's rich kid gimmick and the feud with whoever sandman was supposed to be.

and i also hate more faggots that think hogan not putting people over (put over kidman at least) or the nwo angle running too long and never really concluding (it did) financially ruined the company. people would have kept watching if they didn't get blindsided with losing their tv deal because of network brand image decisions.

>>19695819
They did have a problem with lack of younger talent. I think that was a big part of Russo's push when he came over - he was trying to build up younger guys so they could move up the card (hence all the New Blood stuff). And the company did take a big hit during that stuff but I don't think it was enough to kill the company. All companies go through up swings and down swings.
I also think a lot of the lack of younger talent was due to the Goldberg push. It was absolutely dimes. But it's hard to establish other guys when you have the one guy whose whole gimmick is dominating everyone.
I personally think that if AOL-Time-Warner had sold to the group Bischoff was organizing instead of to Vince that it would still be around and that wrestling would be in a much better place. WWE gained a virtual monopoly and was able to suck up all the talents in the business (both in and out of the ring), making it impossible for other competition to rise against it (can't build a good wrestling company when you lack good writers, bookers, and wrestlers because they all want to work for the big boys). If WCW was still around it would have maintained its prestige and likely gained back some of its stature in a few years.

>>19695851
Whats funny is they had a ton of younger talent they were onboarding and introducing to the audience when AOL Time Warner killed them. AJ Styles was going to be a WCW regular.
AOL Time Warner had no interest in actually making anything off of WCW or doing anything other than killing something Ted liked to spite him. You have to fully understand what happened there and it had 0 to do with ratings, contracts, booking, or any of that. Those little kikes hated wrestling and wanted it gone.

>>19695686
wcw died in like 2001. you had to be at least into your teenage years to have had a sense of what was really going on at the time. so basically any nigga under that's not turning 40 this year is talking too big for his britches. and that's a hood fact straight from the street.

>>19695760
WCW lost $20 million in 2000, do you think that number was magically going to change the next year, or the year after that? if you had a spare $100 million to keep the company afloat for 5 more years ASSUMING losses remained the same would you have done it?

>>19695918
Don't look into how much Aol Time Warner was losing outside of WCW or reality might smack you in the face a bit too hard.

>>19695851
if bischoff bought WCW it would have needed radical restructuring to stay in business. It would have ended up looking like early TNA for better or worse. maybe a sound company but a shadow of its former self. realistically WCW was running on the assumption that ratings (e.g. their main source of revenue) would never drop, until they did. basically lehman brothers

>>19695932
a publicly traded corporation is a little different than a televised traveling circus. just try to picture what WCW would have looked like had they relied on live gates for their revenue

>>19695948
Hey anon I don't know if you know this but your podcast hosts lied to you.

>>19695948
20m was an accounting error to AOL. A non biased executive would have seen the value in the IP rather than get spooked by one bad year that was insignificant to the parent company. They hated wrestling and promptly killed it when Ted was ousted. They would have done the exact same thing to WWF if they owned it, regardless of its success.

>official WWE propaganda machine portrays this
>"WHY DO RETARDS BELIEVE THIS?!"

>>19695918
I didn't say it would have been pain-free but I'd imagine that the finances being sought by the purchasing group Bischoff was putting together probably would have offset anticipated initial problems. There undeniably would have had to be major restructuring but restructuring something that exists is a hell of a lot easier than building from zero when there's an established virtual monopoly in the market.
>>19695941
It would have had to restructure, to be sure, and likely would have dropped talent but the biggest differences between a surviving WCW and TNA are holdover fan loyalties (which were strong) and the fact that the entire thing wouldn't have had to be built from scratch. They could have strategically released talents (while retaining a few top guys and solid hands) versus having to scrape the barrel to build with what was available in the lower leagues and that's huge.
WCW had a lot of solid workers, writers, and other backstage staff. Most of those went to WWE and TNA didn't have access to them until they were released from contracts (if at all). Being able to retain what WCW had to any degree would have been huge and, more importantly, wouldn't have been done against a company controlling most the market.

>>19696018
I think creatively WCW would have suffered in building new talent because they relied almost entirely upon former 80s/early 90s WWF main eventers/upper midcarders who they themselves were established in the dying days of major territories

>>19695865
>AJ Styles was going to be a WCW regular
who would be burid and treated like shit by the oldtimers with bloated contracts and creative control, and refused to put new stars over

Anyone who tries to claim summer 99-00 WCW is good is smoking crack. They deserved to die for spiting and taking their fans for granted so much.

>>19696172
It honestly doesn't really matter because he was an indie flipper at the time, the only person who was probably ready to be pushed immediately without needing to wrestle and get seasoned for a few years from that whole generation of wrestlers was Bryan Danielson

>>19696180
I don't think anyone would say summer 99-00 WCW was good, but other companies went through even shittier periods and came out just fine. It wasn't uniquely bad like some want to pretend it was and was, indeed, more entertaining than a lot of crap today.

>>19696185
Outside of Tony "KWAB" Khan, no one in wrestling has ever lost as much money as WCW in its last 2 years.

>>19696172
They were already in the process of kicking out the old timers. That's what the whole "New Blood" thing was about. Russo was pushing edgier booking precisely to build young guys.
It probably would have had a rough period had it survived but let's not pretend like there wasn't anyone in the company who didn't know how to book and build talent. Or that there wasn't anyone they could hire to book and build talent. The old guys were emphasized for so long because they were the people fans wanted to see.

>>19695965
>20m was an accounting error to AOL
This is cope a loss is a loss wcw was a product with a history of unprofitability and no real signs of turning around by the time it was shitcanned if it had any sort of history of success, it wouldn't have been gotten rid of so easily

>>19696185
No they haven't. It really was that bad. WCW the brand was toxic, and they literally couldn't give tickets away despite handing them out in the streets.

>>19696214
Revisionism. The product wasn't any worse than some of the (Russo-driven) shit WWF did trying to chase WCW. WWF did some godawful cringy shit.
But no one talks about any of that, just the cringe shit WCW did. Funny how history works when it's purely written by the winners.

>no you see this podcaster I pay money to monthly told me it was bad and even though I wasn't even a fetus when WCW was on the air I know it was bad. Here let me show you this part of this book reddit told me to read.

>>19696233
These marks believe that Vince was a square businessman who did everything legit even if it was a bit rough.
He did the same thing to Janel Grant to shut up as he did to Stu Hart, he paid them the first installment of a structured payoff and then never followed through with the rest of the money

>>19696205
>That's what the whole "New Blood" thing was about
you mean the thing that completely failed to get the new guys over, making them the heels against the oldtimers for some reason, and none of them having anything meaningfully distinctive about them to actually stand out as new stars against an entrenched old guard?

>>19696233
>The product wasn't any worse than some of the (Russo-driven) shit WWF did trying to chase WCW
this is the actual revisionism books that could (and have) been written about how uniquely terrible wcw was in both its complete failure as a business and the worst creative known to man nothing really mattered, no promises would be kept, the same old boys will kill all your heroes, it wasn’t worth investing yourself in this parade of senseless twists. So fans didn't they had been completely immunised from the ability to even register surprise anymore by Russo's shit booking being unhindered

>>19696233
Oh, brother.
Then why was WCW doing barely a thousand paid fans while the WWF was at the peak of their boom?

>>19696233
this is why it's important to give zero attention to WWE or anything they do. we've seen what 25 years of WWE dominance looks like, and it doesn't look good at all. WCW, even at its worst, was always the better fed. when WCW did silly shit, it was at least funny. nobody EVER liked mantaur or TL Hopper or fucking Lawrence Taylor main eventing WM or Lawler having another man's nasty foot crammed down his throat or the horrible Isaac Yankem storyline that followed, or any of the other childish and retarded shit that vince did back then. THAT is why they don't want people to have access to the complete libraries from WCW and Jim Crockett Promotions. They don't want people to realize that vince's competition was always better and he only won through the favoritism of the jews. they also don't want people to realize how much he stole other people's ideas. Fuck vince then, now, and forever. he's a goddamn faggot who ruined wrestling.

File: man-who-kept-fighting.png (37 KB, 299x169)

37 KB PNG

>>19696376
t.

I can acknowledge that it’s very likely all the suits were embarrassed to be even tangentially involved with rasslin.
But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t smart business. I have no doubt wcw was losing money and were on track to be even less profitable. Those last nitros they were blacking out most of the arena to hide empty sections.

>>19696526
Even when it was a hot brand they were still totally disinterested in it. Turner execs NEVER, EVER wanted anything to do with wrestling no matter how profitable it could be

>>19696713
doesn't change that it wasn't ever profitable for any meaningful amount of time

>>19696882
Profitable or no, until those last couple of years it was *the* company to watch. WWF was cringe and a joke and anyone who argues otherwise simply wasn't around.
WCW made wrestling cool again. WWF capitalized on the craze WCW created and created something that legitimately beat it in the marketplace but that probably wouldn't have happened if WCW hadn't opened the door and put the pressure on it to do so.
WCW dying was when a lot of people slowly started tuning out. Speaking for myself, WCW brought be back to wrestling in my high school years and I only stuck with WWE for a few years after it was gone because it wasn't really what drew me in the first place.

>>19696376
TL Hopper and Mantaur were peak garbage kino, Pedo LT main eventing WM wasn’t it though

>>19698606
wcw was cool for like 1 1/2 years and then rapidly went to shit. The nWo had already overstayed its welcome even before Starrcade '97

>>19696282
Take the wrestling fig out yo bussy, playa

>>19696376
VDS
I HEAR SMARKS COPING
VDS
I HEAR SMARKS SEETHING
VDS
I HEAR SMARKS RIDIN SOLOOOOO
(On they wrestling figs)

>>19695686
>hated wrestling because they thought it was for white trash retards
This is accurate though. Most of the former WCW marks are now ancient troons that chopped their cocks off. Frankly all wrestling outside of WWE is a tranny dogshit circus show

>>19695686
Kind of. Their dogshit product drove off paying customers and they were still on the hook to pay out stupidly inflated contracts that Bischoff threw around like confetti. If you spend a lot of money and bring in very revenue, you will lose a lot of money very quickly.
>>19695965
By 1995, WCW had cost Turner 30 million. That included the purchase from Crockett. Even by 1993, Turner execs were imploring Ted to get rid of it and show classic movies in the wrestling Saturday time slot. In September 1995, the Turner/Time Warner merger was already agreed to and Vince was giving public comments saying the company was fucked because Ted could no longer protect it.