How WCW Slipped Through Eric Bischoff's Fingers

A revealing, politically incorrect look at how pro wrestling’s future slipped through Eric Bischoff’s fingers, and why fans should be disgusted with AOL-Time Warner.



By Jason Stone
Editor, 24Wrestling

This feature is dedicated to the end of WCW, and how it was ripped from Eric Bischoff‘s hands like a candy bar from a little girl. When you find out why WCW was truly cancelled, the wrestling fan inside you may just be a little offended. Okay, 'a lot' offended.

As you know, in March 2001 WCW stopped broadcasting TV shows and PPVs, and was purchased by Mr. Ruthless Aggression himself Vince McMahon. However, the real downfall of WCW began years before, when the standards & practices people at Time Warner began telling Eric Bischoff he couldn’t do the things he needed to do to compete with the more edgy Monday Night RAW. Storylines would be vetoed and Easy E along with his monkeys were forced to re-write sometimes entire shows just minutes before going live. WCW signed Bret Hart, but he was completely mishandled. By the summer of 1998, Time Warner outright forced WCW to be a more family-friendly show. Papa Bischoff took his frustration out on his employees, who he would throw coffee at and swat with newspapers, unless they were a lot bigger than him and Nash wasn‘t around. The trio of Bischoff, Nash and Hogan came up with some of the dumbest ideas of their lives in a short period of time in 1999. Everyone started to hate them. Eric, who knew the booking was the s**ts, stopped showing up to Nitro and began shaking hands in Hollywood which ended up paying off later. WCW was left to the devices of Kevin Nash, who didn’t do much to bring the company back on it’s feet. I think once he booked an entire hour of Nitro without a single wrestling match, just backstage skits. This lead to a frustrated Bischoff pulling out his dyed jet-black hair and leaving to take a job clubbing baby seals on September 10, 1999.

Ted went against every advisor in his company and kept WCW alive. If that's not a true fan, I don't know what is.

It turned out that Ted Turner himself was really the only one within Time Warner who gave a damn about wrestling, and the rest viewed it as a lowly form of entertainment for meth addicted white trash hillbillies. When someone suggested selling off WCW, Ted shot them down and told them to never mention it again.

Fall 1999: Turner Sports president Brad Siegel appointed an accountant named Bill Busch to run WCW in Bischoff‘s absence, who then had the bright idea to steal Vince Russo from WWF to help the ratings. The idea didn’t go as well as planned and Russo was demoted on January 15, 2000 . He was replaced with Kevin Sullivan, who just may have did as much damage in a few months as Russo did in his entire run. Don’t believe me? Watch WCW UnCeNsOrEd 2000. Days after Sullivan got his spot, a bunch of wrestlers quit including future WWE champs Benoit and Guerrero.

Ah, Kevin Sullivan. Watching old tapes, sometimes we took bets if Kevin Sullivan was really just some guy they found on the street corner yelling things.

Sullivan:...beer hash and lots of squirells’lI tell ya that
if my wife leaves me I sweartoTeddyZ.RooseveltI'llkill...

Time Warner: I like the cut of your jib, son, how'd you like a job.

Sullivan: ...and I tell ya that you haven't hadtoshootyour
hounddogintheballswithachickenriflethen...

Time Warner: You're hired!

NB/Millionaires Club almost turned things around. The storyline had the rug pulled out from under it before the New Blood Rising PPV even aired. Hated by wrestling fans, and rightfully so.

Brad Siegel fired the Busch/Sullivan dream team and brought back Bischoff and Russo as a duo in late March 2000. Although they hated each other, they went half on a candy bar and found the golden ticket -- The New Blood vs. Millionaires Club feud that almost saved WCW's reputation. It began in April, but before the end of the Summer it dwindled away. Russo had trouble finishing what he started and some guys at Turner Sports didn‘t like it, so they pulled the plug. Bischoff then left WCW to take a job euthanizing puppies. (Actually he just went home, spent time with his family, and collected checks.)

Russo was left as uncontested head booker, and the whole wrestling world breathed a big "Oh, Holy Living F...".

During this time, Russo created ideas that in retrospect seem impossible, because there's no way a human being could do enough acid to come up with "David Arquette, WCW champion," and live. Or at least you'd hope. Vinnie Ru came up with brilliant and totally new ideas including, but by no means limited to, covering Sting in blood that magically stayed wet for 3 days and lowering him on a rope on the anniversary of Owen Hart's death. Two ideas that brilliantly pushed the insensitivity envelope.

Other great ideas were G.I. Bro, Russo being the father of Stacy Keibler‘s child, not even advertising two awesome Goldberg vs. Scott Steiner battles (one of them on PPV and the other in a cage for free on Nitro), and other angles so idiotic they make "Muppet's Present Battlefield Earth" look like Se7en.

Bischoff first starting sending out feelers about buying WCW as early as fall 1998, which has some conspiracy theorists saying that Easy E sabotaged the company in 1999 to try and lower the price as much as possible. If there’s any truth to that, then it certainly blew up in his face, but lets leave that for another day…

Time Warner, the parent company of Turner Broadcasting and Turner Sports, always hated WCW. Brad Siegel, who was appointed to oversee WCW, wanted nothing to do with wrestling but was stuck taking care of Ted‘s half retarded baby. Time Warner execs wanted WCW gone but good ol’ Ted wouldn’t let that happen. However, when AOL merged with Time Warner, Ted Turner was effectively pushed out of his own company. There was now a board of directors full of incompetent wannabe entrepreneurs, case in point: AOL lost $54 billion in one quarter! I’m not just talking s**t because I'm mad they cancelled WCW, those are the real numbers! Ted wasn‘t happy. While even Russo can’t match AOL’s stupidity, he did manage to lose almost $20 million (I think) in 2000, mostly on stupid TV props (Hummers, helicopters, limos, stupid hardcore matches) that nobody cared about. Bischoff made an offer to buy WCW, and while Siegel initially rejected, he would go on to accept in late 2000. By January 2001, reports stated that Eric Bischoff and his group of investors known as Fusient Media Ventures, a satanic cockfighting company, had purchased WCW and the deal was done!

On January 11, Bischoff started negotiating with Hogan, and put out this press release: "Wrestling fans can rest assured that we will give the WCW the adrenaline shot it needs to once again become the most exciting brand of wrestling in the world.” He planned to give the cruiserweights their due and bring in Johnny Ace to handle the books. FOX and NBC started inquiring to Fusient about getting WCW programming on their networks! That’s pretty big stuff.

On February 26, 2001 reports came out saying that there were some troubles between Fusient and AOL-Time Warner, but it was nothing to worry about. Then in mid-march, apparently things came to a halt between Brad Siegel and Eric Bischoff; Easy E was being kept in the dark. Bischoff did not have the best relationship with the execs after years of bickering with the standards & practices people.

Fusient was left in the dark over three weeks while the WWF began doing their own arrangements with AOL-Time Warner. On March 13, 2001, WCW head Brad Siegel apparently had a conference call with Fusient Media Ventures executives in Atlanta to try and ‘save the deal’.

Jamie Kellner

But wait! Brad Siegel just had a new supervisor appointed, Jamie Kellner, and this guy REALLY hated wrestling. His first week on the job, Kellner, a conspiracy theorist with a Napoleon complex who thinks TiVo and DVR‘s will destroy the entertainment industry, announced that World Championship Wrestling was CANCELLED from Turner Broadcasting -- Despite still being the highest rated programming on TNT or TBS. 26 years of wrasslin’ on Turner, no more. How does a guy like this get such a powerful job? Well, it was at AOL-Time Warner, which in 2000 and 2001 was the biggest mess on earth. Specializing in things for little girls, Kellner’s credits include commissioning shows like Dawson's Creek and Gilmore Girls. By the way, I'm not lying about this guy's thoughts on Tivo & DVRs like I was about Eric Bischoff clubbing baby seals, check this out.

Why did he cancel it? There was no mention of the decline in ratings, PPV buyrates or ticket sales; After all, if that was the case, WWF wouldn't have made it past 1997 and TNA would never have seen national TV. Kellner's reasoning was that WCW's viewer demographics were not favorable enough to get the "right" advertisers to buy airtime. Yeah, and showing Con-Air eight times a week brings in the high-rollers. This dipsh** was fired in less than two years, but the damage had been done.

WCW wasn’t cancelled because their ratings dipped, it wasn’t cancelled because they didn’t sell as many tickets anymore, it wasn’t cancelled because it didn't turn a profit in 2000 -- It was cancelled because the executives at AOL-Time Warner thought wrestling was too dumb to show on national TV. That is how the television industry views us wrestling fans; too stupid to buy the things the advertisers are selling.

Ted Turner was truly the only thing that kept WCW alive past the early 90’s slump, allowing for the Monday Night Wars to begin and literally save wrestling. To this day, Ted credits WCW with helping him establish TBS & TNT, and recognizes the wrestling industry is one that continuously reinvents itself. But the hatred for wrestling within Time Warner was deep.

With no primary broadcast outlet, WCW became worthless to a company like Fusient. FOX and NBC stepped away from the table. However, WCW wouldn't be worthless to a company who already had a broadcast outlet -- Hmmm....

The final arena booked on the WCW calendar was March 26, 2001 -- in addition to Bischoff’s ‘Big Bang’ PPV on May 6 in Las Vegas, NV which obviously never happened.

Before anyone knew what hit them -- Vince McMahon had swooped in and taken Eric Bischoff’s wrestling company right from under his nose. Time Warner had sold WCW to the WWF. The WWF already had a TV deal with TNN and there were talks of airing Nitro on Saturdays. But the emasculation of Bischoff would not stop there, as he went on to sign a performers contract with Vince and be humiliated on WWE TV and DVDs for the years to come. His run as a WWE performer must have been especially humbling for Eric given their strained relationship, which began when Eric was denied an announcer gig at WWF in the 80’s. Eric put the squeeze on WWF to the point where they neared financial ruin and could barely pay their wrestlers, which is what actually lead to Bret Hart‘s departure. Vince put the squeeze on WCW to the point where it ate itself alive. The two promoters stole talent, traded lawsuits and did every other dirty tactic in the book. Bischoff even challenged McMahon to a fight which Vince “accepted” but never showed up for.

On the Dec. 4, 2000 Nitro, Steiner's return bumped the rating up an entire point from 1.9 to 2.9.

I’m willing to bet my life savings that Bischoff cried like a little girl for a week straight when he found out he lost WCW, then another month when he found out it was to Vince McMahon.

While WCW was slowly slipping downhill there were always hard workers, believe it or not, like Scott Steiner, Jeff Jarrett, Diamond Dallas Page, Rey Mysterio, Lance Storm and many others who went out and gave it their all every night. A slew of new talent was on the horizon but never got a chance to rise, most of them cruiserweights and all those guys from the Natural Born Thrillers. Torrie Wilson, Stacy Keibler, Midajah, Kimberly Page, and all those other chicks also deserve a round of applause for being extremely hot.

Nitro & Thunder weren't cancelled because of mismanagement, 2+ years of crappy writing from Bischoff/Nash/Sullivan/Russo, or because of wasteful spending. It died because AOL-Time Warner thought wrestling fans were stupid.

I guess the “moral of the story” on this feature, is that while we can mostly agree WWE’s quality has dropped since 2001, many of Vince’s decisions are strategically made to drop the stereotype that wrestling fans are dumb hicks and get better advertisers to keep Monday night wrestling alive and kicking.