Vince Russo's WCW 2000 Day's

[Barley]

So recently I've been re-watching a bit of WCW 2000. I'm in two minds about some of the stuff that went down. I really enjoyed some of the stuff he did like the 'New Blood' feuding with the legends but then there's stuff like finishing a match with dropping buckets of fake blood on wrestlers. Everything seems a bit hit and miss to me and it almost seems as if he was moving from idea to idea in a bid to try and capture something from his WWF days. By the way I totally don't buy into the idea that Vince Russo killed WCW. I believe WCW was already a sinking ship before he got on board.

[Bosco Blick]

Didn't Hogan say he thinks Vince McMahon sent Russo and Ferrara to destroy WCW?

 

After watching Pro Wrestling's Insiders Vol 2 the other day, Russo and Ferrara both say they were done with the Wrestling business before they even signed with WCW, so I'm not sure if either of them gave their all for the company. I think they were both more interested in collecting their wages.

 

I wouldn't like to put all the blame on Russo though, as yeah WCW was in a right state before they joined.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

I wouldn't like to put all the blame on Russo though, as yeah WCW was in a right state before they joined.

It wasnt really though. I bet anyone in wrestling today would give both their bollocks to have the fanbase, live attendance, television ratings, financial backing and pay-per-view buyrates WCW had in mid-1999. It had fallen big from his peak, but if they brought in someone who had a clue it would have been saved and probably thrived. Sure, the TV was shit and didnt make sense before Russo took over, but the mistakes Bischoff made were financial risks that Turner couldnt justify so they sacked him (Bisch lost massive money on musical acts, the WCW Grill and all those outside projects he failed with). WCW still had a huge hardcore following. When Russo and Ferrera took over the audience just fucked off. I'm not a big Russo hater, but he should shoulder a massive amount of blame for that one. WCW wasnt like TNA. WCW has enough name value to where if you heard it was doing well again, word of mouth could have brought some of the fans back. Bischoff and Johnny Ace were making the product class again.

[Dirty Eddie]

Oi, leave the Nitro Grill alone. Had a lovely steak there and got to watch Nitro.

[mackie]

To WCW's credit the Nitro Grill was awesome i got to have dinner while watching Spring Stampede 2000 while sitting in a ring. There was also a really cool merchandise stand at the front with some quite cool stuff if i remember correctly

[Bosco Blick]

I wouldn't like to put all the blame on Russo though, as yeah WCW was in a right state before they joined.

It wasnt really though. I bet anyone in wrestling today would give both their bollocks to have the fanbase, live attendance, television ratings, financial backing and pay-per-view buyrates WCW had in mid-1999. It had fallen big from his peak, but if they brought in someone who had a clue it would have been saved and probably thrived. Sure, the TV was shit and didnt make sense before Russo took over, but the mistakes Bischoff made were financial risks that Turner couldnt justify so they sacked him (Bisch lost massive money on musical acts, the WCW Grill and all those outside projects he failed with). WCW still had a huge hardcore following. When Russo and Ferrera took over the audience just fucked off. I'm not a big Russo hater, but he should shoulder a massive amount of blame for that one. WCW wasnt like TNA. WCW has enough name value to where if you heard it was doing well again, word of mouth could have brought some of the fans back. Bischoff and Johnny Ace were making the product class again.

 

True. But while they had the fanbase and the talent, it was the talent that ran the show, and that was the ultimate problem. What they really needed was just to get rid of people like Hogan and Flair who controlled their creative direction as part of their contract, but of course a major clear out would have been near impossible and would have taken more time than they had. Once Russo and Ferrara realised they had a job on their hands dealing with all the big names, they seemed to throw the towel in and that's when the show got a bit silly and rather embarrassing.

[Dirty Eddie]

To WCW's credit the Nitro Grill was awesome i got to have dinner while watching Spring Stampede 2000 while sitting in a ring. There was also a really cool merchandise stand at the front with some quite cool stuff if i remember correctly

 

Yeah the staff were really friendly, they let me and my mate look like tools borrowing all the belts and getting silly photos with them. I still love the old WCW Cruiser belt. Plus all the food was wrestler branded. I believe I ordered a Booker T-Bone.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

What they really needed was just to get rid of people like Hogan and Flair who controlled their creative direction as part of their contract, but of course a major clear out would have been near impossible and would have taken more time than they had.

They did get rid of people like Hogan and Flair. Hogan and Flair drew the biggest business of 1999. That was one of their first big mistakes. Headline talent is always going to have influence. Russo's biggest ever buyrate was a promised match between Hogan vs Sting on Russo's first PPV. That never happened. Giving the fans what they wanted was a thing WCW had in late 99/2000.

[air_raid]

What they really needed was just to get rid of people like Hogan and Flair who controlled their creative direction as part of their contract,

 

I believe far far too much is made of these clauses. Admittedly it seems that working with Hogan can prove tricky if he doesn't want to do what you'd like - Shawn Michaels' remarks on the Hulkster seem to verify that - but on the whole, I'm not sure how much scrutiny it holds up to.

 

For instance, if Flair had the creative control as you seem to think he did, there was certainly no shortage of people that Flair didn't mind losing to during his run. Roddy Piper is another that reportedly had the clause, and he let the Horsemen beat him like a bitch on Nitro and even did jobs for Mark fucking Bagwell before the end.

 

As for times when we know the clauses were enforced, other than the mighty Hulk Hogan, you have Goldberg refusing to work with Jericho on World War 3, but in reality Bischoff didn't seem to want the match to happen anyway, and he if he and Tezza had thought it was worth doing, they could have persuaded Billy Boy it was a good idea for business. Moot point, since Goldy had already been promised the night off and wasn't going to be working anyone that night anyway, and it was theoretically the only PPV where you could have had the World Champion having such a match on the undercard (with the battle royal as the main event). No big deal, no great loss.

 

The other I can think of is when Hitman refused to lose cleanly to Dean Malenko's Texas Cloverleaf on Thunder the week before his confrontation with Goldberg in Toronto. Bret thought it was stupid to make him look weak on tv when he was about to be positioned opposite Bill, especially the week after he lost a clean pin to Booker T. He was right.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Also Flair had no creative control. I'm sure it wasnt his idea to lose to the whole company, get put into a mental home, get buried in the desert and have his head shaved.

[insert_name_here]

On a scale of 1 to 10 how wrong is it that i loved all those ridiculous storylines involving Flair, especially the mental asylum stuff?

[Magnum]

Russo's WCW 2000 stuff is a guilty pleasure of mine. It was chaotic and often nonsensical, but it was never boring. If you took it at all seriously, you'd hate it, but I thought it was a lot more fun than what had preceded it for most of 1999. Plus, unlike most, I loved the Jeff Jarrett 'Chosen One' character and fully supported his position at the top of the card.

 

In terms of where it went wrong, I think Russo took a lot of inspiration from ECW in both his WWF and WCW runs, but in 97/98 the WWF ended up with the positive aspects like the raw, counter-culture feel and gimmicks and angles that were fresh to the majority of wrestling fans. When he tried to repeat that 2-3 years later in WCW, the gimmicks and angles felt like retreads, and the 'rawness' and 'edginess' translated to a cheap and tacky feel to the programme, the sort of thing that prevented ECW from ever becoming truly mainstream.

 

I also think the fact that it went up against the WWF during its most perfect run of booking, TV and match quality in living memory was a huge problem. You couldn't help but compare it unfavourably to what was going on on the other channel. Though WCW was fun, you couldn't invest anything in it because they'd turn characters and abandon angles and storylines at the drop of a hat. For that reason, it could get frustrating, and I'd need regular breaks from watching it. If, on the other hand, Russo's WCW was programmed against the sort of sedate, formulaic programming the WWE was generally putting out 2004-2009, I'd choose to watch WCW almost every time.

[CleetusVanDamme]

It's fun to watch, especially now, but that's mainly due to having Nash, Flair, Goldberg, Sting, Hogan, Steiner, The Cat etc.. on every episode. The sheer mental-ness, and desperation to reclaim their throne (seriously, FUCKING TRIPLE CAGE WARGAMES!, on free tv) made it fun as well like, but without that still amazing roster I'd never have kept tuning in, let alone re-watched it all a decade or so later.

 

 

There is some really good stuff in there too though. The Goldberg heel run especially, it was a stupid idea, but executed well, he played the vicious bastard perfectly, and the beatdown on Jim Duggan's kidney remains one of the most dastardly things I've ever seen done in wrestling. Genuinely shocking.

[Allstar69]

Also Flair had no creative control. I'm sure it wasnt his idea to lose to the whole company, get put into a mental home, get buried in the desert and have his head shaved.

I think Flair knows what he was doing if he didnt want to do it He seems the type that would not do it. All that went on seemed to me like he either come up with it himself or was happy to do it

[Barley]

Russo made a good point in the shoot he did a few years ago when he said do you think a guy like Vince Russo would go up to Ric Flair, a wrestling legend and demand he shave his head on live TV.