Tag: ECW

Whomever winds up in charge of WCW is facing an uphill battle. Largely, of trying to get a snowball gathering momentum as it has picked up speed for more than a year rolling down a hill, to reverse its position and almost magically roll upwards.

To understand that analogy is to understand just how deep the problems are. This is not just a situation where a business had a great year, set an expense budget based on that year, and suddenly business was way down and the budget is starting to bleed red ink. This is an entertainment business that is hot as hell when it’s the in thing, and when it isn’t….well, it can survive at a certain level, but since expenses are way above that level, short-term, things don’t look good. And if things continue unchanged in the same basic direction without improvements, six months from now, they won’t be able to give those tickets away. More important, it is one thing for wrestling go down because the peak has hit, for overexposure reasons, etc. 

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Although wrestlers were singing “Ding, Dong, the Witch is dead,” Friday night in Baltimore, when the word of Eric Bischoff’s re-assignment within Turner (read that as a nice way of saying firing) reached the wrestlers, once the initial happiness wore off and reality set in, the reality is little has changed.

Bischoff was replaced for a number of reasons, a combination of numerous bad deals and falling ratings, house shows and buy rates. The company temporarily is in the hands of Bill Busch, whose title has been changed from Vice President of Strategic Planning to Executive Vice President. The creative control at this point is in the hands of television producer Craig Leathers, who has the final say, and the same booking committee headed by Kevin Nash, Dusty Rhodes and Kevin Sullivan that got the company into this mess, although everyone seems to be jockeying for position to garner power and get creative input

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Publications around the world have been coming up with All-century teams or best of the century performers in all forms of sports and entertainment. Many lists will probably be coming out for pro wrestlers as well. The biggest problem with such lists is comparing entirely different performers who are doing entirely different businesses. Sure, baseball, football and basketball have changed. The players are bigger. The rules have been tweaked, but they are essentially the same game. Pro wrestling re-invents itself constantly and trying to compare and rate Steve Austin against Strangler Lewis is not only difficult, but in reality, impossible and maybe even stupid.

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Amidst rumors flying everywhere of the possible demise of the company and others who are talking that the company is a short period away from growing bigger than ever, the ECW Hardcore Heaven PPV came off like a show that was a bridge for the company to something new, but when it was over, there were still no answers over whether what is new is good news or bad news.

It is hardly a secret that ECW is plagued with financial problems. There are wrestlers owed large sums of money. Those close to Shane Douglas, whose departure from the company, while expected, came out day earlier than expected resulting in him no-showing the PPV, is rumored to be owed in excess of $80,000 (some reports have that figure at $100,000). The stories about the bounced checks are legion. There are some really strange stories about finances, including the often asked question of how the company met payroll and… 

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