Tag: WCW

July 2, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: King of the Ring review, Raw/WCW, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

With the business at a crossroads, Vince McMahon made the ultimate ballsy move. Starting in just a few weeks, unless plans change, and they do on a daily basis, Raw on TNN will be renamed “WCW Raw.”

TNN officially got the word on 6/22, although McMahon had the basic ideas formulated many weeks ago of having one existing prime time show be labeled with the WCW brand and the other be a WWF brand. McMahon’s feelings were that WWF vs. WCW will have to be promoted as both being equals to be able to create a separate entity and drive the same type of successful revenue streams when it comes to merchandising, licensing, ticket selling and PPV as the WWF. As negotiations fell through for the original 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. time slot on Saturday nights on TNN, McMahon said he felt that even if those negotiations hadn’t fallen through, that if WCW was given that time slot, it would immediately establish them as a secondary company.

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June 25, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Plans to relaunch WCW, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

The future of pro wrestling in North America will likely be determined by decisions and actions over the next three months based on the success of the introduction of WCW as a full-time promotion.

The World Wrestling Federation is planning a significant overhaul in aspects of its television as well as significant roster changes due to both the declining ratings pattern and the debut of WCW.

Details of the plans have not been released publicly since much of the end result will be explained through television storylines. What is known is WCW will have its own television show, far sooner than most expect it, and the plans that have been in place for more than one month regarding television appear to be still going through. There is talk of restructuring exactly how the lower rated shows, such as Heat, Superstars, Metal/Jakked and Livewire would be handled as well, since all have shown strong ratings declines in recent months and the Heat at WWF New York on MTV has been a failure to the point that even those in the company publicly have made fun of its ratings.

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June 18, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Potential Awards winners halfway through 2001

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

We’re roughly halfway through certainly one of the most unique years in the history of pro wrestling. We’ve had arguably the biggest news story of the past 15 years, the combination of the cancellation of pro wrestling on the Turner networks and the purchase of the name WCW by WWFE. In reality, we’ve had the folding of WCW and ECW and other companies, most notably RINGS, seemingly teetering on the edge. After seemingly having the midas touch for the past few years when it comes to promotion, Vince McMahon had his biggest and most publicized flop of his career with the XFL, and followed that with the quickest ratings decline of a show in a constant time slot in the history of the industry. We’ve heard a million rumors about start-ups in the U.S., none of which have gotten off the ground. Even the re-launched WCW brand is hardly viewed with the excitement it was even a few weeks ago.

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May 28, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Decline in Monday night wrestling ratings

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

Less than two months after the biggest show in the history of the industry, the entire wrestling industry seemed to hit a panic.

The Monday night audience for wrestling has declined to a scary degree coming off the end of Nitro and folding of WCW, down to a 4.2 rating on 5/21, for the best Raw show in a long time. This number was equivalent to the audience the show used to draw the few times a year it aired from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. on tennis or dog show night. The WWF not only has lost all of the former Nitro audience, as well as having dropped about 16 percent of its own core audience over a seven week period. House show business, on a strong run for the past few years, have started showing more signs of weakening than in any period in the last five years. Moreover, never in recent years had so much been said about the boring state of the WWF, with stagnation setting in.

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April 30, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Death of Johnny Valentine, WCW Nitro delayed

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

If you ask most wrestlers from the 50s through the 70s to do word association, and give the term, “physical toughness,” probably the name that would be mentioned most often, would be Johnny Valentine.

Valentine, who likely went more places and held more regional titles at a time when they really meant being the top man in a territory that did real business, than any wrestler of his era, passed away at the age of 72 at about 3 a.m. on 4/24, the same day as Lou Thesz’ 85th birthday, in Dallas. He’d been suffering numerous physical problems with his back and his heart which dated back, some of which dated back to the 70s, over the past year, which had gone heavily publicized.

Valentine was known in the 70s as the greatest wrestler never to hold the NWA world heavyweight title. He’s largely credited with driving a rebirth of the Mid Atlantic territory in the early 70s which eventually spawned wrestlers like Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat, who were to take the business to new heights as far as in-ring quality was concerned.

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April 23, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Relaunch of WCW, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

The Saturday morning tradition of Memphis studio wrestling, which dates back more than three decades, will continue in some form for at least two more months, but the final live show may have taken place over the weekend.

As mentioned last week, WMC-TV, which has housed the show in its television studios since the late 70s made the decision to cancel the show and informed Randy Hales of it last week. Even before WMC-TV got the show, it was a huge hit in Memphis, as it earlier aired live on a rival station in the market at their TV studio for many years dating back from when Lance Russell was a TV program director in the 60s and made the call to put studio wrestling, which was always strong in the market, on Saturday mornings. The decision was thought to be foolhardy at the time since Saturday mornings were thought to be the province of young children, and wrestling at the time drew an audience of largely adult males, who were thought not to be watching television during that time.

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April 9, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: WrestleMania X-Seven reviewed

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

Wrestlemania X-Seven, in almost every way, was the culmination of the wrestling boom.

Much like the fantasy of Wrestlemania III which was the high peak of the 1980s wrestling boom at the Pontiac Silverdome, this show, 14 years later, was all-around greatest major show the World Wrestling Federation ever produced. While Wrestlemania III was a good show overall, in front of the record crowd, it had an atrocious main event that time and memories have been very kind to, and really only one great match. The in-ring standards of the WWF with the new crew of wrestlers has gone through the roof in the past two years, blowing away the quality of any previous time period.

From a business standpoint, the show on 4/1 at the Reliant Astrodome was most likely the biggest money overall revenue generating pro wrestling event of all-time.

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April 2, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Final episode of WCW Monday Nitro

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

The purchase of World Championship Wrestling by WWF Entertainment this past week combined with the ending of all wrestling programming on the Turner networks changes the entire landscape of the pro wrestling industry forever.

The final episode of Nitro, at least on TNT, the show which forever changed television wrestling from the squash match/interview format to the idea of weekly blow-out almost PPV-like shows, started with the almost surreal image of Vince McMahon addressing the audience after purchasing the show. Perhaps even more telling, and the final moment of 29 years of wrestling on the Turner networks was a music video promoting the Steve Austin vs. Rock match at Wrestlemania. It was an amazing climax to the story, which ended a few days earlier, of wrestling on stations that had been the centerpiece of the opposition to McMahon for the past 16 years.

In between was the big television angle, simulcast on both Raw and Nitro, with Vince in Cleveland for Raw and son Shane in Panama City for Nitro.

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March 26, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: The imminent collapse of WCW

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

Even to the end, they couldn’t be completely honest to their own employees. There is no hiatus, and by the end of the day, TBS Inc. publicly announced it would no longer air wrestling on its stations after a 29-year run.

This clears the way for an expected purchase of what is left of the company, the name and trademarks owned by the company and the videotape library by the WWF, plus however they negotiate contracts of wrestlers, which is expected to go down within two weeks. The combination of the purchase and the end of wrestling on the Turner networks, may mark the biggest news story in the modern era of wrestling. If not the biggest, it ends the challenging story for first place, as the final end of the wrestling war started when Vince McMahon raided Hulk Hogan, David Shults, Roddy Piper and Gene Okerlund from Verne Gagne and Jim Crockett in December of 1983, signalling the start of the wrestling war, which he appeared to have won many times, but it was never final until now.

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March 19, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: The questionable future of WCW

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

There are many questions, and few answers, as it regards the future of World Championship Wrestling.

At press time, eerily similar to ECW just two plus months ago, there are only three shows remaining on the books, the Greed PPV show on 3/18 in Jacksonville, Nitro the next night in Gainesville, FL and the annual Spring Breakout Nitro on 3/26 in Panama City, FL.

Everything else is speculation. There are no shows scheduled for April and nobody seems to have an answer as to what will air in the wrestling time slots on Monday and Wednesday night on TNT and TBS. While there were plans for a 5/6 PPV show from Las Vegas and at one point Eric Bischoff was targeting that show as a major spectacular bringing in a lot of new talent, all previous target dates have been changed because the sale hasn’t gone through and Bischoff doesn’t have the full power to execute his plans and make his changes.

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WCW Saturday Night added to WWE Network

Posted on by Bryan Rose

WCW Saturday Night has officially been added to the WWE Network.

WWE.com posted an article today highlighting that Saturday Night is the latest addition to the Network. Over 50 hours of content have been uploaded, starting with the April 4, 1992 episode, where the flagship World Championship Wrestling program was rebranded as WCW Saturday Night, and runs through January 2, 1993. Names highlighted in the content include Stunning Steve Austin, Dustin Rhodes, Rick Rude, Sting and Ricky Steamboat.

World Championship Wrestling on TBS started to air in the early 1970s as a show for Georgia Championship Wrestling. It would eventually become the top program for Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling promotion until 1995, when WCW Nitro became the company’s top priority. With the addition of WCW Thunder in 1998, Saturday Night became a C-show with little name value.

The show’s format was changed to a recap show in 2000. After a switch to daytime and its runtime cut to an hour, the show ended on August 19, 2000.

March 12, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Future of WCW and ECW

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

We are clearly in a transitional period for pro wrestling in the United States, and a dangerous transition at that.

The big stories of the first few months of 2001 were the chickens coming home to roost of the huge money losses of 2000–the official folding and impending bankruptcy of ECW, which may be announced before you read this but even if it hasn’t been is an inevitability, and the sale of WCW, which may not be exactly smooth sailing but is still expected to go through. Even if the sale goes through before you read this (and it appears it will be at the earliest a week or so later), it leaves a world of question marks for its future. And like while following the fortunes of ECW and WCW last year, the questions, like for virtually the last year, really aren’t about now. They are about one year from now and where this business is headed if and when it stabilizes..

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WCW Saturday Night reportedly coming to WWE Network next week

Posted on by Bryan Rose

More of WCW’s long running Saturday night program is coming to the WWE Network next week, a new report indicates.

Episodes from 1992 through 1994 will be uploaded to the Network starting on April 2, WWE Network News reports. It will be seperate from the World Championship Wrestling shows that have already been uploaded, which has episodes from 1985 through 1989. World Championship Wrestling was rebranded into WCW Saturday Night on April 4, 1992, so that may be the starting point. WWE Network News estimates that up to 100 hours of content will be uploaded. 

Saturday Night was WCW’s flagship show until 1995 when WCW Nitro was introduced and changed the wrestling world forever with a live program that rivaled WWE Raw for years. With the addition of WCW Thunder three years later, Saturday Night eventually became a meaningless “C-show” program that largely featured WCW’s midcard and Power Plant trainees. The show continued to run until 2000, when it was turned into a recap show and ultimately cancelled altogether on August 19, 2000. 

March 5, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: No Way Out review, WCW shake ups, more

Posted on by F4W Staff

The uncertainty of the future of WCW became more apparent this week as all long-term plans changed one more time stemming from record low ratings last week as well as the near collapse of the company sale.

After both Nitro and Thunder last week drew record low ratings (2.05 and 1.52 respectively), Eric Bischoff made the decision late in the week to significantly re-write the largely completed Nitro for 2/26 and bring back Booker T. This completely went against the long-term angle of having all the top babyface stars (Hulk Hogan, Bill Goldberg, T, Sting, Kevin Nash and possibly Diamond Dallas Page at one point) put on the shelf and to be brought back en masse for the new beginning when the storyline aspect of the new owners taking over takes place to try and get strong start-up momentum and turn the company around.

This all took place with the realistic backdrop of the sale of WCW to Fusient Media Ventures almost falling apart in mid-week when examination of the latest expenses and loss revealed a more severe downturn in the business than the prospective new owners were expecting as well as problems with the new ownership group from the TBS side. 

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WCW Thunder episodes now available on the WWE Network

Posted on by Bryan Rose

Episodes of WCW Thunder were added to the WWE Network this morning.

So far, WWE has uploaded most episodes of WCW’s secondary show from the start of the program on January 8, 1998 through September 1999. Some episodes during this time period are still not up as of this writing, but more may be added by the end of the day.

WWE Network News originally reported that episodes of WCW Thunder would be added on March 19. It was theorized that the reason why it had taken so long for the show to appear on the network was due to the lawsuit against WWE by Buff Bagwell and Raven over royalty fees associated with the WWE Network. That lawsuit was dropped back in December.

WCW Thunder ran for a little over three years, ending its run on March 21, 2001. It was the final wrestling program on TBS, which had broadcasted professional wrestling for 29 years before a regime change cancelled all professional wrestling on Turner networks.