For
the three main American wrestling promotions, 1999
was a year of change. The WWF was forced to shuffle
their main event picture after injuries robbed them
of key performers, and their head writer fled the
coop. For ECW, growing pains from their sudden,
rapid expansion and a walk-out by two key wrestlers
left the promotion trying to live up to their own
expectations. For WCW, change seemed to come every
week; new bookers, new Vice Presidents, new wrestlers,
new crises.
As
the bitter cold of winter faded away, though, and
the first spring of the new millenium dawned, so
did the hopes of fans of the three promotions: the
WWF had new stars and was forging ahead without
two of their biggest names with nary a bump. ECW
was slowly but cleverly shifting their product,
yet keeping a foot in that which brought them to
the dance. And executives in WCW had high hopes
for a creative merger of two minds to salvage the
sinking WCW ship.
The
month of April would turn the whole American wrestling
industry upside-down and inside-out.
The
road to rebirth--approaching April 2000:
Before April 2000, nobody really knew the name Robert
Zicari outside of southern California. Before the
summer of 1999, Zicari was known only as a pornographer,
and even in that industry, he and his product were
considered among the lowest, most filthy and degrading
product available (and in porn, that's saying something).
In the summer of '99, Zicari--better known as Rob
Black--started Xtreme Pro Wrestling, a small-time
indy in California that eschewed all scientific
skill and workrate for sleaze and deathmatch-style
violence that ECW didn't sink to even in their bingo-hall
days. His shows were replete with women from his
stable of adult performers, and his wrestlers were
castoffs even among the indies, men destined to
bleed buckets for enough money to get an extra value
meal at McDonald's. In short, XPW and Rob Black
served as much a function in the wrestling industry
as groups like the PTC: none at all.
Until
that April.
Some
of the following, it should be noted, cannot or
has not been verified, for one very simple reason:
nobody can agree on the truth. The events of April
2000 were, remain, and unless time travel is invented
and someone goes back and listens in, will likely
remain a subject of conjecture, opinion and good
ol' guesswork, no matter what Rob Black says.
What
is known is
how everything got started: April was a month circled
in red for fans of all three promotions. In the
WWF, the road out
of WrestleMania was just as important as the road
to it; typically, the post-'Mania season saw new wrestlers
debut with the company (either new signees or call-ups
from the developmentals), while wrestlers who stepped
into the spotlight at WrestleMania looked for ways
to use their momentum to catapult them up the card.
In
ECW, April promised something huge for the promotion,
as TV commercials promised a "(r)evolution"
(their words) and their website, down for months
and replaced with the ominous letter-from-Heyman
splash page, had been replaced on March 1st with
a timer counting down to their April 13th show from
Los Angeles, which would also mark their return
to full-time to live television after the Lolita/Francine
exposure incident. Those with the inside skinny
knew that this was the final transition date for
ECW's long-awaited "shift in philosophy".
What that amounted to was anybody's guess, though.
For
WCW and its fans, April 10th was more then just
a date. More then just a huge event. Dubbed "The
Night The World Changed", April 10th would
mark the first show under the Eric Bischoff/Vince
Russo regime. The prior week, Nitro had taken the
night off, showing a best-of show hosted by Tony
Schiavone, who promised that under the new regime,
the show would return to its former glory; yes,
Tony flat-out admitted that Nitro sucked, but Bischoff
and Russo would "restore the glory and majesty
of WCW" (Tony's words). Rumors abounded about
what kind of new WCW viewers would see; a new WCW
logo had been unveiled, and a new set was all but
certain. But the roster, announcers, the status
of championships, and how they would explain this
blatant rebooting was a mystery.
One
mystery--the roster--would come into clarity during
the two weeks between the last Nitro of the Sullivan
regime and the relaunch: WCW executives, facing
bottom-line-watching Time Warner execs who wanted
the company to look as shiny as possible for the
AOL merger, started cutting expenses. Aside from
discontinuing the ridiculous practice of flying
everyone to
every event, regardless of usage, the execs took
deep cuts at the roster; the sprawling multitude
of luchadores that never amounted to anything got
the boot. Ditto all the wrestlers, like Kevin Wacholz
and Lanny Poffo, the company had signed and never
used. Several openers and lower-mid-carders also
saw their jobs deleted. None of this really surprised
anyone; what did were the big cuts. Sid Vicious,
prone to "injuries" that often found him
rehabbing at softball parks across the country,
was dumped. Randy Savage, a man for whom "mercurial"
is an understatement, also got the boot. The bloated
guaranteed money contracts were renegotiated, and
those who balked were given the option of sitting
at home, collecting no money and waiting for their
terms to run out, or take a pay-cut. And the dead-weight
contracts of Kevin Nash and Scott Hall were once
and for all terminated. Sadly, while Russo and Bischoff
now had license to scour the indies and secure some
new (cheaper) blood for their roster, their old
harvesting field, ECW, was now out of bounds.
Enter
Rob Black and XPW.
The
con--April 2000:
As
soon as WCW finished their purge, the free agent
market became a pirahna pond (the WWF, to no one's
surprise, scooped up Kevin Nash and Scott Hall).
With some money to play around with, Bischoff and
Russo went shopping, only to find that many of the
best up-and-comers were getting snapped up; the
2000 Super 8 winner, Christopher Daniels, signed
to ECW, as did indy tag sensations Christian York
and Joey Matthews and martial arts wizard Low-Ki.
And the ones who weren't sewn up turned WCW down
flat, either too hesitant to tie their futures to
a company as turbulent as WCW, or, thanks to the
good relationship ECW had cultivated with many indies,
many workers were simply content to wait it out
for ECW to look their way.
With
their vision of a young versus old feud evaporating
right before their eyes, Bischoff and Russo scrambled
for a savior of sorts, and stumbled upon one (or
so they thought) in Rob Black. To this day, nobody
will comment on what transpired between the three
during private, closed-door meetings, and, in fact,
until April 10th rolled around, nobody outside the
three of them even knew about the meetings. All
that is known is that, as April 10th approached,
the rumors about April 10th and the aftermath swirled
like the winds of a hurricane; one rumor has the
entire past 4 years--dating back to the incursion
of Scott Hall in 1996--would be erased as a dream
of Sting's. Some speculated a Sports Entertainment
vs. Tradition feud, pitting Russo and a stable of
wrestlers against Bischoff and same. And, while
nobody knew it at the time, WCW had a nice little
bonus secret invested in Rob Black.
April
10th came and went; WCW launched their reboot by
simply vacating all the titles and pitting the "New
Blood" (which had "youngsters" like
Scott Steiner and Booker T, both of whom had been
in the business long enough to not be "young"
anymore) against the "Millionaire's Club",
and instead of Russo vs. Bischoff, the two were
aligned together,
to "correct the mistake" they'd allowed
to perpetuate. The entire roster was involved in
the war, thus turning the entire Nitro into one
amazingly cohesive storyline. The Millionaire's
Club were routinely and resoundingly humiliated
as they underestimated the New Blood, only to wind
up on the bad side of a beating. It was alarmingly
good, and despite the WWF countering with the return
of Hall and Nash, Nitro's ratings actually jumped,
chewing into Raw's by way more then anybody could've
guessed (not enough to really scare Vince McMahon,
but enough to signal a possible changing of the
winds). Pundits were left scratching their heads;
did WCW have a secret pocket of loyalists just waiting
for the brand to be revitalized? Would it just turn
out to be a one-week spike, and the next week would
see ratings bottom out again?
Thunder
would see Bischoff and Russo play their controversial
ace in the hole; the overriding plot of Thunder
was of the Millionaire's Club getting payback on
the New Blood. By the end of the night, the crafty
veterans had managed to score some convincing victories
both in and out of the ring that seemed to signal
that maybe the New Blood weren't ready to step up
after all. As Thunder closed, the Millionaire's
Club sauntered out into the parking lot, basking
in the pride of their victories ... only to get
the raw end of a hardcore beatdown by Kid Kaos,
GQ Money, Supreme, The Messiah and several other
of XPW's roster, cheered on by master thespians
(if one counts group sex as an acting accomplishment)
like Kristi Myst and Lizzy Borden. Rob Black shook
hands with Bischoff and Russo as the XPW "wrestlers"
attacked without prejudice (and sometimes, without
protection, as several wrestlers were busted open
hardway from their sloppy "workrate").
XPW was to be the nuclear bomb that the stiff old
codgers couldn't counter, the weapon to blow them
out of the water. The live crowd, although confused,
reacted exactly as Bischoff and Russo hoped.
Except
that viewers at home who changed channels over to
Fox saw Kaos, Supreme, Money, Rob Black, Kristi
Myst and, of all people, Shane Douglas,
in the front row of Unleashed, heckling a scientifically
brilliant Christopher Daniels/Steve Corino match.
The
next day, TurnerSports executives were furious, and rightfully so. Thunder was pre-taped; Unleashed
wasn't. The explanation was obvious. More then one
person pointed out the irony of this happening to
WCW, given how they'd done the same thing to the
WWF with Rick Rude a few years before. But the irony
of it, and the logistics of it didn't go to explain
how or
why this happened.
To this day, there is no clear answer ... but, if
one is to believe unnamed sources, gossip, the notoriously
unreliable mouth of Rob Black and circumstancial
evidence, then a picture can be painted.
Supposedly,
Rob Black's deal with WCW was a per-appearance deal
for XPW wrestlers and valets to have a short run
on WCW to help bolster the angle. WCW never bothered
to mention that they'd also be viewing the performances
as auditions, and would pursue signing those who
showed promise; the fact that Kid Kaos and Kristi
Myst kept appearing past the termination of the
angle lends credence to the rumors of the appearences
being clandestine auditions. XPW was to get a fee
as well, giving the promotion some extra cash.
Now
the situation becomes murky (as if it weren't already),
as the appearence of XPW on ECW television is viewed
as one of three things, depending on the person:
a publicity stunt cooked up by XPW to get some free
publicity--all the participants, save Myst, were
wearing XPW shirts. Aside from heckling the product--calling
it "fake extreme", "bored-core"
and screaming their promotion's initials--their
appearence on TV was remarkably tame. Of course,
after cameras went off, there was a verifiable incident
in the parking lot of the arena between XPW and
a group of ECW wrestlers, when (supposedly) GQ Money
grabbed Lolita's breast and made and propositioned
her. The ensuing brawl would send Supreme and GQ
Money to the hospital with broken noses, a clump
of hair ripped out of Myst's scalp, and find New
Jack sent to jail for "pulling a shiv"
that nobody could ever reproduce on Rob Black (the
charges would be thrown out when none of the XPW
wrestlers' stories could support one another on
what happened). It was only by the efforts of Shane
Douglas that the situation ended up diffused; when
this got out, many assumed he might've been using
XPW to lobby a job back in ECW. That Douglas got
hired back into ECW a couple months later was chalked
up to "coincidence" by Heyman and Douglas.
Another
theory says it was a stunt cooked up between ECW and XPW. The fact that XPW kept getting camera
time seems to support this, as does Joey Styles'
referring to them even when the camera wasn't on
the invaders. Add to that the fact that Heyman and
Black had done business prior to Black getting into
the pro wrestling business, and suddenly, the kid-gloves
approach to them being on TV doesn't look so out
of place. Why
they would do such a thing in collusion is a mystery
nobody has bothered to clear up in the ensuing years.
Or,
the third possibility: it was a revenge stunt, financed
by the WWF, to try and disrupt ECW's big relaunch
show. It was widely known that Vince still wanted
some kind of revenge for ECW booking Madison Square
Garden; he couldn't pull stunts like he did in the
80's, such as blackmailing PPV distributors not
to carry his competitors' product, and the audience
was too big now for counter-programming to be effective.
And, hey, nobody could say Vince wouldn't stoop
to such a level; the "Billionaire Ted"
skits, the entire D-X/Nitro segments and the backdoor
payments for the salaries of Hall and Nash in ECW
were all petty guerrilla revenge tactics, no matter
how cleverly executed. Hell, read the lyrics to
Vince's song "Stand Back"; the concepts
of "Vince McMahon" and "petty"
are practically surgically fused at the hip.
The
truth? Well, the truth would seem to be a mixture of all three. Certainly, XPW did benefit from the appearance. And
some clever snoopsters managed to dig into XPW's
financials, and was able to determine that whatever
payoff XPW got from WCW, their bank accounts had
gotten a sudden influx of cash well beyond the WCW
payment. When lawsuits stared getting filed--WCW
vs. XPW, WCW vs. WWF (yes, much to the chagrin of
his bosses, Bischoff went to the litigation well
again), , ECW vs. XPW (the WWF reportedly were about to file when someone wisely
pointed out that filing a suit based on breach of
contract tacitly admitted business dealings with
Black)--the picture, even though no one was talking,
became hard to ignore: Rob Black had played everyone.
He'd taken a payoff from WCW to ingratiate XPW into
the mainstream and get his promotion an injection
of cash. He'd taken Vince's money and promised to
disrupt ECW's show on the same night as Thunder,
then turned around and took another payoff, this one from Heyman, to downplay the disruption,
get some publicity for themselves and maybe stir
even a little more buzz for ECW. Eight years later,
the only thing Heyman, McMahon, Russo and Bischoff
can come together on is a lie, even if they're not
telling the same lie.
Russo
(from an MSN chat in 2002): "Black and his
bottom-feeders were there for a one-shot. Anything
else they, or anyone else tells you, they're full
of shit. They took our money, screwed us like the
whores they are, and snuck out the window to work
for someone else. Then Bischoff files a bunch of
stupid lawsuits and throws me under the bus and
gets me suspended for a week while he tries to short-circuit
all our long-range plans. I'll tell you what, Bischoff,
Black, Heyman ... they can all burn in hell."
Bischoff
(from a Q&A on WCW.com in July 2000): "The
incident on Thursday, April 13th, 2000, with members
of the Xtreme Pro Wrestling promotion was an idea
solely born and pushed by Vince Russo. He wanted
to bring in the smut and sickness he peddled on
his former employer's show, and if things hadn't
unfolded how they did, he woulda overrun WCW with
that sickness. I'm almost glad they went on the
other show. It got them out of our hair a lot quicker."
McMahon
(from the McMahon DVD): "Anybody who tells you that I paid XPW to invade ECW obviously
doesn't know how I operate. To think that I'd get
revenge by sending some backyard wrestler rejects
to sit in their front row and heckle them ... that's
not revenge. Burying them in the ratings,
that's revenge. Buying their company, that's revenge. The whole XPW mess? Just a bunch of nonsense
dreamed up by conspiracy theory nutcases in their
parents' basement."
Heyman
(from Forever Hardcore): "McMahon is full of shit, okay? So's Russo. Bischoff might be
the only one besides me who's telling the truth,
and I don't trust that two-face snake as far as
I can throw him. XPW screwed all of us; they screwed WCW by taking their money and making
them look like idiots appearing on two shows in
one night. They screwed Vince by making him look
like an incompetent goon. And they screwed me. One
of their thugs tried to manhandle Amy--Lolita--and
they got their asses handed to them. The only good
thing I got out of it was I stole Shane Douglas
back after we smoothed a few things over."
Indeed,
for all of Rob Black's creativity in playing a triple-agent,
the one thing he didn't think of was that he was
a small-time promoter of a garbage fed and a low-brow
pornographer, trying to stick it to much
larger companies. By the end of the year, legal
fees would drain the coffers of XPW, killing off
the promotion in November. And the two XPW performers
to make the leap would end up haunted by their pasts;
Kaos would stall out as a jobber in WCW before being
let go, while Kristi Myst's XXX-rated past would
get her fired only a couple weeks later.
Relaunch--Spring
2000:
While
the XPW Con-job (as it would come to be known) made
asses out of the wrestling industry, and gave wannabe
smarks something to debate for years to come, the
fact that the Big Three were undergoing spring relaunches
(or, in the WWF's case, the post-'Mania spring freshening)
was not lost on fans, pundits and internet smarks.
Expectations were high for all three shows, and
initially, none failed to disappoint.
In
the WWF, Triple H became the first heel to walk
out of WrestleMania main event as the victor, when
Vince McMahon turned on The Rock. The feud continued
through the spring, with the pair trading the belt
back and forth in match after stellar match. Looming
over Triple H's shoulder, however, was a most unexpected
feud: Hall and Nash, who played off the ECW/WWF
storyline, came in with a vengeance for being abandoned
by Vince. Furthermore, they were enraged that Triple
H would take in "curtain jerkers" like
The New Age Outlaws into D-X (in a memorable unscripted
quote that earned a lot of backstage heat, Nash
commented on the Outlaws; "How did you two
slop-artists make it off Shotgun? Oh, I'm sorry,
you're both obviously qualified people. It musta
been two other idiots who I saw feuding over an
Fat Elvis impersonator."), but didn't extend
the offer to Hall and Nash upon their arrival. In
fact, if one criticism could be leveled at the post-'Mania
WWF, it was that seemingly every
angle pointed back to Triple H; there was a burgeoning
love triangle with Kurt Angle and Stephanie, a part-time
feud with Chris Jericho, the Big Show lobbied for
his yet-unreceived rematch, and the omni-present
threat of the Radicals, the stable consisting of
Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero and Goldberg, loomed
over Triple H's reign (and anyone else, for that
matter).
One
thing that didn't change, of course, was the company's
content; as much as ever, sex and violence ruled
the day. As a matter of fact, despite the architect
of the WWF's morphing into, as WCW partisan Bob
Ryder once called them, "Raw Is Porn",
the WWF's content managed to up the ante even more
in the new millennium. Women's wrestler Stacy Carter
flashed her breasts after winning the Women's Championship
on PPV, and thereafter, her entire gimmick was built
around teases of nudity; this turned the entire
women's division into a parade of matches designed
to get women stripped down to underwear. And, just
to show the company was mature, they decided to
spoof the Parents' Television Council--the fed's
primary nemesis over content--by creating a stable
called Right To Censor, complete with wrestlers
dressed like Mormon missionaries. Fans of the "edgy"
WWF product lapped up t-shirts with "SUCK IT!"
on them and Diva lingerie posters, but the critics
were beginning to notice the fraying edges; plotlines
started and stopped without notice, matches were
generic punch-kick-finisher sequences, and the actual
amount of in-ring content was dwarfed by vignettes
and promos. Once again, the WWF's response to critics
was that they just didn't "get it".
ECW's
date with destiny, April 13th, proved to be probably
the most dramatic in terms of scale. Between the
countdown splash page on ECW's website, and a shift
towards more scientific wrestling, fans were left
puzzled as to whether the control Taz and his cohorts
had won really did extend to the front office. On
April 13th, they got their (kayfabe) answer, as
two legendary figures in wrestling were welcomed
to the ring by Paul Heyman: Ricky Steamboat and
Ted DiBiase. With Heyman's help, they went on to
explain that recent changes in the look and feel
of the product had been done to attract investors,
and that DiBiase was now a partner in ECW. Steamboat,
it was explained, would act as ECW's Commissioner,
enforcing some of the rules changes, which included
a Code Of Honor that dictated all matches--unless
otherwise noted in a "Fight Without Honor"--began
and ended with handshakes, the establishment of
a "Stable Rule", which forced champions
with stables to keep their mates out of the match,
or face title forfeiture, proper respect for authority
figures and penalties for sneak attacks. The new
ECW--the E now stood for Evolved--would pay homage
to the old school values, while retaining its cutting-edge
wrestling style, they promised, and to that effort,
they also said the company would now support two
championships: the ECW World Honored Championship,
and the ECW World Extreme Championship, with neither
title being valued more then the other (the tag
titles, however, would bridge the divisions). Competitors
chasing the Extreme Championship would find the
Code Of Honor more lax, but would also face more
extreme wrestling conditions, while the Honored
Championship would be fought under stricter, more
pure wrestling conditions.
When
it came time to launch the new titles, though, ECW
World and TV Champion Rob Van Dam was given a choice:
he could either pursue the Television Title and
forfeit the World, which would be renamed the Extreme
Title, or he could keep the World and face Taz to
unify the ECW World and Taz's disputed Pro Wrestling
Evolved Championship, which would make the new Honored
Championship. RVD would choose the World Title,
and, under threat of termination, Taz faced and
lost to RVD at a special April event. The Extreme
Championship Tournament would also conclude at Barely
Legal, with Tommy Dreamer facing off against old-school
representative Steve Corino. The PPV would fade
to black on the image of RVD in the ring, celebrating
his championship victory alongside Tommy Dreamer,
the company's first Extreme Champion.
The
special April event caused much hullabaloo in the
industry, as Heyman and Sapolsky shared the same
vision: that the new ECW was a chance to snare more
new viewers, and that properly executed, a "rollout
event" would do just that. So, rather then
present a PPV, ECW negotiated a 3-hour block of
time on Fox on a Sunday night, heavily sponsored
and presented with limited commercial breaks (two
10-minute breaks at the top of the second and third
hours, while the live audience enjoyed performances
by a band). The new rules of ECW were officially
put into play, and along with matches (including
the two title matches), introductory vignettes were
produced to introduce the ECW stalwarts to the new
viewers. Titled "ECW: The (r)Evolution Begins",
and broadcasting from a sold-out Norfolk Scope in
Virginia, the event proved a success in every way
possible; Unleashed's ratings nudged up and May's
PPV buyrates would increase, while critics and fans
showered the event as a welcome breath of fresh
air, showcasing wrestling in a way that neither
WWF or WCW were doing anymore.
Behind
the scenes, the changes in ECW were welcomed enthusiastically,
by both the boys (some of who, like Bret Hart, had
no desire to keep up with--or even compete with--wrestlers
like New Jack, and vice versa) and Fox, who got
a product that was both edgy, different then the
competitors, and no longer sent censors into apoplexy.
XPW's invasion later that night would provide a
nice highlight for the more knowledgeable fan as
to where ECW might've ended up had they not shifted
their company philosophy, although, to some, the
shift would never be acceptable. Paul Heyman would
later say he believed ECW lost as many fans at it
gained that night; when the ratings came back, Heyman
was more then vindicated, as Unleashed's numbers
grew, creeping up on Smackdown's bit by bit. As the summer
continued, the company's mainstream acceptance grew
on the strength of their new outlook; suddenly,
ECW shirts were sharing space alongside the latest
Austin 3:16 shirt. Rolling Stone
ran an article about ECW, profiling how they were
changing perceptions of wrestling with their product.
By spring's end, there was no doubt the company's
new product was a success, even amongst their peers;
the ECWA, one of the longest-running indy promotions
and holders of the annual Super 8 Tournament, signed
on to become ECW's official developmental territory,
giving the promotion first crack at the industry's
best and brightest young superstars.
WCW's
relaunch had the most stunning start, and despite
the bad press Vince Russo has gotten in the years
since, never let it be said he didn't write a blockbuster
first chapter; be it the Austin/McMahon war, the
Undertaker's evolution into the Prince Of Darkness,
or the New Blood/Millionaire's Club war, Russo knew
how to start a feud. Established stars like Ric
Flair, DDP, Sting, Lex Luger and a yet-again-returned
Hulk Hogan mixed with new stars like Mike Awesome,
Scott Steiner, Booker T and Buff Bagwell. It was
when his ideas got bigger then his ability that
the storylines started to flounder, and the time
in which the New Blood/Millionaire's Club meta-angle
deteriorated set a land-speed record.
Chief
among the issues of the angle's collapse was that
even though Russo and Bischoff came up with the
plan together, they differed on execution; Russo
wanted the New Blood as faces, looked to bury the
Millionaire's Club at nearly every turn, and yet
scripted the New Blood with overt heelish tendencies
while their enemies came off as underdog faces.
Bischoff, however, knew that WCW--like the NWA before
it--was a promotion with a legacy of being built
around dominant heels, and wanted the New Blood
to be portrayed as such. Wrestlers were often boggled
as to how to portray their roles, as their position
would often switch several times in one show, thanks to the two different authors moving in different
directions. The effect of all of this led to the
audience not giving a damn about either side, even
while Bischoff and Russo force-fed the feud (in
different ways) week in, week out. By April's end,
there was a betting pool amongst the wrestlers about
who would take his ball and go home first; Bischoff's
odds ran 50-1. Russo's ran 25-1. Someone else decided
to toss in a third option: both being fired.
That
got even odds.
And
because the two writers couldn't agree on a direction
for the story or the performers, the wrestlers took
it upon themselves to add their own twists. Scott
Steiner became notorious for his promos, which were
rambling, at times incoherant, rarely if ever resembling
of the script, and usually inflammatory; one such
instance had Steiner ripping into DDP's physique,
when he popped off with "DDP, answer this for
me; is the reason you haven't gotten your saggy
bitch-tits fixed like your wife's because you won't
pay for it on your knees like she did?" This
caused a fistfight backstage, which earned Steiner
a suspension ... with pay. Young wrestlers took unnecessary risks in order
to get over (like Johnny The Bull, who thought it
a fantastic idea to do a slingshot seated legdrop
to the concrete floor, which netted him a broken
pelvis), and some of the older wrestlers resented
how they were being portrayed and no-sold at will.
When Scott Steiner was booked to the WCW Title against
DDP at Spring Stampede, Steiner's actions had effectively
turned him heel and DDP face ... except that the
script had them in opposite roles. Steiner proceeded
to heel it up and hog the offense, which set DDP
off, who started to shoot on the much larger Steiner;
the referee ended up having to quick-count a pinfall
just to end the match and call in security to break
up a very legitimate fistfight.
Amazingly,
the duo made it through April, and through May to,
although by the time Slamboree rolled around, any
pretense of the Millionaire's Club/New Blood feud
was all but forgotten; the stable names were never
mentioned, Bischoff had all but disappeared from
his on-screen role. Allegiances shifted every episode;
Lex Luger went from being a target of the New Blood
to partnering with former member Buff Bagwell. Ric
and David Flair--father and son, mind you--started
off with David a "face" in the New Blood
against his father, then reunited with him the next
week ... then turned heel on his dad the next week.
And once again, Bischoff was pulling away from his
baby, leaving Russo to indulge in every flight of
fancy he so desired. This included a disastrous
publicity stunt with the movie Ready To Rumble, a painfully bad movie about two idiot wrestling fans
(that made all wrestling fans look bad by association)
on a road trip to see a wrestling show; Russo tied
in the movie to the DDP/Steiner storyline and brought
in the movie's star, David Arquette, to win the
WCW Championship.
Yes,
Deputy Dewey from the Scream movies joined the (now formerly) illustrious ranks
of men like Ric Flair, Sting, Vader and Bret Hart.
Ratings for this particular episode of Nitro cut
in half the week after this disaster--yes,
50% of the audience stopped watching Nitro just because
Arquette won the title. Russo would defend the switch
as an attempt to get some mainstream publicity;
it did. Mockingly. Bischoff, wisely, kept his name
off the flaming disaster that was WCW.
The
Great American Bash would be the duo's final curtain.
The
main event, slated to be Steiner against Hogan for
the belt, went on second. What happened afterwards
is, like the XPW incident, something for which the
truth will never be known. What the audience saw
was Hogan come out, exchange a few words with the
ref and Steiner; Hogan feinted like he would punch,
then tapped Steiner in the chest, who promptly sold
the devestating poke like he'd been on the business
end of a wrecking ball. As the two celebrated the
swerve, Vince Russo marched out to the ring, launching
into a profanity-laced tirade:
Russo:
"What I just saw, I gotta say, makes me sick
to my stomach. From day one that I have been in
WCW, I 've done nothing, nothing but deal with the bullshit of the politics behind that
curtain. The fact of the matter is, I've got a wife,
I've got three kids at home, and I really don't
need this shit. But I come back every day, for the
guys in that locker that week in, week out, who
bust their ass for WCW the right
way. I came back for the Booker T's, I came back
for every single guy in MIA, I came back for Steiner,
I came back for the guys behind that curtain that
give a shit about this company. And let me tell
you who doesn't give a shit about this company,
that goddamn politician Hulk Hogan. Cause let me
tell you people what happened out here in this ring
tonight. All day long I'm playing politics with
Hulk Hogan, because Hulk Hogan, he wants to play
his creative control card. And to Hulk Hogan, that
meant that tonight in the middle of this ring, when
he knew it was bullshit, he beats Scotty Steiner
and gets another time around with the belt. Even
though I don't want it, Eric Bischoff don't want
it, and you people don't want it, he wants the belt,
he wants the nWo. Well guess what, Hogan got his
wish, Hogan got his belt, and I promise everybody
or else I'll go in the goddamn grave, you will never
see that piece of shit again! But I also promise,
cause I know you paid good money to come here tonight,
I promise nobody is gonna be ripped off here tonight.
So Hulk Hogan now has the WCW belt, and Hulk, let's
refer to that as the Hulk Hogan Memorial Belt, because
from here on in, that belt don't mean shit! Because
there will be a new WCW belt, and as far as I'm
concerned, tonight, you ain't gonna have to sit
through no goddamn old folks' night. Tonight, you're
gonna see two guys who been bustin' their ass for
years, Scott Steiner and Booker T. You're gonna
see them fight for the real WCW Championship. Hulk Hogan, you big bald son of a
bitch, kiss my ass!"
To
say the execs were angry would be like saying Godzilla
was just a salamander. Hogan was threatening a lawsuit;
refund demands were pouring in from audience members
and people who ordered the PPV. And since ratings
and buyrates were still in the toilet, even after
the dream pairing, Russo and Bischoff had even less
of a defense. Nobody knows what happened behind
closed doors, but when the doors opened, the results
spoke for themselves: Russo was turfed. Bischoff
had resigned. Hogan had left the promotion and was
filing a suit. Terry Taylor was now in charge of
booking, and was given explicit orders:
Clean
up the mess, while the parent company looked for
a buyer.
The
Big Two's rocky summer (and that other promotion,
too)--Summer 2000:
The
wrestling boom in 2000 seemed to grow bigger every
day; both ECW and the WWF allied with the two political
parties and had representatives (The Rock for the
WWF, and Bret Hart for ECW) at both conventions,
urging teens and young adults to get out and vote.
Sports bars and restaurants like Buffalo Wild Wings
and Hooters started PPV parties. Wrestlers were
guest-starring on everything from Star Trek to Jeopardy's
celebrity edition. Wrestling became so ubiquitous,
many industry experts proclaimed the new boom bigger
then the Rock 'N' Wrestling era, and couldn't forsee
a collapse, even if ratings had cooled a little.
Except
for that one company down in Atlanta.
The
WWF entered the summer with The Rock wearing the
WWF gold, finally having brought the reign of terror
of Triple H to an end, but was facing threats from
Chris Jericho and a dream match Goldberg. Triple
H, meanwhile, had a litany of people looking for
his head, including Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and Eddie
Guerrero, who attempted to pick up Stephanie (which
led to an odd situation that found Triple H and
Kurt Angle partnering against Guerrero and Malenko).
The best news, however, was that Steve Austin, the
WWF's cash cow, would be ready to go in the fall.
However,
not everything ran smoothly for the WWF; the Parents'
Television Council was ramping up their war against
indecency, and the WWF was a prime target, and the
childish responses coming from Stamford--be it the
Right To Censor, Vince's interviews blasting the
PTC with righteous indignance, or the general thumbing
of their noses with the "Get it?" slogan
repeated ad nauseum--didn't
help matters. As the pressure mounted, the backlash
finally started hitting the WWF pocketbook--WalMart,
the nation's biggest retailer, pulled all WWF merchandise
from their shelves, citing the product had become
"too lewd" for the families who shopped
there.
But
the biggest thing on the WWF's horizon would strike
them to the very core, and in typical McMahon fashion,
the situation was handled in such a way that McMahon's
"reputation" as a business genius was
cut off at the legs by his own actions. The WWF's
broadcast contract with the USA Network, which had
broadcast Raw since its debut, was coming to an
end and needed renegotiation. Only Vince McMahon,
already by this point a billionaire, decided his
company--read: himself--needed more money, and proceeded to shop Raw around to other networks.
The biggest interest came from Viacom; their TNN
network was struggling to stay relevant with the
growing popularity of CMTV making TNN duplicative,
and a hot property like the WWF fit into the idea
they had of how to transform the dying network into
a new broadcast force. The only problem was that
USA claimed they had first right of refusal when
it came to renewal offers for Raw; the WWF countered
this with a labyrinthine argument about broken agreements,
windows of time expiring, and the contract being
null and void that only the WWF's resident legal
velociraptor Jerry McDevitt could argue with a straight
face. NBC Universal (USA's corporate parent) sued
for breach of contract; WWF counter-sued for ...
well, nobody was quite able to understand
what they were suing for, other then to get out of the contract.
Nobody bothered to ask NBC why they'd want to hold on to a show owned by a company that most obviously
wanted to run away, but then again, the problem
seemed to repulse logic as if protected by a force
field of absurdity.
In
the end, the WWF got its way, signed a sickeningly
expensive deal that only solidified him as the Mr.
Burns to the wrestling industry's Springfield, and
Raw and all the other was set to debut on The
National Network (whatever that was) in September. Vince's pockets
were made fatter then ever, while USA, loyal home
to WWF programming for years, was left looking forward
to a massive hole in their line-up and their advertising
revenue.
Meanwhile,
ECW's evolution into a hybrid of scientific wrestling
and hardcore action continued to wow fans with amazing
match after amazing match and storylines that started
and stopped in the wrestling ring; you beat me unfairly,
you have a championship I want, you disrespected
me, you left me out to dry in a tag match. Even
in the Extreme division (which they made sure never
to label a "division", so as not to marginalize
it; everyone was treated as an equal, regardless
of style), the storylines were down to earth, if
a little edgier in presentation (and to that end,
Gabe was willing to enlist help from Raven and Tommy
Dreamer, just like the other half got input from
Bret). And the matches drew rave reviews; in the
span of two months, ECW managed to score two five-star
ratings from Dave Meltzer, one for a four-way 60-minute
Iron Man match between RVD, Taz, Bret and Chris
Benoit, and the other for an amazing 6-man tag between
Tommy Dreamer, Sabu and Raven against Rhino, Jeff
Jarrett and Steve Corino under Extreme Rules. It
seemed as if nothing could threaten ECW's steamroller
of success.
In
fact, the only thing that threatened ECW's success
was just that: their success. Before their explosive
success, ECW had a strong core group of wrestlers
that floated in and out of the main event. Thanks
to the phenomenal growth, though, ECW had managed
to lure a number of top-tier talent from the other
two feds, and the side-effect of bringing in all
the world-class talent was a massive logjam. ECW's
main event talent alone featured Dreamer, Raven,
Taz, Sabu, Sandman, Corino, Jarrett, Rhino, Bret,
Benoit, RVD; just below them, waiting for their
shot, sat Jerry Lynn, Justin Credible, Lance Storm,
Chris Kanyon, Perry Saturn, Super Crazy, Yoshihiro
Tajiri, New Jack, Spike Dudley, and new signee William
Regal. Beneath them, there were plenty more people
either coming up or in tag teams. And a logjam at
the top meant a logjam in the middle, and on and
on down the line. It was almost an unprecidented
position to be in, to have such a dearth of talent
in the upper ranks that one had to contemplate ways
to solve the problem.
Fortunately,
solutions presented themselves in the most unusual
of fashions; Taz, long suffering under a problematic
neck, knew his time was limited, and chose to lessen
his in-ring workload to ease into retirement. Likewise,
Bret Hart, an old man in a young man's company,
started pulling back the reins. And ECW icons like
Tommy Dreamer, Sandman and Raven all willingly took
it upon themselves to work with youngsters to get
them over. It didn't solve all of ECW's woes, but
compared to the glut before, any relief was welcome.
In
WCW, there was some
good news (yeah, I know, shocking), although how
"good" it was was disputable; the ratings
had stopped their nosedive and leveled off. Of course,
they were still amazingly low, and showed no signs
of turning around. But, to Terry Taylor's credit,
they stayed more or less level, which fulfilled
the wishes of his bosses to stabilize the company
while they looked for suitors to take the troubled
company off their hands. Many companies were rumored
to be interested, from a privately led group of
investors led by Eric Bischoff, to Atsushi Onita
(owner of FMW), to David McLane, the much-maligned
owner/promoter of GLOW in the late 80's. Legendary
Japanese promoter/star Antonio Inoki, who also fancied
himself a shit-stirrer in the industry, floated
a rumor that none other then Vince McMahon was looking
at purchasing the failing WCW; coupled with the
rumor that the settlement in the trademark infringement
lawsuit over Scott Hall and Kevin Nash in 1996 included
a clause that the WWF got to make the first offer
should WCW come up for sale made the WWF-buying-WCW
rumor grow legs. McMahon himself shot down the rumor,
stating that while the prospect was intriguing,
they were not interested in purchasing WCW. Another
rumor (no doubt conceived by Inoki) surfaced, saying
the asking price was too high for Vince's taste.
Meanwhile,
WCW marched on, trying anything they could to find
that one hot story, that one hot character, that
would catch fire and revive WCW's ailing fortunes.
When the decision was made to scuttle the long-running
Power Plant training facility (which had produced
precisely zero successful students), Taylor asked
management not to throw the baby out with the bathwater
and allow him to promote the students to full-time
on-air positions. The group, collectively known
as the Natural Born Thrillers, were as green as
a plate of spinach, and most definitely not ready
for some of the high-profile feuds they got shoved
into (two of the group, Chuck Palumbo and Shawn
Stasiak, were put in feuds against Lex Luger and
Curt Hennig, where they stole the veterans' gimmicks),
but Taylor could ill afford to take a pass on
anything to
keep the company--and his job--alive.
As
the summer came to a close, one more name popped
up as a potential buyer for WCW, but nobody could
scarcely believe it: Paul Heyman and ECW. ECW was
most definitely in a good way monetarily, but no
one could quite believe they were that
well off. For a week in the late summer, speculation
ran rampant about how stars like Booker T, Scott
Steiner, the Thrillers and others would fit into
the ECW equation. The rumor mill damn near fell
off its axis when Heyman was spotted taking a meeting
in Atlanta with Time-Warner suits, but Heyman himself
would shoot down the rumors on ECW's website the
following day, stating the meeting was to respond
to WCW's request for a "strategic alliance".
Heyman would go on to explain that he declined the
offer, which proposed an inter-promotional angle
and a talent swap, as ECW gained absolutely nothing
from WCW's proposal, and could even stand to lose
out as they hitched their name and new reputation
to WCW's dying husk.
With
the partnership offer rebuked, WCW was quietly taken
off the market. Taylor was given no indication from
the higher-ups on what to do or what to expect,
so he went about doing his best. But taking WCW
off the auction block did little to calm nerves.
In fact, it made things worse; with a sale, WCW might survive, and jobs might be
safe. With no buyers, WCW had precisely two futures:
resurrect or die. There was no need to place bets
on this one in the locker room, because the odds
were plainly obvious.
Bombshells--Autumn
2000:
The
autumn of 2000 gave the wrestling world two bombshells,
and for the first time in what seemed like forever,
WCW had nothing to do with any of it. In fact, WCW
spent the autumn chugging along, playing to half-full
houses (or less), trying everything they could to
keep their head above water.
The
first bombshell came from the WWF, although it didn't
work quite like a normal sudden blast of news would.
This was, in fact, more cumulative. Stone Cold Steve
Austin, missing in action for almost a year, returned
in October, and began a program of tearing through
the fed looking for the person or persons responsible
from running him over a year prior at Survivor Series.
Many saw this as a fantastic way to get one of the
on-the-cusp performers like Chris Jericho, Kurt
Angle, the Big Show or Test to break on through
for keeps.
Instead,
the driver turned out to be Rikishi, a portly Samoan
who had become a popular midcard comedy act thanks
to aligning himself with clueless, white hip-hip
nimrods Scotty 2 Hotty and Grandmaster Sexay and
dancing a lot. His motivation of helping the Samoan
(namely, The Rock) break through to the top and
stop the "great white hope" that kept
the island boys down sat well with absolutely no
one, since The Rock had become champion not once
but several times, including three reigns before
Austin went on the shelf. When WWF Creative saw
the angle dying a quick death, a hasty rewrite made
Triple H the mastermind behind the attack. This
made more sense given the storylines running at
the time of Austin's departure, but was a massive
letdown when they had a dearth of other more enticing
options available.
But
the change in direction for the storyline became
symptomatic of a larger problem with Austin's return:
the promotion being, once again, built around Austin.
The stars that had been built up over the past year,
like Guerrero, Jericho, Malenko and others all suddenly
found themselves crashing back down to the midcard.
Kurt Angle, a pet project of Vince, looked strong
unless put up against Stone Cold. The only people
who were allowed to compete on Austin's level were
Triple H, The Rock, Undertaker and, amazingly, Goldberg
... and only because even Austin saw the money to
be made in the eventual Goldberg/Austin match. Suddenly,
the mood in the locker room wasn't so sunny, despite
the record numbers the company was doing; because
Austin equalled money a year before, he simply
must equal big money now, even though the company had built on 1999 quite
nicely without him.
While
the WWF became The Austin Show, ECW had their own
bombshell announcement in the fall: they put themselves
up for sale.
More
specifically, Heyman put up 49% of the company,
citing the need for both a fresh mind in the front
office, and more capital in the accounts. Instantly,
offers began pouring in, from other promotions both
in the States and abroad, as well as private investors.
Instead of going for the biggest offer, though,
Heyman was shrewd, and picked the person he felt
would be the greatest asset to the company, an event
promoter by the name of Cary Silkin. Silkin's participation
with ECW was minimal, and more described as an "investment"
then a purchase; he would attend shows, sit in on
creative meetings and made sure he got to know each
and every member of the roster, but his day-to-day
involvement in the running was minimal. It almost
begged the question of why
the sale even happened.
ECW's
on-screen product, however, paid no notice to the
split in ownership. Ratings and buyrates continued
to be strong, and Unleashed continued to give Smackdown
headaches (Thunder, by this point, had jumped to
Wednesdays, where programming executives finally
discovered that it wasn't the competition killing
Thunder--Thunder just sucked on ice).
But
as the year wound to a close, there would be one
more bombshell to hit the wrestling world.
The
last gasp for air--Winter 2000/2001:
Wrestling
had always been at the heart of Ted Turner's media
empire, because of a fondness in the eccentric billionaire's
heart for the sport; southern rasslin' had helped
his TBS SuperStation gain a national foothold. When
Jim Crockett Promotions was about to go under, Turner
rescued it and happily wrote checks to keep the
promotion alive, even as it bled money for years.
When Eric Bischoff asked for prime time TV, it was
Turner who ordered his programming executives on
TNT to give it a few hours on Monday nights, against
the WWF's Raw. For years, Turner was the life-support
system and cheerleader for WCW's continued existence.
The
merger between internet giant AOL and multimedia
super-conglomerate Time-Warner gave the world had
a new mega-corporation, AOL Time Warner, which had
fingers in the pies of publishing, television networks,
movie studios, magazines, the internet, the recording
industry, sports ... and an oddball property, a
wrestling promotion that just so happened to be
bleeding money. Turner, now a little fish in a huge
ocean, could no longer underwrite his pet project
willy-nilly. It was now someone else's property.
And
when the suits in AOL Time Warner looked at the
books and saw this appendage that was a gigantic
money-hole, they wasted no time: WCW was going up
for auction. And this time, there would be no reprieve.
If it wasn't sold, and sold fast,
WCW would wind up alongside the AWA in the graveyard
of wrestling promotions that collapsed under their
own hubris.
Immediately,
a suitor stepped forward, a mysterious group of
investors named Fusient Media Ventures. Heading
up Fusient was none other then Eric Bischoff. And
since he was the only one sniffing around, AOL Time
Warner began the sale process. WCW.com acknowledged
the sale, openly referring to Fusient and Bischoff
as "the new owners", and featured an interview
with Bischoff about how he was going to change things:
no more guaranteed contracts. They'd conserve money
by running smaller venues. Performers would be rewarded
for better performances. They would build new stars.
And cruiserweights would be pushed to the moon.
AOL Time Warner actually gave Bischoff the book,
since the sale was a fait accompli (pending a simple little 45 period of due diligence
that nobody in the media bothered to mention or
notice).
Bischoff
also decided that the company was going to need
a fresh start once Fusient had it in their hands,
and began a clever booking scheme to achieve it:
WCW Champion Scott Steiner began systematically
destroying and "injuring" all the faces,
one at a time. It would all lead up to a PPV in
May, called The Big Bang, where everyone would make their comeback, Steiner would be dethroned,
and the company would begin anew. And for those
who actually tuned in to WCW, they found an actually
engaging and compelling program ... but convincing
new people, or former viewers burnt by the company
one too many times, was a hard sell. Ratings didn't
go up, but reviews were enthusiastic. For the first
time in seemingly years, WCW actually looked
good.
Then
Jaime Kellner entered the picture.
A
television executive that had helped launch both
the Fox and WB networks who helped spawn successful
shows like Married With Children, In Living Colour, Gilmore Girls and Dawson's Creek, he
nonetheless came to Turner Broadcasting with a reputation
for maddening decisions that alienated fanbases;
his gutting of the KidsWB line-up included cancelling
hits like Animaniacs,
Freakazoid,
and unnecessarily retooling Pinky &
The Brain. When
he landed at Turner and encountered wrestling, he
saw huge problems: they were aiming for a certain
demographic for both viewers and advertisers, and
even if WCW flipped overnight and became a billion-dollar
division, they wouldn't be scoring the demographic
he wanted.
What's
more, he just didn't think wrestling fit in the
scheme of things, regardless of ad revenue, ratings,
or anything else that might possibly be construed
as beneficial. So, he cancelled WCW programming.
All of it.
Nitro, Thunder, everything. Gone.
Fusient
panicked. The books were bad enough to give the
investors in Fusient a scare; without TV, WCW was
worthless to them. Bischoff tried in vain to get
another network interested, but no matter how much
he schmoozed, Bischoff couldn't shake the stink
of death off of WCW. Nobody bit on Nitro. WCW was
now the walking dead, with the final broadcast slated
for March 26th. With no TV deal, and Fusient's backers
retreating as if their lives depended on it, Eric
Bischoff had to surrender his dream once and for
all.
Just
as it was settling into fan's minds that the Monday
Night War was truly over, and WCW would be a memory,
someone stepped in to alter that perception: Vince
McMahon. On the Wednesday before Nitro, bright and
early in the morn, WWF.com broke the story that
they were in negotiations to purchase WCW. It was
rumored that, thanks to the cancellation of the
TV shows, AOL Time Warner just wanted to wash their
hands of the property and were selling it for a
song. The WWF's website trumpted the occasion like
a cross between Christmas and the fall of Berlin,
complete with an interview with McMahon in which
he speculated how he would handle both the talent
roster and the WCW property itself.
By
Wednesday afternoon, the story was quietly pulled
from WWF.com, along with all related articles, when
another bid, topping both the WWF's bid and
the asking price, came in. The media scrambled to
find out the identity of the mystery bidder, but
neither AOL nor the bidder were forthcoming. Reading
wrestling news sites on that Wednesday was enough
to give anyone a seizure; to keep up with the news,
you had to sit on the refresh button, as another
news tidbit dropped seemingly every second. First
it was the mystery counter-bid; then, the WWF countered.
Nope, another counter-bid. The mystery bidder was
FMW. No, it was NJPW. No, it was Jerry Jarrett.
Oh, wait, here comes another bid.; wait, the WCW
wrestlers are
gonna buy WCW?!? No, wait, Eric Bischoff
and Vince Russo?!? Hulk Hogan?!?
AOL changed their minds? What the--?!?
When
all the false leads, bogus rumors, innuendo and
guesswork were finally sorted out, and people got
a look at the truth, it was just as shocking as
all the BS--ECW
was the mystery bidder, and, after a contentious
bidding war, won the auction. It was a truth no
one was quite able to swallow. How could a company
that was operating out of a bingo hall only 3 years
ago be big enough to buy World Championship
Wrestling?!?
The truth was quite simple: without TV, WCW was
worth nothing, and AOL was willing to sell it for
dirt cheap. And, unlike Vince, who wanted it because
his ego demanded so, Heyman wanted it because, despite
the recent bad programming, WCW had both a rich
heritage he didn't want to see vanish out of spite,
and had a large stable of wrestlers from which he
could hand-pick the next crop of ECW superstars
without having to engage in a bidding war. ECW retained
the rights to 24 stars (although not all would end
up on the roster), while the big names left in WCW
were left to ponder a deal: take a buyout from AOL
at some 50 cents on the dollar so they could test
the free agent market, or sit at home and get guaranteed
money? Some took the buyout, some didn't; the WWF,
looking to get at least something
out of the collapse of their biggest competitor,
managed to snag a couple, but not nearly enough,
and most certainly not everyone they should've. The WCW Title, while not exactly possessing of a long
and winding history (certainly not the claims of
it stretching back to Frank Gotch and George Hackenschmidt),
was merged with the ECW Honored Championship; the
WCW Tag Titles were folded into the ECW Tag Titles.
The rest of the championships were given an honorable
retirement.
As
for the final Nitro, Heyman let Bischoff, who had
steered the ship for the past few months, book the
promotion's final curtain, and Bischoff spared no
expense in trying to make WCW's death knell a loud
one; dubbed "A Night Of Champions", any
previous WCW Champion at any level was welcome to
show up and compete, say a few words, or just attend.
Booker T upended Scott Steiner for the WCW Title;
Dusty Rhodes (with permission from ECW) gave an
impassioned speech about WCW's legacy and ECW keeping
the tradition alive; Raven returned and won the
WCW Hardcore Title in a violent, bloody brawl that
resembled a bingo hall classic, and was miles better
then any attempt at a hardcore match then WCW had
put on; Ric Flair and Sting faced off for one last
time, and, after Sting won by submission, embraced
to the delight of the crowd.
Nitro's
final moments, however, would belong to Paul Heyman,
who surprised the crowd by showing up in the first
place, then asked all the wrestlers, and Eric Bischoff,
to come out so he could address them. The massed
wrestlers--both guests and active performers--assembled
on the stage as Heyman held court and gave a stirring,
compelling speech that aimed to both heal old wounds,
promise a future, and aim a dagger straight at the
heart of a demon;
Heyman:
"If the younger guys like Shawn Stasiak and
Chuck Palumbo will beg my pardon, I think all of
us guys who've been around ... Sting, Ric, Harley,
Lex, we all remember the territories, and how it
worked back then, and how one guy came along and
went national and crushed the territories dead.
Don Owen, Sam Mushnick, Jim Crockett, hell, even
Verne Gagne ... every one of them and more all got
trampled under a steamroller out of Connecticut
that didn't give a damn about tradition ... didn't
give a damn about honor ... didn't give a damn about
you guys, or the promoters and their dreams ...
and didn't give a damn about wrestling.
Well, let me tell you, and let me tell that one
greedy, egomaniacal, self-centered son of a bitch
something; I
give a damn about tradition. I give a damn about these guys and their dreams. And
I still like
wrestling. Not that Sports Entertainment crap you shovel down
people's throats every Monday. Wrestling; two guys fighting it out. No fires at mortuaries,
no spilled coffee, no supernatural powers; two guys
with a grudge, and a place to settle it. That's
what WCW was about, that's what ECW is about, and
that's what Ric Flair, and Harley Race, and Big
Van Vader, and The Road Warriors, and Ricky Steamboat,
and Dusty Rhodes, and me are all about! That's why Cary and I fought so goddamn hard to buy this
company; because we knew, if we wanted the tradition,
and the memory what WCW meant to its fans to survive,
only ECW could keep the flame alive! Not you, Vince
McMahon! All you want is to rape and pillage and
plunder until everything you see is yours. Well,
the history and the legacy of WCW is something you
will never
get your hands on. You will never
have a chance to piss on the ashes, Vince, because
ECW won't let you. We will proudly fly the banner
that this company shrouded itself in, that of pride
to be involved in the sport of wrestling ... for
Terry Funk, and Magnum TA, and the Four Horsemen,
and Sting, and The Great Muta ... for WarGames ...
we will continue the traditions and the honor you
built with your bodies and your blood ... and we're
gonna do it when we bring Nitro back to the airwaves
July 2nd, on FX! Do you hear me, Vince? The war
... has just begun!"
The
announcement of the resurrected Nitro was a closely
guarded secret that only two people outside of the
Fox broadcasting empire knew of: Heyman and Silkin.
Coming on the heels of Heyman's impassioned, fiery
speech, pundits were shocked to see that, while
the final Nitro under the Time Warner umbrella still
lost handily to Raw, the quarter hour with Heyman's
speech thoroughly trounced
the competing quarter hour. It was sweet validation
for Heyman and Silkin, confirming what they already
believed: that buying WCW was the right thing to
do.
And
while fans of WCW would always lament the loss of
the groundbreaking company, anybody who tuned in
that night and heard the passion in Heyman's, and
saw the tears of joy and pride in the eyes of the
WCW locker room knew that while WCW's die may have
been cast three years prior in a garage in Virginia,
those fans knew what made WCW so special wasn't
dead after all.
Where
are they now?:
The
sad, strange saga of the WWF, WCW and ECW, and how
their fortunes changed all from a silly publicity
stunt in Virginia involved a mighty cast of people.
The ensuing years have scattered them to the many
winds (and some might argue that being forgotten
is a fate too fortunate for some of the players),
but, for the sake of history, let's look back on
some of the cast and where fate and fortune have
taken them since WCW's final curtain.
Vince
McMahon:
Not surprisingly, Vince is still in business, pushing
Sports Entertainment as hard as ever. But, like
Verne Gange and Eric Bischoff and a hundred promoters
before him (and himself back in the early 90's),
Vince held on to his top stars and his presentation
style a little too long, and by 2003, ECW had managed
to beat the WWE (having lost the F in a lawsuit
with the World Wildlife Fund) in the ratings for
the first time. Of course, by then, wrestling itself
had also lost its luster with the American public,
but coming in second place was still a bitter pill
to swallow for Vince; to this day, he has yet to
do anything but trade victories back and forth with
Heyman. But he's still an evil billionaire, so,
he can't be too unhappy.
Paul
Heyman:
After the successful relaunch of Nitro, Heyman stepped
back for a time from ECW, letting Silkin and Sapolsky
handle the business. He returned in 2004, working
on-air as a manager, and behind the scenes as a
talent scout; his scouring of the indy scene have
produced some of the biggest stars of the post-Attitude/nWo
generation, including Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels,
Bryan Danielson, Abyss, Monty Brown and AJ Styles,
who have taken the "(r)evolution" that
ECW brought about in 2000 to a whole new level.
Eric
Bischoff:
After a two year absence from wrestling spent wheeling
and dealing various projects in Hollywood that went
nowhere fast, Eric Bischoff made a shocking return
to wrestling ... not as a promoter or owner, but
an on-air role as the General Manager of the WWE.
Critics everywhere almost fainted when they saw
Bischoff debut on Raw by hugging Vince
McMahon; one renowned internet writer, RD Reynolds,
likened the hug to taking a pile of cash, putting
it in a barrel and lighting it on fire. Bischoff
played the role for three years before stepping
away to pursue some more futile projects.
Kevin
Nash: While
his appearance in WWF generated massive buzz, he
was never able to catch the same wave of popularity
he had in his initial WWF run or his WCW stint with
the nWo. A short title run in 2002 proved a disaster,
and a plague of injuries to his knees and legs finally
put the big man out of action in 2004. He has since
signed on with TNA, acting as a part-time booker
and an on-screen, non-wrestling personality.
Scott
Hall: Always
battling problems with drugs and alcohol, Hall's
second WWF run proved all too short, as several
embarrassing incidents while intoxicated (including
a drunk-driving crash that injured fellow passenger
Triple H so badly, he missed almost the entire year
of 2001, and the first couple months of 2002) led
to his termination.
Triple
H: A phenomenal
run as the company's #1 heel was cut short thanks
to a horrific traffic accident with Scott Hall.
When he returned, he was a shell of his former self,
and putting on 40 pounds of bulk didn't help. A
series of injuries followed, and, after marrying
Stephanie McMahon in real-life in 2004, Triple H
retired from the ring and took a position on WWE
Creative that he holds to this day.
Steve
Austin:
After a botched heel turn in 2001 cut his drawing
power, Austin faced tensions with WWE's creative
team over their desire to use his star power to
build new stars. After a walk-out in 2002, Austin
returned, but a lifetime of injuries had taken their
toll, and his in-ring ability was obviously diminished.
He wrestled his final match at WrestleMania XIX,
losing to The Rock. Aside from random appearences
and publicity tours, he makes no real contribution
to the WWE anymore
The
Rock: The
other great draw of the late 20th century, in 2000,
The Rock won a bit part in The Mummy Returns,
which led to a leading role in the prequel, The
Scorpion King.
The success brought Hollywood calling for more,
and eventually won over The Rock, whose contributions
to the WWE became sporadic at best. He wrestled
his final match at WrestleMania XX, teaming (and
losing) with Mick Foley against a trio of young
superstars, Randy Orton, Batista and John Cena,
collectively known as The Revolution.
Bret
Hart: After
retiring in 2003, Bret took a position as head trainer
in ECW's training facility. His students have won
prestigious titles all across the globe, from Japan
(four junior heavyweight champions in three promotions),
Mexico (a heavyweight champion in CMLL), and North
America (various champions in ECW, WWE, and a Super-8
winner). Along with a few others, Bret's tireless
efforts have turned ECW's training grounds into
such a premier facility, there is a near two-year
waiting list to get in.
Taz:
The man whose "big fight" gimmick served
as a prelude to the evolution of ECW in 2000 stepped
back from the ring in 2001, a casuality of neck
injuries. Taz transitioned into the broadcast booth,
becoming the color man for Nitro alongside Mike
Tenay, and joining Joey Styles as color-man for
PPV's. In addition, he works part time in ECW's
training facilities alongside Bret Hart.
Chris
Benoit:
Benoit became a centerpiece of ECW, putting on instant
classics with nearly everyone in the company. He
is a 3-time Honored Champion, currently involved
in the company's top storyline, a race between Samoa
Joe and himself to become the first man in ECW history
to hold both World Championships simultaneously;
Joe has the edge, as he already holds the Extreme
Championship, while Benoit holds no title.
Eddie
Guerrero:
A victim of the glut of main-event-caliber talent
as the WWF entered the new millennium, Guerrero
languished just below World Title contention for
a few years before jumping to ECW in 2004, where
he promptly got pushed to the main event and won
the Honored Title in January 2005. Sadly, it would
be his only reign, as undiagnosed heart disease
would lead to his death in the fall of 2005.
Dean
Malenko:
Malenko collected several midcard titles in the
WWF, including tag title runs with Guerrero, and
European and LIght-Heavyweight runs. However, his
long-standing neck injuries and small stature prevented
a further push, and he announced his retirement
at the 2001 Brian Pillman Memorial Show. He now
works as a senior road agent in WWE.
Bill
Goldberg:
Goldberg would find the most success of any of the
WCW exiles that WWE picked up, winning the WWE Championship
twice. However, conflicts between the creative team
and himself over how he believed his character should
be portrayed led to Goldberg leaving WWE in 2003.
ECW passed on hiring him, and with TNA too cash-strapped
to take on the superstar, Goldberg made a bid for
Hollywood as an action star.
Hulk
Hogan:
Once Hogan's contract lapsed with Time Warner, Hogan
was involved briefly in the abortive XWF promotion
ran by Jimmy Hart. He signed with the WWE, enjoying
a brief nostalgia run (including a disastrous title
run that killed the value of the title, in addition
to the drawing power of Kurt Angle--who he defeated
for the belt, clean as a sheet--and his own), but
got into numerous scuffles with McMahon over payouts
and putting over others. In 2006, he broke ties
with WWE, and started rumors of forming his own
promotion. Nothing has surfaced, but he continues
to bring it up whenever he gets the mediaÕs lens
on him which, a decade or more after he and relevancy
parted ways, is somehow still very often.
Vince
Russo:
In 2003, Combat Zone Wrestling owner Jon Zandig
convinced former XPW owner Rob Black, Andrew McManus
(of the failed WWA experiment) and David McLane
to invest in his company, with the intentions of
making a run at establishing a strong #3. Russo
was convinced to join up and be the booker, but
having four people with differing philosophies on
top led to infighting, and the coalition collapsed.
Without the money to pay for him, Russo left CZW,
got hired on at WWE for four days before proposing
an idea that made Vince McMahon scramble for Russo's
contract and a lighter. Russo was terminated, became
a born-again Christian, and started a wrestling-meets-religion
promotion called Kingdom of Heaven Wrestling.
Rob
Black:
After the CZW experiment went awry, Black tried
to revive XPW in Philadelphia, calling it XPW-The
East Coast Invasion. With several independant promotions
in the area all fighting to be the most hardcore
(CZW still survived, fighting against The Blue Meanie's
3PW, Jersey All-Pro Wrestling and the Indiana-based
IWA-Mid South), and ECW still the favored son of
Philly, XPW shrivelled up quickly. Black poured
his attention back into his porn business, but was
indicted and convicted on federal obscenity charges
in 2005. He is up for release in 2009, and is not
missed in either industry.
Tommy
Dreamer:
The Sting of ECW, worked through injuries galore,
putting over youngsters in his final years in the
ring to make sure ECW had a future. When he finally
hung up the boots, he went to work in ECW's training
facility, once again working with the youngsters.
Raven:
By the time Raven left ECW in 2002, drugs, injuries
and exhaustion had made him a shell of his former
self. After pulling back from the spotlight, Raven
got himself cleaned up and returned to ECW in 2006
as a manager and, behind the scenes, an advisor
to Gabe Sapolsky.
Booker
T: Touted
in WCW for its last two+ years as a future superstar,
Booker decided to take the buyout and signed with
the WWE ... only to languish midcard hell, anchored
with brilliant, career-driving moments as fighting
over a Japanese hair shampoo commercial. He finally
achieved a main event run in WWE in 2006, long overdue
to his supporters.
Diamond
Dallas Page: Another of WCW's upper card who took the buyout and went north. If Booker
T's career stalled post-WCW, DDP's went in reverse,
going from a WCW main-eventer to a WWE lower-mid-carder
after spending four months jobbing to Undertaker
in every way possible. After taking on a motivational
speaker gimmick that only led to his release, DDP
went on to live the gimmick and really become a
motivational speaker.
Scott
Steiner:
Another of WCW's darlings in the final days, Steiner
waited out his contract and signed with the WWF
in 2002. Out of shape and having lost all his buzz
after being off the air for nine months, Steiner
proved a dismal failure and was released in 2004.
After rehabbing several injuries, Steiner went to
Japan, got back in shape, and is now an upper-level
heel in TNA.
Jeff
Jarrett:
After his contract with ECW came to an end in 2002,
Jarrett had seemingly only one option, to re-sign.
At the eleventh hour, Jarrett was brought forth
a proposal, headed by his father and a number of
smaller investors, to re-establish the NWA brand
by creating a new promotion to serve as the centerpiece
for the nearly 60-year-old confederacy of independant
promoters. Dubbed TNA (for Total Non-stop Action)
and showcasing a six-sided ring, the Jarretts' promotion
tried a weekly PPV model before settling into a
standard one-a-month format after getting a regular
timeslot on WWE's former network, USA. Unfortunately,
with WWE's sports-entertainment and ECW's hybrid
of hardcore brawling and high-impact pure wrestling,
TNA's southern rasslin' runs a distant third.
Ric
Flair:
After waiting out his WCW contract, Flair fielded
offers from both major promotions. Flair declined
both and, in 2002, was presented with a new offer:
to help finance a resurrection of his old stamping
grounds, the NWA. Flair became a minor financial
partner, appearing on-screen for a short run, before
transitioning to a managerial role. In 2005, after
the publication of his autobiography, and it was
revealed that Flair had suffered from severe bouts
of depression in the final years of WCW and since,
wrestlers across the industry put together an independant
show to celebrate the career and achievements of
Flair. Wrestlers from TNA, ECW and WWE all participated
in a three-hour show, which culminated in a special
tag-team main event, pitting Flair and Triple H
(a self-professed lifelong Flair fan) against Terry
Funk and Dusty Rhodes in a bunkhouse brawl; Flair
got the victory with a figure-four over Funk, who
then presented Flair with an honorary NWA Championship
belt, proclaiming him World Heavyweight Champion
For Life.
Sting:
Like Flair, Sting waited out his WCW contract and
turned down offers from ECW and WWE to put his money
and his face behind the NWA-TNA promotion, coming
out of self-imposed exile in 2005 to give some additional
star-power to the beleagured promotion.
Shane
Douglas:
Douglas signed a short deal after the XPW Con-job
and quickly discovered he was no longer the big
fish in the small pond, but one of many fish. A
year later, with the option to renew or leave, Douglas
left and signed with the Jarretts' NWA-TNA, first
as a wrestler, then as a color commentator alongside
Tony Schiavone.