Could Eric Bissoff have saved WcW?

[Scott Joyce]

alphanacomm said:

Vince bought WCW for a song. How little? Try 8 million and Time Warner would keep all wrestlers under Time Warner contract so Vince didn't have to pay for Sting, Goldberg, Hall, Nash...etc. As for could have Bischoff saved it. I think Eric said it best himself on the Monday Night Wars DVD. Time Warner would sell WCW to Eric put they wouldn't give him TV time. No national exposure = no money. Eric backed out and Vince swooped in. It's too bad that it happened. Wrestling has been circling the drain ever since.

Unfortunately this is what would have happened had Bischoff bought WCW. The market at the time was mainly the WWF and mostly because Vinces money and ability to lure away top wrestlers. Money is what it all comes down to and thats what killed WCW.

[3rd Hardy]

I think a team of Flair,Anderson,Dusty,Sullivan,Nash. could have saved it.

as long as a click of 3 did not emerged. with each man getting the top job for 6 months.

like lawler and jerry jarrett ran there company.

[Dan Poutsma]

Time Warner was going to just shut the company down at the end of the month anyway if they hadn't come to an agreement with anyone. Bischoff was working with Fusient Media to put a deal together, but then Jamie Kellner was made the new head of TBS and cancelled them off the Turner Networks in favor of more "upscale" programming and that was that. Fusient pulled out because, as mentioned, without TV the promotion meant nothing. Bischoff scrambled at the last minute to put something together with another network, but Vince swooped in and bought the assets dirt cheap.

However, there is something else that has not been mentioned yet which is very imortant. WWE had been looking to purchase WCW for months, but had just gone into partnership with Viacom and couldn't take the risk of peeving them off by buying a promotion that had programming on networks owned by a rival media company. So that was the one major obstable preventing them from buying WCW. Point #2 of interest, Stu Snyder, the then-WWF executive who had been sent in to negotiate, was in tight with then-WCW head Brad Siegel, having previously worked together. So add 2+2: Vince is looking to buy WCW, but can't because he doesn't want to anger Viacom by having WWF produced WCW progamming on TBS and TNT. He uses Snyder as his liaison due to his connection with Siegel, he influences Siegel to get Kellner to cancel the shows so Viacom can't complain and other potential buyers, namely Bischoff, pull out of negotiations. End result: WWF buys WCW for chump change ($2.5 million) since Time Warner has plans to shut the company down by the end of the month anyway and, by this point, are seemingly willing to sell it for a pack of snicker doodles.

[dwbailey]

I can't say if I think wCw would have gotten saved,or not. I can say if it was still around Pro Wrestling probably would be better. I can't really respond to this what if. All I know WWE would never have did this brand expansion to put wrestlers on one show. There probably wouldn't be a TNA around,and some stars like John Cena,Batista,Randy Otron,AJ Styles,Fallen Angel,Samoa Joe,Petey Williams,Alpha Male,Chris Sabin,and Abyss might have gone there.

All we can do is watch TNA to get a taste of what wCw use to be. Give it time. I see TNA wanting to compete with WWE. They finally will get out of Orlando into other Cities for their PPVs.

[Dan Poutsma]

Just finished reading Bischoff's new book "Controversy Creates Cash" this weeekend and here's a basic summary, according to him, as to why WCW failed.

He says there's no question he made mistakes, but claims the real reason it died was Turner's acquisition by Time Warner followed by the subsequent acquisition by AOL and states that the company turned out to be one of the first of many casualties as the result of all the mergers.

There was always plenty of politics and people within TBS who wanted to get rid of WCW to begin with, but it got much worse after Time Warner got involved. When it was just TBS, Eric always had Ted Turner to fall back on because he was the one ultimately in charge. However, after the merger, Ted slowly but surely began to lose his power and it eventually got to the point where Bischoff lost all control of the company because standards and practices and others within the Time Warner/Turner conglomerate began telling him what he could and couldn't do. If he came up with an idea that might offend them even in the slightest way, he had to run it by them first to see if it was ok. He says he fought against them as hard as he could, but his hands had basically become tied and he wasn't receiving much support from Harvey Schiller, who he felt had to make nice with all the A-holes above him because he had his own political agenda in mind, wanting to become Pres. of Turner Broadcasting. Says he considered quitting, but decided to be a team player until Schiller finally informed him in Sept. '99 that he was gone. Says he believes Bill Busch, who was doing the accounting at the time and ended up replacing Eric, manuevered to get rid of him. Bischoff basically told Busch how unhappy he was and how the executives were screwing him and he thinks Busch undoubtably snitched him out so he could move in.

He also claims that WCW's losses weren't as bad as everybody thinks. Despite Time Warner being a public company, the financials of WCW were never released to the public and that they were lumped into the category "other income/losses" with many of the other divisions. That enabled the people who handled the books to play with the figures and pack debt onto the company that didn't really belong to it.

On Hulk Hogan, he says that in order to get him on board he had to give him creative control in his contract. He says that every big star or champion has creative control to a degree, but Hogan was the first to have it written in. Ric Flair played a big part in getting him to come to WCW because Hogan was afraid the established talent wouldn't like him and would attempt to sabatoge him, which is why he wanted control. If he didn't feel comfortable with a scenario, he didn't have to do it and he and creative could come up with something that was more satisfactory. He also says that despite what people say, he never drank "Hulk Hogan Kool-Aid" and there were many times when Hogan frustrated the hell out of him.

On being brought back to WCW with Vince Russo, he says the company was in even worse condition than when he left and that partly had to do with Russo's first run being a disaster and Busch being an idiot. Didn't really like Russo, but was willing to work with him. Despite what people believe, it wasn't a 50/50 deal. Bischoff was ultimately in charge and Russo reported to him. Talks a bit about the movie "Ready To Rumble", but says absolutely nothing about the David Arquette winning the WCW title fiasco.

On Bash at the Beach 2000, says that the plan was for Hogan to say "Screw You WCW' and leave with the belt. This would set up a tournament down the road. Two heels would be in the finals, at which point Hogan would come out and say "this is my title" and fight one of them. After Jarrett laid down for Hogan, he and Bischoff left the arena only to be informed that Russo had gone into business for himself by cutting a promo on Hogan and booking a whole new championship match between Jarrett and Booker T. Hulk subsequently sued Russo and the company as a whole while Bischoff complained to Brad Siegel, who basically did nothing, and he was pretty much done with the company after that.

On buying WCW, Sigel asked him what it would take for him to come back again. Eric said that he couldn't fix WCW, so why not not let him buy it. Siegel said they would never sell it, but called him back at a later time and asked if he was still interested. WWE was looking to buy as well, but Viacom interjected and told Vince they couldn't have a WWE owned WCW on rival networks. Bischoff was intially working with Peter Gruber and Mandalay Entertainment, but they didn't want to use their own money so he hooked up with Fusient Media Ventures and got a couple of other investors to come aboard, including Warburg Pinkus. It was decided Fusient would handle the business end and Bischoff the createive end. In January 2001 it was announced that the deal was done. A letter of intent was signed and everybody was informed of the change in ownership. Eric said the plan was to wipe the slate clean and start over fresh; the promotion would go dark for a period. When the re-launch occurred, house shows would be dropped completely and TV would be taped in one location to save money, likely Vegas where he and Fusient both had connections, until they could get the finances in order. They would still have the TV deal with Turner (10 years) and Bischoff was also negoiating with FX to have one of the shows moved over to that network (Fox wanted Nitro, Bischoff wanted Thunder). In the end, he was in Hawaii when he got a call from Brian Bedol of Fusient telling him it was all over. Jamie Kellner became head of Turner and cancelled the TV. He said they could have the copyrights, trademarks, etc., but without the TV time the WCW brand wasnt' worth anything and the deal was off. Since WCW no longer had TV on Turner, Viacom no longer had anything to object to and WWE swooped in and bought everything up.

[ghettov1]

If WCW's TV Shows wasn't cancelled in 2001 we would've seen Jerry Jarrett maybe buy WCW and had WCW rejoin the NWA and slowly phased out the WCW name in favor of the NWA name.