Bischoff's BIGGEST mistake

[Raven ECW]

I think that Bischoff's biggest mistake was not purchasing WCW. Yes it would have been worth 20 bucks like he said but you also have to think... hmm... you also have that WCW library... build your money back up by doing Best Of DVDs... imagine if he had just done that... sting, nash, hogan, nwo, nwo wolfpac, ric flair, vader and etc. Also History DVDs, histories of all the titles and BAM... you just made a boat load of cash. He was dumb to step aside and now all that footage is in McMahon fire place... wicked dumb Eric... he said in the Wars DVD that he could have kept everything but the tv time and i think a few other things and that's what made him back out.... ahhhh... hello... you could get another network... you were WCW... not some indy fed... someone would have bought... smooth... real smooth. am I right? or wrong?

[Dan Poutsma]

My understanding of it is that it wasn't so much Bischoff who backed out as it was the people he was working with, that being Fusient Media Ventures. When Jamie Kellner cancelled WCW off of TNT and TBS, Fusient pulled out of negotiations. In the meantime, I understand Bischoff was scrambling to put something together with Fox and/or maybe a couple of other networks at the 11th hour before WWE swooped in and picked up their assets dirt cheap.

But that apparently was WWE's plan. They had Viacom breathing down their neck and couldn't negotiate as long as WCW had programming on the rival Time Warner owned Turner Networks out of fear of jepordizing their newfound relationship. So they send in Stu Snyder to talk with Brad Siegel at Turner/WCW, having previously worked together. All of a sudden WCW programming is cancelled by Kellner, supposedly because wrestling no longer conforms with the type of programming TBS and TNT want to present, and the roadblock is taken away. At the same time, any other potential buyer (i.e. Fusient) pulls out because they would have to go through the effort of finding another network (which might've been somewhat difficult considering how Russo and others had run the brand into the ground and how the company was bleeding millions of dollars, but who knows) while WWE already had Viacom and it's family of networks to work with. And besides, Turner was apparently going to just shut the company down anyway if a deal hadn't been reached by the end of the month.