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Top 5 Of WCW’s Biggest Mistakes


WCW was a young wrestling promotion from the late 1980s through early 1990s, but starting in July 1996 with the formation of the coolest heel stable in wrestling history in the nWo, WCW was at its peak beating out WWE for 84 straight weeks in a row and being the top wrestling promotion in North America throughout the entire year of 1997.

But despite the successes of WCW, they also made plenty of mistakes along the way that would lead to its demise.

Here are top 5 of WCW’s biggest mistakes based on what I’ve seen on WCW TV as a young wrestling fan.

1. Hiring Vince Russo - As much as I couldn’t stand this guy back during his time in WCW, he was a major player in the success of The Attitude Era in The WWE which created some of the best storylines of that period in Austin vs McMahon and Undertaker vs Kane which led to WWE finally beating WCW in the ratings. But when Vince asked him to carry extra workload for Smackdown in August 1999, he refused and jumped ship to WCW where I remember he came up with some of the absolute worst booking ideas in wrestling history that also played a role in its demise from viagra on a pole, Judy Bagwell on a pole,  David & Stacy’s “wedding”, putting the title on non-wrestlers like himself & David Arquette. Had WCW not hired this guy, but instead hired better writers, WCW would still be alive today.

2. Making Kevin Nash Head Booker In 1998 - In 1998, Kevin Nash became head booker of WCW which propelled him to the peak of his backstage political ruthlessness by refusing to put young guys over and even booking himself to end “The Streak” of Goldberg and winning the World Heavyweight Title at WCW Starrcade 1998 which then led to the infamous “Fingerpoke Of Doom” that would become one of the most infamous incidents that led to the demise of WCW. Another reason why making Kevin Nash head booker was a big mistake for WCW because they reportedly lost $15 million during his time as head booker of WCW.

3. Bringing In One Too Many WWE Guys - Any up and coming wrestling promoter on the indie scene nowadays knows the best way to build a wrestling promotion from the ground up is to create homegrown talent and not bringing in too many guys from well known wrestling promotions like WWE. WCW was determined to actually beat WWE in the ratings game, so one of the things they did was bring in too many WWE guys like Hogan, Flair, Savage, Luger, Hall, Nash, Bigelow and not focusing too much on the homegrown talent they had in Booker T, Sting, and DDP. Even though this strategy brought mega success for the promotion, but it was also a detriment to the promotion as well as Ted Turner were paying these WWE guys far too much money than what they actually deserved and also young talent were refused to be put over by the WWE guys which also led to WCW’s and later TNA’s downfall (not Impact Wrestling)

4. Refusing To Push The Cruiserweights -  I have always been a fan of cruiserweight wrestling since watching the likes of Rey Mysterio and Eddie Guerrero back in WCW because they would put on some of the most amazing matches on Nitro. I always felt that they should been given the pushes that they deserve, but WCW management constantly pushed the older guys, particularly WWE guys and put them over the young cruiserweights and this led to these young guys being unhappy about being underutilized and buried by WCW management which led some to jump ship to WWE where some of them had Hall Of Fame worthy careers like Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, and Chris Jericho. In WWE today, most WWE fans and specifically Vince don’t care about the cruiserweights and they’re often buried on the main roster like Finn Balor has been recently.

5. Not Cutting Down Nitro To 2 Hours - In the first few years, the three hour Nitro was a good concept, but the main problem to me was the nWo was constantly hogging up screen time away from the young guys by starting off the show at the beginning, middle, and end. I personally think had they cut Nitro down to two hours, it would’ve made for more compelling and interesting storylines for other wrestlers outside of the nWo storyline as well as giving the young guys more screen time rather than being relegated to short matches or not being seen on TV at all.

The Conclusion - The downfall of WCW has greatly harmed The WWE because if you watch WWE programming today, you’ll see nothing but filler garbage and storylines that are much worse than  The Dreadful Vince Russo Era back in WCW.

By Kwame Shakir

1 Comments

  1. For me in no particular order...

    1. Not having Goldberg vs. Hogan on a PPV main event match as that cost them a lot of $$$$$.
    2. The over-reliance of celebrities (Jay Leno, KISS, and Master P) and product placement (Chuckie) that eventually lead to the horror that was David Arquette being WCW World Champ.
    3. Not riding on Chris Jericho's momentum in his desire to feud with Goldberg.
    4. The bait-and-switch tactic against WWE which would backfire on the night of January 4, 1999 in which Mick Foley won the WWE title while WCW did the Fingerpoke of Doom.
    5. Handing over Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, Perry Saturn, & HWMNBN (He Who Must Not Be Named) to the WWE on a silver platter as well as letting go Chris Jericho and Paul Wight aka the Big Show.

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