I listened to a podcast where these two black wrestling fans who are what I like to call WWE PG butt smoochers said said in a bit of a hypocritical and condescending way that “WCW shot themselves in the foot”. While I did agree with them in the sense, but they didn’t mention the fact that The WWE today is making the exact same mistakes that WCW did during the last two years.
Unlike many of these ignorant and self-absorbed casual wrestling fans and WWE apologists nowadays, many intellectual wrestling fans like myself have noted that The WWE today is making many of the exact same mistakes that WCW made back in the day that led to its downfall.
Here are top 5 of the biggest mistakes that WWE is currently making that WCW made.
1. Three Hour Raw - Back in May 1996, WCW extended Nitro to two hours and a year later on February 3, 1997, WWE extended Raw to two hours that led to the biggest period in wrestling history called “Monday Night Wars” where WCW beat WWE 84 straight weeks. In January 1998, one of the biggest mistakes WCW made was when they extended Nitro to three hours that proved to be the turning point for WWE in April of that year when Stone Cold Steve Austin squared off against Mr. McMahon for the first time that helped them finally end the legendary 84 rating winning streak for WCW despite WCW dominating in the ratings for most of that year. Sadly, the three hour Nitro was also one of the main factors that led to the downfall of WCW. Fast forward to 2012, The WWE decided to finally extend Raw to three hours because The USA Network wanted to boost its overall ratings, but this has now proven to be a detriment as it’s killing the current WWE product because it’s mostly filled with meaningless filler matches, filler segments, and scripted promos.
2. Too Much Nostalgia - One of the things that led to the downfall of WCW was the fact that they relied on too much nostalgia not only in the form of old WWE guys like Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage , but also in the form of celebrities like Jay Leno, KISS, and Insane Clown Posse that led to one of the absolute worst booking decisions in wrestling history in having David Arquette winning The WCW World Heavyweight Title in an April 2000 episode of Thunder. Fast forward to today’s WWE, they’re making the exact same mistake that WCW made in terms of relying on too much nostalgia in the form of part-timers like Brock Lesnar, John Cena, Undertaker, Triple H, Shawn Michaels, and The Bellas that not only steal the spotlight away from young full-time performers, but they’re also used to bury any sort of momentum that the young full-time wrestlers have established via The Bellas burying The Riott Squad most recently.
3. Having Throwaway Matches - One of the biggest mistakes that WCW did in my view happened on the very first night that I started watching wrestling on July 6, 1998 when I remember seeing as a 12 year old the Goldberg vs Hollywood Hogan match that I felt should’ve been saved for The Bash At The Beach PPV, but instead they wasted that huge PPV money making opportunity by throwing that all away by having it on Nitro by forcing Goldberg to wrestle twice that night. Fast forward to today’s WWE where these glorified house shows this year such as Greatest Royal Rumble, Super Showdown, and Crown Jewel are basically having throwaway matches because the matches themselves are better suited for the PPVs, not these glorified house shows. An example of this is AJ Styles vs Daniel Bryan for the WWE Title upcoming Crown Jewel glorified house show in Saudi Arabia which should be saved for the upcoming Survivor Series PPV.
4. Having Garbage Writers- When Vince Russo came to WCW after leaving WWE in the fall of 1999, I knew then that the week-to-week writing for Nitro and Thunder was gonna be so awful. Vince Russo wrote some of the absolute worst storyline ideas in wrestling history such as viagra on a pole, Judy Bagwell on a pole, David Flair and Stacy Keibler’s “wedding” and even worse was the fact that he put the WCW World Title on non-wrestlers such as himself and David Arquette. Fast forward to today’s WWE, this is basically the worst period in WWE history from a creative standpoint because the week-to-week writing and storytelling on the main roster especially on Raw is absolutely egregious where examples of this are having Bayley and Sasha go to “therapy” when their feud was getting hot, having The Shield come out in the same police van that that they were taken out of the arena with, turning Becky Lynch heel, burying former NXT stars like Asuka and Ember Moon on the main roster as well as burying other popular performers such as Finn Balor for the sole purpose of getting Roman Reigns over with the fans. I could go on and on with the examples of garbage writing by garbage writers that are much worse than the atrocious Vince Russo’s era in WCW.
5. Losing Their Audience - Back In 1999, WCW was slowly losing their audience because of the overuse of nostalgia and the three hour Nitro, but in the fall of that year when Vince Russo was hired, WCW ratings had rapidly declined during his WCW tenure because of the garbage writing, bad builds, and garbage storylines that permeated under him that was also a major factor that led to WCW’s downfall. Fast forward to today’s WWE, they’re also losing their audience in a very similar fashion that WCW did due to bad booking, bad builds, garbage storylines, repeated matches every week, 50/50 booking, over-pushing of certain performers like Charlotte Flair, Alexa Bliss, and Roman Reigns, burying fan favorites like Daniel Bryan on the main roster, a cruiserweight division that most casual fans don’t care much for, and relying on too much nostalgia.
The Conclusion - For all the WWE apologists that love to say that The WWE’s thriving today in The PG/Reality because WCW shot themselves in the foot need to realize that WWE is doing the exact same thing in many similar ways.
By Kwame Shakir
