Who Killed WCW Episode 1 - Where the Big Boys Play
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00:00Standby. Here we go. In 5, 4, 3, 2. Roll it through.
00:18This is the last Nitro on the Turner Networks and we're going out with a bang.
00:22How do we all feel on this very surreal day for all of us in World Championship Wrestling?
00:28A historic day in sports entertainment and it goes down on our very last telecast.
00:32Where does WCW go from here? What's in the cards? What's going to happen?
00:38If I'm giving a eulogy for WCW, what would I say?
00:42We were WCW. We lived. We breathed. We sweat. We paid the price to be the best.
00:52We gather here today to bid farewell to a wrestling company.
01:00A company that grew from the ashes rose to become the phoenix of professional wrestling.
01:06The legacy of WCW is iconic. I have just such a tremendous amount of reverence and respect for everything that they were able to do.
01:15To know that it went from that to being out of business is a tragedy.
01:21People thinking about themselves and not the good of the company led to the death of WCW.
01:28Thanks to the cash.
01:30Thanks for nothing. Go f*** yourselves. I think that would sum it up.
01:37You know, if I look back and try to describe the journey, the ups, the downs, the twists, the curves, the ride all along the way was a rush.
01:49WCW innovated so many things that are still so much a part of the wrestling programming that we watch today.
01:57Going back to the 80s, early 90s, it was a little company that nobody thought was ever going to be successful.
02:04Anytime anybody talked about professional wrestling in mainstream media, they didn't refer to it as professional wrestling.
02:12They referred to it as WWF.
02:14The World Wrestling Federation.
02:16If you look at where WCW started from.
02:21We were in a different universe and not a favorable one.
02:25That's how far behind we were.
02:27Everybody was very happy to be a distant number two.
02:31Except for me.
02:35The difference between WCW in 93 and 98.
02:41We're over 30,000 fans are canned in the Georgia Dome.
02:45We became the most successful wrestling company in the world almost overnight.
02:49Gentlemen, start your engines.
02:52WCW was able to transcend pop culture.
02:56Wow, the Stinger.
02:57Timmy.
02:59Here comes the NWO, the greatest faction ever.
03:02I don't think I'd seen anything as hot as the NWO.
03:05I was like, wow, this company is going to go through the roof.
03:09We were standing on top of the mountain going, how did we get here?
03:12And then little by little, we just fell.
03:16It was like me having a puppy, raising him to be a full grown dog.
03:21And I watch him run across the street and he gets hit by a bus.
03:26Egos, egos, egos.
03:28A lot of jealousy, a lot of problems.
03:30Do I got your attention now, Eric Bischoff?
03:32Think about it. What are wrestlers? They're a bunch of pathological liars.
03:36What a big word for a suit and tie.
03:38The death of WCW is really death by a thousand cuts.
03:42So, what really happened?
03:45Who's responsible for killing WCW?
03:48That's always going to be the million dollar question.
03:50Who killed WCW?
03:52Well, the easy answer is Vince Russo.
03:54It's just idiotic.
03:56Turner, the organization, the lack of.
04:00The talent killed WCW.
04:04This is preposterous to me.
04:06It would have to be the person with the checkbook.
04:08It would have to be Eric Bischoff.
04:10Sometimes more than one thing can be true.
04:12There's too much blame to go around.
04:14You want to hear the real story or you want to hear the bullshit story?
04:20You cannot sweep this under the rug.
04:22This is a f***ing television show.
04:24I don't understand what he's doing.
04:25The real reason men commit lies.
04:37Back in the day, back prior to social media,
04:41there was still an internet culture
04:44where wrestling fans seemed to congregate
04:46and had a desperate need for an understanding
04:49of what happened to WCW.
04:51Who have convinced a certain percentage of the audience
04:55that it ultimately comes back to me.
04:59If someone were to come to me and say,
05:01okay, here's a tape.
05:05I want you to watch this whole tape.
05:07And it's going to be the entire WCW journey.
05:10And you can decide if you want to do it all over again.
05:13What would I say?
05:17In a heartbeat.
05:19In a heartbeat.
05:21You know, it's really interesting and almost embarrassing
05:23Before I was hired by WCW,
05:25I didn't know what WCW was.
05:27World Championship Wrestling.
05:29I was an outsider to the business.
05:31I was a sales guy.
05:35Right about that time,
05:36through a good friend of mine, Sonny Ono,
05:38this little thing called Ninja Star Wars came into my life.
05:42You put these vests on and you put one on,
05:44I put one on, we chase each other around the house.
05:46And if I hit you with three of my stars,
05:48you're dead.
05:50I put one on, we chase each other around the house.
05:52And if I hit you with three of my stars, you're out.
05:54Just like laser tag, only with these little stars.
05:57Then it was like,
05:59alright, how do we sell them?
06:02At the time, the AWA was on Monday through Friday.
06:06And the AWA was Vern's business.
06:08Vern Gagne, thanks for being out here.
06:10My pleasure, and I'm glad I got out here.
06:12Vern Gagne, professional athlete, wrestler, promoter.
06:15Don't you dare miss it.
06:17Vern did it all.
06:18Vern Gagne's pro wrestling report.
06:20Here's how to order. Mail 1495.
06:22I thought, I'm going to call Vern Gagne.
06:26If Vern runs the commercial in his wrestling program
06:29that's seen nationwide, we'll split 50-50.
06:32I took one of the games and went to meet Vern.
06:35I thought I was going to get the deal, right,
06:37that I was looking for, which I did.
06:39But I was also offered a job.
06:41Welcome to AWA Championship Wrestling.
06:43So my job was to travel around the Midwest
06:45and talk independent television stations
06:48and be carrying AWA shows.
06:50It's a sales job. Sales is sales.
06:52And I think we're going to erase any doubts you've ever had.
06:55I had never met anybody like Eric.
06:57If he thought something was a really good idea,
07:00then he would start to take action,
07:02to breathe life into it.
07:04I'd always been curious how television works.
07:07At night, I just sat in and learned.
07:10Then eventually I was on camera.
07:12My name is Eric Bischoff and you heard...
07:14All this took place over the course of about a year and a half
07:16or two years while I was in AWA.
07:18Buckle up real tight because you're going for a hard bumpy ride,
07:21I promise.
07:22The last six or eight months of it, I didn't get paid.
07:24He couldn't afford to pay me.
07:26My wife and I and our kids suffered financially.
07:29Now we have two little ones,
07:32and we are literally bouncing checks to buy diapers
07:36and barely making rent.
07:39That's how bad it was.
07:40The world heavyweight champion,
07:43he is the living legend, Larry Zbysko!
07:47Larry Zbysko had worked with me in AWA.
07:49We had become friends.
07:51He left AWA, was working in WCW.
07:54Larry told me that, hey, they're looking for announcers down here.
07:57And within days, I got a call.
07:59See you next time.
08:00I got the WCW man.
08:01I was the happiest third-string announcer
08:04that had ever put on a pair of shoes.
08:07I came into WCW so wide-eyed
08:10because I was working for Turner Broadcasting.
08:12He was very nice.
08:14He just seemed like he was not a fish out of water,
08:17but he was kind of uncomfortable,
08:19is the way it seemed to start with.
08:20He's got a suit on, and he's got perfect black hair.
08:24He looked like a Ken doll.
08:25I'm here with Simon Dallas.
08:26The talent within WCW?
08:28Unbelievable.
08:30There was Dusty Rhodes and Gordon Soley and Kevin Sullivan
08:33and certainly Ric Flair.
08:35And there was a new generation.
08:37Guys like Sting, Diamond Nails Page.
08:40Scott Hall was the diamond stud.
08:42On three, one, two, three, rip it off!
08:45Scott was working in WCW when I was hired.
08:48So was Kevin Nash.
08:49Good-looking guy, great physique.
08:51Yeah.
08:53Poor Kevin Nash has so many different characters in the beginning.
08:56They didn't know what to do with him.
08:58Cowabunga!
09:01I just shot Ninja Turtles.
09:05And then I believe Dusty took acid,
09:08and he said, baby, you're going to be Oz.
09:11I said, you do realize that the movie is called The Wizard of Oz?
09:17I am Oz!
09:19You can be the wizard, but you can't be Oz.
09:22Oz is the geographical region.
09:25No, baby, you're going to be Oz.
09:27I'm just like, all right.
09:29World Championship Wrestling is bringing it to you, baby.
09:32We're taking a look at Oz.
09:33They show up in this lime green outfit and an old man's rubber mask,
09:40and then they wrestle a geographical region.
09:44Look at this move right here.
09:45They were trying to put a round peg in a square hole.
09:50They tried to do the gimmicks.
09:51Looks like something's going up and down here.
09:53They were bringing, you know, RoboCop.
09:56Woo-hoo! What strength by RoboCop!
09:58But they really didn't work.
10:00It didn't work.
10:02It was an absolute shitshow.
10:03He's getting cooked, and I think he's well done, guys.
10:06The crowd here going crazy.
10:09WCW had a loyal following.
10:13The defender executives regarded the WCW audience as being downscale.
10:17It was downscale, very sort of southern and Midwestern.
10:24I didn't care about it. I wasn't a fan of it.
10:26Eighty percent of the people who worked at Turner
10:29weren't really wrestling fans to start with, except for Ted.
10:32Ted Turner wears many hats for his many colorful careers.
10:36He is the owner of the Baseball Atlanta Braves,
10:39the Basketball Atlanta Hawks.
10:41He has pioneered television with his own cable network,
10:44which broadcasts 24 hours of news.
10:46Playboy magazine called him a bona fide, larger-than-life character.
10:50Captain Outrageous, that was one of his nicknames.
10:53He will say anything he wants to, anytime he wants to.
10:57You said network presidents should be lined up and shot.
11:01My kind of guy.
11:03Ted enjoyed the fact that I know that you don't like my wrestling,
11:08and that's exactly why I like it.
11:11Dad bought a little TV station here in Atlanta,
11:14and he built an international broadcasting empire in a few years.
11:20And wrestling was one of those things that helped build TBS
11:24and the entire network.
11:27When you go back to the beginning of television, wrestling was there.
11:31It was a lifeblood of programming for local television stations.
11:36It could command a loyal audience in the millions of viewers.
11:40So Ted believed in the power and the loyalty
11:44and the size of the professional wrestling audience.
11:47Ted launched WCW as a result of purchasing Jim Crockett Promotions,
11:51which was a Southern wrestling company.
11:53Jesus Christ!
11:55WCW was seen as sort of the long-suffering, distant number two
12:00trailing behind the WWF.
12:02The winner of the match, the Diamond Star!
12:06Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, they left.
12:10They go to the WWF.
12:12Scott Hall becomes Razor Ramon. He becomes a big star.
12:15Kevin Nash becomes Diesel. Boom, big star!
12:19From a standpoint of the talent, we always considered WWE the show.
12:24There's no comparison.
12:26From a production value perspective, from a talent roster perspective,
12:30from a marketing perspective, from a financial perspective,
12:34WCW lost millions of dollars every year.
12:37I've been warned by my boss that don't help WCW.
12:42Why? If I help them make money?
12:44You don't understand.
12:45Executive management hates wrestling and wants to get rid of it.
12:48And if you're perceived as trying to help them, that's career suicide for you.
12:53Other than Ted Turner, there was not an executive in Turner Broadcasting
12:57that wanted WCW to be in the Turner portfolio.
13:01Put yourself in the position of a television executive within that corporation.
13:05You have this division that is losing as much as $10 million on a yearly basis.
13:10And we don't really get the appeal of this entire genre to begin with.
13:14So, of course, that was going to create a lot of resentment and confusion
13:19as to why do we even have this on the airwaves?
13:21Fix my blood ball, too!
13:23That's what really set the conditions for this dysfunctional relationship
13:26between TBS and WCW.
13:30Bill Shaw was the Vice President of Human Resources for Turner Broadcasting.
13:34He was given responsibility to take over WCW,
13:37as effective president of it.
13:39So Bill came in, he said,
13:41Ted Turner has made a decision
13:43that this company is going to either turn a profit
13:46or Ted's going to pull the plug.
13:48Ted had made up his mind that enough was enough
13:51and he was going to give WCW one last shot.
13:53And we're going to hire an executive producer
13:57who is going to take WCW from a wrestling company to a television property.
14:03Wrestling was seen by the wrestling people as an arena business.
14:09The only other person besides Ted that saw it as television was Eric.
14:16So I threw my name in the hat.
14:19A month or so later, I'm the executive producer.
14:22This is your chance to be a part of professional wrestling history.
14:27What the hell am I going to do?
14:34From Harlem to Harlem Heat!
14:37You come down in the hands of the Heat,
14:39and don't forget that, sucker!
14:43The way my brother and I came into WCW
14:45was a good old boys system gimmick, you know, for two black guys.
14:49This is a spectacular team!
14:51But you could tell the difference going from the good old boys era
14:55to the Eric Bischoff era,
14:57just by the way he tried to create something.
15:00I was hired as the executive producer.
15:02My responsibility was solely the look and feel of the show.
15:06Saturday night!
15:08The biggest challenge that we had was the fact that we couldn't attract an audience.
15:12It looked horrible because you had to turn the lights down
15:15to hide the fact that nobody was there.
15:17How do we fix that?
15:19That's when I decided I was going to shoot the show
15:22instead of the Disney MGM Studios.
15:24They had sound stages so I could control the look of the environment.
15:29And I had a fresh audience coming through five times a day,
15:32so I could shoot five or six shows with a fresh audience each and every time.
15:36Spin them up, lights, camera, action!
15:39I think Eric Bischoff really wanted to take WCW
15:43away from being a southern wrestling company.
15:46You could see the difference.
15:48You could feel it.
15:50In 94, I ascended from executive producer to vice president,
15:55and at that time, nobody thought WCW would ever be competitive with WWF.
16:02I needed people to take WCW seriously.
16:07I needed Hulk Hogan.
16:10Hulk Hogan!
16:13I don't think we'd be here if there was no Hulk Hogan.
16:17In the 1980s, Hulk Hogan is the patriotic, ultra-good guy.
16:22He's coming out waving an American flag,
16:24fighting off these evil foreigners.
16:26Hulk's not tearing us to pieces!
16:28He was the one who broke professional wrestling wide open.
16:32Commercials, cartoons, kids loved him.
16:36Everybody knew Hulk Hogan.
16:38Whether you're a professional wrestling fan or not, you knew the name.
16:42Eating your vitamins, saying your prayers.
16:44Say your prayers, eat your vitamins!
16:46Ric Flair's the greatest wrestler of all time.
16:50But the guy that was on Sports Illustrated, he's the guy.
16:54He is truly a real American.
16:58Coincidentally, while we were shooting WCW at the Disney-MGM studios,
17:02Hulk Hogan was down at Disney shooting a new series called Thunder in Paradise.
17:07Now Hulk had been out of wrestling for some time because of the steroid trial.
17:12He's like a good role model.
17:14He just did whatever it took to get big.
17:17He took both steroid pills.
17:21And I thought, why not at least try to get a meeting?
17:24But he didn't know who I was.
17:26So I went to Ric Flair.
17:28I said, Ric, do you think you can set up a call or meeting between Hulk and I?
17:33One night I was sound asleep and the phone rings and I pick up the phone and it's,
17:37Hey brother. Whoa! Wake up!
17:40It was Hulk.
17:42Welcome Hulk Hogan!
17:45Being able to work with Hulk Hogan, being on the same roster as Hulk Hogan,
17:50elevated everybody's career and it had immediate impact.
17:53All of a sudden people were returning phone calls much faster.
17:57It's all perception.
17:58That's why we're here today.
18:00For a match between two of wrestling's biggest superstars, Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair.
18:05So Hulk's original deal included four pay-per-views a year and he had creative control.
18:11Essentially means that he gets a thumbs up or thumbs down as to whether or not he wants to do it.
18:19WCW is about to dominate the globe in professional wrestling.
18:23Talent began to get a little confident that this Turner guy over here was starting to get serious.
18:28Dad always loves competition.
18:30So you get a Vince McMahon who says, Oh, this is my territory.
18:35There's going to be problems.
18:38Keep in mind at that point, I had never had a one-on-one meeting with Ted Turner.
18:44And I walked into the meeting.
18:46My boss, Harvey Schiller, was already sitting there.
18:49Scott Sassa, the heir apparent to Ted Turner at the time.
18:53He was in the room.
18:55So I sat down and immediately, Eric, let me ask you a question.
19:01I can't do a good Ted Turner impersonation.
19:03Oh, Erica.
19:05What's it going to take for WCW to be competitive with WWE?
19:11In what seemed like 20 minutes, it was maybe milliseconds.
19:15But it was like watching your life pass before you right before the train hits you.
19:19I don't know what the answer is.
19:21What are my options?
19:22I can't bullshit Ted Turner.
19:23He'll see through that so fast.
19:25Tell the truth.
19:26Truth usually works.
19:27So I'm just going to tell him the truth.
19:29So I said, Ted, they're on primetime.
19:33Monday night, coast-to-coast.
19:36We're 6 o'clock Eastern, 3 o'clock Pacific on a Saturday.
19:42We can't be competitive with that.
19:45Ted looks over to Scott Sassa and says,
19:46Oh, Scott.
19:49Give Erica two hours every Monday night, head-to-head, WWE.
19:53I thought, how am I going to do this?
19:56And I walked out of Ted's office,
19:58like myself in my room,
20:00sat there with a yellow legal pad and said,
20:03start thinking of ways.
20:06So at this time, you know, Monday Night Raw was the primary show for the WWF.
20:11And the WWF was, at that time,
20:13the first company to have that primetime show on Mondays.
20:16Welcome to Monday Night Raw.
20:19When Ted said, you know, I want to move WCW to TNT,
20:25it was like, what are you kidding me?
20:27I've been killing myself to build this brand
20:30that we were known as the premium network on basic cable.
20:34When I tried to fight Ted on it, I lost that battle.
20:37How can I be better than WWF?
20:41I can't.
20:43Their production was much better.
20:45The storytelling, it was cleaner, easy to follow,
20:49and built everything to feel larger than life.
20:53WCW always looked like it was trying to catch up to the wheel that just fell off.
20:59But if I can give people a reason to watch me instead of them,
21:04I got a shot.
21:06The one vulnerability was that they were taped every other week.
21:10We should be live.
21:12I went to Brad Siegel and said, I want to do this live every week.
21:14We were so competitive with USA Network.
21:17If we go up against them,
21:19we're going to hurt their highest rated show, Roth, on Monday night.
21:23It would be the way that we could win as the number one basic cable network.
21:27He said, we've got a block of action programming called Nitro.
21:32Why don't we thematically keep it the same?
21:34We'll call the show Nitro.
21:36Hell yeah!
21:38WCW, Monday Nitro.
21:40But we could not give tickets away.
21:42Keep in mind, this is the first Nitro.
21:44Nobody's ever heard of it before.
21:46We put it in an arena where it's going to look cool.
21:50What about Mall of America?
21:52Mall of America at the time was like a big damn deal.
21:55The bargains are coming! The bargains are coming!
21:57Back then, Mall of America was kind of a destination.
22:00Still, the largest mall in the United States.
22:02Just about big enough to hold WCW
22:05and its debut broadcast of Monday Nitro.
22:08My hope was that I'd get enough people that were walking by the mall
22:12that would stop long enough and watch
22:14that I could get kind of a couple beauty shots.
22:16And it worked great.
22:18It looked like a really cool fight club for yuppies.
22:24If you want surprises, this is where you come.
22:27Because our show is live and you never know who's going to show up.
22:32Lex Luger. Everybody thought that Lex was under contract.
22:35He had just been in WWE the night before.
22:37WWE had no idea.
22:40And it set the tone for Nitro.
22:42When I came there, Eric was testing the waters.
22:45I am Medusa.
22:47I was WWF's champion.
22:49I'm like, I got an idea.
22:51And that's what I think of the WWF Women's Championship belt.
22:55That shock value is what we really needed to get the attention.
22:58That's the magic of live.
23:01That's what will make us competitive.
23:05You know, I'm focused on that big nasty giant.
23:09But the main thing, like you said, Mean Gene,
23:11is to get in that ring, brother.
23:15In this country, we love to build people up.
23:20We love to tear them down.
23:23And then we love them to rise from the ashes again.
23:26We weren't seeing the gains in terms of ratings that we had anticipated.
23:31We had kind of leveled out.
23:33Hulk could sense, I think, that the Hulk Hogan character,
23:37he was losing steam.
23:38They are taking him apart.
23:39The audience still reacted to it, but not the same way.
23:43I saw the hair boost.
23:45Hulk Hogan making his way to the ring.
23:48The 80s were done.
23:51I needed to change the perception of Hulk Hogan forever.
23:56What is he doing?
23:57Hulk Hogan has betrayed WCW.
24:04Randy, what's going on here?
24:06May 27th of 1996, Scott Hall debuted on WCW television.
24:12You people, you know who I am.
24:16Scott Hall worked and performed for WWF as Razor Ramon.
24:20But you don't know why I'm here.
24:24Kevin Mash shows up.
24:26Everybody knew they were WWF guys.
24:30Oh my God, no, no, turn over now.
24:33Razor Ramon and Diesel are on Nitro.
24:35Are they the WWF?
24:37You want a war? We are taking over.
24:41They were bad guys that were invading the company.
24:44This is different.
24:45This is something that we have never seen in professional wrestling.
24:49By not dissuading people, that's what created the perception
24:54that perhaps this was an invasion.
24:56But of course it wasn't.
24:58They didn't want to renew their contracts with WWE.
25:01I'm thinking, I need a reality storyline.
25:04Admittedly now, you know, enough time has gone by.
25:07I admittedly allowed them to think
25:10that they were showing up on behalf of WWE.
25:13Do you work for the WWF?
25:16No.
25:18And then they alluded to a third man.
25:20You tell billionaire Ted to break out the money
25:24and get anybody he can
25:26because the big man and the medium-sized man
25:30and our surprise buddy are going to carve them up.
25:36Big surprise coming in.
25:38Who's the third man?
25:40All while that's going on in television,
25:42Hulk Hogan's in California doing a movie called Santa with Muscles.
25:45Keep the milk and cookies warm.
25:47Classic.
25:48I get a phone call from Hulk.
25:50Any way I can get you to come out, I want to talk to you about creative.
25:53Got to his trailer, he's waiting for me.
25:55He says, it's a brother.
25:57Who's the third man?
25:59What have we got here? The Stinger.
26:01I already spent two weeks convincing Sting to turn heel and be the third man.
26:05I didn't want to tell Hulk,
26:07but I didn't want to lie to him either.
26:09Who do you think it should be?
26:11You're looking at him, brother.
26:13Oh, wow.
26:15World Championship Wrestling presents The Banish and The Beach.
26:20I didn't want him to come to the building until the very last minute.
26:24I talked to Kevin Sullivan about the best way to try to achieve that.
26:27Kevin Sullivan sequestered Hulk in Daytona Beach.
26:32He had to babysit him for like a whole night
26:35because he was afraid that Hogan might not show up as a mystery third man.
26:39There were a lot of risks to Hulk turning heel.
26:41You have to put yourself in his shoes.
26:43Hulk is a very loyal guy,
26:46and he was carrying a lot of people.
26:49If he lost his endorsements,
26:52if he lost the movies,
26:56maybe their pocketbook would be hurt.
27:00I knew that there was a chance with people around Hulk
27:02he could possibly second-guess himself.
27:05We don't know yet who the third man is.
27:07We didn't leave my house until the first match started.
27:13I didn't want anybody to get to him.
27:17Hulk shows up at the building.
27:19I still don't know at this point where his head is at
27:22because we hadn't talked all day.
27:24The macho man, Randy Savage, and Sting
27:27will represent WCW to meet these outsiders.
27:32When Hogan came down the ramp,
27:34I still wasn't 100% sure.
27:36Hulk Hogan is here! Hulk Hogan's here!
27:39Hulk comes down. We clear out.
27:43He hits the rope, drops the leg.
27:45Up, up, up!
27:47What is he doing?
27:48Is he the third man?
27:50The production truck erupted with elation
27:53for what just went down and how the crowd reacted to it.
27:56It was a roar like we hadn't heard before.
28:01And it got louder and angrier, and it was building.
28:06They were pissed, really pissed.
28:09What do we got here? We got a fan coming in.
28:11He's a hero.
28:12And now the hero's standing in the middle of the ring
28:14that was filling up with garbage,
28:15telling every one of those fans he was only in it for the money.
28:19It would be like Babe Ruth telling all the fans
28:22who had followed him for years and years and years
28:24to stick their support right up their ass.
28:27All this crap in the ring represents these fans out here.
28:32It was the biggest turn in the history of wrestling.
28:36Saved his career.
28:39And then it becomes the three guys with Hulk.
28:41Now it's like, who are they?
28:43You can call this the New World Order of Wrestling, brother.
28:49I didn't know what the NWO was about to become.
28:53NWO, take one.
28:55NWO, the thing that really broke everything,
28:58what was happening in pop culture,
29:01they were representing it with their spin on it.
29:04It was like street.
29:06We can't have them have any association with WCW whatsoever.
29:09This is our show. We're doing it our way.
29:13Those small elements, the way we shot the NWO interviews,
29:18we shot them black and white.
29:20Black and white? Why are you doing black and white?
29:22Trust me, black and white will be cool.
29:24Not only was it pretty f***ing cool, but also disruptive.
29:26And those guys were the right talent to pull it off.
29:29They did whatever the f*** they wanted to do.
29:32What is this?
29:33Didn't care whether you cheered them or you booed them.
29:36Oh my gosh!
29:37Zero f***ing to give.
29:39NWO for life!
29:42Those guys really set the world on fire.
29:46My son came home from school
29:48and asked me if I could bring him four or five NWO shirts
29:51so he could take them to school the next day.
29:53And I said, why?
29:54He said, all my friends want them.
29:56Well, absolutely.
29:58That's what we began to see emerging
30:00with Eric's vision of what the NWO was.
30:03They were bad, but they were cool.
30:05To this day, there's still NWO shirts.
30:08I don't see any other shirts from WCW.
30:10The fans were so intoxicated with NWO.
30:15It made everything bigger.
30:17And when something gets too big too fast,
30:20shit's going to hit the fan at some point.
30:22And then it did.
30:23They're in the control room now!
30:25Hold on, what do we got here?
30:26What does that do?
30:27Oh!
30:29Fade to black!
30:30Shouldn't have bought that cheap TV!
30:34You go back and you look at Nitro ratings
30:36from the premiere episode all the way up
30:38until the NWO was revealed.
30:41We were doing fine.
30:43We'd win a week or two.
30:44WWE would win a week or two.
30:46We were essentially even until the NWO.
30:50Legitimately, the NWO was responsible
30:54for 80% of our growth.
30:57And I thought, OK, I've got to find a way
31:00to maintain the reality.
31:01New world order!
31:03Something that the audience can't tell
31:05whether it's real or whether it's not.
31:08Worst thing you can do on Earth
31:10in professional wrestling
31:12is have a backstage fight.
31:15Everybody that throws a punch backstage
31:19goes, ah!
31:21Ooh!
31:22Eh!
31:24It's so bad.
31:25We want to make the back look completely real,
31:29not a wrestling program.
31:32Oh, no!
31:33Neil Pruitt came up with the idea
31:35of the production people helping.
31:38Up until that time,
31:39I never had gone to a producer
31:41and said, what kind of shot?
31:43But I went to him.
31:45Cullinan up on the middle, turnbuckles,
31:47climbs the top, nicely done.
31:49There was that one night we were in Orlando
31:51at the Disney tapings.
31:56We wanted to make it look like NWO
31:58just came and wreaked havoc
32:00and took over.
32:02We need somebody in the back, please!
32:04What is he talking about?
32:05He's trying to get a cameraman.
32:06We were inspired a bit by Hill Street Blues
32:09as far as the way you move
32:11throughout a scene with one camera.
32:13We were all about making it work,
32:15making what looked like reality happen.
32:18Craig Leathers can hear us, Craig.
32:20Are you going to send a cameraman back there or not?
32:22They're coming around the corner.
32:24Wait a minute, we go to the back!
32:26And we had baseball bats.
32:28They got baseball bats!
32:30All the carnage is already taking place.
32:33It's the old Hitchcock.
32:36You see the knife, and then you see the blood.
32:39You let the mind create the violence.
32:42Please!
32:44They were picking up props.
32:45They were nailing them.
32:47They all worked their asses off
32:49to make it look as believable as it could.
32:51And I don't know if it was planned in advance.
32:54Only Kevin Nash or Ray Mysterio could tell you that.
32:56Nash picked up Ray Mysterio
32:58and threw him against the trailer like a lawn dart.
33:01Whap!
33:02We're going to have Kevin Nash standing there,
33:04and they're going to have Ray Mysterio Jr. jump on him.
33:08There's Ray Mysterio.
33:09Hey! He dove off!
33:10Ray says, do you think you can throw me through that window?
33:14No, dude.
33:15It's a window.
33:17You'll die.
33:19I said, let me just throw you off the trailer.
33:22Hey! Head first!
33:24So we were doing things that nobody had ever seen.
33:27It looked like a giant crime scene.
33:30It creates emotion in the audience.
33:32Please, somebody help him!
33:34And they forget that they're watching professional wrestling.
33:38We're going to try to get this all back together,
33:40and we'll be back.
33:42WCW really started to leave their competition in the dust,
33:45and that was the vaunted 83-week winning streak.
33:49We were pro wrestling,
33:52and they were playing catch-up for the first time.
33:55I remember when that happened.
33:56I remember thinking, we should do more shit like that.
34:00That freedom, we did not have.
34:04And to see the company not only compete with the WWE,
34:09but knock them on their ass for 83 weeks,
34:12like straight weeks, wow.
34:15It is the number one professional wrestling program around the world!
34:20Once those ratings started, there was no stopping them.
34:23I think the war with WWF was personal with Eric.
34:26He was always chasing ratings.
34:28Eric cared more about ratings than advertising dollars.
34:31This is a television company,
34:34and we're going to run WCW like a television company.
34:38It was this maniacal desire to be number one and to beat WWF.
34:45There was a competitive pressure that I put on myself.
34:48So Vince McMahon, this is for you!
34:50And I said something like,
34:52I'm not going to stop until I drive a stake
34:55through the heart of Vince K McMahon.
34:59I may have gone a little over the top.
35:07Back up, 1996.
35:10I keep hearing how Vince McMahon plans his stuff out a year in advance.
35:15He knows what he's going to have in next year's WrestleMania
35:1810 months before it happens.
35:20Why can't we do that?
35:22And I saw Sting as the opportunity to do that.
35:24And the Stinger making his way to the ring!
35:28One night, Scott Hall started explaining this idea that he had
35:32for a new version of the Sting character
35:34based on the Brandon Lee character in the movie The Crow.
35:37And he goes, you're the scary Sting.
35:40And I looked over at Sting, and his eyes were like this big.
35:43The Sting Crow character was born.
35:47And so he went up in the rafters
35:49and built the anticipation that was needed
35:51to really put that character over.
35:53That started what became an 18-month story.
35:56Oh my!
35:57And he started showing up and scaring the hell out of everybody
36:00in the NWO.
36:02He's got everybody!
36:03Sting would finally confront Hogan.
36:05They'd have the match for control of WCW.
36:08He's pointing me!
36:09It was something really that had not been done to this degree
36:12before in the history of wrestling,
36:14making the decision that we're actually not going to pay this off
36:17next week or next month, but we're going to keep this going
36:20until the end of the year in our Starrcade pay-per-view.
36:23Welcome to Starrcade 1997!
36:27An event 18 months in the making!
36:31Sting is going to beat Hogan clean.
36:33WCW is going to come out on top.
36:35Then it's going to be up to NWO to kind of rebuild from the ground up.
36:39That was the plan.
36:40Sting has returned to the wrestling ring
36:43to reclaim WCW's title from the NWO.
36:48The original finish, it got convoluted and compromised throughout the day.
36:53There was supposed to be the big boot by Hogan,
36:57the leg drop on Sting, the cover,
37:00but the referee's supposed to do a fast count.
37:03It wasn't a fast count, but Bret Hart came in,
37:06restarted the match with himself as the referee.
37:10Well, even the idea, the referee and the fast count and the whole thing,
37:14when they gave it to me, it was like, really?
37:17Like, that is the lamest ending.
37:19Bret Hart is here tonight as a referee.
37:21Is that right? Is that correct?
37:24It's an awful, stupid, and very convoluted ending for the match.
37:29I remember Eric Bischoff insisting how it was going to be fantastic.
37:34Hart's right in front of Sting!
37:37And the crowd reacted the way you wanted them to react initially.
37:42Yay, Sting finally won.
37:44Heavyweight champion of the world, Sting!
37:50It wasn't until afterwards that people started to realize
37:54what a convoluted finish it was.
37:57In our business, you can screw up the whole match.
38:01Do not f*** up the finish.
38:03Then all hell broke loose.
38:07Back in the Internet world, all of the purveyors of truth out there,
38:11they all of a sudden became so obsessed over the finish of Starrcade 97.
38:17What really happened between Sting and Hogan?
38:20Why did it happen? How did you let that happen?
38:24I still get heat for that.
38:26Bischoff had kind of hitched his wagon to Hogan.
38:28He kind of listened to what he said more than the other guys.
38:31On the day of the Sting-Hogan match,
38:34it was apparent to both Hulk and I
38:37that Sting didn't appear to be nearly as excited about the opportunity
38:43that we'd been working on for 18 months.
38:45There was something about him that day that was off.
38:49Sting left the room and Hulk and I kind of looked at each other
38:53and I said, what are you thinking?
38:54He goes, not today, brother.
38:57Not today. His head's not right.
38:59His head's not right.
39:01Hulk just wasn't feeling it.
39:03So we changed the finish, or lack thereof, of the clean finish,
39:07because Hulk Hogan has creative control.
39:10He had creative control. He didn't give two shits.
39:13He'd walk in at 7.30, read the TV and say, doesn't work for me, brother.
39:17He has free right to pretty much do whatever he wants.
39:21He has no interest in that company other than himself.
39:25That right there can really start turning things a certain way.
39:28I think the only guy that was not political was Sting.
39:33Sting didn't seem to be part of that group.
39:35I think Sting had been convinced that Hulk was going to pull the rug out
39:40from underneath him at the last minute.
39:42He walked into that meeting expecting it and actually manifested it.
39:48When guys got those kind of agendas, thinking about themselves,
39:52that's what happens.
39:54And that's pretty much when the ship started to go down.
40:06Starkey 97, Hogan and Sting is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.
40:11We had the audience in the palm of our hands.
40:14But unfortunately, the end didn't live up to the rest of the story.
40:20It certainly wasn't what the fans wanted.
40:22You'll find people who think that was the reason WCW kind of went downhill.
40:27Whatever, wrestling fans.
40:33The WWF had really established a strong creative foundation throughout 97.
40:38If you go back and look at the numbers,
40:40you can start to see that gap getting ever closer.
40:42Vince McMahon went on camera.
40:44He said, we're going to change the way we do things.
40:46We're not going to insult the audience's intelligence.
40:49The WWF has been an entertainment mainstay here in North America and all over the world.
40:54As the times have changed, so have we.
40:57I'm happy to say that this new, vibrant, creative direction
41:00has resulted in a huge increase in television viewership.
41:03He's saying, we're going to do what those other guys are doing
41:06because it's really kicking our ass and it's beginning to hurt.
41:09Vince brings Mike Tyson into WrestleMania.
41:13Knowing that anything that Tyson does, it's a million dollars.
41:22The next night I saw Kevin, first thing I said to Kev was,
41:27you feel the water? It's getting cold.
41:30In other words, we're on our way to the iceberg.
41:34Me and Disco Inferno, we thought The Rock was cool.
41:39And we thought Steve Austin was cool.
41:41And me and Disco were always in the back watching them, you know, backstage.
41:45And we would get heat. Why are you watching the show?
41:47Because it's better than ours.
41:49You know, at that time, I really did not give a f***.
41:52Bischoff, he remembers the big crowds and he was the kingpin.
41:57But the truth of it is, he never knew anything about wrestling.
42:00And then towards the end, basically, he was just yessing to Hogan.
42:05It was a disaster.
42:06Hogan was the bigger talent.
42:08Hogan was the guy that he was going to go with, no matter what.
42:14That's the bond right there, Hogan and Bischoff.
42:17They're both accountable to each other.
42:20That's the secret, is that Hulk Hogan was basically the puppet master to Eric Bischoff.
42:26And Eric Bischoff, he was just a prop.
42:30And that's what killed WCW.
42:33Everything looks easier from the outside.
42:36But once you get inside, you realize just how complicated and nuanced
42:41some things that appear to be so easy and so simple really are.
42:46Who's responsible for killing WCW?
42:48Just look at some of the names who are floating around at the highest levels of internal broadcasting.
42:54They wanted WCW to go away.
42:57They got their wish.
43:00You're leading a night, and now you're not leading a night.
43:03There's reason for concern.
43:05We hit a small brick wall.
43:07The wheels started falling off creatively.
43:10What the f*** is this?
43:12WWE's answer was attitude.
43:15They were willing to go further creatively.
43:18That's exactly what we're going to do to kill you off.
43:21Why are we doing this?
43:22Is this class?
43:23Is this what we're supposed to do?
43:25That's exactly what we're going to do to kill you off.
43:28Why are we doing this?
43:29Is this classy enough for our networks?
43:31That pissed me off.
43:33They started to handcuff us with standards and practices.
43:36Did he say butt on TBS?
43:38I'm not convinced that wasn't an orchestrated hit job.
43:41I don't think that's debatable.
43:43There are too many conspiracies behind the scenes trying to knock him off.
43:47Once you have the monkeys running the zoo, you're in trouble.
43:51The blood was in the water and the sharks were coming to get it.
43:54That's the name of the game.
43:56People will try to manipulate.
43:59And who prevailed?