Who Killed WCW- Episode 4 - The Final Nitro

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Who Killed WCW- Episode 4 - The Final Nitro
Transcript
00:00WCW is about to dominate the globe in professional wrestling.
00:1710 million people in the United States were zeroed in on professional wrestling.
00:22We were the number one cable rated show.
00:24For almost two years, mind blowing.
00:27And when something gets too big too fast, shit's going to hit the fan at some point
00:31and it did.
00:32Little by little, we just fell.
00:35We already knew that we were running thin.
00:38It is so good to be king.
00:41He cared more about ratings than he cared about advertising dollars.
00:44It was a shit show.
00:47Vince Russo was just another idiot.
00:50He was there to lead to our ultimate demise.
00:54I was done.
00:55It was over.
00:56I could have cared less.
00:58No doubt in my mind, Bischoff was responsible for a little of this.
01:02Another nail in the coffin of a company that was rapidly dying at that time.
01:06I don't control that shit.
01:08I go out and I do my job.
01:10My check didn't change.
01:11It was the easiest money I ever made in my career.
01:14Like they got what?
01:16When guys got those kind of agendas, thinking about themselves, that's pretty much when
01:20the ship started to go down.
01:22This is some fucked up shit.
01:25You ain't in Kansas anymore.
01:27You cannot sweep this under the rug.
01:31This is a fucking television show.
01:33I don't understand what he's doing.
01:34The real reason men come in lies.
01:36I believe WCW has come to an end.
02:02It is.
02:03At an end.
02:05It didn't feel like a family anymore.
02:07It felt like everybody was out for themselves and it seemed like the blood was in the water
02:11and the sharks were coming to get it.
02:14I think everybody just didn't know what was happening.
02:16We were still hearing the rumors that we were just going to shut the doors.
02:19So I think at that point everybody was just really unsettled.
02:24It's easy to lose sight of how lucky we are to be part of this.
02:27Hopefully it ain't over.
02:29WCW wrestling is so important to me.
02:31There's just that one guy, Turner, I think, just doesn't think wrestling is cool
02:36and whatever is going to ruin it for millions of people.
02:39I think Turner finally started looking into the books and said,
02:42we got to pull the plug on this.
02:44No matter how much Ted Turner loved this business and wanted to keep it afloat,
02:50you start looking at the books at that time and seeing how much money we were spending.
02:54I can only imagine how much money went out the window.
02:57Oh my God.
03:00After Brad brought me back to kind of oversee Russo,
03:04it was apparent to me that things were more dysfunctional within Turner Broadcasting
03:08and the relationship between Turner and WCW than they had ever been.
03:12I'm not talking about what was going on in television
03:14or how much money they were making or losing.
03:16I'm just talking about the relationship.
03:20Time Warner is a company of winning brands and winning people,
03:24and so is AOL, for this merger.
03:27Just like when we put Turner Broadcasting into Time Warner,
03:30it made the company much, much stronger,
03:32and I think we're all committed to making this thing work.
03:35AOL was absolutely ubiquitous at that time in terms of, in the public consciousness,
03:40the company introduced many people to the concept of logging onto the Internet for the very first time.
03:46I've been on America Online two months, and it's really been a revelation for me.
03:51You got mail!
03:54This was at the time where a lot of the new Internet.com businesses
03:59were receiving wild overvaluations based on promises of future growth.
04:04If you looked at the assets besides furniture,
04:08they have a subscription list, and that's the people who subscribe to AOL.
04:14AOL's leadership in the early part of 1999 also were keenly aware of this reality as well.
04:20So one option that was considered was to merge with a media and entertainment conglomerate,
04:25which was Time Warner.
04:26The combined company, which will be called AOL Time Warner, gives each partner what it now lacks.
04:32What ended up happening is that AOL shareholders would receive 55% of the new company,
04:38and Time Warner, 45%.
04:41Now, my dad's never been online in his life.
04:44Never touched a computer, never owned a cell phone, never used an ATM, right?
04:48He's old school.
04:49So I think there was a whole generation gap loss on AOL's going to buy this giant company with nothing,
04:58where the older investment guys are like, well, you can't turn it down.
05:01It's hundreds of dollars a share.
05:03This is going to be awesome.
05:04We're only going to make a billion dollars.
05:06But nobody would stand up and go, this is a Ponzi scheme, man, right?
05:10This is all going to fall apart.
05:12The blockbuster deal still needs regulatory approval and a nod from Time Warner and AOL shareholders.
05:17AOL had serious, serious issues.
05:21WCW got caught up in that also.
05:25In a sense, you could say it was collateral damage.
05:28Wrestling has become fun, crazy entertainment.
05:32It's an alternative.
05:34It doesn't define our network.
05:36It's one night a week.
05:37It's a hit every Monday night, but it wasn't anymore.
05:40Because it was broken and I had to fix it, I was a physical presence there.
05:44I was in there trying to do whatever I can do to get it back on track.
05:49Big mistake!
05:51What a bunch of fucking boobs.
05:54It was so bad, I really felt like, okay, stake in our heart.
05:59It was a chaotic shit show and a blur.
06:02And I said, I'm about to get the hell out of here because I've had it.
06:06You had to look out for yourself.
06:08I just felt like Brad didn't know anything about wrestling.
06:12I mean, he knew about the corporate side, but he wasn't a wrestling person.
06:15He wasn't somebody that was going to try to help save the company.
06:19It was like going through the motions.
06:21To be completely honest, I couldn't fix it.
06:24And the red kept getting redder.
06:26And the ratings kept falling and falling and falling.
06:28In addition, WCW drove away its paying audience.
06:31Look at the difference in buy rate between the uncensored pay-per-view in March of 1999
06:37and the same event just 12 months later in March of 2000.
06:41They basically put on the exact same main event, Hogan Flair, two years in a row.
06:45Hold on to your hats! One, two, three!
06:48In March of 1999, the uncensored pay-per-view enticed some 325,000 viewers to purchase the event.
06:56But just 12 months later, only 60,000 people were willing to purchase the 2000 version of WCW Uncensored.
07:03That represents a drop of 81%.
07:08The narrative is at the end of 2000, WCW had losses of around $62 million.
07:14That's the narrative.
07:15And I think that there probably is a grain of truth to that.
07:18But what people don't understand is the why.
07:23Professional wrestling is very different when you're a company like Time Warner AOL.
07:28A lot of answering to shareholders that have expectations on a monthly and quarterly basis.
07:35I think there was a lot of debt from other divisions in the company that could be allocated legally,
07:42but allocated as losses against WCW because everybody knew it was going to be written off as a loss anyway.
07:48The bullshit internal transfers that people tried to park all the trash on our books while we were getting hurt.
07:56It was clear to me at that point that Turner Broadcasting didn't want anything to do with WCW.
08:02And I said to Brad specifically, I said, Brad, why don't you let me explore selling WCW while it still has some value?
08:12Because the velocity at which WCW was losing round at that particular time was pretty dramatic.
08:20Brad kind of chuckled at me and he said, Eric, you know this company, we don't sell anything, we buy things.
08:28So I just let it go.
08:30Fast forward.
08:32Good evening. Today we announced that the Federal Communications Commission has approved the merger of America Online and Time Warner Inc.
08:42So the merger was announced on January 11th, 2000, finalized on January 11th, 2001.
08:49There had actually been a lot of financial experts who had been predicting the imminent demise of AOL for quite some time.
08:57Keep in mind that throughout the year 2000, a number of significant things happened.
09:02We had the dotcom recession, right?
09:05We had a number of these internet companies that were going to be the darlings of the future that went belly up, which affected AOL in a serious way.
09:13Its stock price dropped by 50%, which of course creates a huge pressure to look closely at which divisions are profitable and which are registering huge losses.
09:24That put WCW even more in the crosshairs.
09:27There were a lot of executives at very senior levels.
09:30The only person standing in front of them was Ted Turner.
09:34The merger happens, Ted becomes vice chairman.
09:38You know, he was excited about that at first.
09:40And you know, you have an office in New York, you know, I've made it.
09:44Well, no, your name made it, your businesses made it.
09:48They didn't want to even hear at the board meetings from him.
09:51Ted Turner was no longer a challenge.
09:53Ted Turner was regulated to the corner and didn't have a voice or vote in his own company.
09:58You know, Ted is no longer in a position to have control over WCW and its affairs.
10:04I remember saying, you know, we're Time Warner.
10:08Is it that important to own a wrestling company that's losing money, bleeding massively, has lost money every year of its existence except for one or two years?
10:19Is that really what Time Warner needs to own?
10:22I don't think we need this.
10:29Brad Siegel, take one.
10:32I get a phone call from Brad.
10:34He said, so let me ask you, Eric, a couple months ago you brought up the idea of selling WCW.
10:39Do you think you could find a buyer?
10:41And I immediately said, sure.
10:43I had no idea.
10:44I'd never done anything like that before.
10:46But I assured him that I could find someone who had the resources to buy it.
10:50I said, you want me to put a deal together?
10:51You want me to try to put some people together?
10:53And he goes, see what you've got.
10:55I went to a guy by the name of Peter Goober.
10:58Peter Goober, at that point in time, owned a company called Mandalay Sports and Entertainment.
11:02He's a very, very, very well-established Hollywood guy.
11:05And he said, look, I'm not interested in investing and buying WCW, but I think I know some people who may.
11:11And he put me in touch with Brian Badal and Steve Greenberg, who owned a company called Fusion Media Ventures.
11:17Fusion Media Ventures had created the Classic Sports Network, which became ESPN Sports Classic.
11:23Brian and Steve understood media.
11:25They had great connections in New York on Wall Street.
11:28And we hit it off and started the process.
11:31I called Brad back and said, OK, I got the investment.
11:34Fusion Media funded the initial round with $5 million of their own and then went out and raised $62 million in the market.
11:42I felt like I was capable with the financial resources and the right partners with me, that there was potential for WCW.
11:48The professional wrestling genre as a whole is indestructible.
11:52It's just a matter of the company being in the right hands.
11:55Eric was invested in trying to keep WCW alive and moving.
12:02So it was very exciting when the opportunity came up to buy it.
12:07And it wasn't surprising that he went 100% all in and just gave it all he had.
12:14We had come up with a loose plan of what we were going to do once the deal was consummated.
12:20For example, went out to Las Vegas.
12:22We met with Hard Rock and they were planning on building an entertainment theater on top of one of their parking garages that would hold about 3,500 people.
12:30So we started to negotiate the opportunity for kind of a full-time location producing our shows in front of a live audience in Las Vegas every Monday night.
12:38And one of the initial thoughts we had is let's bring WCW back with this pay-per-view called the Big Bang.
12:46So on January 11, 2001, it appears that Fusion Media Ventures has purchased the company.
12:54The figure that was reported at the time of the apparent sale to Fusion was $67 million.
13:00There's a lot of exuberance about, once again, this being now the turning point.
13:05Now we've got the new owners in play, now Eric Bischoff's back in his position.
13:08This is where we're off to the races.
13:10The new goal is 100 weeks in a row, and that's kind of what's in the future for WCW.
13:14We always looked at this as a partnership between us and Eric.
13:19We certainly aren't buying this because we think it should just stay number two.
13:26We won't be satisfied until this thing is number one again, and our goal this time is 100 weeks, not 96 weeks in a row.
13:34I was excited. I thought, you know, okay, great, this is going to open a new door.
13:38We're going to continue to go on like we are.
13:40I think we were going to see a smarter, newer, more refreshed version of Eric.
13:45He looked really gung-ho to make this work.
13:48The return of broadcasting guaranteed us our time slot on Monday night and Thursday night.
13:53So our job was then to produce the show, find the advertisers, and turn the show profitable.
13:58I remember that being part of the deal, and I like that as part of the deal.
14:02Knowing that you've got that slot, then being able to calculate what the advertising value of that's going to be is critical.
14:10So it was a fait accompli as far as we were concerned, and we were scheduled to close that deal.
14:18On March the 6th, Jamie Kellner is announced as the new CEO of Turner Broadcasting.
14:23Jamie Kellner is someone whose reputation certainly preceded him in the television business.
14:27He is credited with having a huge influence over the growth of the Fox network, and then actually becoming a founding partner of the WB network.
14:36And upon being appointed to the role, his initial comments to the press were that,
14:42I'm paraphrasing, this is a great company full of great people. I'm going to try not to mess things up. I'm going to tweak it.
14:49Jamie Kellner was one of the best television executives in the business, but Jamie hated wrestling.
14:55He hated it. You know, he hated it, didn't get it, didn't want anything to do with it.
15:00It was a pain in the ass, and we were losing so much money all the time that I think I made the suggestion to sell WCW.
15:09I don't know if it came from me or somebody suggested it and I latched on to it.
15:13And Jamie was like, yep, get rid of this as fast as you can. I don't want anything to do with it.
15:18March 16th, Brad Siegel sends out a memo advising WCW employees there's going to be a period of hiatus.
15:25Then just a few days later, actually there's not going to be a hiatus, but the programming is being canceled after a 29-year run on the Turner networks.
15:36And that leads us to an episode of Monday Nitro in the midst of all of this chaos that has to occur in Gainesville, Florida that Monday evening.
15:45Many of you may know that for the past six months I've been working with a group of people whose goal it was, and is, to acquire World Championship Wrestling.
15:54But recently we've hit a couple roadblocks that may be, in fact, brick walls.
16:01And while it is still in my power, I want to do something befitting what could be, very well, the last night of wrestling on the Turner networks.
16:12That being said, I'll see you all in Panama City next Monday night, the Night of Champions.
16:18Incredible!
16:22We were just getting ready to close, and I got a call from Brian Badal. And Brian said, Eric, it's done.
16:29I said, congratulations, Brian. He said, no, you don't understand. It's done. The deal is over. It's off the table.
16:37We were rounding third, heading for home, and there was no warning whatsoever. It came completely out of the blue.
16:44Jamie Kellner, he was the head dog. And he looked at the WCW deal and contemplated us having at least a couple years of two hours of prime time on Monday night, two hours of prime time on Thursday night.
16:56And Kellner didn't want that beachfront property to be dedicated to wrestling content. He wanted that prime time schedule for other programming.
17:05The cold, hard truth is that WCW was completely reliant on television. So much so, in fact, that Eric Bischoff famously quipped that without television, the company was worth 20 bucks, if anything.
17:18So at that point, when you take the television distribution off the table, you're taking 90% of the revenue out of the equation. The deal was not worth it to us. It effectively killed the deal.
17:30I was devastated.
17:34What am I doing here?
17:36Stu, Snyder, ready, go, action.
17:40Growing up, I loved wrestling. I lived in New York, so I remember going to Madison Square Garden once a month. Bruno San Martino, Ivan Putzky, Gorilla Monsoon, George the Animal Steel. I can go on.
17:55I enjoyed it. I loved it. It's a core element of my childhood.
17:58I joined Turner Broadcasting in 1993. My responsibility was to come on board and head up a unit called Turner Home Entertainment. And then I left, did a few other things, including becoming the president and chief operating officer of WWF Entertainment.
18:16The first thing I was looking to do was to keep growing the core business, to look for new opportunities for the company.
18:23I continued to read about what was happening at WCW. I kept reading about the behind-the-scenes angst going on there. The ratings weren't improving. What's going to happen here? Are they going to stick with this? Are they not going to stick with it?
18:36And what I recall is picking up the phone and calling Brad and just checking in, first of all, because we've known each other for a long, long time.
18:45Keep reading about this stuff. Are you okay? And, you know, he'd share with me some of the angst he was going through.
18:51I may have said something to the effect of, hey, look, if there's ever a reason to have a conversation, I think we might be interested.
18:59We were aware that there was another player. It didn't factor into anything. I didn't know their deal. I didn't know what they were offering. I knew nothing.
19:06Internally at WWF, we had made a decision and thought if we could do a transaction to acquire WCW, we were going to work really hard to get that done.
19:17On Friday, March 23rd, the WWF announces the unthinkable, that it has purchased its competition, WCW.
19:26On March 26th, 2001, the final episode of WCW Nitro is broadcast live from Panama City Beach, Florida.
19:33Oh, what is this for?
19:35We're doing a little documentary on the last day of Nitro.
19:38The last day of Uniball.
19:40Uniball.
19:42Believe what you want to believe. Believe what you want to believe. But WCW Nitro is not over.
19:51Believe what you want to believe. But WCW Nitro is not over.
19:58It's great.
20:03Get the fuck out of here.
20:06Do you know anything? What's going on tonight?
20:11Holy shit.
20:12What is that all about?
20:17Panama City, Florida. Vince McMahon vignette.
20:19Vince McMahon vignette. Wow. That's big time, brother.
20:28You had Vince McMahon starting the show on camera. It's hard to overstate just how shocking that was at the time.
20:36Imagine that. Me, Vince McMahon. Imagine that. Here I am on WCW television.
20:48How can that happen? Well, there's only one way.
20:52You see, it was just a matter of time before I, Vince McMahon, bought my competition.
21:01That's right. I own WCW.
21:05Therefore, in its final broadcast tonight on TNT, I have the opportunity to address what is the fate of WCW?
21:17Because the fate, the very fate of WCW is in my hands.
21:27We thought we were coming to work like a regular day, and no one knew until that night. No one knew.
21:35We saw Vince come up on the trot. No matter how you look at it at that point, you know, no matter how it spread, they win the war.
21:44When WWE acquired WCW, it felt like the end of an era.
21:50It sucked. The 800-pound gorilla of the room had won.
21:53I had no idea what Vince would do with it. I didn't know if it was more advantageous for him to buy it and keep it afloat and then have the competition or destroy it.
22:08So the fear of the unknown is pretty heavy.
22:11There was a lot of sadness and a lot of uncertainty. Who they were going to hire, who they were going to cut.
22:17We don't really know what's going on. People are happy and sad at the same time. They don't know why. I don't think you want my real feelings about it, because they ain't pretty.
22:26It was very emotional. I remember Dusty was there, so I was sticking pretty close to him. There were WWF signs up, which was really weird.
22:36You know, because there's always signs like on the dressing room doors, you know, wherever, and you were seeing WWF. I mean, it felt like a slap.
22:42I remember Shane McMahon coming in, and he had a little brief meeting with everybody. And we get told the company's been sold to the WWE.
22:51And tonight, everybody's going to find out about it. And a lot of guys were like, oh my God.
22:57As I was seeing the wrestlers and performers backstage, you know, shoulders might have been slumped before they walked through the curtain.
23:04But then when they walked through, it's back to business as normal. And then when they came back after their match or segment or whatever, it's back to what's going on, what's going to happen.
23:14Let's not lose sight of the fact this is the last Nitro on the Turner Network, and we're going out with the bang.
23:20Scott Steiner and I, we had a conversation, and Scott goes, you know, what do you think you're going to do, man? What do you think you're going to do?
23:26And I look at Scott, and I go, bro, who's auditioning that night?
23:30But Booker T, the cover! Down comes the one-shot blaster! Yes, he is!
23:34Oh, and he nailed it!
23:36Everyone was working that night, so we went out and we rocked it.
23:39He's got it! Oh, God! Here it is! And one, two, could it be it? Yes! Yes! Booker T!
23:46I didn't know I was going to win the world title that night. But then when I did find that out, I go, oh, yeah, man. I got a chip in the eye.
23:52They got eyes on me. You know, so I was really excited.
23:58I was probably perhaps one of the only guys that was excited, though.
24:03I mean, it was sad, you know? It wasn't even sad, it was pathetic.
24:08Why?
24:10Because fucking people actually showed up.
24:13Hey, you guys want to be on the Titanic?
24:17Nah.
24:18You guys want to be on the Titanic?
24:21Nah.
24:23Good.
24:25I'll sit and watch the fucking thing sink from my fucking house.
24:28I didn't watch it as it happened live. I feel bad for the talent that were there.
24:32I feel bad for the production staff that were there that didn't see it coming, had no idea what their futures were going to be.
24:38It's a big life change. But as far as the brand itself, I walked away from it. I no longer cared.
24:44It's going to be an emotional thing. You see a lot of production guys, a lot of people, cameras taking pictures of the guys.
24:50And to me, I look at it as the day you left college and guys you might not see again.
24:55But this is a Titanic group of guys we have.
24:58One of the camera guys and one of the sweetheart guys, he'd been working for the company for 27 years.
25:04All of those people lost their livelihood.
25:09And that's why I say, fuck you, Jamie Killner.
25:12I was concerned about a lot of people that just couldn't walk into a job so easily.
25:17Our jobs are so different. It's not a factory. We don't do the same thing every day.
25:23We're a combination of a circus and an army.
25:26And to get that good at it, we had to have the right people in the right places.
25:30And the way you got to that point was the trust of one another.
25:43Then now you can't do it together anymore.
25:47Everybody was in a bad space. A lot of them didn't know what they were going to do.
25:52But there was a time, you know, you got to let it go.
25:56But in this business, it's a little bit different.
26:00What was really weird to me, this multi-million dollar company was sold to WWE for like nothing.
26:07I'm not saying that there was anything spooky kooky going on there, but I have my suspicions.
26:13I own WCW! I own the WWF! And you will treat me with respect!
26:33When you think about the final purchase price, we're talking about a company that at its peak was generating in the neighborhood of $200 million a year.
26:41And a huge part of pop culture that gets sold for a little over $4 million.
26:47I always thought that when I heard the price of what they paid for WCW, it was an inside job of some sort.
26:53Somebody filled their pockets by making that deal, for as cheaply as it was.
26:58Maybe there's an envelope pushed across the desk. Maybe you got influence with the guy that's selling it.
27:06Look, there's some murky circumstances. Stu Snyder was an executive at Turner Broadcasting.
27:12Oh, by the way, Stu Snyder, after the fact, just happens to land a plum executive role with WWE.
27:26Bob Ryder, he was one of the hosts on shows that were broadcast over WCW.com.
27:32So in the summer following the sale of WCW being purchased by the WWF, Bob Ryder puts out a widely disseminated post online, essentially alleging that there had been a conspiracy at play.
27:45Bob Ryder, he was a good man and a good friend.
27:47And I know that Bob had written about a theory that Brad Siegel helped facilitate the actual sale to WWE by convincing Jamie Kellner to take the distribution of programming out of the deal.
28:04Bob's theory was Brad Siegel really didn't want WCW as a part of the Turner portfolio, and this was Brad Siegel's way of using Jamie Kellner to kill the deal.
28:15The conspiracy theory was really something like out of a wrestling storyline, essentially.
28:21There was a plot initiated by Brad Siegel and Stu Snyder to clear the path for it to have a quick sale to the WWF.
28:30Stu Snyder at that time was the president of the WWF. He had previously worked at Turner Broadcasting, had a relationship with Brad Siegel.
28:36And so the allegation was that there were covert talks between the two.
28:42And the primary piece of evidence was the fact that WCW was sold for 4.3 million bucks.
28:48I don't know that that's true. It is a conspiracy theory.
28:52Unfortunately, there are enough questions and questionable relationships that lend interest in a conspiracy like that.
29:01Because you were friends with Stu Snyder, it was a way to ensure the WWF would have an advantage to the sale.
29:09No. Well, first of all, I mean, we'd known each other our entire careers.
29:14I mean, the fact that Stu Snyder was running WWE and was a likely buyer for WCW is purely coincidence.
29:25Did you have any advanced knowledge that the Fusion deal was going to fall through?
29:30No. Simple as that.
29:34My understanding is that Brad reported up to Jamie Kellner and that Jamie made the decision to say, I don't want it on our on our end and cancelled it.
29:44If you think about how serious these particular allegations are and the fact that they would lead to potential SEC violations
29:52and have serious professional and personal consequences for all people involved,
29:57it's quite the audacious plot given the high profile nature of the people that we're talking about
30:02and what they stood to lose if eventually they would be convicted essentially of corporate espionage.
30:08I'm not saying I'm 100 percent convinced that Stu Snyder was part of an orchestration to make sure WCW got sold for nickels on the dollar.
30:20I'm not suggesting that I know that.
30:22I just lean in that direction because I don't believe in the number of coincidences that surround this entire situation.
30:29I'm just not buying it.
30:30I understand gossip. I understand rumor.
30:35But it's easy to sit on the sidelines and not really understand the economics of the businesses to say what something is worth.
30:43If there was a deal out there worth $60 million, I can guarantee you as I'm sitting here today, the Turner executives would have made a deal.
30:52We wanted to sell it. When we sold it, that's what it was worth.
30:55My regret is that when the ratings started to plummet, we could not find the right story, the right players in that story to turn it around.
31:08You know, that's a big regret of mine. We weren't successful.
31:11Sometimes that happens. You can't always be successful.
31:15I feel a responsibility for it because I clearly was not the person to do it.
31:20I didn't know the business and the story well enough to write it myself. I'm not a writer.
31:28So, yeah, I'm really sad about that and regret it wasn't a different outcome.
31:33Would anything have been done to save WCW?
31:36In my opinion, without a strong advocate who really believed in the business, it would have been tough to exist there with everything else, their challenges as a company.
31:50But that world had passed. Ted was that person who was its chief advocate.
31:56In the new AOL Time Warner, without that person, I don't know how it succeeds there.
32:01And for good or for worse, the one thing that all the talent knew, they knew where the buck stopped at WWF.
32:08It was Vince. You were either in line or you were out. That's how Vince ran that place.
32:14That place was a different story, a different time, different era.
32:16So unless you had somebody like that who could go, this is the way it's going to run and I have the support of corporate to leave it alone and let me do my thing, I think it would have been challenging.
32:28It's been proven that it was challenging.
32:38Let me be clear. We weren't looking at all to buy something and kill it.
32:43This brand is still good. It's still relevant to an audience.
32:48We're going to figure out how do we keep it alive and maybe over time it comes back as a separate show.
32:56In my head, I saw this great rivalry that was under one roof.
33:01First of all, it all started with the famous Shane McMahon showing up on WCW on Nitro.
33:07And proclaiming the storyline of basically Vince was going to buy WCW, but he snagged it out from him.
33:22I remember sitting down in my hotel room and writing down all the wrestlers who I had hoped to wrestle.
33:28Goldberg, Sting, Savage, everybody in the NWO.
33:32I remember writing everybody down and going to Vince and saying, hey, this might be a good idea.
33:37What about this guy and this guy and this guy and this guy? Let's bring them in.
33:40There was so much speculation as to how it would all work.
33:44What people don't realize is that when WWE acquired WCW, the assets of WCW, the contracts weren't really part of the equation.
33:52It wasn't like all of the talent that was under contract automatically came to WWF.
33:56At least not the big names that mattered.
33:59Some of those people had quite a bit of time left on their contracts and they were going to get paid anyway.
34:04I knew that at the time guys were getting 50 cents on the dollar on their existing contracts and that was not happening with me.
34:11I'm not going to give in. I'm not going to do it.
34:13So if I had to sit out for three years, I sat out for three years.
34:16Not everybody wanted to go to work for WWE.
34:19You didn't have Sting. You didn't have Lex Luger. You didn't have Goldberg.
34:23What do you really have?
34:26I still had over a year left on my contract.
34:30They offered me a 50% buyout and go to work or just sit at home for the next year.
34:37I said, nah man. I decided out of my mind.
34:41I remember Ric Flair saying a long time ago, time off is your worst enemy.
34:46So I was like, let's take the 50% buyout and let's go to work.
34:50Wait a minute! What the hell?
34:56Look at T! He's the WWE, WCW champion!
35:01Back then it was a test.
35:03Throw these guys out here and see how good they really are compared to the WWE guys.
35:09Shane and I decided to join forces.
35:13The Invasion storyline was supposed to be the best that WCW had to offer versus the best that WWE had to offer.
35:21But we were in no shape to actually be able to really, really pull off an Invasion angle
35:27just because we did not have enough star power to really, really get that thing off the ground.
35:32They never really did a WCW, WWE feud correctly.
35:37And I think that was a big mistake by Vince McMahon.
35:40I think he could have done some really cool matchups and some really cool things.
35:44Hey yo!
35:46They were going to write the history that they wanted to create.
35:50And no matter how you looked at it, we were the Confederate soldiers going to work for the Union.
35:56And if you thought that you were going to go over one of their top guys, bullshit.
36:01They brought us in under the guise of, this isn't going to work twice.
36:07I looked at Scott, I said, we're gone. We're done. We're dead.
36:10I get to have the wonderful experience to watch my friend who now has been sober for 11 months
36:18go downstairs and just start pounding drinks.
36:22And he's like, fuck it.
36:24You talking about a miserable day in my life?
36:28The way they said, WCW?
36:31There was no room in New York City for a company like WCW.
36:36There was no room in New York City for a company like WCW.
36:40That's just the way I felt about it.
36:42When the WWE won the war, not only did they want to win the war,
36:46but they wanted to bury the opposition and they wanted to plant the flag.
36:51And that's what they needed to do more than anything to really solidify winning that war.
36:58Planting that flag.
37:00Yeah, they had to be in a dominant position to do that.
37:04We're back live here, ladies and gentlemen. This crowd is still buzzing.
37:08Here comes Mr. McMahon back.
37:11He promised to name the new general manager of Raw.
37:14In 2002, Vince McMahon called me.
37:17And while Vince was speaking, I had already made up my mind that this is my opportunity.
37:22Allow me to introduce you to the new general manager of Raw.
37:27His name is Eric Bishop.
37:31I'm not going to say that everybody in WWE was happy to see me show up,
37:36but the people that mattered could not have made me feel more at home.
37:40I like Eric a lot. We're good buddies. I've known him for a very long time.
37:44And he has his bust on the Mount Rushmore of professional wrestling executives.
37:49Everything that went wrong, the fusion sale falling through,
37:54the fact that the narrative is Eric Bischoff, creator of WCW.
37:58I had an opportunity to write the last chapter of my story.
38:03Wait a minute. What? What the hell is going on? What is this?
38:07You know, I had been with WWE for a few years as that general manager character,
38:11and everything was going great.
38:13And I remember getting a phone call from Stephanie McMahon, who was head of creative at that point.
38:17She goes, Eric, I don't want you to take this the wrong way.
38:19You've done a great job, but we're going to go in a different direction.
38:23Eric Bischoff has abused his power for too long.
38:27John Cena was going to hit me with his finish and drag me out of the ring,
38:32and John Cena was going to throw me in the back of a garbage truck,
38:35and I was going to be hauled out of the arena.
38:37And I very seldom questioned creative.
38:41But I went to Vince and said, it doesn't make any sense for John Cena to do it.
38:44It makes more sense for you to do it.
38:47And I thought, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to have fun doing it.
38:50I'm going to make this fun for me.
38:52And I did. And I had a blast.
38:53And I got to live a dream.
38:55And rewrite my own chapter.
38:57And I loved it. Every minute of it.
38:59There's not a second of it that I regret.
39:07Who killed WCW?
39:10Ooh. Who killed WCW?
39:15I think it was Turner Corporate.
39:18And some of the people within the booking committees.
39:20AOL, Time Warner, the executives, they were embarrassed by Goofy Wrestling.
39:26The guys in Turner that didn't want us and didn't like us,
39:30and the top guys not letting the mid-card guys interact with them.
39:36WCW killed itself.
39:38The cast of characters that was WCW killed WCW.
39:43It didn't function as a team any longer.
39:46It functioned as a bunch of self-seeking individuals.
39:50I've never seen anybody that was that high up in the food chain
39:56take less responsibility.
39:59This is what killed WCW.
40:01They were fighting within themselves.
40:03They were eating their own. The Wolves.
40:06Who killed WCW? That's easy.
40:08Turner Sports.
40:10It would have to be the person with the checkbook.
40:12It would have to be Eric Bischoff.
40:14Vince Russo, Eric Bischoff,
40:16two guys that had zero knowledge about how to run wrestling.
40:20And they put themselves in a position to tell people like me what to do.
40:25And that's what killed WCW.
40:28As a matter of fact, I'm going to give myself a round of applause for that.
40:33Yes, thank you.
40:35Bro, they took such a drop from where they were
40:38to where it was when it was sold, and so much money lost.
40:42I don't think anybody could have done anything.
40:45So I would say a business decision killed WCW.
40:50I don't think one person could have killed WCW by any stretch of the imagination.
40:54There were a shitload of people who contributed to its downfall.
40:57I think it's a collection of factors, a number of reasons that explain its demise.
41:02There's plenty of blame to go around,
41:04but I think ultimately it was inevitable that it was going to fall apart.
41:09A good buddy of mine, he's one of my best friends,
41:11downtown Bruno.
41:13When I first started, I said, Bruno, give me some advice.
41:16He said, you're going to hear a voice one day,
41:18and that voice is going to say, go on home, the big run's over.
41:23WCW as an entity, they heard that voice.
41:26And the big run was over, and it was fucking awesome.
41:33Wow, man, what a run.
41:36It was always about the performances for me.
41:38It was always about the fans.
41:39We were rock stars.
41:42Everywhere we went, it was packed.
41:45A whole WCW experience was a hell of a ride, period.
41:51Let us remember the lessons learned and strived to build a fairer
41:56and more equitable future for wrestling.
41:59We've done over 350 or 60 some odd nitros,
42:02and a lot of these people are like family to me.
42:05It was a good ride. It was fun.
42:06You were like a big family, even though you're a dysfunctional family.
42:09You may not get along with everybody,
42:11but you're still going to be there when it comes to it.
42:14It was the greatest job.
42:16They let us be as creative as we wanted to be.
42:18The first time I realized WCW was big
42:21was my very first show, when I debuted.
42:24There was a palpable energy.
42:26You could feel the crowd.
42:28There's something special and something different
42:31about a wrestling fan.
42:33It just blew my mind.
42:34To see what a big deal WCW really was.
42:38He's got him up!
42:40Those were some great times.
42:42Terrific times.
42:44And it came to an abrupt end like that.
42:46But, hey man, all good things come to an end.
42:51I still think that, you know, when it comes down to it,
42:54WCW is Eric's creation.
42:56Any success they had was with Eric.
42:59There's nobody on this planet that can look in the mirror and say,
43:02I beat Vince McMahon at professional wrestling
43:07for 83 weeks.
43:10It's a pretty fucking huge accomplishment.
43:16Cool.
43:18Time fucks with your head, you know?
43:21It becomes distorted.
43:23My memory is more like a series of photographs.
43:28There's bits and pieces,
43:29and moments that stand out in my mind.
43:31But as time goes on, they kind of just all blur together.
43:35When I look back at my time during WCW,
43:37the journey, the ups, the downs,
43:39the ride all along the way was a rush.
43:42We were the number one wrestling company on television
43:45in the world.
43:47Very proud of that.
43:49I was able to experience and achieve things
43:52that nobody thought possible.
43:54And I wouldn't have had any of this
43:56if it wasn't professional wrestling.
43:57So I'm grateful for every minute of it.
43:59The good, the bad, everything in between.
44:02Very lucky.