Jericho, Big Show, Radicals and Regal

[Guest jm29195]

Can anyone give a detailed explanation of how these guys were written out of wcw storylines when they left and which wrestlers were involved, did they loose looser leaves town matches or were there other reasons given??

[Guest Choken One]

Regal was fired for His Drug Abuse and his lack of professionalism (i.e exposed Goldberg)

 

Jericho's contract ran out and he was jobbed three times in the U.S tournament...but his character wasn't ruined or anything...about 2 months before the contract xpired...he just was taken off the air.

 

TBS contract was running out and Show was sick of Bischoff and his treatment and New York was offering one of the biggest contracts in history. Show was jobbed out as he left...

 

The Radicals (Benoit, Guerrero, Saturn and Malenko) were fed up with booking decisions (dispite Benoit being the #2 face) but when Russo was fired and Sullivan was hired as head writer, Sullivan has UGLY history with Benoit because of Nancy.

 

The "Radicalz" along with Shane Douglas, Kidman, Mysterio, Konnan and Kanyon all threatened to leave the company and Douglas was actually the ring leader although Douglas knew damn well he wasn't going back to WWF. Kidman and The rest were promised to be elevated (and they were).

 

So, when Bret Hart suffered his career ending concussion, he was booked to face Sid at Souled Out and Jeff Jarrett was booked for a Triple Threat Theatere Match with Benoit (which was pretty much a Three stages of hell match but only with Catch as Catch, HIAC-rip off and Bunkhouse match)...Jarrett suffered multiple concussions due to wrestling three matches the week before on one night against "legends" Superfly, Santana and some one elese...

 

So WCW decided to Have a vacant title match between Sid and Benoit. They decided to put the title on Benoit in hopes that would persaude him to stay...

 

They replaced the Triple Threater with Kidman Vs Melenko in a Catch as Catch match...Vs Saturn in the Bunkhouse and Douglas's Henchman THE WALL in the HIAC rip off.

 

Benoit went over with Anderson as Referee. Benoit won via Cross face but WCW intentionaly made sure Sid's feet were placed under the ropes...

 

However, later that night...WCW took the belt away from Benoit just in case...Benoit said "Fuck you" and left with Malenko, Guerrero and Saturn behind.

 

WCW put the title back and said Benoit was stripped because of a referee's error.

[cawthon777 0]

I remember hearing Chris Jericho on the LAW a few days before Starrcade 98 and he was talking about his contract issues and his treatment in WCW. He basically said if he regained the TV title from Konnan at the PPV, it was a sure sign he was staying. If he lost, he was on his way out.

 

They kept him around a few months more but jobbed him out to Saturn at Uncensored. Then, right around that same time, he lost to both Booker T and Scott Steiner in the US title tournament and was off TV by mid to late April. He continued working house shows for a few weeks more. His last bout was a tag match with he and Eddie against Kidman & Mysterio. He said before the match that if he was pinned, he would leave WCW. Kidman pinned him in the match and that was that.

 

The Big Show's last WCW TV match was his loss to Diamond Dallas Page at Starrcade 98 after DDP hit a Diamond Cutter off the top.

[bob_barron 0]

Big Show's last WCW match was a loss to Nash on Monday Nitro on 1.11.99 I think

[Guest jm29195]

Didn't Regl return to WCW in 1999 after his first wwf run? I remember him in the Hardcore Junkyard battle royale at Bash at the Beach 1999?

Hows about Raven and Sandman?

Scott Hall?

What about Vader in the wwf?

[bob_barron 0]

Yea- Regal cleaned himself up and was a lowermidcarder in WCW from 1999-2000

[Guest jm29195]

For that matter what about Davey Boy Smith from WCW and Sable from WWF?

[cawthon777 0]

Davey Boy was injured when he fell on the Warrior's trap door during a match. This was fall of 98 when Warrior briefly returned and would come up from underneath the ring to make his surprise appearances during Nitro (segments that often put me to sleep, literally). The fall broke his back and put him in the hospital for a great long while - and was the reason he later became addicted to pain killers.

 

Sable left the WWF in May of 99. There were talks of her being an uber bitch backstage and she was furious over some of the guys pulling pranks on her - I believe Road Dogg took a crap in her bag at one point. She sued the WWF over sexual harrasment and showed up in the front row at WCW Monday Nitro a few weeks later - simply as a message to the wrestling community since it was too early for her to sign with WCW (no compete clause) as many predicted she would eventually do.

[Guest Mulatto Heat]

I didn't watch a single Nitro in 1999 but I heard this somewhere and I want to know if it's true:

 

Wasn't Big Show supposedly going to be named Big Titan or just Titan in the WWF even before he left WCW, and on his way out didn't he get a nWo beatdown with Bischoff (?) saying "The Titanic has sunk" or something like that? Or was that a myth?

[iliketurtles 0]

Don't ask where I heard it, but I think Big Show was actually suppose to be called Big Nasty.

 

I never got why they just didn't keep calling him The Giant, or "The Big Show" Paul Wight.

 

I remember the nWo beatdown with Nash on Giant, but not what Bischoff said.

[Guest Dmann2000]

Most on the web then assumed Wight would be called Titan when he arrived in the WWF, a play on Titan Sports.

 

But for once Vince didn't go with the obvious.

[Guest Choken One]

They called him BIG NASTY for a week and that didn't work and J.R intradvertly called him the big show and it stuck.

 

Same thing happened with Radicalz.

 

JR just called them that as a spur of the moment description and it stuck...

[Guest Mulatto Heat]

I remember the nWo beatdown with Nash on Giant, but not what Bischoff said.

You know, come to think of it, it might have been Schiavone or one of the other announcers. You know that the WCW commentary team weren't above making childish quips against the 'competition'.

 

On another note, I never really 'got' why the Radicals had that name. To me they weren't exactly 'radical', just unhappy and unfulfilled. Also, while we're on the subject, recently I was looking up old RAW reviews (like CRZ and Slobberknocker before the archives vanished), and saw some old tOA quotes, and I got the impression that the WCW supporters thought that the four made a bad move, and there was a funny tOA quote about Benoit probably feeling so bad that he just pinned the Rock in his first singles win less than a month in the company.

[Guest Choken One]

Radical often is infered to mean "Outlaws" and they already had a tag team called that...

[Fökai 0]

Wasn't Big Show supposedly going to be named Big Titan or just Titan in the WWF even before he left WCW, and on his way out didn't he get a nWo beatdown with Bischoff (?) saying "The Titanic has sunk" or something like that? Or was that a myth?

 

Nash/TBS were fighting over who would be the "giant" of the nWo Wolfpack that reformed on the 01/04/99 Nitro at the Georgia Dome - aptly known as the episode that housed "The Fingerpoke of Doom". After the reformation of the "A-Team Wolfpack" (Hogan, Hall, Nash, Steiner, Buff, Luger), the B-Team (with Giant leading the charge) became angry at the turn of the events. The challenge was laid out by Big Show the Thunder following the A-Team reformation (01/08/99), but Nash won decisively on the 01.11.99 episode of Nitro. The entire nWo agreed to dump whoever lost that match, so being that TBS lost, they did an old-school beatdown on him, complete with Bischoff providing commentary.

 

IIRC, Bischoff's comment directed at TBS was "The Corporate Giant fell", referring to Wight leaving for the WWF soon after.

[Guest Loss]

Jericho was offered an obscene amount of money (we're talking TWO Jeritron 5000's territory) to stay in the company, but all they would commit to as far as a push was two consecutive Nitro tag main events and a run with the US title.

 

Jericho had a verbal agreement with Bischoff in the summer of 1998 to stay, and then Scott Steiner, despite being injured at the time and not being over at all at that point was resigned for twice the money Jericho was being offered. Jericho balked and refused to sign a contract until he was given equal pay.

 

This coincided with the famed Goldberg program which Goldberg nixed after Kevin Nash got in his ear and said Jericho was too small to ever be in main events and that he should refuse to do the program. The angle ended up being blown off on TV the week prior to World War 3, where neither guy had a match and where Jericho was lobbying to be put in the challenger spot. Nash took the book and saw Jericho as a threat and immediately put the TV title on his buddy Konnan and under orders from Bischoff to job him until he resigned, took the opportunity to bury him the last few months of his deal, although admittedly his treatment at times in WWE has been far worse than how he was treated in early 1999 under Nash's watch.

 

There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the general political reasoning behind Jericho jumping. Each of those questions posed is a novel unto itself, and I'll go more in detail on Jericho's situation later.

[Guest wildpegasus]

Quote Chocken One

 

"...WCW took away the belt from Benoit just in case."

 

Benoit gave the belt up himself

[MillenniumMan831 0]

Jericho was offered an obscene amount of money (we're talking TWO Jeritron 5000's territory) to stay in the company, but all they would commit to as far as a push was two consecutive Nitro tag main events and a run with the US title.

 

Jericho had a verbal agreement with Bischoff in the summer of 1998 to stay, and then Scott Steiner, despite being injured at the time and not being over at all at that point was resigned for twice the money Jericho was being offered. Jericho balked and refused to sign a contract until he was given equal pay.

 

This coincided with the famed Goldberg program which Goldberg nixed after Kevin Nash got in his ear and said Jericho was too small to ever be in main events and that he should refuse to do the program. The angle ended up being blown off on TV the week prior to World War 3, where neither guy had a match and where Jericho was lobbying to be put in the challenger spot. Nash took the book and saw Jericho as a threat and immediately put the TV title on his buddy Konnan and under orders from Bischoff to job him until he resigned, took the opportunity to bury him the last few months of his deal, although admittedly his treatment at times in WWE has been far worse than how he was treated in early 1999 under Nash's watch.

 

There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the general political reasoning behind Jericho jumping. Each of those questions posed is a novel unto itself, and I'll go more in detail on Jericho's situation later.

Interesting stuff . . . I also remember something about Saturn wanting to lose the Souled Out Dress Match AND the SuperBrawl rematch since everyone would figure he would at least win the rematch. Nash found this to be hilarious and booked it. Of course, Saturn did prevail at Uncensored 1999 (CJ's last ppv).

[Der Kommissar 0]

Wasn't Regal written back out of WCW early in the Russo years when he and a bunch of other jobbers were involved in a battle royal where the losers got fired and the winner got a new gimmick?

[Guest jm29195]

Wasn't Regal written back out of WCW early in the Russo years when he and a bunch of other jobbers were involved in a battle royal where the losers got fired and the winner got a new gimmick?

 

 

 

 

This sounds interesting-does anyone know more about this?

[cawthon777 0]

Wasn't Regal written back out of WCW early in the Russo years when he and a bunch of other jobbers were involved in a battle royal where the losers got fired and the winner got a new gimmick?

Russo showed up in October 99. I'd bet Regal was gone by then due to his substance abuse and wasn't really seen again until the Pillman Memorial match with Benoit.

[bob_barron 0]

See my above post.

 

Regal wasn't fired from WCW (the second time) for abuse- he was fired because they had nothing for him to do

[Der Kommissar 0]

This sounds interesting-does anyone know more about this?

 

From what I can remember, it happened on a Thunder during early in Russo's first WCW stint. It was won by Chavo Guerrero Jr.

 

EDIT: From what I could see on a google search, it as an "opportunity knocks" battle royal, where the winner gets a shot on Nitro, while the losers should seek employment elsewhere. The participants were: El Dandy, Regal, Dave Taylor, Jerry Flynn, Chavo Guerrero, Chris Adams, Scotty Riggs & Prince Iaukea. For some reason, Iaukea was kept on and became the Artist Foremerly known as Prince. I actually originally thought he won the thing, I guess I was mistaken.

Edited August 27, 2003 by Will Scarlet

[treble 0]

Didn't Jericho break his ankle or something on Nitro in the spring of '99, a few months before his contract ran up (I think it was the first show with the new set, theme song, etc.)?