worst WCW blunder ever

[Guest Shaved Bear]

RUSSO!!!!!!!

anyone disagree? its impossible to disagree

[Guest Tony149]

I don't think Russo was WCW's "worst blunder". I'm going to say former WCW V.P. from 1988-1991, Jim Herd. He fired/let Flair go.

[Guest dreamer420]

Signing Hogan.

[Guest Tony149]

Hogan is also a big blunder, as he sent WCW about a year back after they started getting hot with their product. Hogan comes in and like that the product cools off then starts to suck. Although, I don't know if the nWo could of been as big without him.

[Guest Dark Lotus]

There are a lot of ways you can go here... Arquette, Russo, The Radicalz... but in my mind, the biggest mistake WCW made was at Starrcade 97.  They had the opportunity to put Sting over Hogan clean, and bring closure to the year in the rafters storyline, maybe even to the nWo in some ways (although they could stay around like a Horsemen-style group).  But instead they f'd it up, dragged it out, and refused to let a good story die.  

 

It would've been a great markout moment, Sting, after being betrayed by everyone in WCW, comes back and reclaims the gold from the man who tried to destroy HIS company.  But instead they did the screwy "fast" count thing and ruined it.

[Guest Tony149]

That's good point. IMO, that was the first time WCW shot itself in the foot. The second shot would be a year later at Starrcade when Flair lost to Bischoff, and Goldberg lost to Nash. The final gun-shot would happen on Nitro a few weeks later with THE FINGERPOKE OF DOOM~!

[Guest Dark Lotus]

Exactly, that's what killed WCW really, was inability to end GREAT storylines, and pushing the wrong people at the wrong time, putting non-wrestlers over wrestlers.

 

I wouldn't necessarily call Goldberg losing to Nash a bad thing.  It was necessary in the course of the storyline for Goldberg to lose eventually, so that he could chase again.  He had to be exposed as human for his character to grow.

 

Now the FINGERPOKE OF DOOM~! was a big problem.

 

Face it, all Russo really managed to do was to sedate the patient, so that when Vince McMahon finally pulled the plug, there was no pain left.

[Guest Army Eye]

Of course the most fatal flaw with WCW was the horrible management in general and lack of a clear leader, but let's try to look at more specific blunders.

 

Goldberg's first loss was terrible.  I agree that he had to lose eventually, but losing to a taser attack from Scott Hall? That is such a horrible and anti-climactic way for your top guy to suffer his first loss.  Basically all it did was kill 'the streak', it didn't make him look more human or vulnerable at all.

 

Why not have Goldberg pass out in a Bret Hart sharpshooter?  At that point they were copying all of WWF's storylines anyway.  It does make him seem somewhat human (which was needed at that point, as all of his matches were such a foregone conclusion), but it wouldn't hurt his heat all that much.  Have a couple rematches.. maybe a DQ ending in one, before finally Goldberg takes the title back and you've had a great feud and both guys coming out of it looking like gold.

 

Giving away Goldberg vs. Hollywood Hogan for free was simply a catastrophic, money-losing blunder.  Hogan was by far the most over heel in the fed and Goldberg was the undefeated, phenom babyface.  It was a natural Starrcade main event, and would've drawn ridiculous money.  As it was, giving it away on Nitro made for a great show, and popped a big rating, but at what cost?  I guess the plan was to draw the big rating and hope you hang on to the big audience who would presumably become interested in Goldberg as world champ.  But we then see another big WCW blunder, and the reason why WCW couldn't hang on to any of those extra viewers, the poor handling of Goldberg's world title reign.  Quite simply, Goldberg was exposed as a one-dimensional guy who is only interesting when he is squashing someone, and WCW had no idea what to do with him.  So they just kept feeding him jobbers every week, and poor Schiavone was left to try and explain why bums like Jerry Flynn and Glacier were getting world title shots.  And just like that, the world title had lost almost all the prestige it had with Hogan holding it, and it never really recovered.  

 

But if I had to pick one blunder that towered over all the rest, it had to be Starrcade '97.  The build-up to this show was fantastic and it drew a huge buyrate.  This is the card that looked great on paper but the execution of it was botched in every way possible.  After ~18 months of being dominated, this was the night that the WCW was finally supposed to triumph over the NWO and vanquish them, (that's what everybody wanted to see and were PAYING TO SEE) and boy that sure didn't happen.  Where to begin when talking about this atrociously booked event?!  First of all, the heels (mostly NWO) went over in just about every match.  The match second from the top, Nash vs. Giant, never even took place, due to Nash no-showing the event.  In lieu of the match, a Scott Hall interview and then "confrontation" with the Giant took place.  I find it hard to understand why Hall and Giant couldn't have improvised a 3-4 minute match.  Also, Raven was advertised as wrestling Benoit, which was a pretty hot feud as Raven had been avoiding Benoit for a while.  But Raven comes out and says Saturn will be wrestling instead.  WTF??  The PPV buyers get cheated out of ANOTHER match they wanted to see.  Another debacle came soon as Bagwell went over Luger via screwjob in what was supposed to be the blowoff to that feud (in the ultimate insult to PPV buyers, Luger instead won the REAL blowoff on NITRO THE NEXT NIGHT!).  Then, after 3 months of Hennig's big push and going over Flair in their feud(!), he gets embarassingly jobbed out to DDP?!?!  I guess this was done to make up for the loss of a babyface winning match on the card (Giant going over Nash), but who knows.

 

Still, even as I watching the show live, despite all the huge blunders, I didn't think the show was doomed.  All that really mattered was Sting's dramatic return, and going on to triumph over Hogan cleanly.  That's what people paid to see.  Instead Sting laid down to the legdrop and a 'fast count' from Nick Patrick (whether Patrick actually counted fast is irrelevant to me, pulling shit like that in the blowoff match of the century is just INEXCUSABLE), before getting the match restarted by Bret Hart and eventually winning a very tarnished victory.  Speaking of Bret Hart, I don't know how they could have had his big WCW PPV debut go any worse.  They booked him to be a total asshole for some reason.  First of all, he reffed the Zybysko/Bischoff match, and inexplicably knocked out Bischoff with a haymaker and declared Zybysko the winner in one of the all-time mind boggling match decisions.  Then in the main event, he comes out and restarts the match after the referee had already counted 1-2-3 Who the fuck does Bret think he is, the commissioner? I know he had a ref license that night, but how is he overruling other referees' decisions??

 

WCW had a HUGE audience that night and blew it in every way possible.  I think this night was more damaging to them then any other.  No, they didn't lose all their fans right then and there, but a lot of them were soured on the product, and looking back on it, it was the beginning of the end, no doubt about it.

 

I guess I went on for a while there, but I was a die-hard WCW fan (watched every Nitro and Thunder until the bitter end) and it really killed me to see them do these things.....

[Guest Kahran Ramsus]

Staarcade was a huge blunder, no doubt.  But they could have saved it.  They did after all have Goldberg to pick up the slack.  Not to mention the returning Ric Flair.

 

The Goldberg/Fingerpoke of Doom was the worst blunder WCW ever made.  That was the point when the fans really gave up.  Prior to the Fingerpoke of Doom fans were hanging on thinking that WCW couldn't possibly screw this one up.  Hogan was gone to retirement, like everybody wanted, and there was hope.  After the fingerpoke fans never trusted WCW again.  WCW was a terminally ill-patient from that point on.  Russo just pulled the plug, and probably saved the WWF in doing so.  The WWF was headed down the same road in 1999 until Russo left.

[Guest Tony149]

I was also a die-hard WCW fan. From the old NWA days. It was real hard to watch a company owned by people with HUGE pockets and TV outlets, yet rarely get cross-promoted on other Turner networks. WCW was a company that should of never failed, but it did. Too damn bad!

[Guest Galactic Gigolo]

The biggest blunder WCW did, no doubt, was assuming that no matter what they did, they'd always be on top.  That's the attitude Eric got in 1998, and soon enough, the WWF was kicking the crap out of them week after week.

[Guest Mark4steamboat]

Definitely naming Ole as booker when Flair was tearing it up for WCW.

[Guest Tony149]

Good point. Flair was doing a good job as booker, but Jim Herd made the change to Ole. Ole booked some weird stuff when he was in charge.

[Guest fouronthefloor77]

What happened to Ole? he seemed to book Georgia pretty well in the early 80's.

I'd really have to agree on Starrcade 97 that was my first WCW pay per view since Slamboree 93,That finish should've been used on Nitro to build up to the big Starrcade match if they were going to use it at all.

I think the NWO thing lasted too long,It had such a great beginning,but there was no real climactic end to it,It just fizziled out,which goes back to poor execution in booking.

They also misused talent like crazy,Steve Austin,Undertaker,Chris Jericho,Chris Benoit,HHH etc they had all the big names at one time and they just didn't know what to do with them.

[Guest dreamer420]

Turning Goldberg heel was a pretty stupid clusterfuck as well.

[Guest Tony149]

Ole cut back on a lot of things during his run as booker in 1990. He brought in a lot of older wrestlers and used a lot of jobbers on the Clash of the Champions cards. He's mostly remembered for booking the horrible "Black Scorpion" angle. It could of been fine had WCW knew who they wanted to play the part.

[Guest fouronthefloor77]

yeah the Black Scorpion angle was retarded,Barry Windham dressed as Sting at Halloween Havoc was pretty dumb too.

[Guest Zack Malibu]

Treatment of the luchadores.  If they pushed the cruiserweights and Mexicans harder in the beginning, and gave us reasons to care about guys like Hector Garza, La Parka, etc., they would have had an awesome alternative to what the WWF was putting on at the time.

 

I don't think signing Hogan was a blunder, but letting him "run the show" right away was a definite blunder.  WCW had begun using a more extreme style do to the following ECW was gaining, but Hogan comes along, Max Pain vanishes, Foley leaves for SMW, the Nasty Boys are turned face, and Kevin Sullivan is left fighting Hogan and a dyslexic "brother".  Steve Austin was being groomed as the "next big thing", Flair was on top as a babyface, Sting and Ricky Steamboat were both very over faces, Vader was a monster, and guys like Johnny B. Badd, Brian Pillman, Dustin Rhodes, Paul Orndorff, Arn Anderson and Steve Regal were kicking ass on the undercards.  Hogan came in and created a bargain basement WWF.

 

Bischoff's trashing of the Tag Titles was pretty bad as well, since, like the cruiserweights, a wellbooked WCW tag division would have easily topped WWF's division in 98 (LOD?  DOA?  Godwinns/Southern Justice?  Save me.)

 

Giving Pillman his termination notice during the infamous "shoot angle" that has spawned a million copycats.  Pillman could have easily turned into a WCW antihero, and possibly competed with the WWF and former partner Austin in popularity.

[Guest goodhelmet]

arquette. This was the final nail in the coffin which eventually led to its demise. I guess that's Russo's fault so I agree with whoever said bringing Russo in. And to think, the week before we had Benoit-Hart. Russo sucks on so many levels.

[Guest Your God]

Probably keeping the nWo angle running as long as it did.  It never should have got to the point where it was morphing into two groups and that people wearing any sort of nWo outfits were fan favorites.  Fans lost interest quickly and switched to the WWF.

 

Speaking of the nWo, I doubt it'll ever truly be buried.  It went from its original incarnation, to the Hollywood/Wolfpac feud, to the B-Team, to the Russo version, all the way up to the McMahon reincarnation.  Yeah, it was a groundbreaking angle, but when will it ever die?!

[Guest Tony149]

One thing that hurt WCW as well, was the fact they never got the big win over the nWo.

 

As for the nWo...in many ways, they're like the 4 Horsemen. You couldn't top the original, but they around for years with different guys. Only Ric & Arn would remain Horsemen forever. Same with the nWo. Every nWo group had Hall & Nash. I doubt the nWo will be around as long as the Horsemen were due to age, but they always come back.

[Guest Mark4steamboat]

At the end with Russo, they were basically parodying themselves.  lt was becoming harder and harder to sit through a wcw program. Thunder bored the crap out of me and Nitro was pitiful because no one cared anymore. My friend and I caught Rick Steiner in an elevator after a nitro and we were the only ones that even recognized him. We had upper bowl seats and they moved all the people(less than 50) in our section down to the floor. That was probably the worst show i have ever been to.