Why do they keep blaming Bischoff for WCW failing?

[zyn081 0]

Pretty self-explainatory. How much do you buy into what the WWE say about Bischoff? Was he solely to blame as they make it out to be? Can anybody be solely blamed for WCW going under?

 

Feel free discuss, especially you Si82.

[cabbageboy 0]

At the end of the day, Bischoff has to be praised for WCW's success and blamed for its failure. It was his decision to let Nash book, it was his decision to dick around in Hollywood and take his daughter to Europe or Japan and ignore the company for weeks on end. If he'd put his foot down on some of this stuff before it got out of hand WCW might still be around today.

[Guest Fook]

It's simple. In 96-97, Bischoff beat Vince at his own game and Vince has never forgotten this. So now they use revisionist history to show that Bischoff got lucky and ultimately ruined an entire wrestling company. This is also the reason they keep humiliating him on tv.

[cabbageboy 0]

Maybe Bischoff DID get lucky? It's not like there was anything prior to 1996 that suggested they could do that great stuff.

 

I almost think WCW succeeded at this point in spite of Bischoff. If you look at how many people truly liked WCW more than the WWF, this is a fairly small number (and would mainly consist of people in the south). I mean hell, I've always liked the WWF more than WCW but even I was more interesed in WCW in 1996 or so. Some of it was that I flat out hated what the WWF was doing back then. WCW only got a ratings lead in my view because people they were doing good stuff for a while and the WWF was shit. Once the WWF had something people wanted to see again (like Austin as champ), the WWF was back on top.

[Si82 0]

It's like Fook said. WWE had their ass handed to them by WCW when Eric Bischoff was in charge and because history is written by the winners Eric Bischoff is made out to be the man who killed WCW. It's incredibly sad that Vince can't just put things behind him and get on with life rather than feel the need to embarass Bischoff every so often. But that's Vince for ya.

 

That's not to say that Bischoff should not take some blame for the death of WCW just not all of it. I mean, things really did begin to go downhill under his watch. He make a lot of shitty business decisions to try and compete with WWE. Crap like signing Master P to a $200,000 per appearance deal, paying Megadeath $250,000 to perform on Nitro, paying Kiss $500,000 to play on Nitro and the introduction of The Demon becuase of the deal, giving Dennis Rodman a $1 million to return and refusing to accept that anyone but the old guard should be on top.

 

Granted they help start the slump but you have to remember once the shit really hit the fan Bischoff was gone from the company. They could have make a comeback if more crappy decisions weren't made by the upper management. Once Bischoff went the company didn't even have a direction untill Vince Russo was brought in. He lasted a few months and then Kevin Sullivan was put in charge which caused the four "Radicalz" to resign and the company got even worse. The final nail would have to be bringing back Russo again.

 

Bischoff did play a part in the end of WCW but there are many other factors and many other people who the blame should be placed upon.

[Guest MikeSC]

It's like Fook said. WWE had their ass handed to them by WCW when Eric Bischoff was in charge and because history is written by the winners Eric Bischoff is made out to be the man who killed WCW.

You're missing that for MOST of EB's tenure, WCW was a money pit.

 

And WWE ended up kicking the shit out of WCW with EB in charge as well.

 

EB was turfed in 1999 for a reason.

That's not to say that Bischoff should not take some blame for the death of WCW just not all of it. I mean, things really did begin to go downhill under his watch. He make a lot of shitty business decisions to try and compete with WWE. Crap like signing Master P to a $200,000 per appearance deal, paying Megadeath $250,000 to perform on Nitro, paying Kiss $500,000 to play on Nitro and the introduction of The Demon becuase of the deal, giving Dennis Rodman a $1 million to return and refusing to accept that anyone but the old guard should be on top.

EB always used tons of money to compete. He just stopped getting lucky picks. Also, WWF stopped losing their top guys and when that well dried up, WCW found it incredibly difficult to make a new guy.

 

Take away Nash & Hall and WCW never dominates the WWF for one day.

Granted they help start the slump but you have to remember once the shit really hit the fan Bischoff was gone from the company.

EB caused much of the shit to hit the fan. Just because he was gone when the problems started to really become prominent does not mean he was not largely responsible.

 

He allowed the main eventers to do whatever they want.

He wrote creative control into a ton of contracts.

He couldn't come up with an idea after nWo and, thus, allowed it to become a joke.

He pissed away a big money match in Hogan v GB to win the ratings battle for one week.

They could have make a comeback if more crappy decisions weren't made by the upper management. Once Bischoff went the company didn't even have a direction untill Vince Russo was brought in. He lasted a few months and then Kevin Sullivan was put in charge which caused the four "Radicalz" to resign and the company got even worse.

Russo was turfed because his numbers were horrible. Absolutely horrible. Things got no better when he was in charge and Russo's ideas were mind-numbingly bad.

Bischoff did play a part in the end of WCW but there are many other factors and many other people who the blame should be placed upon.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Such as?

 

I don't blame Hunter for the WWE's current problems because Vince is the one who allowed him to have so much power.

-=Mike

[Si82 0]

You're missing that for MOST of EB's tenure, WCW was a money pit.

 

And WWE ended up kicking the shit out of WCW with EB in charge as well.

 

EB was turfed in 1999 for a reason.

What exactly is your point here? I didn't say WCW wasn't a money pit, or that they didn't get their ass kicked when Bischoff was in charge, or that Bischoff wasn't canned for good reason. I agree with all those points because they are fact. What they have to do with the fact that WCW was the top wrestling company in the world for a couple of years I don't know.

 

EB always used tons of money to compete. He just stopped getting lucky picks. Also, WWF stopped losing their top guys and when that well dried up, WCW found it incredibly difficult to make a new guy.

 

Take away Nash & Hall and WCW never dominates the WWF for one day.

Why not use the cash he had access to in order to bring talent to the company. After all, wrestling is a business and he was in direct competition with another company. Are you saying the Bicshoff entire run in WCW was based on luck rather than the ability to spot talent? And how do you know that WCW wouldn't have done well without Hall and Nash. Nitro was pretty competive with Raw before then and who's to say they wouldn't have come up with a different gimmick to get on top?

 

He allowed the main eventers to do whatever they want.

He wrote creative control into a ton of contracts.

He couldn't come up with an idea after nWo and, thus, allowed it to become a joke.

He pissed away a big money match in Hogan v GB to win the ratings battle for one week.

This is all true. But WCW could have made a comeback. It wasn't dead when Bischoff was dumped.

 

Russo was turfed because his numbers were horrible. Absolutely horrible. Things got no better when he was in charge and Russo's ideas were mind-numbingly bad.

Again, I never said Russo was fantastic for the company or that he had great ideas becuase he didn't. I said he gave the company a direction. Not a very good one but a direction. I also didn't say that things got better either. So why bring these things up?

 

Such as?

 

I don't blame Hunter for the WWE's current problems because Vince is the one who allowed him to have so much power.

Kevin Nash, Hulk Hogan, the other old boys, Vince Russo, Bill Busch the rest of WCW upper management who didn't act when they saw their was a problem.

[Guest MikeSC]

You don't blame the boys for abusing power.

 

You blame the boss for GIVING them the power to abuse and never stopping it.

 

WCW was on top for a while. WCW also lost more money than any company has ever considered losing for 2 years of his tenure. When he was turfed in 1999, yes, WCW was dead. They had no chance to ever compete again. They had pissed away their fanbase and nothing they did would have brought them back --- especially since Bischoff's plans always seemed to involve "Let's do what we did before some more".

 

Why is EB blamed for WCW failing? Because he was the one who placed all of the time bombs that made the death inevitable.

[KTID 0]

At the end of the day, Bischoff has to be praised for WCW's success and blamed for its failure.

 

I don't blame Hunter for the WWE's current problems because Vince is the one who allowed him to have so much power.

 

 

It really wasn't as clear cut in WCW as it is in WWE, where Vince McMahon is the one man in charge and all decisions are ultimately his. In WCW, Eric Bischoff, or anyone else for that matter, was never in *complete* control of the company. He was probably the nearest thing to a figurehead they had, but he still had to answer to superiors, had Turner people with no wrestling knowledge hanging around, and even had wrestlers like Hogan and Flair going over his head to have decisions made. So while Vince McMahon accepts all credit/blame for WWE's successes/failures, Eric Bischoff cannot do so for WCW.

[Guest MikeSC]

Thing is, it was EB who ultimately gave the boys the creative control clauses that made running WCW impossible.

[Si82 0]

You don't blame the boys for abusing power.

 

You blame the boss for GIVING them the power to abuse and never stopping it.

 

Yes, the should have stopped it but nobody did. That's not to say that the boys shouldn't be blamed at all. Sure they had the power given to them but they chose to abuse it. They should, therefore, accept some of the blame.

[Guest MikeSC]

I disagree. The blame, ultimately, falls to the man who was in charge, which EB was. He created the situation that caused the problems.

[KTID 0]

Thing is, it was EB who ultimately gave the boys the creative control clauses that made running WCW impossible.

 

 

You're right that he gave several wrestlers creative control causes, which was one of the reasons for WCW's death. But thats only one of the many reasons. He can't be blamed 100%.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Bischoff did do some good things (the nWo, of course...and introducing Nitro was huge). But the main problem was that he let the main event guys like Hogan and Nash have too much creative control, resulting in them not putting over any new guys. Other than Goldberg, who got over because of his look, and because they had 100 guys job to him, they didn't really ever create any new faces until it was too late and they got desparate post '99.

 

The other main problem with Bischoff was that he threw around money like it was going out of style. As noted above, he spent exorbitant amounts of cash on stupid crap that didn't make for a better wrestling product.

 

I think Vince Russo needs to have a hefty amount of blame placed on his shoulders, though. They took Bischoff out of the control picture, and gave the ball to Russo. At that point, WCW could have still been put on the right course, but Russo's idiotic and masturbatory booking completely killed the credibility of the promotion for good.

[cabbageboy 0]

Turfing Bischoff in Sept. 99 was pretty much necessary. The guy was a nonentity by that point, he was always on vacation, he let the inmates run the asylum. Frankly he was probably so burnt out that he needed to be let go.

 

I maintain that the WWF was open to a possible attack around the time HHH first started getting pushed as champ. He wasn't over, the shows were getting mediocre, and if there had been anything notable happening in WCW they could have rebounded. In fact I dare say that the initial Russo Nitros were a lot more entertaining than the Raws of this time (Oct/Nov. 99). Whatever momentum Russo initially had was gone by Dec. 99 however, and they just went back to another lame NWO incarnation before Bret got hurt, Jarrett got hurt, and everyone wanted their release. Basically the events of Jan. 2000 killed WCW. By Jan. the WWF was also doing quality shows again and the Cactus/HHH feud finally put Hunter over as a major star.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

There is more then enough blame to go around for the death of WCW.

 

Eric Bischoff deserves blame for turning WCW into a virtual ATM machine for useless talent (case in point Scott Norton and Stevie Ray got $800,000pa deals), and for giving away creative control clauses like they were his wife at the Gold Club

 

Hulk Hogan deserves blame for actively sabotaging numerous careers and storylines to satisfy his own ego. Yes, Bischoff should get blamed for allowing that to happen, but Hogan still deserves the blame for actually doing it.

 

Same with Kevin Nash.

 

Vince Russo. When Bischoff was canned in 1999 there was still a chance that WCW could have been turned around. Their numbers were just above the level where, had they sunk any lower, WCW would have had to sell ads at a reduced rate due to the numbers being so low. They still had enough talented workers that, with a creative and intelligent wrestling mind, they could have turned things around. It would have taken a year or two, but the potential was there to build WCW back up. Instead, we got WWF-lite, and some of the most inane crap this side of Jim Herd, and a clueless hack who flat out ignored what the fans of the company paying him $750,000pa were telling him, and took the compay past the point of no return.

 

Combine the ego's and total ineptness of those four, and they provided the ammunition needed for the ultimate trigger man, Jamie Kellner

[USC Wuz Robbed! 0]

In retrospect, WCW definitely doesn't fit the current TBS/TNT format.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

If New WCW had been born, they should have worked with TBS/TNT in order to give the product a feel that fitted in with the station they were on. With what they've got on now, New WCW would be a gritty realism-based product, with no OTT nonsense.

[King Cucaracha 0]

I don't blame Bischoff for caving into Hogan's demands, because let's face it, no promoter in the world is going to risk losing Hulk Hogan if they can help it...certainly not in 1997/8ish anyway. (Sure, there was Mr America in 03, but besides that.)

 

If WCW had lost Hogan, then Vince would have snapped him up and given him as much creative control as he liked. And, at the time, Hogan still had a lot to offer Hogan. He wasn't a superb draw like in the 80s, sure, but he was still doing something for the company. And besides that, if Bischoff had stood up to Hogan and Hogan had left, he wouldn't have been the only one. A lot of Hogan's friends would have followed. In retrospect, it might not have been that bad of a thing. From Bischoff's POV, you lose Hogan, you lose a huge piece of the NWO.

 

Ditto Nash, although to a lesser extent. From Bischoff POV, if Nash (and Hall) left because they didn't get their own way, Vince probably would have brought them in and used them to push WWF ahead in the ratings.

 

Everything else like the cheque books and the treatment of Flair (Horsemen vs. NWO would have drawn huge IMO, had they not been jobbed out.) is on Bischoff's shoulders.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

Bischoff's main problem was that he thought that as long as he had Hogan, he'd never be in trouble. Eric would never do anything to risk losing Hogan, because he was convinced that all he really needed was Hogan, and everything else would work out.

[King Cucaracha 0]

Well, if Hogan went back to the WWF during the Monday Night Wars, the buzz would have been huge, so I guess he had a point.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

I think the earliest Hogan could have left during the MNW era would have been at the start of 1997, as there was talk of Hogan jumping at that point, but that got shot down as Vince wasn't wanting him back.

 

That would have been interesting, though, with Hogan and Shawn at his worst in the same locker room.

[Dangerous A 0]

That would have been interesting, though, with Hogan and Shawn at his worst in the same locker room.

 

 

I'd pay to be a fly on the wall in that locker room.

[KTID 0]

Why would that be interesting? The only reason Shawn got to do as he pleased all the time was that McMahon was scared of losing him. If Hogan was back, Shawn would have been right back in his place.

[slabinskia 0]

Bischoff is a large part of the blame for the guarenteed contracts.

 

In my opinion the slow downward spiral started at starcade 97.

 

Starcade 97 was where it slowly started to go downhill imo.It was suppose to be the blowoff to the nwo angle.I will give bischoff credit for being able to wait till starcade for hogan-sting.Most of the heels won the matches when ALL of the babyfaces should have gone over to kill the nwo.I would have had starcade 97 end with sting going over clean.After he celebrates,bret hart challenges him for the title and they go off the air while the 2 have a staredown.

 

That was one scenario but there were many other bad booking decisions.

 

Goldberg won the belt on nitro in july98 and lost to nash at starcade 98.I would have delayed goldberg winning the belt until starcade.A huge money match in goldberg/hogan was wasted on tv for the benefit of the ratings.I don't know when goldbergs' streak should have ended but losing to nash at starcade was not a great decision.

 

There were enough good angles without the nwo on the shows.Goldbergs' streak,benoit-raven,jericho-malenko,booker t,etc.

 

I think it was time for bischoff to go in 99 when he did but the problems started long before then.

 

I am curious as to what the death of wcw book had to say.

[cabbageboy 0]

The Death of WCW basically says a lot of what people have already been saying on here: too much creative control given to wrestlers, Bischoff wasn't minding the ship, no one was elevated until it was too late, etc.

 

Starrcade 97 was a perplexing show in a lot of ways. You'd think since Bischoff planned it so far in advance he would have convinced Hogan way ahead of time that he had to job clean here, it was the only good choice. As far as the rest of the show goes, it's baffling. I didn't watch the show at the time but after hearing the results from friends who saw it I was bewildered that they did half of that stuff. It was like:

 

"Dude, I think Hogan got robbed....he got a 3 count on Sting, but then Bret Hart had the match restarted saying it was a fast count when it wasn't, and Sting won." I thought:

 

"Why the hell would they do something like that? Sting should have just killed Hogan bad in that match."

"That's stupid though

[Guest wildpegasus]

It was all Bret Hart's fault. Remember Confidential.

 

 

And I would've given Norton an 800,000 contract too

[MillenniumMan831 0]

The one thing that goes against the grain from the general consensus of the IWC is that I think it was a good move to have most of the nWo guys go over heading into the Main Event. Granted, Sting should have obliterated Hogan. However, killing off the nWo at this point would have been a bit premature . . . by about 6 months or so. If the nWo wins all the undercard matches but convincingly loses the Main Event, they still have a leg to stand on.

 

The first 6 months of 1998 should have been WCW finally killing off the nWo little by little until the culmination at Bash at the Beach where WCW could win a match similiar to the one at Uncensored 1997. Or they could have held it off until Fall Brawl and do it at the War Games.

[cabbageboy 0]

I think everyone can agree that the single biggest booking mistake WCW ever made was not having a true blowoff to the NWO where they finally got what was coming to them. The thing is I don't think Bischoff had another idea after the NWO, thus they stayed around forever.

 

The irony is that WCW was actually doing a lot of great stuff right around the time the NWO first arrived. Take a look at GAB 96, that show has a lot of great stuff on it and maybe 5 mins. of The Outsiders. WCW didn't HAVE to have the NWO to have a good show, it just became a booking crutch.

[Si82 0]

And I would've given Norton an 800,000 contract too

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The question is, why?

 

I agree with the last two posts that the nWo angle should have had a proper blowoff match instead of it fizzling out.