Chris Jericho welcomes Dave Meltzer to the show.
Meltzer informs that WWE’s purchase of WCW changed the wrestling business and was the most impactful thing that happened to the business during his lifetime. In his opinion it was even more impactful than when McMahon took WWE national in the 1980s. In one swift movement McMahon eliminated all competition and changed the way performers made a living, since there was really no alternative workplace to WWE at that time.
Jericho notes that WCW’s downfall occurred rather quickly. Meltzer agrees, informing that WCW went from working stadiums to going out of business in a little over three years. In 1998 they were extremely successful and making a huge profit. They had a slight loss in 1999 but by 2000 they were losing over $60 Million a year. That’s a huge drop-off in very little time.
Meltzer says it’s hard to believe how fast WCW drove their customers away. The company’s expenses stayed roughly the same but their revenues plummeted as fans stopped buying PPVs and stopped attending live events.
It’s amazing to look back now and realize that on a random Monday night in 1998 over 9 million people were watching wrestling at the same time. For some segments that total went up to 11 million. When WCW drove their fans away those fans never really came back, because WWE’s ratings didn’t skyrocket as one might think after they bought WCW.
Meltzer says it’s not really true that WCW and TBS officials didn’t want wrestling on the air. Some officials approached Ted Turner when WCW started losing money but he quickly shot down the idea of removing the brand from his network. As the company continued to lose money other options had to be considered and they began speaking with Vince McMahon.
The initial plan was to sell WCW to McMahon so McMahon would have complete creative control but the shows would still air on TBS. Unfortunately, due to McMahon’s exclusivity agreement with SpikeTV at the time, this plan came crashing down to earth. This is when Bischoff and his partners stepped in in an attempt to buy WCW, but that plan didn’t work either.
Eventually one high-up Turner/AOL executive grew tired of wrestling and thought it was low-brow. McMahon ultimately purchased the company outright for $2.5 Million. Meltzer notes that McMahon must still be laughing his ass off to this day, that he was able to buy his biggest rival’s history, assets and video library for that amount of money. He still has no idea why the company was sold for such a low price.
This basically eliminated all competition for McMahon, and no other wrestling company was able to make a mark until WWE moved back to the USA Network a few years later. At that time SpikeTV still wanted to air wrestling and this gave TNA a television home where they were able to have moderate success for a period of time.
Meltzer informs that initially McMahon wanted to run WCW as a separate brand and was prepared to air WCW on Monday nights in order to build the promotion back up. The storyline was going to consist of Vince and Linda getting a divorce, and through that divorce Linda would get control of Monday night. She would then give this time slot to Shane McMahon and WCW.
In one night all these plans changed, and McMahon scrapped the entire thing. The one main event match between Buff Bagel and Booker T in Washington had a lot to do with this, as McMahon felt his audience wouldn’t accept WCW as a separate brand.
Meltzer notes that if they would have aired this match from Atlanta – where RAW was supposed to take place a week or two later – the fans mightn’t have turned on it so viciously, since WCW was quite popular in Atlanta but not so popular in Washington.
Meltzer thinks McMahon cut the plans so quickly because the XFL had just failed and McMahon didn’t want to have another failure on his hands, especially one tied to the wrestling business.
Meltzer notes that Ric Flair and Sting weren’t prepared to wrestle on the final Nitro, and Flair wore a shirt because he was out of shape. There are rumours circulating that McMahon booked this match at the last minute because he was a fan of their work and wanted to see them work one final match together. In that sense, it was a fitting send off for WCW.
Meltzer notes that there was an appetite for an Invasion angle, and even without WCW’s biggest stars the original Invasion PPV did huge numbers. Other than WrestleMania, it is the biggest PPV of all time. Jericho notes that even though he was in a 10-man tag on that PPV, it was still his highest payoff except for one WrestleMania at that point. That’s how well that show did financially.
Meltzer thinks Eric Bischoff had a chance to keep WCW alive if he would have been able to buy the company in 2001. If he could have kept it alive for just a couple of more years the company would have never went out of business because that’s when huge television money started pouring in.
Meltzer thinks the greatest thing that ever happened to Vince McMahon was the Monday night wars, even though he certainly hated everything about it at the time. That period made wrestling extremely popular. Jericho doesn’t think AEW will force McMahon to adapt in order to survive given how much money WWE has nowadays, but he still thinks McMahon will up his game creatively because he’s extremely competitive.
Jericho asks Meltzer to name the biggest reason WCW failed, and Meltzer thinks that reason is terrible creative. He watched all of the shows during that time and he couldn’t believe how bad they were. He also notes that WCW was promoting names for live events and not delivering, and that hurt live event attendance over time.
That sums up today’s episode of Talk is Jericho. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya next week for another recap!
