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Did you know Edit. User reviews 5 Review. Top review. In the beginning. The shows were filmed during the week, edited to one hour, transmitted to the local "Big 3" stations, and finally shown on TV across America. And he systematically slaughtered the competition with his WWF Product.
World Wide from then on became a shell of it's once great self and was then finally turned into what WWF Superstars of Wrestling eventually became a "Recap Show". Details Edit. Release date United States. United States.
But the thing was, it was OK at that point. They didn't care. When he arrived in WWE, he said it was a complete , he had to actually know how to wrestle. He was put on the rise quickly in WCW because they needed to develop stars for the future. This is why we went from seeing former big stars, to random guys no one ever heard of, winning all sorts of titles. This is the about the same time Sting got a gimmick change, Booker T got bigger and Rey Mysterio made his impact.
EB wanted the Cruiserweight division to be big, so, he went out and hired guys from around the world to add International flair. People such as Jushin Liger made his mark during this time. So, neither really lost a lot back then.
But, it was the competition that made these two companies do crazy things. While the NWO was great at the time, even those internally thought it lasted 6 months too long. Bischoff then saw contract after contract expiring. So, he kept asking for money to re-sign these men and women. People such as Hogan, Nash and Hall ran the company from the inside, with Nash even being in charge of booking at one point, which curiously was around the time he ended Goldberg's winning streak.
But obviously he wouldn't kill the streak to get himself over, right? Then we saw the Finger Poke of Doom, one of the biggest mistakes ever developed by a creative team.
Ted Turner needed another show to help out his new network TBS. TNT was doing great, and Nitro was one of the reasons. It was a rough time and WCW was suffering. But, that wasn't killing them yet. Hogan, in particular, was able to gain considerable influence through a friendship with Bischoff.
Another thing Bischoff may have failed to consider was the fact that many WCW fans watched it as an alternative to the product of the WWE in the early 90s, and many NWA fans saw the hiring of former WWE talent as an attempt to copy its success, as opposed to being an alternative product with an emphasis on in-ring action.
This was not lost on Turner management, however, and Bischoff's bold, expensive steps didn't quite meet their expectations when they came to check up on things in mid Thus, Bischoff called Turner and requested a private meeting, which he was granted. In , WCW entered its peak, largely due to the nWo storyline. The latter feud served to build up the Starrcade pay-per-view in December.
When WCW delivered the Sting vs. Hogan match for the WCW World Championship, the PPV drew WCW's biggest buyrate and Bischoff was largely praised in the months leading up to this pay-per-view because of his refusal to "hotshot" give away a big money PPV match before proper build-up, causing a lesser buy rate Sting vs. Hogan was heavily criticized for not doing a clean finish to the match, which confused and irritated fans who had waited over a year to see Sting take down the nWo.
The finish involved a recently introduced Bret Hart who had refereed the previous match between Bischoff and Larry Zbyszko for control of Monday Nitro coming down to the ring after Hogan had supposedly won the match.
Hart alleged that referee Nick Patrick had performed a fast count on Sting, and wanted to "make things right. In addition, the company also had credible midcard stars such as Chris Benoit and Raven , as well as an exciting cruiserweight division featuring high-flying competitors from Mexico the luchadors and Japan as well as the United States. However, things would unfold quite differently from what WCW had planned.
The combination of a company screwing over a popular wrestler and angering many fans should have dealt a massive blow to the WWF and given WCW a great amount of hype to work with. The classic feud between McMahon who was re-imagined and re-branded as the evil company chairman character Mr. McMahon and Austin who, ironically, had been released by Bischoff in the summer of for not being marketable captured the imaginations of fans.
The WWF did not stop there. Their ratings increased dramatically in the next two years, more than ever before. WCW's next big attempt at ratings supremacy was marketing ex-NFL newcomer Bill Goldberg as an invincible monster with a record-breaking winning streak. Goldberg was indeed incredibly popular from the outset, with chants of 'Gold-berg, Gold-berg' heralding his approach to the ring, but business still quickly fell off for WCW, especially as the list of stars ready to be destroyed by Goldberg grew shorter.
Goldberg was a clear PPV main event. The following night, WCW decided to correct the problem by airing the entire match for free on Nitro and thus winning the ratings war for the final time. WCW slowly slid into a period of extravagant overspending and what was viewed almost universally as creative decline, with the reason why it happened and who let it happen still a matter of debate. Another was that WCW's credibility was badly damaged by embarrassing product placement, like Rick Steiner trading barbs with Chucky the killer doll which was roundly booed by the in-house audience on the live Nitro broadcast in the hopes of generating interest in the film Bride of Chucky.
Yet another possible reason was the stale, pointless, and at times self-serving storylines concocted by inexperienced bookers such as Kevin Nash , and the fact that the top-level stars had no motivation to excel in the ring due to their long-term guaranteed-money contracts, only giving their utmost when it suited them to do so. In reaction the company began to panic and tried to solve its problems by throwing money at a variety of personalities, a practice it could ill-afford to engage in.
Many talents were reportedly signed to keep them from appearing on WWF television. At one point, WCW held over individual performers under guaranteed contracts and often paid many of them to simply stay at home and collect a paycheck.
As mentioned above, people were growing suspicious of Nash's questionable storylines, which were dominated by his on-screen persona. Then came the infamous " fingerpoke of doom " match with Hulk Hogan in January The particular Nitro in which this match aired was being advertised as a StarrCade rematch between Nash and Goldberg.
As a result, the arena was a complete sellout, with over 40, people watching live and millions more around the world hoping for the rematch. All night long, the announcers hyped the main event as being the "biggest match in the history of our sport" and said that "unlike the other guys, we have a real main event.
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