10 Times Backstage Politics Ruined WCW
Survey says...another LOSS for the "good guys". WCW was a riot backstage.
No one incident or bad piece of onscreen booking can be blamed for WCW's ultimate (and untimely) demise in 2001. Years of creative malpractice, negligence and a staggering amount of backstage politicking contributed to the bitter end though, that's for sure. When realising just how much nonsense was going on behind the curtain any given week, it's actually remarkable that World Championship Wrestling was able to function at all!
Events like Nitro, Thunder and monthly pay-per-views somehow churned on in spite all that behind the scenes friction, but things spiralled out of control in front of the cameras. So, if one isolated decision couldn't outright kill WCW, it could certainly ruin the fun of it. Here, we've served up 10 examples of times when politics happening backstage completely wrecked plans or forced hasty rewrites that were always going to be less-than.
This was just something people involved in the company had to put up with after a while, and it wasn't a new thing tied to Hulk Hogan's arrival in 1994 or the overarching nWo storyline's ironclad grip on the product from 1996 onwards. WCW was a bit of a bin fire long before stars like Hulk, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall had their wicked way with things.
They're included too, of course. Nobody's suggesting for a second that any single person should shoulder full responsibility, but WCW had quite the cast of characters putting hands in the cookie jar and leaving crumbs behind.
You won't believe some of these stories, or how they negatively affected what happened on TV.
10. A JR Vendetta Wrecks The Cruiserweight Division
Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara have claimed previously that they didn't have anything against Jim Ross; and that the wretched Oklahoma character in WCW was only created to pop some folks who recalled Ed's JR impressions when both were on the WWF writing team. Namely, one Vince McMahon found Ferrara's send up of the iconic announcer hilarious, because of course he did.
It should've stayed in creative meetings, if anything. OK shouldn't have made it to TV, but WCW was a desperate outfit by late-1999, and the twin-pronged Russo/Ferrara combo couldn't resist poking fun at someone on the other channel. It would've been bad enough had Oklahoma exclusively existed in going nowhere skits outside the ring, but he didn't.
That gimmick (for whatever reason) dominated the once-proud Cruiserweight division and even "enjoyed" a reign as champion into the bargain. It was terrible. Simply terrible. Feuds and matches such as Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio, Chris Jericho vs. Juventud Guerrera and Billy Kidman vs. all-comers were shoved to one side to Ed could perform a poor taste ritual humiliation of Jim's Bell's Palsy affliction on Nitro and Thunder.
The OK gimmick was born from taking potshots and trying to 'pop the boys' backstage. It was a piece of politically-charged backbiting in the midst of a ratings war that WCW were never going to win. Thankfully, the Cruiser ranks came back to life before the end of the company's shelf life thanks to guys like Shane Helms, Chavo Guerrero and a few others.
It would've been a travesty had Oklahoma feuding with Madusa been the last thing that belt had to offer.