8 Signings That DESTROYED Wrestling Promotions
The call is coming from inside the house! Starring Hulk Hogan, CM Punk &...Stone Cold Steve Austin?
No one figure can destroy a wrestling company any more than one can claim sole credit it for its success.
This has been a blessing and a curse for wrestlers and promoters alike over the years, with plenty of talent understandably leveraging their personal successes in order to get bigger contracts from the paymasters they've helped to get rich. On the opposite side of the ledger, bookers, owners and the like will have argued down undeniable star power, praising the power of the pencil as the reason for a talent getting over to such an extent that everybody gets rich.
The difference between the debate when business is booming and when the bubble has burst centres around the stark issue of blame. When millionaires and billionaires are arguing for credit, a lot of them simply want the ego-boosting compliments because they've got enough money. When times are harder, the money matters more. Nobody wants to be saddled with a reputation as a territory-killer, or whatever approximation of one can exist in the modern era anyway.
Those featured here weren't solely responsible for demises/destruction of brands, companies or careers, and it would be irresponsible to say so. But some were integral, all used their influence for worse rather than better, and in a couple of instances, the wrestling company in question was no longer in operation within two years of the damage being done.
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8. Vince Russo
More words have been written about Vince Russo's failures as WCW's creative chief than the amount he'd try to fit into the average worked shoot promo on a 2000 edition of Nitro, and maybe he likes it that way.
Russo was a figure so consumed by controversy - or the idea of controversy as a primary creative driver - that he might be quite grateful of any legacy a quarter of a century removed from his last period working for a major organisation and even longer on from when he found some success in the role. It's a pity, because the best Vince Russo story is the one that ultimately started him off on the road to telling so many terrible ones.
Between various interviews with the key figures of the day, Russo himself, and a Kevin Kelly article published in Raw Magazine when Russo was the editor, the tale broadly goes along the lines of Vince McMahon being so furious with either the February 26th or April 14th 1997 edition of Raw (featuring poorly-produced and mostly disappointing action from Germany and South Africa respectively) that he threw a copy of the magazine on the desk in front of the likes of Jim Ross, Jim Cornette and others and wondered aloud why the stuff on the screen couldn't match the stuff on the page. It served as a perfect route in for Russo, but never had a company been so set up for such a change, as opposed to what happened when World Championship Wrestling tried to give him the same job.
Titan had a talent roster whipped up by a wrestling war, a top star-elect in Stone Cold Steve Austin, and a production arm just waiting to flex in the way it had in the last boom. By 1999, WCW's undercard were keen but the stars had never cared less, and Russo's frenzied ideation and polar opposition position on pro wrestling was a new worst case scenario for a company that thought it had already hit bottom.
In understandable acts of self-defence, Russo pointed to occasional ratings upturns, but like his storylines, the holes got bigger and bigger. By the time he was out for good, there was barely a company - let alone a micro success story - left to defend.