Did WWE Purposefully Bury Former WCW Stars?
Is Vince McMahon guilty of fighting a war long after it had already been won?
I know, most of you more than likely clicked expecting to see a page with the words 'Yes, of course they did' accompanied by a laughing Vince McMahon sitting on a mountain of cold, hard dollars, but I think there's a more complex answer here, to be frank and I want to investigate it. Well, maybe there's a more complex answer, and maybe not Besides, we wrestling fan folk just love to go around in circles debating about sports entertainment matters, so why not trudge up this old debate, eh?
Now wrestling is a vindictive business at the best of times, but did Vince McMahon and WWE purposefully bury former WCW stars who came to work for the company after the Genetic Jackhammer won the fabled 'Monday Night War'? Is the most powerful man in wrestling really that petty, or is this just the cry of a million conspiracy theorists who simply don't know what is 'best for business'? Let's look at the evidence and find out.
After years of battling WCW for ratings supremacy, WWE were finally able to buy their competition when the formerly Turner-owned promotion went out of business in March 2001. The company had been in dire financial straits for a long time (they lost about $62m in 2000 alone) and were, essentially, a sitting duck. The damage was just too severe at that point and they needed putting out of their misery.
There had been negotiations with other interested parties for months, including Eric Bischoff and Fusient Media Ventures, but one of their partners backed out when new head of Turner Broadcasting (Jamie Kellner) pulled all wrestling programming off of TBS and TNT. Without a television deal and the advertising revenue it would bring, WCW was pretty much worthless.
Well, not worthless, but worth a lot less than it should have been. On March 23, 2001 Vince McMahon ended up purchasing WCW, the contracts of 24 undercard performers and the entire tape library for a paltry $2.2m plus legal costs.
Just two years earlier it had been valued at close to $400m.
Vince - ever the good sport and humble winner - went to the ring live on the March 26 episode of Raw to brag about his triumph. Not only was he positively ecstatic about having beaten Turner and vanquishing the group that had bested him in the ratings 84 weeks in a row, he was also using the stage as a way to test audience reaction to some stars who could very well be under his employ in the near future.
He brought up names like Hulk Hogan, Lex Luger, Buff Bagwell, BookerT, Sting and Goldberg and used the audience response as a barometer of interest in seeing them in a WWF ring. All of those men (bar Lex Luger) would eventually show up, but the end result wasn't always what they'd hoped or desired.
Click 'Next' for part 2...