Everything You DIDN’T KNOW About WCW’s Final Days
2. Stop. You Know Nothing.
Picture the scene.
You’re a wrestler working a WCW show in March 2001. Let’s say it’s the Knoxville taping on March 12, at which 2,742 fans are in attendance, only 2,123 of whom have paid money. It’s incredibly bleak. WCW promotes a house show that has already been cancelled due to a criminally low advance; it’s difficult to tell at this point whether the company is incompetent or in denial. It’s probably both. It feels like the end. It might feel like the end because it is the end.
It is a matter of public record that WCW is for sale because business is so staggeringly awful. The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the Pro Wrestling Torch, and PWInsider report this constantly; virtually every 2001 Observer cover story is dedicated to the WCW sale.
Let’s even say that you’re one of those wrestlers who actually ignores what the “marks” write in the dirtsheets (such a wrestler does not exist, but a scene is being set here.)
Steve Heyer, Turner Broadcasting president, said in November 2000 that selling the underperforming WCW might be a good strategy. Brad Siegel, President of TBS general entertainment networks, acknowledged in January 2001 that the fate of WCW had been discussed internally, and explained why Warner would entertain serious offers. Linda McMahon had discussed the WWF’s first, failed attempt to purchase WCW on CNBC’s Power Lunch in November 2000. Brad Bedol and Stephen Greenburg, Fusient co-founders, talked about WCW like they already owned it in January 2001.
While they went far too early, the New York Post, one of the biggest newspapers in the country, reported on January 12 that WCW had been sold to Fusient Media. This was a national (albeit minor) news story. It was impossible not to know about it - and even though the Fusient deal collapsed, it is very obvious that WCW remains for sale because the company in its current state is losing money at an alarming rate. This must have been all anybody talked about backstage at WCW shows.
By March 23, it was over; Turner officially revealed that WCW programming had been cancelled.
On March 21, Disco Inferno went on an Atlanta-based radio show and said that he thought all this talk of TNT and TBS cancelling WCW shows WAS A WORK.
Worms have Disco Inferno in their brains.