During the Monday Night Wars, Nitro beat Monday Night RAW for 86 consecutive weeks in the ratings. A big part of that was due to Eric Bishoffs contributions in the creative department, especially surrounding the New World Order (NWO) faction. Arguably WCWs biggest financial cash cow, it was this idea that allowed WCW to compete against WWF in the Monday Night Wars. However, success in one area doesnt always translate well into others. His first major error was allowing WCW star Kevin Nash to become a booker. Nash booked himself to be the one to end Goldbergs undefeated Streak, and also took part in the infamous Fingerpoke of Doom match against Hulk Hogan. By late 1999, Bishoff was more concerned with emphasizing older talent over the younger guys in WCW. Superstars who were in their 40s and 50s, like Hogan, Diamond Dallas Page, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Sting and Ric Flair, were getting most of the attention while younger, more technically gifted stars were barely given any creative support at all. This led to many terrible matches between some of those older stars, especially when compared to younger guys like the Radicalz, all of whom defected for the WWF. This is primarily what spelled disaster for WCW. Instead of continuing to build new stars for the company to keep competing with the WWF, WCW under Bishoff focused on the older guys who would might not stand by the company for the long-term. Some similarities in this booking style started to take place in TNA when Bishoff and Hogan arrived in the promotion in late 2009. Large stables with too many members, as well as an emphasis on older stars, seemed to permeate TNA programming during Bishoffs time in power in the company. While not as prominent in TNA as it was in WCW, it still spoke to his decisions to put older stars over newer talent who needed more screen time to get themselves across to the fans. Though Bishoff did do a lot of good in WCW, he did indeed make many mistakes that led to poor matches among older wrestlers, instead of focusing on newer wrestlers.
Alexander Podgorski is a writer for WhatCulture that has been a fan of professional wrestling since he was 8 years old. He loves all kinds of wrestling, from WWE and sports entertainment, to puroresu in Japan.
He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Queen's University in Political Studies and French, and a Master's Degree in Public Administration. He speaks English, French, Polish, a bit of German, and knows some odd words and phrases in half a dozen other languages.
