10 Incidents That Led WCW To Destruction

1. The AOL-Time Warner Merger

Despite all of the problems experienced by WCW in its later years, the company still could have been saved thanks to the passion of one man - Ted Turner. Turner was an avid wrestling fan and his Time Warner-owned television stations had played host to WCW programming almost since its inception. In fact Turner bankrolled the promotion, allowing it to sign the names that would give it the legitimacy it lacked in its early years, and was even parodied by the WWF during its "Billionaire Ted" skits. Unfortunately for WCW, right at the point where its booking was going down the toilet and the WWF's Attitude Era was in full flow, Time Warner entered negotiations with AOL for a merger, which eventually came to fruition on January 10th 2000 in a multi-billion dollar deal. With it,Turner's influence within the company was drastically reduced to the point where he could no longer keep his baby on the air through his own influence alone. WCW struggled along for about a year, with a potential buyout by a consortium led by Eric Bischoff being touted at one point. Eventually the company executives grew tired of the promotion, selling it off to Vince McMahon in early 2001 for a paltry $2.5 million dollars. At its peak WCW was earning hundreds of millions of dollars a year thanks to an explosion in popularity caused by the formation of the NWO and healthy injections of Ted Turner's money. However, once the NWO concept grew stale and Turner was no longer able to support the company as he once had, it was destined for the scrapheap. Despite all this, WCW is the only company that offered a true alternative to the WWF and it put on some amazing shows. Many of today's fans lament the failure of any other promotion to truly take its place and the company will still have a place in the hearts of fans who recognised how truly exciting the Monday Night Wars era was.