10 Things You Didn't Know About WCW In 1998

10. WCW Had 200+ Talent Under Contract In 1998

All in all, today's WWE has North of approximately 100 contracted performers, extending across the main roster and those toiling away in NXT trying to get noticed. That's a healthy number, especially considering it includes the likes of The Rock, Hulk Hogan, Paul Heyman and others who don't appear all that often. Compare that to the number of talent WCW employed towards the end of the 90's and things start getting interesting. In 1998, World Championship Wrestling had around double the amount of names WWE do today on their books. Obviously, that's a lot of wrestlers, and there's no way any company could feasibly fit them all into storylines, regardless of how many hours of TV and Pay-Per-View they need to fill. Shockingly, the likes of Lanny 'The Genius' Poffo, Barry 'Demolition Smash/Repo Man' Darsow and even Jim Powers were all under contract to WCW in 1998, with only Darsow appearing on television that year. Quite why these guys were given money to do absolutely nothing is mind-boggling, but the number of talent in WCW would rise the next year, for no real reason whatsoever. There was no room for that many names in the product, so it all boiled down to a colossal waste of money.