25 Crazy WCW Facts (That Get Progressively More Ridiculous)
22. Thursday Slamboree Thursday
By 1999, WCW was failing dismally.
Months and months before Russo turned up, WCW had experimented with dumb authority figure power struggles and a silly, heightened tone. Meanwhile, the WWF was so hot that it barely mattered how awful it was. WCW copied the WWF’s homework and still failed. Many people felt that a back-to-basics approach was necessary. You know, things like sensible long-term storylines, match results that matter, listening to the audience, rewarding wrestlers who actually put in a modicum of effort. With WCW though, the absolute bare minimum was not met so often that the promotion had to get even the most rudimentary business practises correct before anything else.
In denial, WCW ran the TWA Dome in St. Louis, Missouri, drawing just 13,000 paying fans after persuading 30,000 to attend a Nitro in the same building in December 1998. You’d think that WCW might have wanted to push the hell out of the show on TV. Times were bleak. Instead, WCW failed to get the date of the show correct on television. This is the first thing they hammer you with in promo class. The date and the venue is the most important information to stress. Forget that, and you can forget selling any tickets. WCW forgot this; on the go-home edition of Thunder, a graphic was displayed reading ‘Slamboree! TOMORROW, 8PM EST’.
The problem, of course, was that like every other WCW pay-per-view ever, Slamboree was taking place on Sunday.
WCW was so stupid that if it was a person, it would forget how to breathe.