WCW was an odd duck in many ways. Forget about the wrestling product for a second: WCW's parent company was Turner Broadcasting, and with Ted Turner at the helm, their stated corporate ethos was very much about world peace, equality, racial harmony, protecting the environment, and so on. This is the company that gave us the Goodwill Games and Captain Planet, after all. On top of that, WCW was based out of Atlanta, a city with a large black population (and eventually a large Mexican population, as well), and the company drew a large number of black fans to its live events. WCW was never something that most of the people at Turner Broadcasting wanted. Look at how quickly they washed their hands of WCW once Ted Turner was out of power. With disdain came a lack of oversight, and while TBS controlled the purse strings, they didn't exercise much oversight over what went on day to day. WCW was hated by the rest of TBS, and so they didn't act like the rest of TBS. You're about to find out exactly what type of behavior that led to. From hiring discrimination to wrongful discrimination to offensive gimmicks to straight up abusive, racist language, lawyers had a ton of ammunition.
Formerly the site manager of Cageside Seats and the WWE Team Leader at Bleacher Report, David Bixenspan has been writing professionally about WWE, UFC, and other pop culture since 2009. He's currently WhatCulture's U.S. Editor and also serves as the lead writer of Figure Four Weekly and a monthly contributor to Fighting Spirit Magazine.
