The Day WCW Nitro Died
Feels worth clearing something up before we get back into how such a massive mess was made.
Vince Russo didn't kill WCW, and far be it for this article to be another assertion of that for him to vanity search and rip apart. 2004's "Death Of WCW" by Bryan Alvarez and RD Reynolds pinned plenty on him, and Eric Bischoff and many others. Just about every one of the named parties predictably refuted much of the book's content as missing the wider issues at play, and maybe they had a point. Though detailed, Alvarez and Reynolds luxuriated perhaps a little too liberally on some of the truly terrible storylines and angles that permeated Nitro and Thunder in the years leading up to WCW's demise.
As a division of a Turner enterprise that was simultaneously crumbling and evolving beyond something anybody - Ted Turner included - could realistically keep a hold of, World Championship Wrestling was always going to struggle to maintain its position as long as it continued to lose money.
And lose money it did in 2000. Sh*tloads of it.
A Variety piece on the planned 2001 Fusient Media company buyout notes it was around $60,000,000, with various other sources offering figures around $10,000,000 either side of that. This year - this disastrous, money-haemorrhaging sh*thouse of a year - was dominated and defined by Vince Russo's vision of Nitro. He was in and out of the company over the 12 month period, was at various points the on screen authority figure, the real life head of creative and even briefly the WCW World Heavyweight Champion.
It was the sort of chaos that invites ironic analysis in the post-script. Wrestling Twitter's version of bad movie night, 2000 Nitro doesn't blink when you're trying to stare it out, but when you do you miss something. It's batsh*t, cash-pilfering television.
And I sweaaa to gawd bro, you won't believe it but this is a shoot bro, but the night that birthed this era was also the night that killed WCW's flagship. March 23rd 2001 was the end. October 18th 1999 was the point of no return.
CONT'D...