The Untold Truth About WCW Champion David Arquette
The titular untold truth only remains untold in certain corners of the wrestling internet because so few people that formed its original incarnation cared to listen. Despite occasional contradictions below the line on websites such as this one, the internet can be a much nicer place now than it once was. Anonymised forums and newsgroups have been shunted to the fringes of the world wide web in place of social media landscape made up of names and faces and lives and careers - few would be so furious with a booking decision that they'd risk any of the above on lambasting it with the sort of biliousness that was once so commonplace.
This can't be understated - people f*cking despised this decision.
David Arquette winning the WCW World Heavyweight Championship wasn't the death of WCW, just like the Fingerpoke Of Doom wasn't, nor Judy Bagwell On A Pole wasn't, nor Jamie Kellner's axing of it from the TNT schedule wasn't. Death by a few thousand paper cuts and a few million squandered dollars, the company perished for all of the above and many more micro-moments like them. But it was yet another case of the company picking at the already-frayed stitches of the organisation's fabric, and unlike much of the worked shoot sh*t airing on Nitro and Thunder whilst audiences deserted the show in droves, this blunder had to be high profile to justify its very existence.
The mainstream world took one look at it, laughed, and bantered it off. The wrestling world didn't want to look, but couldn't stop staring in disillusioned disbelief. The company had booked the worst of both worlds.
CONT'D...