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30 minutes ago, Mister TV said:

The whole "shady accounting" things seems like an excuse, was it one of the many reasons WCW was always in the red? Sure, but there were numerous other factors that put them in that position that no one ever seems to talk about. WCW had massive operating costs(house shows, talent, staff, and so on), I can't see ppv revenue(which was split with cables companies) and ad revenue being enough to put the company into the black. On ad revenue, remember not only did WCW have "low rent" ad buyers, the overall cost of ad time on cable until say 1996ish was low, both companies were "right place right time" when their ratings peaked at the same time the rates peaked.

I'm no accountant or anything, but I always assumed Turner viewed WCW as a loss leader in its corporate hierarchy. I'm sure WCW did have huge operating costs and salaries, but propping up THE with WCW PPV revenue and keeping TBS programming costs low did WCW no favors keeping themselves out of the red.

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Ok here’s my what if ...

What if back in 2009 when Spike TV aired replays of Impact on Saturday mornings, they had ordered new programming and Xplosion has expanded to two hours?

What would that show have looked like? Other than Thunder on acid?

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On 3/25/2021 at 9:16 AM, Mister TV said:

The whole "shady accounting" things seems like an excuse, was it one of the many reasons WCW was always in the red? Sure, but there were numerous other factors that put them in that position that no one ever seems to talk about. 

The talking point that WCW was put out of business by creative accounting reminds me of a consulting client I had about 20 years ago.  Client started up an internet foods services business in the days when internet businesses were still fairly novel.  Company took off like a rocket and became very profitable very quickly.  Company ended up with huge tax bill, so their accounting firm recommended they start spending money to reduce the size of their tax bill.  The accountants presumably wanted the owners to reinvest in the company by making infrastructure improvements that would legally make them look less profitable on paper but lead to greater profitability down the road.

What the owners did was give themselves raises and start spending money like proverbial drunken monkeys.  Cars, homes, lavish home renovations, lavish gifts for employees, expensive tips, etc.  Some of it was even nominally business-related - in the way staying in the most expensive room in the most expensive hotel in the city is a justifiable business expense.  Fast-forward a couple years and the company still had explosive sales growth, but was cash poor and had a crippling amount of debt to the point the company couldn't afford to pay its shipping bills and was sued several well-known parcel delivery services (hint: a company operating as an internet-only business and selling fresh food kinda needs the companies that handle its deliveries).

And... they still kept spending money.  One of the owners once had barely enough money to her name to pay her utility bills (they had to stop paying themselves as much and also stupidly ignored advice from experts - including me -  and didn't set the company up correctly to limit personal liability) and still wandered over to a public auction and bought a $500,000 house.  She just assumed the money would come from somewhere because... why not.  She never lived in the house, of course.  Just came up with enough money to pay the upfront auction costs then never managed to come up with the rest of the transaction amount.  House had to be auctioned off a second time.

Was their creative accounting going on in Turner?  Quite possibly.  Probably.  But Eric and co. also spent money like drunken monkeys assuming the cash would always come from somewhere like magic.  You can get away with that for awhile when you're on the upswing and have enough clout to ignore your critics.  But, no upswing lasts forever, so...

My favorite "WCW wastes money" story - and there are a lot to choose from - is WCW comping plane tickets to everyone for Nitro shows.  Even the talent who lived within driving distance.  And weren't going to be used on the show.

 

Edited by Eoae
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The best WCW spending story is from JJ Dillon's book. He said that when Sting did an appearance with a crow in 1997 they had to spend $5,000 to contract a crow handler.  They had to buy plane tickets for the crow handler, the crow and get this...a back-up crow. They did this multiple times, had to pay the crow handler $5K each time and apparently the crow was only in each shot for like 5-10 seconds. 

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2 hours ago, cwoy2j said:

The best WCW spending story is from JJ Dillon's book. He said that when Sting did an appearance with a crow in 1997 they had to spend $5,000 to contract a crow handler.  They had to buy plane tickets for the crow handler, the crow and get this...a back-up crow. They did this multiple times, had to pay the crow handler $5K each time and apparently the crow was only in each shot for like 5-10 seconds. 

And Eric has said that that was 1 of the coolest Sting moments lol! Eric is like Hogan minus the muscles really. Everything he says is something that justifies something dumb that he did a long time ago, and he’s careful not to expose some other lie in the process. 

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Buying a ticket for a back-up crow is what slays me. Wrestlers don't have stunt doubles for crazy bumps (well except for that one time where Vampiro lit "Sting" on fire and pushed him off of the WCW version of the Titan Tron) and they'll make a concussed Bret Hart try to speed away in a rental car on an icy concrete area with production trucks all around him but they'll pay for a stunt crow.

Edited by cwoy2j
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2 hours ago, cwoy2j said:

Buying a ticket for a back-up crow is what slays me. Wrestlers don't have stunt doubles for crazy bumps (well except for that one time where Vampiro lit "Sting" on fire and pushed him off of the WCW version of the Titan Tron) and they'll make a concussed Bret Hart try to speed away in a rental car on an icy concrete area with production trucks all around him but they'll pay for a stunt crow.

Of course they needed a stunt crow, the other one wouldn't do nudes.

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I have been thinking on this day, what if Baron Mikel Scicula opened up a wrestling school in 1985ish, and that became the dominant indy style down the road - punches into the breadbasket instead of moonsaults, selling of the ear always instead of 2.75 kickouts, stomping the mat in place of slapping the leg, capes in place of kickpads, hammerblows to the back over World of Sport reversals, sideburns not wet hair, Maltese folk music for entrances instead of nu metal... What a world that would be!

hsseweteecx.jpeg

Virtute et Constantia,

RAF

Edited by thee Reverend Axl Future
fix pics, nix clicks
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What if, when DX invaded WCW Nitro, instead of shutting the door, they'd told Meng to stand outside it?

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On 4/4/2021 at 5:16 PM, AxB said:

What if, when DX invaded WCW Nitro, instead of shutting the door, they'd told Meng to stand outside it?

What if, he crotch chopped and joined them, breaching his contract with no repercussions? Then we'd stuck with dick jokes about Haku and the Tongan Death Grip.

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18 minutes ago, Infinit said:

It really would've been something if Bischoff got a few cameramen and half the roster and told them to beat the hell out of DX, live on TNT.

DX had sub-machine guns (not to be confused with Sex Machine Gun) tho! And a tank. It could have gotten pretty ugly. Or was it a jeep with a (sex) Machine Gun. An armored and armed vehicle of some sort, any way! Not pretty!

Edited by Shartnado
Was it a tank? Probably not...
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1 hour ago, Shartnado said:

DX had sub-machine guns (not to be confused with Sex Machine Gun) tho! And a tank. It could have gotten pretty ugly. Or was it a jeep with a (sex) Machine Gun. An armored and armed vehicle of some sort, any way! Not pretty!

Yeah, but WCW had Meng and Fit Finlay.  

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14 minutes ago, Infinit said:

It was just DX and a a few cameramen, right? With all the talent WCW flew in to sit in catering for Nitros, they easily could've outnumbered them. Would've been amazing live television lol

No one on the WCW roster would have agreed to that, the "boys" weren't loyal to the companies the same way fans were, no one was going to risk injury or arrest "standing up" for WCW, plus DX had friends and in the case of Road Dogg family working for WCW. Even if a few WCW guys went out there the most likely scenario was them taking a bump then turning around and suing WCW for being an unsafe workplace.

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1 hour ago, Mister TV said:

No one on the WCW roster would have agreed to that, the "boys" weren't loyal to the companies the same way fans were, no one was going to risk injury or arrest "standing up" for WCW, plus DX had friends and in the case of Road Dogg family working for WCW. Even if a few WCW guys went out there the most likely scenario was them taking a bump then turning around and suing WCW for being an unsafe workplace.

There was that ECW/ XPW brawl a bit later in response to an attempted invasion angle. Although a bunch of people who fought on the ECW side later took XPW bookings.

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XPW spent the entire event intending to start shit, to the point that Johnny Webb went around to their street team folks in line for the event and told them to make sure NOT to get involved.

 

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14 hours ago, Mister TV said:

No one on the WCW roster would have agreed to that, the "boys" weren't loyal to the companies the same way fans were, no one was going to risk injury or arrest "standing up" for WCW, plus DX had friends and in the case of Road Dogg family working for WCW. Even if a few WCW guys went out there the most likely scenario was them taking a bump then turning around and suing WCW for being an unsafe workplace.

Yeah, I know it wouldn't have happen.  But this is the "What If" thread lol

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