The Viceland Wrestling Documentaries

[Cobra Commander]

1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:

If Time-Warner/Turner didn't want to flush the toilet on WCW and we got Eric Bischoff Presents Hogan Championship Wrestling, there is some interesting fantasy booking you could do. Main thing I can think of is the Disciple as permanent US or TV champion (they didn't have an IC belt anymore did they? What was the secondary title below World?). What else you think might could happen? Who gets sacked/buried, who gets elevated? 

How much overlap would there be between Fusient WCW and the XWF? Also, would Fusient have bought the Time-Warner talent contracts or would part of WCW not be available if Bischoff bought the company

[Elsalvajeloco]

Hell, I wonder if any of those WCW contracts may have non transfer clauses. I know Fedor Emelianenko may have it twice (although his PRIDE deal may have expired prior to the Zuffa purchase) where if the company is bought, his contract does not transfer over. That's pretty wild considering if you're buying an entertainment based entity, you would want to secure the biggest asset they have.

[Curt McGirt]

I had no idea the XWF existed. Never even heard of it. 

[Elsalvajeloco]

2 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

I had no idea the XWF existed. Never even heard of it. 

You didn't miss much. I think I saw the pilot episode in syndication one Saturday and that was enough for me. 

[Curt McGirt]

It might've been fun seeing... heh heh... Quick Kick

[Cobra Commander]

2 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

I had no idea the XWF existed. Never even heard of it. 

It coincidentally served the purpose of getting Hogan/Hennig/Piper back into the WWF.

Quote

During the tapings, a joint angle was worked with the Puerto Rico-based World Wrestling Council (WWC) which began by having Ray González appear backstage speaking to Hogan, Bagwell and other talents in an effort to have them join his La Familia del Milenio stable. This was worked along WAPA-TV, which produced a prime time special titled XWF vs. WWC: Invasión, but the angle was heavily modified since it featured the reduced roster and González left for the IWA-PR. More cards were co-promoted, with WWC ultimately winning a series where the only consequential outcome was a title change of the XWF World Tag Team Championship.

sadly the world never got to see a Hulk Hogan WWC run in 2001/02

[zendragon]

@Technico Supportthe rich and shameless Hoban v gawker is fascinating in this context as well. Hogan saying “Hulk Hogan has a ten inch penis “ was him in character and not terry bollea 

[NoFistsJustFlips]

On 8/2/2023 at 9:56 AM, Dolphman 3000 said:

Kind of surprised they didn't bring up WWE having right-of-first-refusal to buy WCW that resulted from WWE suing WCW for copyright infringement in 1996

The episode made it seem like WCW willingly pissed away 50 million so they wouldn't have to sell to Eric

Don't think you understand how this works. WWE don't get to say nah you can't sell for $60 million because we want it for $2.5 million (which is how your statement comes off). Right of first refusal is Fusent Media saying we are going to purchase WCW for $60 million. Then AOL Time Warner had to go okay hold on a second we can't accept that until we ask WWE. Hey WWE do you want to buy WCW for $60 million? WWE say fuck no. WCW goes okay Fusent they refused the purchase price, we are good to go.

WCW willingly pissed away $50+ million because Jamie Kellner thought wrestling was stupid and didn't want it on his networks. The price was $60 with the Thunder & Nitro time slots locked in for (I believe) 5 years. Once Keller was like nah dawg we don't want rasslin on this here fine station, no TV time inclused anymore. Then Fusent Media pulled out. WCW as a company with no TV distribution was not worth $60 million.

Then WWE were like oh you don't have a buyer anymore, want these spare peanuts for your rings, trademarks, tape library, & Lance Storm? Sold!

[odessasteps]

Would def encourage folks to listen to the BTS episodes about the sale, since there's a lot of detail not in the newsletters at the time. 

[Dolphman 3000]

1 hour ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

Don't think you understand how this works.

You literally have no idea what you're talking about

As part of WWE's settlement with WCW after they infringed on the Razor Ramon and Diesel trademarks, Vince had it written into the settlement that they had right of first refusal to purchase WCW if it ever came up for sale

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/883214-wwe-the-5-most-interesting-excerpts-from-wwe-related-lawsuit-filings-case-law

The lawsuit went on for years, ending with a settlement in 2000.  One of the terms gave WWE the right to bid on WCW's assets if the company was liquidated.  As mentioned in the Sid slide, Time Warner cancelled WCW's television shows in March 2001 and sold the company assets to WWE.

The selling price was somewhere in the $2.5 million to $4.3 million range, depending on how it's calculated.  As a term of the sale, WWE promised to buy a certain amount of advertising on TBS and TNT for a few years.

[SirSmUgly]

23 hours ago, zendragon said:

@Technico Supportthe rich and shameless Hoban v gawker is fascinating in this context as well. Hogan saying “Hulk Hogan has a ten inch penis “ was him in character and not terry bollea.

Hulk Hogan in character said he lived 32 hour days and slammed Andre on five different continents in one of those days. If Hulk Hogan were talking about his penis size, ten would be low for him. He'd boast of a fourteen or sixteen incher at least.

[PetrolCB]

43 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said:

If Hulk Hogan were talking about his penis size, ten would be low for him. He'd boast of a fourteen or sixteen incher at least.

24 inch python.

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

2 hours ago, Dolphman 3000 said:

You literally have no idea what you're talking about

As part of WWE's settlement with WCW after they infringed on the Razor Ramon and Diesel trademarks, Vince had it written into the settlement that they had right of first refusal to purchase WCW if it ever came up for sale

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/883214-wwe-the-5-most-interesting-excerpts-from-wwe-related-lawsuit-filings-case-law

The lawsuit went on for years, ending with a settlement in 2000.  One of the terms gave WWE the right to bid on WCW's assets if the company was liquidated.  As mentioned in the Sid slide, Time Warner cancelled WCW's television shows in March 2001 and sold the company assets to WWE.

The selling price was somewhere in the $2.5 million to $4.3 million range, depending on how it's calculated.  As a term of the sale, WWE promised to buy a certain amount of advertising on TBS and TNT for a few years.

Yeah, no, that's not how it works. Reread Noflips post who went to far too much detail explaining it for you to just ignore it.

[NoFistsJustFlips]

You can lead a gremlin to water but can't get him wet after midnight I guess

The right of first refusal is literally the right to make the first offer. Or in a case like this when another offer was put on the table first, the right to accept those terms or refuse them. WCW entered into a deal with Fusent Media. That was because WWE was given the chance to agree to the $60 million offer on the table or refuse it. They refused it. That's why it was officially announced on TV & in real news publications that Fusent had entered into the deal with AOL Time Warner. WWE decided not to exercise their clause because $60 million was way more than they were willing to pay.

Then when the deal fell apart because the TV was pulled, WWE bought up the scarps.

Thanks for that smug rebuttal, but it made you look even dumber than usual. Awkward.

[Cobra Commander]

giving WCW five years guaranteed in 2001 seems like a bad enough deal that you don't even have to have a special dislike for wrestling to think that's a bad idea, I mean, it's no "700 Club has to be on your network forever" contract but..

[Curt McGirt]

I'm guessing that they just replaced WCW with syndicated network show re-runs before and after movies. Wonder if they made better ratings than the wrestling if so.

[SirSmUgly]

8 minutes ago, Cobra Commander said:

giving WCW five years guaranteed in 2001 seems like a bad enough deal that you don't even have to have a special dislike for wrestling to think that's a bad idea, I mean, it's no "700 Club has to be on your network forever" contract but..

If Kellner could peek into the streaming future in which live TV with a built-in audience is especially valuable, it might have begun to look like a reasonable idea.

[Cobra Commander]

1 hour ago, SirSmUgly said:

If Kellner could peek into the streaming future in which live TV with a built-in audience is especially valuable, it might have begun to look like a reasonable idea.

I mean, that took a really long period of time after March 2001. It took TNA until 2005 to really find a cable network home and that was on their second try (third try if you count streaming on their website). Remember that YouTube didn't exist until 2005.

1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:

I'm guessing that they just replaced WCW with syndicated network show re-runs before and after movies. Wonder if they made better ratings than the wrestling if so.

looking at the TV listings in the Kansas City Star. TNT aired Purgatory starring Eric Roberts in the Nitro time slot one week after Nitro was 86ed.

[SirSmUgly]

2 minutes ago, Cobra Commander said:

I mean, that took a really long period of time after March 2001. It took TNA until 2005 to really find a cable network home and that was on their second try (third try if you count streaming on their website). Remember that YouTube didn't exist until 2005.

looking at the TV listings in the Kansas City Star. TNT aired Purgatory starring Eric Roberts in the Nitro time slot one week after Nitro was 86ed.

Oh, sure. Streaming isn't really a thing at all until what, 2010-11 with Netflix's small, but growing catalog of shows and films?

But that's the thing about streaming; it actually didn't take that long at all. By 2016, just fifteen years later, there would be a clear need for something like WCW as live programming became exponentially more important to cable channels. It's why AEW exists. That was a very fast fifteen year period, is what I'm saying.

TNA/Impact did just about everything it could not to position itself in the place that AEW currently exists within

[Elsalvajeloco]

29 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said:

Oh, sure. Streaming isn't really a thing at all until what, 2010-11 with Netflix's small, but growing catalog of shows and films?

But that's the thing about streaming; it actually didn't take that long at all. By 2016, just fifteen years later, there would be a clear need for something like WCW as live programming became exponentially more important to cable channels. It's why AEW exists. That was a very fast fifteen year period, is what I'm saying.

TNA/Impact did just about everything it could not to position itself in the place that AEW currently exists within

I wonder how much damage was done trying to get TNT for example into the prestige TV game. I mean they had minor successes like the American TV remakes of Snowpiercer and Animal Kingdom, The Last Ship, and something niche like Claws, but they also had a bomb like Mob City and The Alienist didn't do as well as expected with all the hype. You have the regime change under the merger, and it's scorched earth to go all in sports. Paramount (fka Spike) did the same thing, but for stuff like Waco that didn't generate the expected buzz, they still got Yellowstone and the nine billion spinoffs. 

I feel like the prestige TV game was/is very lottery ticket based and everybody bought 150 tickets only to come up with very little to show for it. They are a lot of shows that are moderate successes and definitely have at least a cult following, but no one as near as many that will penetrate the hearts and minds of viewers. If you didn't know better, you would think 100 million people watched the Wire when it originally aired. Yet, a show like that which didn't have the same numbers as some as the shows now probably has had much more staying power. 

[Cobra Commander]

20 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I wonder how much damage was done trying to get TNT for example into the prestige TV game

Just imagine how much more money Ted Turner could have spent on Gods and Generals if he hadn't lost his power first.

But wasn't TNT always at least supposed to be more prestigious than TBS?

[Elsalvajeloco]

37 minutes ago, Cobra Commander said:

Just imagine how much more money Ted Turner could have spent on Gods and Generals if he hadn't lost his power first.

But wasn't TNT always at least supposed to be more prestigious than TBS?

Maybe the older folks here would have a much better context, but IMO TNT was not more prestigious as it was a more world ready version of TBS. I don't think TBS until the recent years where it's baseball non exclusive to the Atlanta Braves and stuff that's not day long John Wayne/Eastwood marathons and Andy Griffith was going to be viewed as the a down home Southern channel. Based of what Bischoff has said about how he turned around WCW, I think he preferred having Nitro on TNT. On TBS, any wrestling show that's going to be on there is "rasslin". Even though a lot of the Nitros in the few two years were from southern hot beds for wrestling, once it got going and the company as whole grew, it expanded past those markets fast.

However, the problem you run up against is you go from having an identity to either not having an identity or just being the colorless, odorless thing. I think WWF's inherent advantage in the MNW is no matter what happened in terms of news stars being produced, you can still trace whatever is going on back to Bruno, Buddy Rogers, Pedro Morales, the early years of Hogan, etc. You can see the throughline, which I would admit you can credit to Vince and also the continuity of having reliable, consistent creative (bad or good). WCW in late 98 and 99 before the meltdown was fully realized is an entirely different entity than NWA going into WCW in 88-90. Yes, it's more popular technically but if you're someone who isn't instantly attracted to all the NWO mess and Goldberg, why the hell would you watch? What's the hook? That would be an even bigger issue in the final 18 months of the company. 

I know Eric didn't want Thunder, but I think the biggest asset they missed is the fact that TBS had been what it was for wrestling back in the day. Why not make Saturday Night and Thunder be something entirely different than Nitro? That's what WWF/E ended up doing with Smackdown and look where it's at now. He could have easily made a bad situation into a manageable by just being like Nitro is the show with all the hoopla and ballyhoo with angles and storylines and Thunder/Saturday Night is the show with all clean finishes and good, strong solid wrestling matches. Once Saturday Night just became matches and Thunder was the show with 75 run-ins (many matches including multiple runs with a half dozen guys at least), both were DOA. 

[Cobra Commander]

28 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I think he preferred having Nitro on TNT. On TBS, any wrestling show that's going to be on there is "rasslin"

Also any TBS wrestling show was gonna occasionally run into being bumped off of the regular time by Atlanta Braves games

[colonial]

7 hours ago, Cobra Commander said:

Just imagine how much more money Ted Turner could have spent on Gods and Generals if he hadn't lost his power first.

But wasn't TNT always at least supposed to be more prestigious than TBS?

When TNT first launched, it was essentially a precursor to TCM. Turner had just purchased the MGM library, was experimenting with colorizing old films, etc., and wanted a channel to showcase his new toys.

Even in those early years, there was definitely a prestige factor to TNT. In addition to the films, they had a Sunday night NFL game for at least a year with pre-game shows in the stadium parking lots -- think Larry King was one of the pre-game hosts.

TBS was the southern-fried channel for the longest time, even when it had NBA basketball for a time in the 80s. It wasn't until Time Warner completely took over from Turner that the "old" TBS vestige vanished (goodbye wrestling, Braves baseball, "Andy Griffith" reruns, etc.)

[Gorman]

When I covered Bash at the Beach 2000 in my new WCW book, "King of Atlanta," I discussed how the Montreal Screwjob would have worked if they did it like Russo did with the Daytona Beach Screwjob.