The Viceland Wrestling Documentaries

[Cobra Commander]

after seeing Teddy Turner in the documentary, I read that he's a high school economics teacher (at a private school in Charleston) and I can see him running videos of John Stossel from 20/20 to fill time in a class

also kinda wild and maybe says something about Ted Turner that his son, after getting some jobs in the Turner empire, is working as a teacher instead of getting entrenched in a nepotism job before Ted lost power. Feels like Ted would actually prefer his kids establish their own careers instead of mooching off the family name? (then again, Ted's father killed himself when Ted was 24 and Ted had to take over the family business, so maybe he wouldn't have wanted his kids to have to take over for him?)

[SirSmUgly]

15 minutes ago, Cobra Commander said:

 

also kinda wild and maybe says something about Ted Turner that his son, after getting some jobs in the Turner empire, is working as a teacher instead of getting entrenched in a nepotism job before Ted lost power. Feels like Ted would actually prefer his kids establish their own careers instead of mooching off the family name? 

Ted Turner talks about wanting his kids to establish themselves without relying on nepotism in his autobiography Call Me Ted, and Teddy actually contributes a blurb to that book confirming this, so this doesn't surprise me. 

[Technico Support]

54 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said:

 

• AOL was such a nothing company. They owned nothing valuable. AOL-Time Warner is the dumbest merger ever. What did Time Warner get out of it other than debt and a company that was less valuable as we moved toward the Dot Com Bust?

--------------

• As an aside, the Rock sucks, man. This was pointless television, and frankly, I'm pretty sick of seeing that dude's giant head on promotions for everything from alcohol to body wash whenever I go into a store. He was the most pointless talking head in the history of TV docs in this series. In conclusion, I would like him to take his fuckloads of money and go the fuck away for a long time, maybe forever. Seeing him in '98 - '01 WWF on the rare occasions that I re-watch that stuff is enough. 

Anyway, this was a pointless wrestling thing, but like many pointless wrestling things, I watched it anyway! 

 

• Isn't AOL's product insane in retrospect?   Like they had maybe a few years where I guess they were valuable as an ISP for dial-up and a sort of front page to people who didn't understand how to use a search engine.  But I know I had broadband by the time the merger happened.  So yeah, their best days were firmly behind them by then.  WTF.  That's some "Watts and JR con Crockett into buying the dying UWF" level of fuckery there.
• YES.  There are Rock and Kevin Hart standees at my local liquor store for whatever tequila vanity project they're shilling, just smiling like the two most pandering and inoffensive, "please accept us, white people" motherfuckers you have ever seen.

Edited June 26 by Technico Support

[Cobra Commander]

My grandma was on AOL whenever she had some reason to go into the computer room and check her stuff (also she found that she could get knitting patterns and genealogy on the internet). Around my house, we were on the more conventional forms of internet that outlasted AOL. Kinda wild that AOL got the majority share in an AOL Time Warner merger, but guessing that's how they made the deal happen.

[twiztor]

Episode 2 thoughts.

Goldberg is an ass.

 

Episode 3 thoughts.

here's my favorite part (besides Russo thinking he was a better performer than 80% of the roster):

Vince Russo (when asked if he understood why people were upset about Arquette being given the belt):
who cares bro? what they think don't matter

Vince Russo (when he's talking about Hogan @ Bash at the Beach):
the internet posts were all praising me, so i knew i did the right thing bro.

 

Episode 4 thoughts.

where can i watch all the backstage footage from the final Nitro?

Edited June 26 by twiztor

[Cobra Commander]

just imagining how much more annoying Russo WCW would have been if he could have been reading Tweets during the shows

[NoFistsJustFlips]

Whole lotta hindsight on these AOL takes lol. In 1995-2000 there was no bigger company in America. Their exponential growth was crazy. They owned such a high percentage of the early dial up market share it was crazy. Now 2000 and the dot com bubble burst and the advent of broadband in the early 2000s made their downfall even faster than their rise. But in January of 2000 when the deal was announced they were a juggernaut and the projections going forward were more exponential growth.

We all know that didn't happen. But the 'what would Time Warner even get out of this merger' takes are really off the mark. A broadcasting company that merged with a media company that merged with a news corporation that then wanted to merge with an internet monster. It made perfect sense (at the time) to try and have an all in one media giant that pulled in revenue from every inch of the entertainment spectrum. And in a company that wasn't corporately inept, could maximize the synergy, that sounds like money in the bank.

Now the grander WCW part of the equation we all have a better grip on. In my opinion there was no timeline where WCW was going to survive. Too much brand damage had been done. WWE fell to second place for a bit during the war, but it was never to a degree that they were tarnished beyond repair. And that's why they were able to come back. WCW in 2000 was tarnished beyond repair. Had Fusient closed the deal I really don't see how weekly studio taping in Las Vegas (very much like what TNA ended up becoming) with the failed brand stench WCW had would have any chance of survival.

Even on a timeline where everything lined up perfectly. Bischoff had the best creative spark of his career. You get a healthy motivated Goldberg, a hot RVD off of ECW's collapse, Joey Styles as your voice, a renewed cruiserweight division with the Low Kis the Christopher Daniels the AJ Styles of the time. They didn't have the ammo to fight back to the top spot. And this is with the TNT & TBS time slots. Short of an Austin / Rock / Undertaker jumping ship and recreating the Hogan shift (which in it's self wasn't instant and was on the verge of failing without Hall & Nash / the nWo), no chance in hell.

So in a way it's irrelevant who killed WCW. It was death by 1,000 dumb paper cuts. Bad booking. Bad management. Short sighted decisions, bad corporate structure, brand value being tarnished beyond repair, fucked up finances, bad contracts, creative control, and about 100 other things. It's hard for me to find any path where everything lines up and they survive the ratings bleed. WWE was the hottest it had even been since the absolute heights of Hulkamania. They had a hot hand that they rode for a long long time before showing signs of slow down. There's no evidence that anything could have changed that short of a catastrophic defection again to spark interest.

I do miss the shit out of WCW. I just preferred their style of presentation to WWE's. At least up until 1999. When they switched from trying to be different to trying to be more WWE than WWE could, it was some ugly as fuck production visuals.

[BloodyChamp]

13 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

In my opinion there was no timeline where WCW was going to survive. Too much brand damage had been done. WWE fell to second place for a bit during the war, but it was never to a degree that they were tarnished beyond repair. And that's why they were able to come back.

This. Wow. WCW was finished period. Closing was only a formality way before it closed. Meanwhile the WWF was always there stomping through even at their worst, and strictly on the business side they were always superior. WCW making millions of dollars was like an idiot making millions of dollars on a scratch off. They always found a way to burn it.

[SirSmUgly]

3 hours ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

Whole lotta hindsight on these AOL takes lol. In 1995-2000 there was no bigger company in America. Their exponential growth was crazy. They owned such a high percentage of the early dial up market share it was crazy. Now 2000 and the dot com bubble burst and the advent of broadband in the early 2000s made their downfall even faster than their rise. But in January of 2000 when the deal was announced they were a juggernaut and the projections going forward were more exponential growth.

We all know that didn't happen. But the 'what would Time Warner even get out of this merger' takes are really off the mark. A broadcasting company that merged with a media company that merged with a news corporation that then wanted to merge with an internet monster. It made perfect sense (at the time) to try and have an all in one media giant that pulled in revenue from every inch of the entertainment spectrum. And in a company that wasn't corporately inept, could maximize the synergy, that sounds like money in the bank.
 

Gonna respectfully disagree with you on this, sir, if only because analysts were making these critiques at the time it happened. I was in my "reading USA Today" phase, and I remember this being a strong line of critique even then.

 

Quote

I do miss the shit out of WCW. I just preferred their style of presentation to WWE's. At least up until 1999. When they switched from trying to be different to trying to be more WWE than WWE could, it was some ugly as fuck production visuals.

This is spot on, though.

[zendragon]

WCW died a death of a thousand cuts

Some to think about an alternate reality where Fusient buys WCW as its on a creative up swing

boy was Nash loaded during this

kinda fun to hear Brad Siegal Dick (Dewey)Cheatum (and Howe) ect tell their side of the story

 

[odessasteps]

WCW was doomed when Turner bought JCP. Everything else was just a matter of time. 

[zendragon]

Watch Bruno Sammartino (2019) - Free Movies | Tubi (tubitv.com)

If anyone needs a palate cleanser

[The Natural]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ikftpOaE3-U

Bret Hart's the best. NSFW.

[Peck]

Craig "Pitbull" Pittman got pyro on '96 Nitro?????  THERE'S the death of WCW. 

[SirSmUgly]

2 hours ago, Peck said:

Craig "Pitbull" Pittman got pyro on '96 Nitro?????  THERE'S the death of WCW. 

HOW DARE YOU BESMIRCH THE NAME OF THE PITBULL, LONG MAY HE APPLY CODE REDS TO MANY A PUKE.

[Ace]

Hey, at least Pittman was a Marine.

[twiztor]

8 hours ago, Ace said:

Hey, at least Pittman was a Marine.

i also saw him have a couple legit MMA matches, pre-WCW run. He went 1-1, but unfortunately did not use the Code Red. 

[Technico Support]

I was today years old when I realized Craig Pittman's finisher name is a reference to Marine punishment, popularized in A Few Good Men.

I guess I couldn't handle the truth.

[NikoBaltimore]

On 6/27/2024 at 4:01 AM, zendragon said:

Watch Bruno Sammartino (2019) - Free Movies | Tubi (tubitv.com)

If anyone needs a palate cleanser

The editing on this was very erratic and felt like a fever dream.  But the content itself was very good.

As for the show it didn't accomplish much which I expected.  All it did was show that Goldberg is still trash and Russo should not be doing anything with any media ever again.  For anybody that re-watches '99 WCW and on you're a braver soul than I am.

[SirSmUgly]

37 minutes ago, NikoBaltimore said:

The editing on this was very erratic and felt like a fever dream.  But the content itself was very good.

As for the show it didn't accomplish much which I expected.  All it did was show that Goldberg is still trash and Russo should not be doing anything with any media ever again.  For anybody that re-watches '99 WCW and on you're a braver soul than I am.

Into July of 1999, March/April had a month of television across that time that was actually quite good, but the quality of Nitro plummets again soon after Spring Stampede '99. 

Nitro goes from "beating RAW every week in the ratings" to "competitive back and forth" to "getting destroyed by RAW in the ratings" in a year's time. It feels quick, but IMO the TV goes off the rails right after BatB '98 and from then until about Uncensored '99, Nitro especially is mediocre-to-bad regularly at the same time that the WWF is heating up. There's a short upturn after Uncensored '99 that lasts four or five weeks, and then it's back to hell. 

Nitro is terrible for something like ten months starting with the build to Road Wild '98 with only a short break in the middle. I've come to the conclusion that Bischoff's creative oversight is probably what pushed WCW to a point of no return, well before Russo gets involved. 

Thunder has been consistently pleasant, though. I've said elsewhere that my biggest surprise about re-watching the Nitro era of WCW is that Thunder is decent more often than not (at least through June of 1999) and has some surprisingly good eps sprinkled throughout. Which says something about the Bischoff creative era since from the jump, Bischoff wanted little to do with that show. 

[zendragon]

Similarly WCWSN and WorldWide probably are the shows that have the most consistent quality through out the MNW 

[NikoBaltimore]

I see.  I'll take your words for it.

Also, forgot to add to my surprise my wife was fascinated by the first two episodes.  But when they previewed the third with Russo I said I have to watch this alone.  She thought I was nuts but after seeing that episode it reinforced my belief that I was doing her a favor.

[SirSmUgly]

51 minutes ago, NikoBaltimore said:

I see.  I'll take your words for it.

Also, forgot to add to my surprise my wife was fascinated by the first two episodes.  But when they previewed the third with Russo I said I have to watch this alone.  She thought I was nuts but after seeing that episode it reinforced my belief that I was doing her a favor.

Maybe the spiciest of takes on my part, but as delusional as Russo is, he somehow comes off as the more credible one when placed next to Eric Bischoff on these shows. Somehow, he's the guy who came out of the BatB 2000 DSotR sounding like he was the closest to reasonable. He said some batty shit in this mini-series, but Bischoff seems just one step more delusional than him. 

[zendragon]

I don't know if the Raw magazine story he tells is true but the one thing I'll give Russo credit for is some how he got Vince to understand he needed to update the product

[SirSmUgly]

28 minutes ago, zendragon said:

I don't know if the Raw magazine story he tells is true but the one thing I'll give Russo credit for is some how he got Vince to understand he needed to update the product

I don't even give him that much. IMO the guy who got Vince to understand that he needed to update the product was Paul Heyman, indirectly, due to ECW. 

I could be wrong, but I think ECW is the brand to thank for modernizing the WWF, and frankly, Bischoff's claims that the WWF was trying to copy "the Nitro formula" are nonsense. WWF during the Attitude Era is, IMO, ECW-lite. And then 1999 - 2000 Nitro was WWF Attitude-lite, which is why it sucked so bad. A watered down version of a watered down version of ECW is probably going to be hard to watch!