- 4 months ago
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00:01Stand by.
00:03Here we go, in five, four, three, two, roll it through.
00:14This is the last Nitro on the Turner Networks, and we're going out with a bang.
00:19How do we all feel on this very surreal day for all of us in World Championship Wrestling?
00:24A historic day in sports entertainment, and it goes down on our very last telecast.
00:29Where does WCW go from here? What's in the cards? What's going to happen?
00:35If I'm giving a eulogy for WCW, what would I say?
00:39We were WCW! We lived! We breathed! We sweat! We paid the price to be the best!
00:52We gather here today to bid farewell to a wrestling company.
00:57A company that grew from the ashes rose to become the phoenix of professional wrestling.
01:03The legacy of WCW is iconic.
01:06I have just such a tremendous amount of reverence and respect for everything that they were able to do.
01:11To know that it went from that to being out of business is a tragedy.
01:17People thinking about themselves and not the good of the company led to the death of WCW.
01:24Thanks to the cash.
01:27Thanks for nothing. Go f**k yourselves.
01:30I think that would sum it up.
01:32You know, if I look back and try to describe the journey, the ups, the downs, the twists, the curves, the ride all along the way was a rush.
01:45WCW innovated so many things that are still so much a part of the wrestling programming that we watch today.
01:52Going back to the 80s, early 90s, it was a little company that nobody thought was ever going to be successful.
02:01Any time anybody talked about professional wrestling in mainstream media, they didn't refer to it as professional wrestling.
02:08They referred to it as WWF.
02:09The World Wrestling Federation.
02:12If you look at where WCW started from.
02:15Tonight on World Championship Wrestling.
02:17We were in a different universe and not a favorable one.
02:21That's how far behind we were.
02:24Everybody was very happy to be a distant number two.
02:28Except for me.
02:30The difference between WCW in 93 and 98.
02:37Where over 30,000 fans are jammed in the Georgia Dome.
02:41We became the most successful wrestling company in the world almost overnight.
02:46Gentlemen, start your engines.
02:48WCW was able to transcend this pop culture.
02:52Wow, it's a stinger.
02:54Timmy, here comes the NWL.
02:57The greatest action ever.
02:59I don't think I'd seen anything as hot as the NWL.
03:02I was like, wow, this company is going to go through the roof.
03:04We were standing on top of the mountain going, how did we get here?
03:08And then little by little, we just fell.
03:11It was like me having a puppy, raising him to be a full grown dog.
03:17And I watch him run across the street and he gets hit by a bus.
03:21Egos, egos, egos.
03:22Egos, egos, egos.
03:24A lot of jealousy, a lot of problems.
03:26Do I got your attention now, Eric Bischoff?
03:29Think about it. What are wrestlers? They're a bunch of pathological liars.
03:32What a big word for a suit and tie.
03:35The death of WCW is really death by a thousand cuts.
03:39So, what really happened?
03:41Who's responsible for killing WCW?
03:43That's always going to be the million dollar question.
03:47Who killed WCW?
03:49Well, the easy answer is Vince Russo.
03:51It's just idiotic.
03:53Turner, the organization, the lack of.
03:57The talent killed WCW.
03:59This is preposterous to me.
04:02It would have to be the person with the checkbook.
04:04It would have to be Eric Bischoff.
04:06Sometimes more than one thing can be true.
04:09There's too much blame to go around.
04:11You want to hear the real story or you want to hear the bullshit story?
04:16You cannot sweep this under the rug.
04:19This is a television show.
04:21The real reason men come in lies.
04:23Back in the day, back prior to social media, there was still an internet culture where wrestling fans seemed to congregate and had a desperate need for an understanding of what happened to WCW.
04:46Who have convinced a certain percentage of the audience that it ultimately comes back to me.
05:01If someone were to come to me and say, okay, here's a tape.
05:06I want you to watch this whole tape and it's going to be the entire WCW journey and you can decide if you want to do it all over again.
05:13What would I say?
05:17In a heartbeat.
05:19In a heartbeat.
05:21You know, it's really interesting and almost embarrassing.
05:24Before I was hired by WCW, I didn't know what WCW was.
05:29World Championship Wrestling.
05:31I was an outsider to the business.
05:33I was a sales guy.
05:36Right about that time, through a good friend of mine, Sonny Ono, this little thing called Ninja Star Wars came into my life.
05:43You put these vests on and you put one on, I put one on, we chase each other around the house and if I hit you with three of my stars, you're out.
05:50Just like laser tag only with these little stars.
05:53Then it was like, all right, how do we sell them?
05:58At the time, the AWA was on Monday through Friday and the AWA was Vern's business.
06:04Vern Gagne, thanks for being out here.
06:05Well, my pleasure and I'm glad I got out here.
06:07Vern Gagne, professional athlete, wrestler, promoter.
06:10Don't you dare miss it.
06:12Vern did it all.
06:14Vern Gagne's pro wrestling report, here's how to order.
06:17Mail 1495.
06:19I thought, I'm gonna call Vern Gagne.
06:22If Vern runs the commercial in his wrestling program that's seen nationwide, we'll split 50-50.
06:28I took one of the games and went to meet Vern.
06:31Vern, I thought I was gonna get the deal, right, that I was looking for.
06:34Which I did, but I was also offered a job.
06:36Welcome to AWA Championship Wrestling.
06:39So my job was to travel around the Midwest and talk independent television stations and be carrying AWA shows.
06:46It's a sales job. Sales is sales.
06:48And I think we're gonna erase any doubts you've ever had.
06:50I had never met anybody like Eric.
06:53If he thought something was a really good idea, then he would start to take action, to breathe life into it.
07:01I'd always been curious how television works.
07:03At night, I just sat in and learned.
07:06Then eventually I was on camera.
07:08My name is Eric Bischoff and you heard Vern...
07:10All this took place over the course of about a year and a half or two years while I was in AWA.
07:14Buckle up real tight because you're going for a hard, bumpy ride, I promise.
07:18The last six or eight months of it, I didn't get paid.
07:20He couldn't afford to pay me.
07:22My wife and I and our kids suffered financially.
07:25Now we have two little ones and we are literally bouncing checks to buy diapers and barely making rent.
07:35That's how bad it was.
07:36The world heavyweight champion, he is the living legend, Larry Zabisco.
07:43Larry Zabisco had worked with me in AWA.
07:45We had become friends.
07:46He left AWA, was working in WCW.
07:49Larry told me that, hey, they're looking for announcers down here.
07:53And within days, I get a call.
07:55See you next time.
07:56I got to WCW, man, I was the happiest third string announcer that had ever put on a pair of shoes.
08:03I came into WCW so wide-eyed because I was working for Turner Broadcasting.
08:08He was very nice.
08:09He just seemed like he was not a fish out of water, but he was kind of uncomfortable is the way it seemed to start with.
08:16He's got a suit on and he's got, you know, perfect black hair. He looked like a Ken dog.
08:21I'm here with Diamond Dallas.
08:22The talent within WCW, unbelievable.
08:25There was Dusty Rhodes and Gordon Soley and Kevin Sullivan and certainly Ric Flair.
08:31And there was a new generation.
08:33Guys like Sting, Diamond Dale's page.
08:36Scott Hall was the diamond stud.
08:38On three, one, two, three, rip it off!
08:41Scott was working in WCW when I was hired.
08:43So was Kevin Nash.
08:45Good looking guy.
08:46Great physique.
08:47Yeah.
08:48Poor Kevin Nash has so many different characters in the beginning.
08:52They didn't know what to do with him.
08:54Cowabunga!
08:56I just shot Ninja Turtles.
08:59And then I believe Dusty took acid.
09:03And he said, baby, you're gonna be Oz.
09:06I said, you do realize that the movie is called The Wizard of Oz.
09:12I am Oz.
09:15You can be the wizard, but you can't be Oz.
09:17Oz is the geographical region.
09:20No, baby, you can be Oz.
09:22I'm just like, all right.
09:24World Championship Wrestling is bringing it to you, baby.
09:27We're taking a look at Oz.
09:28I just show up in this lime green outfit in an old man's rubber mask.
09:35And then they wrestle a geographical region.
09:40Look at this move right here.
09:41They were trying to put a round peg in a square hole.
09:45They tried to do the gimmicks.
09:47Looks like something's going on down here.
09:49They were bringing, you know, Robocop.
09:52Woohoo!
09:53What strength by Robocop!
09:54But they really didn't work.
09:56It didn't work.
09:57It was an absolute shit shot.
09:59He's getting cooked, and I think he's well done, guys.
10:02The crowd here going crazy!
10:05WCW had a loyal following.
10:08The Turner executives regarded the WCW audience as being downscale.
10:13It was downscale, very sort of Southern and Midwestern.
10:19I didn't care about it. I wasn't a fan of it.
10:2280% of the people who worked at Turner weren't really wrestling fans to start with, except for Ted.
10:28Ted Turner wears many hats for his many colorful careers.
10:32He is the owner of the Baseball Atlanta Braves, Basketball Atlanta Hawks.
10:37He has pioneered television with his own cable network, which broadcasts 24 hours of news.
10:42Playboy magazine called him a bonafide, larger-than-life character.
10:45Captain Outrageous, that was one of his nicknames.
10:48He will say anything he wants to, anytime he wants to.
10:52You said network presidents should be lined up and shot.
10:56And shot.
10:57My kind of guy.
10:58Ted enjoyed the fact that I know that you don't like my wrestling, and that's exactly why I like it.
11:06Dad bought a little TV station here in Atlanta, and he built an international broadcasting empire in a few years.
11:16And wrestling was one of those things that helped build TBS and the entire network.
11:23When you go back to the beginning of television, wrestling was there.
11:27It was a lifeblood of programming for local television stations.
11:31Oh!
11:32It could command a loyal audience in the millions of viewers.
11:36So Ted believes in the power and the loyalty and the size of the professional wrestling audience.
11:43Ted launched WCW as a result of purchasing Jim Crockett Promotions, which was a southern wrestling company.
11:49Jesus Christ!
11:51WCW was seen as sort of the long-suffering, distant number two, trailing behind the WWF.
11:57The winner of the match, the Diamond Stars!
12:02Scott Hall, Kevin Nash.
12:05They left.
12:06They go to the WWF.
12:08Scott Hall becomes Razor Ramon.
12:10He becomes a big star.
12:11Kevin Nash becomes Diesel.
12:13Boom!
12:14Big star.
12:15From the standpoint of the talent, we always consider WWE the show.
12:20There's no comparison.
12:21From a production value perspective, from a talent roster perspective, from a marketing perspective, from a financial perspective, WCW lost millions of dollars every year.
12:33I've been warned by my boss that don't help WCW.
12:38Why?
12:39If I help them make money?
12:40No, you don't understand.
12:41Executive management hates wrestling and wants to get rid of it.
12:44And if you're perceived as trying to help them, that's career suicide for you.
12:48Other than Ted Turner, there was not an executive in Turner Broadcasting that wanted WCW to be in the Turner portfolio.
12:56Put yourself in the position of a television executive within that corporation.
13:01You have this division that is losing as much as $10 million on a yearly basis.
13:06And we don't really get the appeal of this entire genre to begin with.
13:10So, of course, that was going to create a lot of resentment and confusion as to why do we even have this on the airwaves.
13:17Mix my blood ball, too!
13:19That's what really set the conditions for this dysfunctional relationship between TBS and WCW.
13:24Bill Shaw was the Vice President of Human Resources for Turner Broadcasting.
13:30He was given responsibility to take over WCW as effective president of it.
13:35So, Bill came in, he said, Ted Turner has made a decision that this company is going to either turn a profit or Ted's going to pull the plug.
13:44Ted had made up his mind that enough was enough and he was going to give WCW one last shot.
13:49And we're going to hire an executive producer who is going to take WCW from a wrestling company to a television property.
13:59Wrestling was seen by the wrestling people as an arena business.
14:05The only other person besides Ted that saw it as television was Eric.
14:12So, I threw my name in a hat.
14:15A month or so later, I'm the executive producer.
14:18This is your chance to be a part of professional wrestling history.
14:23What the hell am I going to do?
14:25The way my brother and I came into WCW was a good old boy system gimmick, you know, for two black guys.
14:46This is a spectacular team.
14:48But you could tell the difference going from the good old boys era to the Eric Bischoff era just by the way he tried to create something.
14:56I was hired as an executive producer.
14:59My responsibility was solely the look and feel of the show.
15:03Saturday night.
15:05The biggest challenge that we had was the fact that we couldn't attract an audience.
15:09It looked horrible because you had to turn the lights down to hide the fact that nobody was there.
15:14How do we fix that?
15:15That's when I decided I was going to shoot the shows down at the Disney MGM Studios.
15:20They had sound stages so I could control the look of the environment.
15:24And I had a fresh audience coming through five times a day.
15:28So I could shoot five or six shows with a fresh audience each and every time.
15:32Spin them up, lights, camera edge.
15:35I think Eric Bischoff really wanted to take WCW away from being a southern wrestling company.
15:42You could see the difference.
15:44You could feel it.
15:46In 94, I ascended from executive producer to vice president.
15:51And at that time, nobody thought WCW would ever be competitive with WWF.
15:57I needed people to take WCW seriously.
16:02I needed Hulk Hogan.
16:05Hulk Hogan!
16:09I don't think we'd be here if there was no Hulk Hogan.
16:13In the 1980s, Hulk Hogan is the patriotic, ultra-good guy.
16:17He's coming out waving an American flag, fighting off these evil foreigners.
16:21He was the one who broke professional wrestling wide open.
16:27Commercials, cartoons, kids loved him.
16:32Everybody knew Hulk Hogan.
16:34Whether you're a professional wrestling fan or not, you knew the name.
16:38Eating your vitamins, saying your prayers.
16:40Say your prayers, eat your vitamins!
16:42Ric Flair is the greatest wrestler of all time.
16:45But the guy that was on Sports Illustrated, he's the guy.
16:50He is truly a real American.
16:53And coincidentally, while we were shooting WCW at the Disney MGM Studios,
16:58Hulk Hogan was down at Disney shooting a new series called Thunder in Paradise.
17:03Now Hulk had been out of wrestling for some time because of the steroid trial.
17:07He's like a good role model because he just like did whatever it took to get big.
17:13Like he took those steroid pills.
17:16And I thought, why not at least try to get a meeting?
17:19But he didn't know who I was.
17:21So I went to Ric Flair.
17:23Hello.
17:24I said, Ric, do you think you can set up a call or meeting between Hulk and I?
17:29One night I was sound asleep and the phone rings and I picked up the phone and it's,
17:33Hey brother.
17:34Whoa!
17:35Wake up.
17:36It was Hulk.
17:38Welcome Hulk Hogan!
17:41Being able to work with Hulk Hogan, being on the same roster as Hulk Hogan, elevated everybody's career.
17:48And it had immediate impact.
17:50All of a sudden people were returning phone calls much faster.
17:53It's all perception.
17:54That's why we're here today.
17:56For a match between two of wrestling's biggest superstars, Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair.
18:01So Hulk's original deal included four pay-per-views a year and he had creative control.
18:06Essentially it means that he gets a thumbs up or thumbs down as to whether or not he wants to do it.
18:11One!
18:12Two!
18:13WCW is about to dominate the globe in professional wrestling.
18:18Talent began to get a little confident that this Turner guy over here is starting to get serious.
18:24Dad always loves competition.
18:26So you get a Vince McMahon who says, Oh, this is my territory.
18:31There's going to be problems.
18:33Keep in mind, at that point, I had never had a one-on-one meeting with Ted Turner.
18:39And I walked into the meeting.
18:42My boss, Harvey Shuler, was already sitting there.
18:45Scott Sassa, the heir apparent to Ted Turner at the time.
18:49He was in the room.
18:51So I sat down and immediately, Eric, let me ask you a question.
18:57I can't do a good Ted Turner impersonation.
18:59Oh, Eric, what's it going to take for WCW to be competitive with WWE?
19:08In what seemed like 20 minutes, it was maybe milliseconds, but it was like watching your life pass before you right before the train hits you.
19:15I don't know what the answer is.
19:17What are my options?
19:18You can't bullshit Ted Turner.
19:19You'll see through that so fast.
19:21Tell the truth.
19:22Truth usually works.
19:23So I'm just going to tell him the truth.
19:25So I said, Ted, they're on prime time.
19:28Monday night, coast to coast.
19:31We're 6.05 Eastern, 3.05 Pacific on a Saturday.
19:37We can't be competitive with that.
19:40Ted looks over to Scott Sassa and says,
19:42Oh, Scott, give Eric two hours every Monday night, head to head, WWE.
19:49I thought, how am I going to do this?
19:51And I walked out of Ted's office,
19:54put myself in my room, sat there with a yellow legal pad and said, start thinking of ways.
20:01So at this time, you know, Monday Night Raw was the primary show for the WWF.
20:07And the WWF was at that time, the first company to have that prime time show on Mondays.
20:12Welcome to Monday Night Raw!
20:15When Ted said, you know, I want to move WCW to TNT, it was like, what are you kidding me?
20:23I've been killing myself to build this brand that we were known as the premium network on basic cable.
20:30When I tried to fight Ted on it, I lost that battle.
20:33How can I be better than WWF?
20:37I can't.
20:39Their production value was much better.
20:41The Storyteller, it was cleaner, easy to follow, and built everything to feel larger than life.
20:47Unbelievable!
20:49The WWF always looked like it was trying to catch up to the wheel that just fell off.
20:54But if I can give people a reason to watch me instead of them, I got a shot.
21:01The one vulnerability was that they were taped every other week.
21:05We should be live.
21:07I went to Brad Siegel and said, I want to do this live every week.
21:10We were so competitive with USA Network.
21:12If we go up against them, we're going to hurt their highest rated show, Roth, on Monday night.
21:19It would be the way that we could win as the number one basic cable network.
21:23He said, we've got a block of action programming called Nitro.
21:27Why don't we thematically keep it the same?
21:30We'll call the show Nitro.
21:32Hell yeah!
21:33WCW, Monday Nitro.
21:35But we could not give tickets away.
21:37Keep in mind, this is the first Nitro.
21:39Nobody's ever heard of it before.
21:41Well, if I can't put it in an arena where it's going to look cool, what about Mall of America?
21:47Mall of America at the time was like a big damn deal.
21:50Your bargains are coming! Your bargains are coming!
21:52Back then, Mall of America was kind of a destination.
21:55Still, the largest mall in the United States.
21:58Just about big enough to hold WCW and its debut broadcast of Monday Nitro.
22:03My hope was that I'd get enough people that were walking by the mall
22:07that would stop long enough and watch that I could get kind of a couple beauty shots,
22:12and it worked great.
22:14It looked like a really cool fight club for yuppies.
22:17If you want surprises, this is where you come, because our show is live,
22:24and you never know who's going to show up.
22:27Lex Luger.
22:29Everybody thought that Lex was under contract.
22:31He had just been in WWE the night before.
22:33WWE had no idea.
22:36And it set the top for Nitro.
22:38When I came there, Eric was testing the waters.
22:41I am Medusa.
22:43I was WWF's champion.
22:45I'm like, I got an idea.
22:47And that's what I think of the WWF Women's Championship belt.
22:51That shock value is what we really needed to get the attention.
22:54That's the magic of live.
22:57That's what will make us competitive.
22:59You know, I'm focused on that big, nasty giant.
23:04But the main thing, like you said, me, Gene, is to get in that ring, brother.
23:08Take the WCW headwing gun.
23:10In this country, we love to build people up.
23:15We love to tear them down.
23:18And now we love them to rise from the ashes again.
23:22We weren't seeing the gains in terms of ratings that we had anticipated.
23:26We had kind of leveled out.
23:28Hulk could sense, I think, that the Hulk Hogan character, it was losing steam.
23:33They are taking him apart.
23:35The audience still reacted to it, but not the same way.
23:39I started to hear booze.
23:41Hulk Hogan making his way to the ring.
23:44The 80s were done.
23:46I needed to change the perception of Hulk Hogan forever.
23:51What has he done?
23:53Hulk Hogan has betrayed WCW.
23:56Randy, what's going on here?
24:01May 27th of 1996, Scott Hall debuted on WCW television.
24:08You people, you know who I am.
24:11Scott Hall worked and performed for WWF as Razor Ramon.
24:15But you don't know why I'm here.
24:19Kevin Nash shows up.
24:21Everybody knew they were WWF guys.
24:25Oh my God, no, no, turn over now.
24:28Razor Ramon and Diesel are on Nitro.
24:31Are they the WWF?
24:33You want a war?
24:34We are taking over.
24:36They were bad guys that were like invading the company.
24:40This is different.
24:41This is something that we have never seen in professional wrestling.
24:45By not dissuading people, that's what created the perception that perhaps this was an invasion.
24:52But of course it wasn't.
24:54They didn't want to renew their contract with WWE.
24:57I'm thinking, I need a reality storyline.
25:00Admittedly now, you know, enough time has gone by.
25:04I admittedly allowed them to think that they were showing up on behalf of WWE.
25:09Do you work for the WWF?
25:12No.
25:13And then they alluded to a third man.
25:16You tell Billionaire Ted to break out the money and get anybody you can.
25:22Because the big man and the medium-sized man and our surprise buddy are gonna carve them up.
25:32Big surprise coming in.
25:34Who's the third man?
25:36All while that's going on on television, Hulk Hogan's in California doing a movie called Santa with Muscles.
25:41Keep the milk and cookies warm.
25:43Classic.
25:44I get a phone call from Hulk.
25:46Any way I can get you to come out, I want to talk to you about creative.
25:49Got to his trailer, he's waiting for me.
25:52He says, brother, who's the third man?
25:55What have we got here?
25:56The Stinger!
25:57I already spent two weeks convincing Sting to turn heel and be the third man.
26:01I didn't want to tell Hulk, but I didn't want to lie to him either.
26:05Who do you think it should be?
26:07You're looking at him, brother.
26:09Oh, wow.
26:11World Championship wrestling presents the Bears at the Beach.
26:16I didn't want him to come to the building until the very last minute.
26:20I talked to Kevin Sullivan about the best way to try to achieve that.
26:24Kevin Sullivan sequestered Hulk in Daytona Beach.
26:28He had to babysit him for like a whole night because he was afraid that Hogan might not show up as a mystery third man.
26:35There were a lot of risks to Hulk turning heel.
26:37You have to put yourself in his shoes.
26:39Hulk is a very loyal guy, and he was carrying a lot of people.
26:45If he lost his endorsements, if he lost movies, maybe their pocketbook would be hurt.
26:56I knew that there was a chance with people around Hulk, he could possibly second guess himself.
27:00We don't know yet who the third man is.
27:02We didn't leave my house until the first match started.
27:08I didn't want anybody to get to him.
27:12Hulk shows up at the building.
27:14I still don't know at this point where his head is at because we hadn't talked all day.
27:19Lex Luger, the Macho Man Randy Savage, and Sting will represent WCW to meet these outsiders.
27:28When Hogan came down the ramp, I still wasn't 100% sure.
27:32Hulk Hogan is here! Hulk Hogan's here!
27:35Hulk comes down, we clear out, he hits the rope, drops the leg.
27:41Hulk, Hulk, Hulk! What is he doing?!
27:43Oh my God! Is he the third man?!
27:46He's the third man!
27:47The production truck erupted with elation for what just went down and how the crowd reacted to it.
27:53It was a roar like we hadn't heard before.
27:58And it got louder and angrier, and it was building.
28:02They were pissed. Really pissed.
28:05What do we got here? We got a fan coming in.
28:07He's a hero.
28:08And now the hero's standing in the middle of the ring that was filling up with garbage,
28:11telling every one of those fans he was only in it for the money.
28:15It would be like Babe Ruth telling all the fans who had followed him for years and years and years
28:20to stick their support right up their ass.
28:23All this crap in the ring represents these fans out here.
28:28It was the biggest turn in the history of wrestling. Saved his career.
28:33And then it becomes the three guys with Hulk. Now it's like, who are they?
28:39You can call this the new world order of wrestling, brother!
28:45I didn't know what the NWO was about to become.
28:48NWO, take one.
28:50NWO is the thing that really broke everything.
28:54What was happening in pop culture, they were representing it with their spin on it.
29:00It was like street.
29:02We can't have them have any association with WCW whatsoever.
29:05This is our show! We're doing it our way!
29:09Those small elements, the way we shot the NWO interviews, we shot them black and white.
29:15Black and white? Why are you doing black and white?
29:17Trust me, black and white will be cool.
29:19Not only was it pretty cool, but also disruptive.
29:22And those guys were the right talent to pull it off.
29:25They did whatever the they wanted to do.
29:27What happened?
29:28Didn't care whether you cheered them or you booed them.
29:31Oh my God!
29:33Zero to give.
29:34NWO 49!
29:38These guys really set the world on fire.
29:42My son came home from school and asked me if I could bring him four or five NWO shirts
29:47so he could take them to school the next day.
29:49And I said, why?
29:50He said, all my friends want them.
29:52Well, absolutely!
29:53That's what we began to see emerging with Eric's vision of what the NWO was.
29:59They were bad, but they were cool.
30:01To this day, they're still NWO shirts.
30:03I don't see any other shirts from WCW.
30:06The fans were so intoxicated with NWO.
30:11It made everything bigger.
30:13And when something gets too big too fast, shit's gonna hit the fan at some point.
30:18And then it did.
30:19They're in the control room now!
30:21Hold on, what do we got here?
30:22What does that do?
30:23What's that?
30:24Oh!
30:25Fade to black!
30:26Shouldn't have bought that cheap TV!
30:28You go back and you look at Nitro ratings from the premiere episode all the way up until the NWO was revealed.
30:37We were doing fine.
30:39We'd win a week or two.
30:40WWE would win a week or two.
30:42We were essentially even until the NWO.
30:46Legitimately, the NWO was responsible for 80% of our growth.
30:53And I thought, okay, I've gotta find a way to maintain the reality.
30:57New world order!
30:58Something that the audience can't tell whether it's real or whether it's not.
31:03Worst thing you can do on Earth in professional wrestling is have a backstage fight.
31:10Hey!
31:11Everybody that throws a punch backstage goes, ah, ooh, uh.
31:19It's so bad.
31:21We want to make the back look completely real, not a wrestling program.
31:27Hey!
31:28Oh no!
31:29Neil Pruitt came up with the idea of the production people helping.
31:34Up until that time, I never had gone to a producer and said, what kind of shot?
31:39But I went to him.
31:41Conan up on the middle, turnbuckles, climbs the top, nicely done.
31:45There was that one night we were in Orlando at the Disney tapings.
31:52We wanted to make it look like NWO just came and wreaked havoc and took over.
31:57We were inspired a bit by Hill Street Blues as far as the way you move throughout a scene with one camera.
32:09We were all about making it work, making what looked like reality happen.
32:14Craig Ledlis can hear us. Craig, are you going to send a cameraman back there or not?
32:17They're coming around the corner.
32:20Wait a minute, we go to the back!
32:22And we had baseball bats.
32:24They got baseball bats!
32:25But all the carnage has already taken place.
32:29And it's the old Hitchcock.
32:32You see the knife and then you see the blood.
32:35You let the mind create the violence.
32:38There are no players!
32:39They were picking up props.
32:41They were nailing them.
32:42They all worked their asses off to make it look as believable as it could.
32:47And I don't know if it was planned in advance.
32:50Only Kevin Nash or Rey Mysterio could tell you that.
32:52Nash picked up Rey Mysterio and threw him against the trailer like a lawn dart.
32:57Whap!
32:58We're going to have Kevin Nash standing there.
33:00And they're going to have Rey Mysterio Jr. jump on him.
33:03There's Rey Mysterio!
33:04Hey!
33:05He dove off!
33:06Ray says, do you think you can throw me through that window?
33:09No, dude.
33:11It's a window.
33:13You'll die.
33:15I said, let me just throw you off the trailer.
33:18Hey!
33:19Head first!
33:20So we were doing things that nobody had ever seen.
33:23It looked like a giant crime scene.
33:25It creates emotion in the audience.
33:28Please, somebody help him!
33:30And they forget that they're watching professional wrestling.
33:33We're going to try to get this all back together.
33:35And we'll be back.
33:37WCW really started to leave their competition in the dust.
33:40And that was the vaunted 83-week winning streak.
33:44We were pro wrestling.
33:48And they were playing catch-up for the first time.
33:51I remember when that happened, I remember thinking,
33:53we should do more shit like that.
33:56That freedom we did not have.
34:00And to see the company not only compete with the WWE,
34:05but knock them on their ass for 83 weeks.
34:08Like, straight weeks.
34:10Wow!
34:11It is the number one professional wrestling program around the world!
34:16Once those ratings started, there was no stopping him.
34:19I think the world with WWF was personal with Eric.
34:22He was always chasing ratings.
34:24Eric cared more about ratings than advertising dollars.
34:27This is a television company.
34:29And we're going to run WCW like a television company.
34:33It was this maniacal desire to be number one and to beat WWF.
34:40There was a competitive pressure that I put on myself.
34:44So Vince McMahon, this is for you.
34:46And I said something like,
34:48I'm not going to stop until I drive a stake through the heart of Vincent K. McMahon.
34:55I may have gone a little over the top.
35:03Back up, 1996.
35:06I keep hearing how Vince McMahon plans his stuff out a year in advance.
35:11He knows what he's going to have in next year's WrestleMania 10 months before it happens.
35:16Why can't we do that?
35:17And I saw Sting as the opportunity to do that.
35:20And the Stinger making his way to the ring!
35:24One night, Scott Hall started explaining this idea that he had for a new version of the Sting character,
35:29based on the Brandon Lee character in the movie The Crow.
35:33And he goes, you're the scary Sting.
35:35And I looked over at Sting, and his eyes were like this big.
35:39The Sting Crow character was born.
35:41That's Sting!
35:42It is crazy.
35:43So he went up in the rafters that built the anticipation it was needed to really put that character over.
35:49That started what became an 18-1 story.
35:51Oh my!
35:52Sting!
35:53And he started showing up and scaring the hell out of everybody.
35:56And he ended up well.
35:57He's got everybody else!
35:59Sting would finally confront Hogan.
36:01They'd have the match for control of WCW.
36:03He's pointing me!
36:05It was something really that had not been done to this degree before in the history of wrestling,
36:09which was making the decision that we're actually not going to pay this off next week or next month,
36:14but we're going to keep this going until the end of the year in our Starrcade pay-per-view.
36:18Welcome to Starrcade 1997!
36:22It'll be 18 months in the making!
36:26Sting is going to beat Hogan clean.
36:28WCW is going to come out on top.
36:30Then it's going to be up to NWO to kind of rebuild from the ground up.
36:35That was the plan.
36:36Sting has returned to the wrestling ring to reclaim WCW's title from the NWO.
36:44The original finish, it got convoluted and compromised throughout the day.
36:49There was supposed to be the big boot by Hogan, the leg drop on Sting, the cover,
36:55but the referee's supposed to do a fast count.
36:59It wasn't a fast count, but Bret Hart came in,
37:02restarted the match with himself as the referee.
37:04That was three, what do you think?
37:07Well, even the idea, the referee and the fast count and the whole thing,
37:11when they gave it to me, it was like, really?
37:14Like, that is the lamest ending.
37:16Well, Bret Hart is here tonight as the referee, is that right?
37:18Is that correct?
37:19Is that correct?
37:20It's an awful, stupid, and very convoluted ending for the match,
37:26but I remember Eric Bischoff insisting on how it was going to be fantastic.
37:30Hart's ready to go!
37:32He's got it!
37:33And the crowd reacted the way you wanted them to react initially.
37:38Yay!
37:39Sting finally won.
37:40Heavyweight champion of the world, Sting!
37:46It wasn't until afterwards that people started to realize what a convoluted finish it was.
37:53In our business, you can screw up the whole match.
37:57Do not f*** up the finish.
37:59Then all hell broke loose.
38:03Back in the internet world, all of the purveyors of truth out there,
38:08they all of a sudden became so obsessed over the finish of Starcade 97.
38:13What really happened between Sting and Hogan?
38:16Why did it happen?
38:17How did you let that happen?
38:19I mean, I still get heat for that.
38:22Bischoff had kind of hitched his wagon to Hogan.
38:24He kind of listened to what he said more than the other guys.
38:28On the day of the Sting-Hogan match, it was apparent to both Hulk and I
38:33that Sting didn't appear to be nearly as excited about the opportunity
38:39that we'd been working on for 18 months.
38:42There was something about him that day that was off.
38:45Sting left the room and Hulk and I kind of looked at each other
38:49and I said, what are you thinking?
38:50He goes, not today, brother.
38:53Not today.
38:54His head's not right.
38:56Hulk just wasn't feeling it.
38:59So we changed the finish or lack thereof of a clean finish
39:02because Hulk Hogan has creative control.
39:05He had creative control. He didn't give two shits.
39:08He'd walk in at 7.30, read the TV and say,
39:11it doesn't work for me, brother.
39:13He has, you know, free right to pretty much do whatever he wanted.
39:16He has no interest in that company other than himself.
39:20That right there can really start turning things a certain way.
39:23I think the only guy that was not political was Sting.
39:28Sting didn't seem to be part of that group.
39:31I think Sting had been convinced
39:34that Hulk was going to pull the rug out from underneath him at the last minute.
39:38He walked into that meeting expecting it
39:41and actually manifested it.
39:44When guys got those kind of agendas, thinking about themselves,
39:48that's what happens.
39:49And that's pretty much when the ship started to go down.
40:01Star King 97, Hogan and Sting is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.
40:06We had the audience in the palm of our hands,
40:10but unfortunately, the end didn't live up to the rest of the story
40:15and certainly wasn't what the fans wanted.
40:18You'll find people who think that was the reason WCW kind of went downhill.
40:23But I'm wrestling fans.
40:29The WWF had really established a strong creative foundation throughout in 97.
40:34If you go back and look at the numbers,
40:35you can start to see that gap getting ever closer.
40:38Vince McMahon went on camera and said,
40:40we're going to change the way we do things.
40:42We're not going to insult the audience's intelligence.
40:45The World Wrestling Federation has been an entertainment mainstay
40:47here in North America and all over the world.
40:50As the times have changed, so have we.
40:53I'm happy to say that this new, vibrant, creative direction
40:56has resulted in a huge increase in television viewership.
40:59He's saying, we're going to do what those other guys are doing
41:01because it's really kicking our ass and it's beginning to hurt.
41:05Vince brings Mike Tyson into WrestleMania.
41:09Knowing that anything that Tyson does, it's a million bucks.
41:14Oh my! Oh my hand! Tyson! Tyson!
41:18The next night I saw Kevin.
41:20First thing I said to Kev was,
41:23you feel the water? It's getting cold.
41:26In other words, we're on our way to the iceberg.
41:29Me and Disco Inferno, we thought The Rock was cool.
41:35And we thought Steve Austin was cool.
41:37And me and Disco were always in the back watching them,
41:40you know, backstage and we would get heat.
41:42Why are you watching the show? Because it's better than ours.
41:44You know, at that time I really did not give a ****.
41:48Bischoff, he remembers the big crowds and he was the kingpin.
41:53But the truth of it is, he never knew anything about wrestling.
41:56And then towards the end, basically he was just yesing to Hogan.
42:01It was a disaster.
42:02Hogan was the bigger talent.
42:04Hogan was the guy that he was going to go with no matter what.
42:09That's the bond right there, Hogan and Bischoff.
42:13They're both accountable to each other.
42:16That's the secret is that Hulk Hogan was basically the puppet master to Eric Bischoff.
42:23And Eric Bischoff, he was just a prop.
42:27And that's what killed WCW.
42:30Everything looks easier from the outside.
42:33But once you get inside, you realize just how complicated and nuanced
42:37some things that appear to be so easy and so simple really are.
42:42Who's responsible for killing WCW?
42:45Just look at some of the names who are floating around at the highest levels
42:48within Turner Broadcasting.
42:50They wanted WCW to go away.
42:54They got their wish.
43:01You're leading a night and now you're not leading a night.
43:04There's reason for concern.
43:06We hit a small brick wall.
43:08The wheels started falling off creatively.
43:11What the is this?
43:13WWE's answer was attitude.
43:16Ow!
43:17They were willing to go further creatively.
43:19That's exactly what we're gonna do to kill you off.
43:23Why are we doing this?
43:24Is this classy enough for our networks?
43:26That pissed me off.
43:28They started to handcuff us with standards and practices.
43:31Can you say butt on TBS?
43:33I'm not convinced that wasn't an orchestrated hit job.
43:37I don't think that's debatable.
43:38There are too many conspiracies behind the scenes trying to knock him off.
43:42Once you have the monkeys running the zoo, you're in trouble.
43:45Woo!
43:46The blood was in the water and the sharks were coming to get it.
43:49That's the name of the game people will try to manipulate.
43:53And who prevent?
43:55He is in the house!
43:59He is in the house!
44:01Pretty much.
44:02This was much longer this time.
44:04I was thinking...
44:06I've known surfaces?
44:08I can make it compare, but that feels moreģ .
44:10He is in the opinion of the cockroach.
44:13No one of our
44:17destroys.
44:18To be careful, he is talking about fire...
44:20We had toŠ¾Š±Š¾Š“ć shit over here.
44:22A, that's carbony!
44:24Like you?
44:25Okay, dude.
44:26Like you?
44:27You're Sara!
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