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00:00Stand by. Here we go. In five, four, three, two, roll it through.
00:13This is the last Nitro on the Turner Networks, and we're going out with a bang.
00:22How do we all feel on this very surreal day for all of us in World Championship Wrestling,
00:28a historic day in sports entertainment, and it goes down on our very last telecast.
00:33Where does WCW go from here? What's in the cards? What's going to happen?
00:38If I'm giving a eulogy for WCW, what would I say?
00:42We were WCW. We lived. We breathed. We sweat. We paid the price to be the best.
00:52That's right. We gather here today to bid farewell to a wrestling company.
01:01A company that grew from the ashes rose to become the phoenix of professional wrestling.
01:06The legacy of WCW is iconic.
01:09I have just such a tremendous amount of reverence and respect for everything that they were able to do.
01:15To know that it went from that to being out of business is a tragedy.
01:21People thinking about themselves and not the good of the company led to the death of WCW.
01:28Thanks to the cash.
01:30Thanks for nothing. Go f*** yourselves.
01:34I think that would sum it up.
01:37You know, if I look back and try to describe the journey, the ups, the downs, the twists, the curves,
01:45the ride all along the way was a rush.
01:48WCW innovated so many things that are still so much a part of the wrestling programming that we watch today.
01:57Going back to the 80s, early 90s, it was a little company that nobody thought was ever going to be successful.
02:05Anytime anybody talked about professional wrestling in mainstream media,
02:08they didn't refer to it as professional wrestling.
02:12They referred to it as WWF.
02:14The World Wrestling Federation.
02:16If you look at where WCW started from...
02:19Tonight on World Championship Wrestling.
02:21We were in a different universe and not a favorable one.
02:25That's how far behind we were.
02:27Everybody was very happy to be a distant number two.
02:31Except for me.
02:32The Crow, it's on the air!
02:35The difference between WCW in 93...
02:38Take a look at the crowd!
02:40...and 98.
02:41For over 30,000 fans are jammed in the Georgia Dome!
02:44It became the most successful wrestling company in the world.
02:48Almost overnight.
02:49Gentlemen, start your engines!
02:52WCW was able to transcend into pop culture.
02:56Wow, it's a stinger!
02:57Timmy?
02:58Here comes the NWO.
03:00The greatest action ever.
03:02I don't think I'd seen anything as hot as the NWO.
03:05I was like, wow, this company's going to go through the roof.
03:09We were standing on top of the mountain going, how did we get here?
03:12And then little by little, we just fell.
03:16It was like me having a puppy, raising him to be a full-grown dog,
03:20and I watch him run across the street and he gets hit by a bus.
03:26Egos, egos, egos.
03:27A lot of jealousy.
03:29A lot of problems.
03:30Do I got your attention now, Eric Bischoff?
03:32Think about it.
03:33What are wrestlers?
03:34They're a bunch of pathological liars.
03:36What a big word for a suit and tie!
03:38The death of WCW is really death by a thousand cuts.
03:43So, what really happened?
03:45Who's responsible for killing WCW?
03:48That's always going to be the million-dollar question.
03:51Who killed WCW?
03:53Well, the easy answer is Vince Russo.
03:54It's just idiotic.
03:55Turner, the organization, the lack of.
04:00The talent killed WCW.
04:03This is preposterous to me.
04:06We would have to be the person with the checkbook.
04:08It would have to be Eric Bischoff.
04:09Sometimes more than one thing can be true.
04:12There's too much blame to go around.
04:14You want to hear the real story or you want to hear the bullshit story?
04:17You cannot sweep this on the run.
04:22This is a television show.
04:24I don't understand what he's doing.
04:25The real reason men come in lies.
04:27Back in the day, back prior to social media, there was still an internet culture where wrestling fans seemed to congregate
04:46and had a desperate need for an understanding of what happened to WCW, who have convinced a certain percentage of the audience that it ultimately comes back to me.
04:57If someone were to come to me and say, okay, here's a tape.
05:08I 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.
05:18What would I say?
05:21In a heartbeat.
05:23In a heartbeat.
05:24You know, it's really interesting and almost embarrassing.
05:28Before I was hired by WCW, I didn't know what WCW was.
05:33World Championship Wrestling.
05:34I was an outsider to the business.
05:36I was a sales guy.
05:40Right about that time, through a good friend of mine, Sonny Ono, this little thing called Ninja Star Wars came into my life.
05:47You 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.
05:53Just like laser tag, only with these little stars.
05:57Then it was like, all right, how do we sell them?
06:02At the time, the AWA was on Monday through Friday, and the AWA was Vern's business.
06:08Vern Gagne, thanks for being out here.
06:09Well, my pleasure, and I'm glad I got out here.
06:11Vern Gagne, professional athlete, wrestler, promoter.
06:15Don't you dare miss it.
06:16Vern did it all.
06:17Vern Gagne's pro wrestling report, here's how to order.
06:20Mail, $14.95.
06:22I thought, I'm going to call Vern Gagne.
06:25If Vern runs the commercial in his wrestling program that's seen nationwide, we'll split 50-50.
06:32I took one of the games and went to meet Vern.
06:35I thought I was going to get the deal, right, that I was looking for, which I did, but I was also offered a job.
06:40Welcome to AWA Championship Wrestling.
06:42So my job was to travel around the Midwest and talk independent television stations into carrying AWA shows.
06:50It's a sales job.
06:51Sales is sales.
06:52And I think we're going to erase any doubts you've ever had.
06:55I had never met anybody like Eric.
06:57If he thought something was a really good idea, then he would start to take action, to breathe life into it.
07:04I'd always been curious how television works.
07:07At night, I just sat in and learned.
07:10Then eventually I was on camera.
07:12My name is Eric Bischoff.
07:13All this took place over the course of about a year and a half or two years while I was in AWA.
07:18Buckle up real tight because you're going for a hard, bumpy ride, I promise.
07:21The last six or eight months of it, I didn't get paid.
07:24He couldn't afford to pay me.
07:25My wife and I and our kids suffered financially.
07:29Now we have two little ones and we are literally bouncing checks to buy diapers and barely making rent.
07:38That's how bad it was.
07:40The world heavyweight champion, he is the living legend, Larry Zbysko.
07:46Larry Zbysko had worked with me in AWA.
07:49We had become friends.
07:50He left AWA, was working in WCW.
07:54Larry told me that, hey, they're looking for announcers down here.
07:57And within days, I get a call.
07:58See you next time.
07:59I got the WCW man.
08:00I was the happiest third string announcer that had ever put on a pair of shoes.
08:07I came into WCW so wide-eyed.
08:10Because I was working for Turner Broadcasting.
08:12He was very nice.
08:13He 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.
08:20He's got a suit on and he's got, you know, perfect black hair.
08:23He looked like a Ken doll.
08:25I'm here with Diamond Dallas.
08:26The talent within WCW, unbelievable.
08:29There was Dusty Rhodes and Gordon Soley and Kevin Sullivan and certainly Ric Flair.
08:35And there was a new generation.
08:37Guys like Sting, Diamond Dallas Page.
08:40Scott Hall was the diamond stud.
08:42On three.
08:42One, two, three.
08:44Rip it off.
08:45Scott was working in WCW when I was hired.
08:48So was Kevin Nash.
08:49Good looking guy.
08:50Great physique.
08:51F*** yeah.
08:53Poor Kevin Nash has so many different characters in the beginning.
08:56They didn't know what to do with him.
08:58Cowabunga!
08:59I just shot Ninja Turtles and then I believe Dusty took acid and he said, baby, you're going to be Oz.
09:10I said, you do realize that the movie is called The Wizard of Oz.
09:16I am Oz.
09:19You can be the wizard, but you can't be Oz.
09:21Oz is the geographical region.
09:24No, baby, you're going to be Oz.
09:26I'm just like, all right.
09:27World Championship Wrestling is bringing it to you, baby.
09:31We're taking a look at Oz.
09:32I just show up in this lime green outfit in an old man's rubber mask.
09:39And then they wrestle a geographical region.
09:44Look at this move right here.
09:45They were trying to put a round peg in a square hole.
09:49They tried to do the gimmicks.
09:51Looks like something's going on down here.
09:53They were bringing, you know, Robocop.
09:56Woohoo, what strength by Robocop.
09:58But it really didn't work.
10:00It didn't work.
10:01It was an absolute shit show.
10:03He's getting cooked and I think he's well done, guys.
10:06The crowd here going crazy.
10:08WCW had a loyal following.
10:12The Turner executives regarded the WCW audience as being downscale.
10:17It was downscale, very sort of southern and midwestern.
10:24I didn't care about it.
10:25I wasn't a fan of it.
10:2680% of the people who worked at Turner weren't really wrestling fans to start with, except
10:31for Ted.
10:32Ted Turner wears many hats for his many colorful careers.
10:36He is the owner of the Baseball Atlanta Braves, Basketball Atlanta Hawks.
10:41He has pioneered television with his own cable network, which broadcasts 24 hours of news.
10:46Playboy magazine called him a bonafide, larger-than-life character.
10:50Captain Outrageous, that was one of his nicknames.
10:53He will say anything he wants to, anytime he wants to.
10:57You said network presidents should be lined up and shot.
11:01My kind of guy.
11:03Ted enjoyed the fact that I know that you don't like my wrestling, and that's exactly why I like it.
11:11Dad bought a little TV station here in Atlanta, and he built an international broadcasting empire
11:18in a few years.
11:20And wrestling was one of those things that helped build TBS and the entire network.
11:27When you go back to the beginning of television, wrestling was there.
11:31It was a lifeblood of programming for local television stations.
11:35It could command a loyal audience in the millions of viewers.
11:40So Ted believes in the power and the loyalty and the size of the professional wrestling audience.
11:47Ted launched WCW as a result of purchasing Jim Crockett Promotions, which was a southern wrestling company.
11:53Jesus Christ!
11:55WCW was seen as sort of the long-suffering, distant number two trailing behind the WWF.
12:01The winner of the match, the Diamond Stars!
12:05Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, they left.
12:10They go to the WWF.
12:12Scott Hall becomes Razor Ramon.
12:14He becomes a big star.
12:15Kevin Nash becomes a diesel.
12:17Boom, big star.
12:18From a standpoint of the talent, we always consider WWE the show.
12:24There's no comparison.
12:25From a production value perspective, from a talent roster perspective, from a marketing perspective, from a financial perspective, WCW lost millions of dollars every year.
12:37I've been warned by my boss that don't help WCW.
12:42Why?
12:42If I help them make money?
12:43No, you don't understand.
12:45Executive management hates wrestling and wants to get rid of it.
12:48And if you're perceived as trying to help them, that's career suicide for you.
12:52Other than Ted Turner, there was not an executive in Turner Broadcasting that wanted WCW to be in the Turner portfolio.
13:00Put yourself in the position of a television executive within that corporation.
13:05You have this division that is losing as much as $10 million on a yearly basis.
13:10And we don't really get the appeal of this entire genre to begin with.
13:14So, of course, that was going to create a lot of resentment and confusion as to, why do we even have this on the airwaves?
13:21Mix my blood boil, too.
13:23That's what really set the conditions for this dysfunctional relationship between TBS and WCW.
13:28Bill Shaw was the vice president of human resources for Turner Broadcasting.
13:34He was given responsibility to take over WCW as effective president of it.
13:39So 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.
13:49Ted had made up his mind that enough was enough and he was going to give WCW one last shot.
13:53And we're going to hire an executive producer who is going to take WCW from a wrestling company to a television property.
14:04Wrestling was seen by the wrestling people as an arena business.
14:10The only other person besides Ted that saw it as television was Eric.
14:16So I threw my name in the hat.
14:19A month or so later, I'm the executive producer.
14:22This is your chance to be a part of professional wrestling history.
14:27What the hell am I going to do?
14:34From Harlem to Harlem Heat!
14:37You come down in the hands of the heat and don't forget that sucker!
14:43The way my brother and I came into WCW was a good old boy system gimmick, you know, for two black guys.
14:50This is a spectacular team!
14:52But you could tell the difference going from the good old boy's era to the Eric Bischoff era just by the way he tried to create something.
15:00I was hired as an executive producer.
15:03My responsibility was solely the look and feel of the show.
15:07Saturday night!
15:08The biggest challenge that we had was the fact that we couldn't attract an audience.
15:13It looked horrible because you had to turn the lights down to hide the fact that nobody was there.
15:17How do we fix that?
15:19That's when I decided I was going to shoot the shows down at the Disney MGM Studios.
15:24They had sound stages so I could control the look of the environment.
15:28And I had a fresh audience coming through five times a day so I could shoot five or six shows with a fresh audience each and every time.
15:35Spin them up.
15:36Spin them up. Lights, camera action.
15:38I think Eric Bischoff really wanted to take WCW away from being a southern wrestling company.
15:44You could see the difference. You could feel it.
15:49In 94, I ascended from executive producer to vice president and at that time nobody thought WCW would ever be competitive with WWF.
16:00I needed people to take WCW seriously. I needed Hulk Hogan.
16:07Hulk Hogan!
16:11I don't think we'd be here if there was no Hulk Hogan.
16:16In the 1980s, Hulk Hogan is the patriotic, ultra good guy.
16:21He's coming out waving an American flag, fighting off these evil foreigners.
16:25He was the one who broke professional wrestling wide open.
16:31Commercials, cartoons, kids loved him. Everybody knew Hulk Hogan.
16:37Whether you're a professional wrestling fan or not,
16:40you knew the name. Eating your vitamins, saying your prayers.
16:43Say your prayers, eat your vitamins.
16:45Ric Flair's the greatest wrestler of all time.
16:48But the guy that was on Sports Illustrated, he's the guy.
16:53He is truly a real American.
16:57And coincidentally, while we were shooting WCW at the Disney MGM Studios,
17:01Hulk Hogan was down at Disney shooting a new series called Thunder in Paradise.
17:07Now Hulk had been out of wrestling for some time because of the steroid trial.
17:11He's like a good role model, because he just like did whatever it took to get big,
17:16like he took those steroid pills.
17:18And I thought, why not at least try to get a meeting?
17:23But he didn't know who I was.
17:25So I went to Ric Flair.
17:26Hello.
17:27I said, Ric, do you think you can set up a call or meeting between Hulk and I?
17:32One night I was sound asleep and the phone rings and I picked up the phone and I said,
17:36Hey, brother.
17:37Whoa.
17:38Wake up.
17:39It was Hulk.
17:41Welcome Hulk Hogan.
17:45Being able to work with Hulk Hogan, being on the same roster as Hulk Hogan,
17:50elevated everybody's career.
17:51And it had immediate impact.
17:53All of a sudden, people were returning phone calls much faster.
17:56It's all perception.
17:57That's why we're here today.
17:59For a match between two of wrestling's biggest superstars, Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair.
18:04So Hulk's original deal included four pay-per-views a year and he had creative control.
18:10Essentially, it means that he gets a thumbs up or thumbs down as to whether or not he wants to do it.
18:19WCW is about to dominate the globe in professional wrestling.
18:22Talent began to get a little confident that this Turner guy over here is starting to get serious.
18:28Dad always loves competition.
18:30So you get a Vince McMahon who says, Oh, this is my territory.
18:35There's going to be problems.
18:37Keep in mind, at that point, I had never had a one-on-one meeting with Ted Turner.
18:43And I walked into the meeting.
18:45My boss, Harvey Shuler, was already sitting there.
18:48Scott Sassa, the heir apparent to Ted Turner at the time.
18:52He was in the room.
18:54So I sat down and immediately, Eric, let me ask you a question.
19:00I can't do a good Ted Turner impersonation.
19:02Oh, Eric, what's it going to take for WCW to be competitive with WWE?
19:10In what seemed like 20 minutes, it was maybe milliseconds,
19:15but it was like watching your life pass before you right before the train hits you.
19:19I don't know what the answer is.
19:21What are my options?
19:22You can't bullshit Ted Turner.
19:23You'll see through that so fast.
19:24Tell the truth.
19:25Truth usually works.
19:26So I'm just going to tell him the truth.
19:28So I said, Ted, they're on prime time.
19:31Monday night, coast to coast.
19:34We're 605 Eastern, 305 Pacific on a Saturday.
19:41We can't be competitive with that.
19:43Ted looks over to Scott Sassa and says,
19:45Oh, Scott, give Eric two hours every Monday night, head to head, WWE.
19:52I thought, how am I going to do this?
19:55And I walked out of Ted's office, put myself in my room, sat there with a yellow legal pad and said,
20:02start thinking of ways.
20:04So at this time, you know, Monday Night Raw was the primary show for the WWF.
20:10And the WWF was, at that time, the first company to have that prime time show on Mondays.
20:15Welcome to Monday Night Raw!
20:18When Ted said, you know, I want to move WCW to TNT, it was like, what are you kidding me?
20:27I've been killing myself to build this brand that we were known as the premium network on basic cable.
20:33When I tried to fight Ted on it, I lost that battle.
20:36How can I be better than WWF?
20:39I can't.
20:41Their production diet was much better.
20:44The Storyteller.
20:45It was cleaner, easy to follow, and built everything to feel larger than life.
20:51Unbelievable!
20:52WCW always looked like it was trying to catch up to the wheel that just fell off.
20:58But if I can give people a reason to watch me instead of them, I got a shot.
21:05The one vulnerability was that they were taped every other week.
21:09We should be live.
21:10I went to Brad Siegel and said, I want to do this live every week.
21:13We were so competitive with USA Network.
21:16If we go up against them, we're going to hurt their highest rated show, Roth, on Monday night.
21:22It would be the way that we could win as the number one basic cable network.
21:26He said, we've got a block of action programming called Nitro.
21:31Why don't we thematically keep it the same?
21:34We'll call the show Nitro.
21:35Hell yeah!
21:36WCW, Monday Nitro.
21:38But we could not give tickets away.
21:41Keep in mind, this is the first Nitro.
21:42Nobody's ever heard of it before.
21:44Well, if I can't put it in an arena where it's going to look cool, what about Mall of America?
21:51Mall of America at the time was like a big damn deal.
21:53Your bargains are coming! Your bargains are coming!
21:56Back then, Mall of America was kind of a destination.
21:59Still, the largest mall in the United States.
22:01Just about big enough to hold WCW and its debut broadcast of Monday Nitro.
22:07My hope was that I'd get enough people that were walking by the mall that would stop long enough and watch that I could get kind of a couple beauty shots and it worked great.
22:17It looked like a really cool fight club for yuppies.
22:24If you want surprises, this is where you come because our show is live and you never know who's going to show up.
22:30Lex Luger. Everybody thought that Lex was under contract.
22:34He had just been in WWE than that before.
22:37WWE had no idea.
22:40And it set the tone for Nitro.
22:42When I came there, Eric was testing the waters.
22:45I am Medusa.
22:46I was WWF's champion.
22:48I'm like, I got an idea.
22:50And that's what I think of the WWF Women's Championship belt.
22:54That shock value is what we really needed to get the attention.
22:58That's the magic of live.
23:00That's what will make us competitive.
23:04You know, I'm focused on that big nasty giant.
23:07But the main thing, like you said, Mean Gene, is to get in that ring, brother.
23:12Take the WCW heavyweight title.
23:14In this country, we love to build people up.
23:19We love to tear them down.
23:22And then we love them to rise from the ashes again.
23:25We weren't seeing the gains in terms of ratings that we had anticipated.
23:30We had kind of leveled out.
23:32Hulk could sense, I think, that the Hulk Hogan character, it was losing steam.
23:37They are taking him apart.
23:38The audience still reacted to it, but not the same way.
23:42I saw the hair boos.
23:44Hulk Hogan making his way to the ring.
23:47The 80s were done.
23:49I needed to change the perception of Hulk Hogan forever.
23:54What is he doing?
23:55Hulk Hogan has betrayed WCW.
23:59Randy, what's going on here?
24:05May 27th of 1996, Scott Hall debuted on WCW television.
24:12You people, you know who I am.
24:15Scott Hall worked and performed for WWF.
24:18As Razor Ramon.
24:19But you don't know why I'm here.
24:23Kevin Nash shows up.
24:25Everybody knew they were WWF guys.
24:29Oh my God, no, no, turn over now.
24:32Razor Ramon and Diesel are on Nitro.
24:35Are they the WWF?
24:37You want a war?
24:38We are taking over.
24:41They were bad guys that were like invading the company.
24:44This is different.
24:45This is something that we have never seen in professional wrestling.
24:48By not dissuading people,
24:51that's what created the perception that perhaps this was an invasion.
24:55But of course it wasn't.
24:57They didn't want to renew their contract with WWE.
25:00I'm thinking, I need a reality storyline.
25:03Admittedly now, you know, enough time has gone by.
25:06I admittedly allowed them to think that they were showing up on behalf of WWE.
25:12Do you work for the WWF?
25:16No.
25:17And then they alluded to a third man.
25:20You tell Billionaire Ted to break out the money and get anybody you can.
25:26Because the big man and the medium-sized man and our surprise buddy are going to carve them up.
25:36Big surprise coming in.
25:38Who's the third man?
25:40All while that's going on on television, Hulk Hogan's in California doing a movie called Sandal with Muscles.
25:45Keep the milk and cookies warm.
25:46Classic.
25:47I get a phone call from Hulk.
25:49Any way I can get you to come out, I want to talk to you about creative.
25:53Got to his trailer, he's waiting for me.
25:55He says, brother, who's the third man?
25:58What have we got here?
25:59The Stinger!
26:00I already spent two weeks convincing Sting to turn heel and be the third man.
26:05I didn't want to tell him.
26:07But I didn't want to lie to him either.
26:09Who do you think it should be?
26:11You're looking at him, brother.
26:13Oh, wow.
26:15I didn't want him to come to the building until the very last minute.
26:23I talked to Kevin Sullivan about the best way to try to achieve that.
26:27Kevin Sullivan sequestered Hulk in Daytona Beach.
26:32He had to babysit him for like a whole night because he was afraid that Hogan might not show up as a mystery third man.
26:39There were a lot of risks to Hulk turning heel.
26:41You have to put yourself in his shoes.
26:43Hulk is a very loyal guy and he was carrying a lot of people.
26:49If he lost his endorsements, if he lost the movies, maybe their pocketbook would be hurt.
26:59I knew that there was a chance with people around Hulk, he could possibly second guess himself.
27:04We don't know yet who the third man is.
27:06We didn't leave my house till the first match started.
27:11I didn't want anybody to get to him.
27:15Hulk shows up at the building.
27:17I still don't know at this point where his head is at because we hadn't talked all day.
27:23Alex Luger, the Macho Man Randy Savage, and Sting will represent WCW to meet these outsiders.
27:31Oh no!
27:32When Hogan came down the ramp, I still wasn't 100% sure.
27:36Hulk Hogan is here! Hulk Hogan's here!
27:39Hulk comes down, we clear out, he hits the rope, drops the leg.
27:45Hulk, Hulk, Hulk! What is he doing?
27:47Oh my God! Is he the third man?
27:49He's the third man!
27:50The production truck erupted with elation for what just went down and how the crowd reacted to it.
27:56It was a roar like we hadn't heard before.
27:59And it got louder and angrier and it was building.
28:05They were pissed. Really pissed.
28:08What do we got here? We got a fan coming in. He's a hero.
28:11And now the hero's standing in the middle of the ring that was filling up with garbage telling every one of those fans he was only in it for the money.
28:18It would be like Babe Ruth telling all the fans who had followed him for years and years and years to stick their support right up their ass.
28:26All this crap in the ring represents these fans out here.
28:32It was the biggest turn in the history of wrestling. Saved his career.
28:38And then it becomes the three guys with Hulk. Now it's like who are they?
28:43You can call this the new world order of wrestling brother.
28:49I didn't know what the NWO was about to become.
28:52NWO, take one.
28:54NWO is the thing that really broke everything.
28:58What was happening in pop culture, they were representing it with their spin on it.
29:03It was like street.
29:05We can't have them have any association with WCW whatsoever.
29:09This is our show. We're doing it our way.
29:13Those small elements, the way we shot the NWO interviews, we shot them black and white.
29:19Black and white? Why are you doing black and white? Trust me, black and white will be cool.
29:22Not only was it pretty cool, but also disruptive.
29:25And those guys were the right talent to pull it off.
29:28They did whatever the they wanted to do.
29:31What is this?
29:32Didn't care whether you cheered them or you booed them.
29:35Oh my God!
29:36Zero to give.
29:38NWO for life!
29:41These guys really set the world on fire.
29:45My son came home from school and asked me if I could bring him four or five NWO shirts
29:50so he could take them to school the next day. And I said, why?
29:53He said, all my friends want them.
29:55Well, absolutely!
29:57That's what we began to see emerging with Eric's vision of what the NWO was.
30:02They were bad, but they were cool.
30:04To this day, they're still NWO shirts. I don't see any other shirts from WCW.
30:09The fans were so intoxicated.
30:13With NWO, it made everything bigger.
30:16And when something gets too big too fast, shit's gonna hit the fan at some point.
30:21And then it did.
30:22They're in the control room now!
30:24Hold on, what do we got here?
30:25What does that do?
30:26What's that?
30:27Oh!
30:28Fade to black!
30:29Shouldn't have bought that cheap TV!
30:31You go back and you look at Nitro ratings from the premiere episode all the way up until the NWO was revealed.
30:41We were doing fine.
30:42We'd win a week or two. WWE would win a week or two.
30:45We were essentially even until the NWO.
30:50Legitimately, the NWO was responsible for 80% of our growth.
30:57And I thought, okay, I've gotta find a way to maintain the reality.
31:01New World Order!
31:02Something that the audience can't tell whether it's real or whether it's not.
31:07Worst thing you can do on Earth in professional wrestling is have a backstage fight.
31:13Hey!
31:14Everybody that throws a punch backstage goes, ah, ooh, ah.
31:23It's so bad.
31:24We want to make the back look completely real, not a wrestling program.
31:31Hey!
31:32Oh, no!
31:33Neil Pruitt came up with the idea of the production people helping.
31:37Up until that time, I never had gone to a producer and said, what kind of shot?
31:42But I went to him.
31:44Conan up on the middle, turnbuckles, climbs the top, nicely done.
31:48There 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.
32:01We need somebody in the back, please!
32:03What is he talking about?
32:04Need somebody trying to get a cameraman?
32:05We were inspired a bit by Hill Street Blues as far as the way you move throughout a scene with one camera.
32:11We were all about making it work, making what looked like reality happen.
32:18Craig Leathers can hear us.
32:19Craig, are you going to send a cameraman back there or not?
32:21They're coming around the corner.
32:23Wait a minute!
32:24We go to the back!
32:25And we had baseball bats.
32:27They got baseball bats!
32:29But all the carnage has already taken place.
32:32And it's the old Hitchcock.
32:34You see the knife and then you see the blood.
32:38You let the mind create the violence.
32:41There are no players!
32:42They were picking up props.
32:44They were nailing them.
32:46They all worked their asses off to make it look as believable as it could.
32:50And I don't know if it was planned in advance.
32:53Only Kevin Nash or Rey Mysterio could tell you that.
32:55Nash picked up Rey Mysterio and threw him against the trailer like a lawn dart.
33:00Whap!
33:01We're going to have Kevin Nash standing there.
33:03And they're going to have Rey Mysterio Jr. jump on him.
33:07There's Rey Mysterio!
33:08Hey!
33:09He dove off!
33:10Ray says, do you think you can throw me through that window?
33:13No, dude.
33:15It's a window.
33:16You'll die.
33:18I said, let me just throw you off the trailer.
33:21Hey!
33:22Head first!
33:23So we were doing things that nobody had ever seen.
33:26It looked like a giant crime scene.
33:29Creates emotion in the audience.
33:32Please somebody help him!
33:33And they forget that they're watching professional wrestling.
33:36We're going to try to get this all back together and we'll be back.
33:40WCW really started to leave their competition in the dust.
33:44And that was the vaunted 83 week winning streak.
33:48We were pro wrestling.
33:52And they were playing catch up for the first time.
33:55I remember when that happened.
33:56I remember thinking, we should do more shit like that.
33:59That freedom, we did not have.
34:04And to see the company not only compete with the WWE, but knock them on their ass for 83 weeks.
34:12Like, straight weeks.
34:14Wow!
34:15It is the number one professional wrestling program around the world!
34:20Once those ratings started, there was no stopping him.
34:23I think the war with WWF was personal with Eric.
34:26He was always chasing ratings.
34:28Eric cared more about ratings than advertising dollars.
34:31This is a television company.
34:33And we're going to run WCW like a television company.
34:37It was this maniacal desire to be number one and to beat WWF.
34:44There was a competitive pressure that I put on myself.
34:47So Vince McMahon, this is for you.
34:49And I said something like, I'm not going to stop till I drive a stake through the heart of Vincent K. McMahon.
34:59I may have gone a little over the top.
35:07Back up, 1996.
35:10I keep hearing how Vince McMahon plans his stuff out a year in advance.
35:14He knows what he's going to have in next year's WrestleMania 10 months before it happens.
35:19Why can't we do that?
35:21And I saw Sting as the opportunity to do that.
35:23And the Stinger making his way to the ring!
35:27One night, Scott Hall started explaining this idea that he had for a new version of the Sting character
35:33based on the Brandon Lee character in the movie The Crow.
35:36And he goes, you're the scary Sting.
35:39And I looked over at Sting, and his eyes were like this big.
35:42The Sting Crow character was born.
35:45That's Sting!
35:46It is!
35:47So he went up in the rafters that built the anticipation it was needed to really put that character over.
35:52That started what became an 18-month story.
35:55Oh my!
35:56Sting!
35:57And he started showing up and scaring the hell out of everybody in the NWO.
36:01He's got everybody!
36:02Sting would finally confront Hogan.
36:04They'd have the match for control of WCW.
36:07He's pointing me!
36:08Don't worry about it!
36:09It was something really that had not been done to this degree before in the history of wrestling,
36:13which was making the decision that we're actually not going to pay this off next week or next month,
36:18but we're going to keep this going until the end of the year in our Starrcade pay-per-view.
36:22Welcome to Starrcade 1997!
36:26It'll be 18 months in the making!
36:30Sting is going to beat Hogan clean.
36:32WCW is going to come out on top.
36:34Then it's going to be up to NWO to kind of rebuild from the ground up.
36:38That was the plan.
36:39Sting has returned to the wrestling ring to reclaim WCW's title from the NWO.
36:47The original finish, it got convoluted and compromised throughout the day.
36:52There was supposed to be the big boot by Hogan, the leg drop on Sting, the cover,
36:59but the referee is supposed to do a fast count.
37:02It wasn't a fast count, but Bret Hart came in, restarted the match with himself as the referee.
37:08Well, even the idea, the referee and the fast count and the whole thing,
37:14I remember when they gave it to me, it was like, really?
37:17Like, that is the lamest ending.
37:19Bret Hart is here tonight as the referee. Is that right? Is that correct?
37:24It's an awful, stupid, and very convoluted ending for the match,
37:29but I remember Eric Bischoff insisting on how it was going to be fantastic.
37:34Hart's waiting, Logan!
37:36And the crowd reacted the way you wanted them to react initially.
37:41Yay, Sting finally won.
37:43Heavyweight champion of the world, Sting!
37:50It wasn't until afterwards that people started to realize what a convoluted finish it was.
37:56In our business, you can screw up the whole match.
38:00Do not up the finish.
38:03Then all hell broke loose.
38:05Back in the internet world, all of the purveyors of truth out there,
38:11they all of a sudden became so obsessed over the finish of Starcade 97.
38:16What really happened between Sting and Hogan?
38:19Why did it happen? How did you let that happen?
38:22I still get heat for that.
38:24Bischoff had kind of hitched his wagon to Hogan.
38:28He kind of listened to what he said more than the other guys.
38:31On the day of the Sting-Hogan match, it was apparent to both Hulk and I that Sting didn't appear to be nearly as excited about the opportunity that we'd been working on for 18 months.
38:45There was something about him that day that was off.
38:49Sting left the room and Hulk and I kind of looked at each other and I said, what are you thinking?
38:54He goes, not today, brother.
38:56Not today. His head's not right.
38:59Hulk just wasn't feeling it.
39:02So we changed the finish or lack thereof of a clean finish because Hulk Hogan has creative control.
39:08He had creative control. He didn't give two shits.
39:11He'd walk in at 7.30, read the TV and say, doesn't work for me, brother.
39:16He has, you know, free right to pretty much do whatever he wanted. He has no interest in that company other than himself.
39:24That right there can really start turning things a certain way.
39:27I think the only guy that was not political was Sting.
39:32Sting didn't seem to be part of that group.
39:35I think Sting had been convinced that Hulk was going to pull the rug out from underneath him at the last minute.
39:42He walked into that meeting expecting it and actually manifested it.
39:48When guys got those kind of agendas, thinking about themselves, that's what happens.
39:53And that's pretty much when the ship started to go down.
40:05Star King 97, Hogan and Sting is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.
40:10We had the audience in the palm of our hands.
40:14But unfortunately, the end didn't live up to the rest of the story.
40:19And certainly wasn't what the fans wanted.
40:22You'll find people who think that was the reason WCW kind of went downhill.
40:27Whatever, wrestling fans.
40:33The WWF had really established a strong creative foundation throughout in 97.
40:37If you go back and look at the numbers, you can start to see that gap getting ever closer.
40:42Vince McMahon went on camera and said, we're going to change the way we do things.
40:45We're not going to insult the audience's intelligence.
40:48The WWF has been an entertainment mainstay here in North America and all over the world.
40:53As the times have changed, so have we.
40:56I'm happy to say that this new, vibrant, creative direction has resulted in a huge increase in television viewership.
41:02He's saying, we're going to do what those other guys are doing.
41:05Because it's really kicking our ass and it's beginning to hurt.
41:08Vince brings Mike Tyson into WrestleMania.
41:12Knowing that anything that Tyson does, it's a million bucks.
41:21The next night I saw Kevin.
41:24First thing I said to Kev was, you feel the water?
41:28It's getting cold.
41:29In other words, we're on our way to the iceberg.
41:32Me and Disco Inferno, we thought The Rock was cool.
41:38And we thought Steve Austin was cool.
41:40And me and Disco were always in the back watching them, you know, backstage.
41:44And we would get heat.
41:45Why are you watching the show?
41:46Because it's better than ours.
41:48You know, at that time, I really did not give a .
41:51Bischoff, he remembers the big crowds and he was the kingpin.
41:56But the truth of it is, he never knew anything about wrestling.
41:59And then towards the end, basically, he was just yessing to Hogan.
42:04It was a disaster.
42:06Hogan was the bigger talent.
42:08Hogan was the guy that he was going to go with no matter what.
42:13That's the bond right there, Hogan and Bischoff.
42:17They're both accountable to each other.
42:20That's the secret is that Hulk Hogan was basically the puppet master to Eric Bischoff.
42:26And Eric Bischoff, he was just a prop.
42:31And that's what killed WCW.
42:33Everything looks easier from the outside.
42:36But once you get inside, you realize just how complicated and nuanced some things that appear to be so easy and so simple really are.
42:45Who's responsible for killing WCW?
42:48Just look at some of the names who are floating around at the highest levels within Turner Broadcasting.
42:54They wanted WCW to go away.
42:57They got their wish.
43:00You're leading a knight and now you're not leading a knight.
43:08There's reason for concern.
43:10We hit a small brick wall.
43:12The wheels started falling off creatively.
43:15What the is this?
43:17WWE's answer was attitude.
43:20Ow!
43:21They were willing to go further creatively.
43:23That's exactly what we're gonna do to kill you off.
43:26Why are we doing this?
43:27Is this classy enough for our networks?
43:30That pissed me off.
43:32They started to handcuff us with standards and practices.
43:35Did you say butt on TBS?
43:36I'm not convinced that wasn't an orchestrated hit job.
43:40I don't think that's debatable.
43:42There are too many conspiracies behind the scenes trying to knock him off.
43:45Once you have the monkeys running the zoo, you're in trouble.
43:49Woo!
43:50The blood was in the water and the sharks were coming to get it.
43:53That's the name of the game.
43:55People will try to manipulate.
43:58And who prevent?
44:02He is in the house!
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