The Death of WCW

The Death of WCW by R.D. Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez is the story of the rise and fall of the wrestling promotion (or franchise if you will) known in it's latter years as World Championship Wrestling (WCW). During WCW's heyday, this was THE wrestling promotion, and with complete backing from media mogul Ted Turner, they had almost unlimited access to prime time TV spots and a budget for poaching talent from other promotions, like Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation (now WWE). WCW had everything going for it, and for a period of time following the hiring of maverick Eric Bischoff as the booker (dude who decides storylines and which characters are to be involved), WCW rose from relative obscurity to completely outclass Vinny Mac's outfit.

And then everything went south, by which I don't mean that WCW returned to it's south-of-Mason-Dixie line roots, but rather that the company began it's steady decline until Vince McMahon himself was able to buy WCW complete with talent and storylines for a song (or at least insanely cheap).

If you've followed any pro wrestling from the 90's or so, including Sting, Goldberg, the Steiner Brothers, the heel turn of Hollywood Hulk Hogan and NWO, then you'll probably enjoy this book just for the anecdotes which are strewn liberally throughout the 300+ pages. What makes the book even more enjoyable is the sometimes very detailed descriptions (with color commentary, as befits an account of pro wrestling) of the (many) bad decisions that eventually led to the demise of WCW - past the point where even uncle Ted Turner was able to save the promotion. Examples include:

• A year or so before WCW went under, they figured out a brilliant cost-cutting strategy for reducing their immense travel budget. Instead of flying the entire roster (~160 wrestlers) to each and every house show, they only flew in the talent scheduled to actually make an appearance in the house shows (approximately a tenth of the roster). No kiddin'
• Poaching high-profile talent from other wrestling promotions, giving the newly acquired talent long-time contracts and ridiculously high salaries, only to use them in minor storylines, never giving them any push at all.
• Hiring bookers (such as Dusty Rhodes and Kevin Nash) who insisted on being headliners themselves, and booking all the story lines so that either themselves or their old pals won the titles, thus holding back new talent.
• Including a "creative control" clause in the contracts of major stars like Hogan who - surprise, surprise - didn't really want to lose and thus made it hard to follow through with long-term storylines involving title changes

In summary, it's a fun read. Epic ending of a book review.