Saturday, November 22, 2008

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.

8 comments:

Anders said...

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

..."creative control" clause in the contracts of major stars like Hogan who - surprise, surprise - didn't really want to lose

Are you saying that wrestling matches are fixed? That they are not for real? Come on...

Wilhelm said...

Kayfabe!!

Never said it wasn't real, only that Hogan didn't want to lose.

...and Kayfabe!!

Anders said...

Puh! I was worried there for a minute.
And Kayfabe right back at'ya!











(That's not the correct usage of Kayfabe, mh? Is my complete ignorance regarding "pro" wrestling showing?)

Wilhelm said...

You tell me, broski

Anders said...

From Wikipedia:
...maintenance of pro wrestling's backstage secrets are more difficult to keep than they were in earlier decades...

You think?!? No sh*t...

Wilhelm said...

Actually Vinnie Mac forced the decision to admit that pro wrestling was fake, especially with his definition of his franchise as "sports entertainment"

Sadly, there are plenty of wrestling fans who keep up the suspension of disbelief a little too hard, much like there are way too many soccer fans who are willing to enter physical altercations because someone in their vicinity wears a shirt from another soccer franchise (let's not call it a club). Actually I find the concept of hooliganism to be way more distasteful than anything related to pro wrestling.

Anders said...

Now why did you have to bring up football (it's not "soccer", you brain-washed pseudo-American!) when we were talking real sports here?
;-)

But I do agree about hooliganism ("casuals") and I'm just as puzzeled about how a "club" can be considered locally rooted when the players on the team are bought from all over the world...

Wilhelm said...

...and the owners, coaches and even shirts are prone to change, and not to local talent either.

Yes; let's get back to real sports like wrestling - besides it's way better acting there than your average Italian douchebag pulling a "Gone with the wind" and fainting if another player comes within five meters of him, only to explode into a pasta-and-crystal-meth induced frenzy when the ref doesn't call the play according to his "Days of our lives"-reminiscent performance.