Jim Cornette on If Paul Heyman Booked WCW In 1999 Instead Of Vince Russo
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- From Episode 292 of the Jim Cornette's Drive Thru
Guest Artist: George Livanidis ( / georgelivs )
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Not even Paul Heyman could have save WCW; the executives didn't want wrestling on their Network but A invasion angle (written by Paul Heyman) would have been interesting to see.
Well it's always the question if they would still be so against wrestling if it had massive ratings and making profits.
@@Hyde_Hill Oh, they still would be against wrestling but they would put on A face like they care about wrestling while secretly sabotaging it behind the scenes.
The things that made ECW so successful would be destroyed under WCW management. First of all.. they sold out and automatically DoA.
Vince was smart enough to slowly incorporate SOME ECW influence. WCW with in desperation mode would turn it into a farce.
@@Hyde_Hill they had that in 97/98 and hated WCW. And I get it, I love wrestling but it will always be seen as bottom of the barrel.
They didn't want wrestling in 2001. In 99, they wanted wrestling but added a "Family values" clause in the contract with Creative.
WCW would have died anyway. Hogan would say.. "put RVD over? that doesnt work for me brother." And all is in vain.
Yes. The top authority didn't want wrestling.
@@savagedarksider2147 well yeah besides the obvious noose over there neck with Time Warner.
Trying to satisfy Hogan's ego was one of the biggest challenges they had. The Dungeon of Doom angle is his idea of what wrestling should be.
Paul Heyman would say: “book Hogan against New Jack”
@@mrwednesdaynight Hogan's ego hurt them in 1998, but by 2000 he was in the mid-card and feuding competitively with Billy Kidman. And getting many of the best crowd-reactions in mid-2000 (admittedly not saying much). He was a problem, but not the main reason they went under.
After the AOL-Time Warner merger, they were looking for a way to end WCW. This was in 1998, when they were generating more revenue and higher ratings than they ever had, and it literally pissed the execs off that they were successful, because they couldn't justify pulling the plug. They HATED being involved with wrestling, and Ted had lost control of his own company without even realizing it. WCW was Ted's pet project & he loved it. Once Ted lost power, it was only a matter of time no matter how successful the company was.
It always gets overlooked, but it also needs to be said that WCW itself wasn't losing all of that money during its final year. AOL-Time Warner used Hollywood accounting practices to shift debt from other divisions onto WCW's books.
And the execs were friends with Vince. It was literally industrial collusion and espionage.
hogan and EB ruined WCW.
@@StrikeTeam0316 tell us youre a bundle of sticks without telling us youre a bundle of sticks
@@MrSinister718 effffff hogan and the woman who birthed him.
McMahon's WWE missed a huge opportunity with the Invasion because he couldn't stand to book the WCW guys with any kind of respectability. At that point, Vince was still so emotionally wrapped up in the Monday Night Wars that he had to smash them publicly in every way.
He would have had 3-5 years of programming practically written for him, with established stars at his disposal.
This☝
It wasn't just that, it was the fact that the bigger paid talent i.e. Hogan, Nash, Steiner, Goldberg etc all were allowed to sit at home and do nothing whilst still getting paid their contract amounts until Time Warner decided to stop it (Sting said he only chose that option because he knew WWF would fuck up the crow gimmick). HAD they done that at the beginning, we would have seen the nWo a year earlier instead of the crappy WWF version of nWo as well as Goldberg, Sting, Steiner, Luger etc all in WWF.
@@GenGamesUniverse That's part of what I am talking about. If the effort was made to bring in all of the top guys by renegotiating contracts and planned creative, it could have been so much better. Sure, some of the big names still would have sat it out, but don't tell me that they couldn't have made it work with most of them if they wanted to have a really huge story where the main eventers from both companies had legitimate respect on their names.
@@GenGamesUniverse I doubt you would have seen Luger come back in any capacity. Vince was probably still sore about him defecting back in 1995.
@@evrbodywell that's one positive
it's always great to hear Jim talk about Paul E. You can tell he loves Paul. He worked with him, he respects his mind for the business more or less, he LOVES his promos. Jim just didn't care much for ECW or what it was, but even back then he was willing to work with Paul and do an appearance because he likes Paul. Even to this day, his has more positive to say about Paul E than negative. It's just nice to hear. I'd love for them to do a sit down talk like that Table for 3 thing he did with Bischoff a few years ago.
They're the same guy. Their back stories are eerily similar, just in different locations.
@@natebaxter9551
Bruce Prichard said he told Cornette that he's the Southern version of Paul Heyman & Heyman was the Northern version of Cornette
Plus Heyman is one of the few guys who didn't fire Heyman.
@@dhenderson1810That would've been a great angle.
@@danieldees9686 I meant, Heyman is one of the few who didn't fire Cornette.
Either way, i really miss WCW
As someone who watched to the bitter end, I agree. As bad as WCW could get at times, at least you had more variety than today.
I don't.
I agree. WCW, even in its dying days, was a big blessing compared to any of the s*** we see today.
I really miss ECW
Wcw was always better than wwe
Having Raven get his win back against Tommy would have been so cool to see on WCW if this happened. The What Ifs in wrestling never ceases to amaze me.
I feel like Jesus could've taken the book and Hogan, Nash, Goldberg, Steiner would all still be problems.
YEP. The creative control contracts is what REALLY killed WCW.
That doesn't work for me, savior.
I wouldn't throw Goldberg in that group, he was just getting bad advice from the other people you mentioned, and because he was still as green as RVD's stash he didn't know any better.
Also, IIRC Steiner never had any creative control in his contract, it was just that everyone was terrified of him and let him do whatever.
Hogan was the worst by far. He really should have known better for all his time in the business. Goldberg had been convinced his unbeaten streak was more important than it was but he was green and could have learned better (I think) and the others would still put people over from time to time to keep it interesting.
@The_Great_Hambino terrified of Steiner? But he always seemed so calm, detached and purehearted.
I love these hypothetical/what if scenarios but i also hate them because sometimes it makes you yearn for something that never came to fruition.
@@James-if3kc or Undertaker
I don't think the Justice League could have saved WCW at this point.
Nope they'd let it crash and burn like it did
@@James-if3kc 😅😅😅
Lol, Batman would preptimed all over the WWF
@@jeffrobagman2834 Batman could get them a TV deal at least.
Paul wouldn't have survived the Turner executives who just didn't want wrestling on their channels anymore, the most you could hope for if he had been in charge of WCW in '99 is that he'd just book better TV for the company's remaining time than Russo did. But who knows, perhaps it would have helped facilitate Bischoff's attempted buyout if the product still looked remotely competitive by mid-2001.
I seem to recall a JJ Dillon interview talking about Bischoff's buyout attempt:
Dillon: "Look at the books" (to one of Eric's backers)
*Deal talk stops*
The biggest problem was the over spending on contracts and all the money disappearing. A TB Employee audited WCWs books and discovered they had contracts being paid out ot wrestlers who never stepped foot in the ring or showed up on TV. These contacts weren't high but paying a guy 100k+ to sit at home let alone a few dozen of them made no sense. They also had guys who were travelling on the companies dime but not to WCW Shows. The books were a mess and the auditor reportedly told his boss he wanted to be nowhere near WCW as he felt it was a matter of time before someone ended up in jail.
Outside of financials Hogan had creative power over how he was used and most of the vets had been driven into the ground. To many guys like Hall and Nash were routinely burying opponents making midcarders look to weak. Turning it around without those guys willing to make others look good or a guarantee for stronger booking would of been near impossible.
Don't let the Cornette fans read this, it's too logical, they prefer to blame Russo for everything.
Yep, this is so true. Eric was literally handed "Uncle Ted's" checkbook and thought he had unlimited amounts of money to poach talent from the WWF to WCW like Nash, Hall, Vicious, Hogan, Luger etc. When you look at how much they were making, it was ridiculous amounts.
Even people like Jericho and Kanyon said that when they went into a meeting with Bischoff, Eric literally said "Give me a figure!" and when they gave him a figure of what they thought was reasonable, Bischoff went "Hmm...that's not what I was going to pay you" and then gave them more money than what they were asking. Hell, Jericho's dad turned around and said "Be careful, it's not the amount of money you're making, it's how happy you are in your job!" and Jericho realized that a few years later when the shit with Goldberg went down (where Goldberg bitched and complained to Hogan and Hogan got the whole program with Jericho/Goldberg canned).
@@James-if3kc Well it was a strategy. You see Eric got guys singing his praises calling up everyone under the moon about jumping to WCW. Guys who wouldn't give Eric the time of day started coming in for meetings. The problem was he ignored the WCW guard who made a name for themselves away from the WWE. Guys like Foley and Vader found renewal offers lower while watching guys like Beefcake come in making what had previously been main event level money.
@Weenie Beanie a Russo apologist simp has no room to lecture anybody on logic.
@@TOFTS77 Yep, he fired Jericho, Austin and Waltman over the phone too.
I kind of wish Vince McMahon kept WCW Nitro and did a proper invasion angle that lasted a couple of years.
He couldn't afford the major contracts they were on AOL some accepted a buy out. Goldberg Ric Flair and Sting no shade on Sting stayed home. so Vince was handed less known wrestlers along with everything else. Booker T and DDP accepted a buy out to join the WWE everyone else stayed home until the money ran out. Rey Mysterio was told enjoy the AOL contract at home and we'll talk to you after it's finished. The invasion angle wasnt all it was cracked up to be.
@@sc30002001 - "Big Sexy/Lazy" Kevin Nash decided to stay home too.
@sc30002001 you give them the money guaranteed and some on top of that to come back. Its not brain surgery.
WCW would be doomed anyway due to AOL Time Warner doing budget cuts
That merger really doomed the entire Turner enterprise. It was a disaster on so many levels.
*Nothing to do with the merger. It was solely due to the fact WCW had become a money-pit, losing $15 million in 1999 under Maggot Bischoff and then losing $62 million in 2000. If WCW was turning a profit, they'd have kept WCW.*
@Matthew Singh-Dosanjh They weren't even being paid by Tuner for thunder. Making a weekly prime time show can't be done for free without losing millions.
Yep. AOL/TW was a disaster all the way around.
@@MattSingh1 There's also the fact that WCW appealed to a demographic that TNT wasn't interested in. Not only was WCW a money pit, even if it was still making a profit, it just didn't fit TNT's core demo. Without Turner, AOL Time Warner saw WCW not as a company, but as a TV show. A TV show that didn't fit their target demographic. So they just cut it.
The only way to save it was if the AOL/Time Warner merger didnt happen.
Thats literally what killed it.
And not lose tens of millions of dollars a year. 😂
This. AOL Time Warner saw WCW as a Loss Leader and decided to pull the plug.
My take: WWF was too hot, and WCW was losing too much money for Heyman to save the company. WCW in 99-00 would be much more fondly remembered, but the higher ups at Turner would have still cancelled it due to it bleeding money.
WCW in 99-00 would be like the Sega Dreamcast of wrestling then. Fondly remembered but the mistakes the company made years earlier killed it.
Yeah the AOL-Time Warner merger would've killed it anyway. Otherwise, it could've existed as real cheap programming once a lot of the huge contracts would've expired.
Considering how he bankrupted ECW, he probably would've made WCW go even deeper than it did
@@InvisibleHotdog he wouldnt have control over a budget; pretty sure russo didnt.
Heyman could have saved money by not paying WCW's wrestlers lol
Heyman would have refused to be WCW head booker. In a 1999 interview, Heyman said that even if WCW had had 15 consecutive great Nitros, they would still trail WWF because the WCW product had become so toxic BEFORE Russo joined the company.
Dude was in bed with the WWF
@@thecaliforniabruh1158 Of course. It's not a "random" act of kindness for Vince to feature ECW in 90s Raw.
Do you know where I can find that Heyman interview?
And he would have still taken the job.
Exactly. That's why they were so desperate to HIRE Russo and Ferara. The ship was already sinking pre Russo WCW.
WCW still would’ve died but no one would’ve been paid.
People still think that WCW went out of business because of quality. AOL/TimeWarner didn't want wrestling despite WCW was the highest-rated programming on TNT and TBS.
*Babbling nonsense. This is a B.S narrative pushed by Maggot Bischoff, hack Guy Evans and other ignorant buffoons. If WCW was making the huge profit in 99/00 that it was making circa 1996-1998 AOL/TW would've wanted to keep WCW.*
The quality was never there for WCW. But when you have finishes and commentators that shouldn't be commentating and not knowing what's going on, also changing ending of matches on the fly, it just made the viewer not care about it anymore, I was one of those viewers.
I would've been down for that WCW Nitro/ECW Thunder scenario.
Down...just like the ratings and ticket sales woulda been.
ECW on TNT. Fits together like a hippo in a birdcage.
Time/Warner AOL couldn't wait to get wrestling off their networks.Between that and some of the talent had creative control which would doom WCW no matter who ran it.
They were happy to let TNT be nothing but Law and Order reruns as crazy as that seems to any television viewers. They destroyed everything Ted built so they could execute their brilliant plan of Law and Order reruns.
Heyman would have done a better job than Russo; that's for sure.
By 1999, it was clear that WCW had hit the iceberg (long before Russo came in and made it worse) so Heyman being the head writer wouldn’t save the company.
If Paul Heyman started booking WCW in 1999 Nitro and Thunder would’ve been a 1,000 times better. The product would’ve been in direct competition with the Attitude Era. But, with so much damage done financially and the merger of Time Warner,Inc. and Turner Broadcasting Heyman as Creative Director could’ve probably been too little too late unfortunately.
The Death of WCW and Nitro are the most definitive books on rise and fall of WCW. Both books are must haves for wrestling fans in my humble opinion.
If Heyman was producing WCW, he would’ve phased out a lot of the older stars and revolve the shows around the younger talent.
That would had been a good thing
If you like fiction!
Russo tried to lessen the roles of Hogan, Flair, Piper etc, and push younger talent.
That's a big part of why he was removed after 3 months, despite business going up across the board.
He also didn't do himself any favors arguing over who was paid what. Basically, Time Warner logic was "If one guy is getting a million a year, and another guy is getting 300K a year, then push the guy who's getting the million".
Russo said he had nothing to do with how much anyone was getting paid.
It's a mark book written by those who have never worked in the business. It's been debunked into oblivion.
Wrong. Death of WCW is mostly a fictional tale full of made up lies and nonsense, like the Rick Steiner story and the Newspaper ad. It's a horrible book and it's sad to see that so many marks still take it as gospel.
He'd still have been stuck with Hogan. You can say he was still a big draw but his refusal to ever put anyone over was already screwing everything up. A heel that _never_ loses makes good booking impossible.
Like roman reigns
For many years, Hogan benefited from not being on television every week. In the WWF, Hogan might appear once a month on television, and not necessarily to wrestle. From 1998 on, it seemed like Hogan was on television every week. People got tired of him. And his deal with Turner was a loser for WCW.
@@EwanCumia EVERYONE HATED Hollywood Hogan in 1998. Everybody did.
The obvious solution to save WCW at that point was to end the Monday night war by changing times slots. WCW starts after WWF finishes or ends when WWF Starts. I don't see why it had to be a fight to the death.
Can you imagine Paul with a billion dollar check book? If he made a presentable show with just his dad’s check book he would’ve done wonders with Ted Turner’s money.
He would blow through the money in record time. When it comes to business sense, Heyman is just as bad as Bankrupt Bischoff is.
The only reason WCW stayed profitable in 1998 was Goldberg. Every other storyline went to shit, and made no sense. Much of the talent was getting buried by Hogan and Nash. Even Bret Hart couldn't save things. And the merger with Turner losing his power was the end.
The sole reason WCW pulled a profit in 1998 was because Bischoff shifted most expenses onto the books of the next years. Hence why they lost nearly 10 million in 1999 and 64 million in 2000. He even admitted that on his own podcast. Bankrupt Bischoff has no business mind at all, he is completely inept at running anything, hence why he bankrupted every other business he ever started and himself twice.
I love Paul heyman and ecw was exciting but how would he have saved WCW when he couldn’t even save ECW he knew how to entertain but was not good with the business/ money side of the business . (Vince saved Paul) Wwe Now, Then And Forever
I kind of like cartoon Corny
He's adorable.
Cartoon Corny: “Excuse me! You didn’t make our food? You thought it was a fake order? Well that’s just ducky. I’m upset but I guess we all make mistakes you bunch of goofballs!”
@@MikeMiddleton323 I read that in his voice. 😃
The smartest thing Piper ever did was not lay down for hogan
I can see Raven beating up all members of the flock except Saturn. Raven fires all the other members and says there is a new darkness in the horizon and each week brings out a new member which ends up being the ECW roster but pushed very strong like how the NWO started.
It is kind of weird how Russo tends to get all the blame for the collapse of WCW when in reality Bischoff had already spent the company into a point of no return. Did Russo's booking suck? Yes. Would anyone else have been able to come in and book a wrestling program with ratings high enough to justify the budget that Bischoff had created? Doubtful. I get that Russo wasn't helping to right the ship, but he also wasn't the one who put it on a crash course with an iceberg either. I think Jim is 100% correct. Without some higher level exec stepping in, and getting the budget under control no amount of booking would have saved the company.
Fact is, before Russo came in, the main event scene contained Hogan, Macho Man, Roddy Piper, Nash, Hall, Sting, Sid and Goldberg.
When Russo came in, guys like Jeff Jarrett, Booker T and Scott Steiner were main eventing, so the card was fresher and guys were getting opportunities, rather than same old, same old.
Russo is just not liked because he is abrasive and outspoken. If he kissed ass, he would be given more credit. But just because people don't like him, it doesn't take away from what he achieved.
I really enjoyed the "Higher Powers" storyline. The *Millionaires Club v New Blood" storyline was no worse than the "Invasion" in WWE.
Plus, Russo was head writer for RAW in 1998, during its most prosperous years.
I think Russo is remembered exactly as he should be: a sub-par 'writer' that was in the right place, at the right time. Yes, he contributed to the Attitude Era but exactly how much of its success can be attributed directly to him? And how much to McMahon? Or the apparatus around WWF, at the time?
We've seen his work outside of WWE and it just doesn't hold up.
With that being said, without higher exec intervention, WCW was doomed. Russo's booking didn't help.
Yeah, true. The way I like to put it is that WCW was already in the toilet, Russo just flushed it. Outside of Tony Khan I can't think of anyone else in wrestling that could have done worse than Russo though. You might not be able to blame him for the over-spending but you can definitely blame him for the buyrates falling off a cliff, they were down around 50k in the summer of 2000.
@@Cruising_On_Lake_Havasoma Dixie Carter says "Hold my beer".
Jim Herd did the dirty work of putting WCW into a coma. Shitstain just pulled the plug.
I agree with Last that cutting costs at WCW before the merger would have been helpful. But even with that WCW's future would have been uncertain after the merger, simply because the merged company not only wanted nothing to do with wresting, they wanted nothing to do with sports period. They unloaded the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks as fast as they could after the merger as well. It could have been interesting to see who would have lined up to buy WCW in alright financial shape though.
The big problem with all of this hypothetical is how would Paul be able to book 10 hours of Television every single week? Kevin Nash is on record that Nitro going to three hours and the addition of Thunder to the mix made booking ten times more difficult because you had to book weeks in advance and if one slight thing goes wrong, the whole ten hours of TV goes to hell. Paul would get creative burn out from an environment like that. That's not even getting into the meddling from corporate management coming in and demanding that the product needed to go back to PG when WWF was going hard into TV-14 due to all of sex and violence Vince was pumping out with the attitude era. On top of that, according to the book Nitro, many executives from Turner at the time have since said that money assets were getting shuffled around post Time Warner merger to make all their properties look profitable. The place they stole money from the most to bolster the others was WCW.
DOUBLE J JEFF JARRET REF BUMP GUITAR SHOT STROKE
No one Could've saved wcw.. The executives were sh**
People don't realize that, in a large sense, WCW and WWF audiences were totally different. That's why WCW's audience went away after 2001. They wouldn't have cared about Taz or Mike Awesome or the Blue Meanie. Plus, the death of WCW was really because the executives didn't want it around.
I get what you're saying. I love wcw but I woulda been really interested in ecw joining the fray
@@kevinwagner7333 Yeah, it would have been interesting for fans like us, for sure. But I don't think it would have had a wide appeal at that time for a Southeast audience.
They weren’t drastically different
100% agree. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with anything related to ECW. Hated when they came into WCW, hated it even more when they came to WWF and why I quit watching all together.
The executives was trying to get WCW off of their networks long before 2001.
He would’ve asked for 30% ownership of the WCW brand like he did to Dixie
Dixie should have taken that offer.
Not even Paul heyman could've saved WCW lol
Sorry to say Ben even if Tony "the Kid's" millions couldn't save WCW 😢
@@williammitchell4417 LMAO Good One
I think Paul would've definitely made the TV more interesting in the short run. He would've done well with the WCW midcard and elevate some guys while keeping the top stars relevant.
Even if WCW was still going under in 2001, I think Paul would've made 2000 better than what it was and the company may have had a higher value that Vince may not have been able to purchase.
You are talking about the same Paul Heyman that booked ECW?
Or is there another Paul Heyman I'm unfamiliar with?
Yes everyone wanted to see Hulk Hogan vs Taz, Randy Savage vs. Sandman, Ric Flair vs Raven. How stupid😅😅😅
Savage v Raven would have been cool AF. Benoit and DDP could have catalysed it. They almost squared off after Savage v. Stevie Richards
I would have liked it if Taz shot on Hogan.
I don't think in 1999 anyone would've thought of a roster split or having 2 brands. That was a Vince idea. I'd imagine they'd just shut down ECW and let go of the under card guys and keep the upper card guys.
The idea of the nWo was always to give them a show. Vince pinched it from WCW. Bischoff should have acted on this when he was forced to debut Thunder. The stage was set for it. nWo had failed to win Nitro from WCW (Bischoff v. Zbysko), and Hogan and Sting were at an impasse as to who is the champ. It would have been the perfect and logical next step after Starrcade.
The main issue always at TBS was, the suits there didn't want Wraslin' on the network to begin with. Turner kept it going while he was in charge but once he lost his power, and the abuse of all the money by WCW top guys didn't help to make things better either, time for Wraslin' on TNT was over.
Heyman's booking only ever lost money.
And the joke of seeing "tough guy" Taz against a Goldberg or Meng?
It's depressing how people think that that "Death of WCW" asswipe is in any way accurate. It's just two obsessive iwc fanbois writing drivel and rumors.
A better book is Guy Evans' "Nitro".
And, it's upsetting that with all he accomplished in the business, Jim is still obsessed with the guy Vince chose instead of him in 1997...
According to Bryan Alvarez, there were more than 300 people on contract for WCW in 1998 and 1999... you just didn't see them all on TV.
Long debunked that it was 300. Bryan Alvarez hates WCW with a passion, hence why he wrote Death of WCW which is full of lies and made up nonsense.
No doubt they were all members of the NWO, too
Honestly that would be good to have ECW as a developmental promotion like NXT also PH could have transformed the power plant Into a real pro wrestling school or dojo.
Eric was also under the impression that the budget deal he got approved the year prior to the merger was still in effect only to find out the budget got cut in half along with after Turner got removed from power it was basically over for WCW because only Ted wanted wrestling on Turner Broadcasting but also when Eric came back he wasn't in a corporate role let alone in charge of creative
WCW didn't fail horribly overall. 2000 WCW I think had more money and better ratings than AEW now, and maybe WWE now. Time Warner wanted it gone period.
It was too late in '99. Russo destroyed the ratings but WCW died because of the AOL merger and not selling to EB.
I’m almost done 99 in my rewatch. It’s not good but I will take Russo over what wcw was doing before he came in 99. The 1st 9 or so months of that year are some of the most painfully dull wrestling tv I’ve ever watched.
That booking committee that was there right before russo did some really dumb stuff in a very short amount of time like turning Sting heel against Hogan(which was a colossal failure as they were down south and the crowds hated Hogan), Lodi & Lenny’s gay gimmick which got pulled from tv with Lenny as cruiserweight champ so they just gave the belt to Psychosis, Dustin Rhodes was given a pedophile gimmick.
@@James-if3kc Who hangs outside a little boys bedroom telling him to come with him to experience complete bliss. I wanted to call the authorities while Tony Schiavone wanted to know when this strange man is coming to nitro.
@@James-if3kc Tony had really given up by fall of 1999. There was a tag title match on nitro that he says I don’t care about this match I just want to stare at Torrie Wilson. He then spent the entire match flirting with Torrie who was joining commentary.
Sure, you can fantasy book a great WCW. But what you gonna do when you want Hogan to drop a match and he points at his creative control clause? Or Hall. Or Nash. Or Goldberg. Or Sting. No one could have gotten all these people to play nice and do what is best for business. That's one of the things that did in WCW.
It wouldn't have mattered. Paul Heyman would have been pretty much in the same situation. Vince Russo regardless if they booked it or not, that company was going to go downhill no matter what. Too many politics. Too much going on above their heads. The company would have been done over regardless. It was inevitable.
This is blasphemy to say on Jim Cornette’s channel, but I’m going to say it anyways: while I think Heyman is a million times better as a booker than Russo, I actually dislike Heyman far more than I dislike Russo
Russo ruined people’s careers out of stupidity, ignorance, and lack of common sense regarding wrestling. But I genuinely don’t get the sense that his wrongdoings were done out of malice. Pretty well-regarded guys like Mick Foley and The Rock still speak about Vince Russo as a human being in a positive manner
Heyman on the other hand deliberately and knowingly CRIPPLED his own talent financially and conned them. Does that make him smart? Probably, but it also makes him a terrible human being. When you leave your talent hanging despite owing them 6 figures, that’s just not okay and I’m honestly baffled that more people don’t hate Heyman for it the way I do
Heyman actively discouraged his talent from signing with WWF or WCW even though he already knew he was going to the WWF! The guy basically ensured his own lifeboat and then asked his talent to smile and drown. Who does that???
There’s TONS of examples, but Tommy Dreamer is the most glaring. What Heyman did to Dreamer is unforgivable IMO
Heyman, McMahon, and Bischoff screwed their talents and products one way or another. When one promoter cries about the other "playing dirty," it's laughable.
But what's the dirt on Heyman?
@@Speedyreedy1218never heard of the mass transit incident?
@@dkupke Bits and pieces.
Elaborate.
@@Speedyreedy1218 at a particular show in Philly one of the wrestlers no showed. Heyman decided to let a 16 year old kid he had never met before, who had no resume and no credentials, get into his ring. For sure, the kid lied about his age and claimed he was trained, so he was at fault too-but the fact Heyman casually let a total stranger into the ring ought to be telling. The kid got the living bajeezus beat out of him by New Jack and after he tried to sue Heyman. Heyman plays victim about it to this day.
well he is a "new" New Yorker par for the course with those people
Jim Cornette and Paul Heyman are polar opposites. Cornette was about the old school style good guy vs bad guy while Heyman was about the antiestablishment/hardcore style anti hero guy vs neutral guy. Both were business minded in their own right despite failing financially.
We would have had better wrestling under Heyman, but an invasion angle wouldn't make sense. The WCW crowd wouldn't have cared for the ECW guys, most fans probably thought that ECW was some sort of Chinese rip off of BMW
Paul did an interview talking about booking Smackdown with Rey, Edge, Eddie & Chavo, Angle & Benoit, how he had 3 tag teams playing off each other AND individually. It was really interesting.
I don’t watch wrestling anymore, not for about a decade but I’ll listen to this
Paul heyman predicted in 1995 nitro will lose monday night wars plus he knows how toxic that place is he would never go to be head booker
I don’t think an invasion really works considering most of the mid 90s was spent on the nWo invasion angle.
WCW was already doomed by summer 1998 with Turner executives starting to get involved in the content. Paul Heyman while yes talented creatively wouldn’t handle the politics between Turner executives and the talent. I don’t think Hogan and Heyman would get along to be honest. I think the only benefit would be having ECW be more mainstream but besides that I don’t think it would work because of the egos involved.
Alot of WCW fans didn't watch ecw because a lot of us didn't have access to it. So idk. Would have been cool to see as a what if.
I really hope Jim gets a chance to have a public conversation with Paul Heyman before he retires from podcasting. That would be so damn fascinating to hear.
I'd like to see Cornette have a face-to-face meeting with Russo.
Considering Russo was just a small reason wcw failed, I dont think heyman instead of russo would've made much of a difference in the long run. Turner's standards and practices plus creative controlled contracts, he wouldn't have been able to do things that made ecw popular.
Tbs didn't want wrestling on their station no more that's why they made it difficult for Eric Bisshoff to buy
I don't think that's true cuz they pushed for them to create WCW Thunder in order to sell ad space.
@@Marc_Araujothat's over 3 years apart, mark.
The AOL Time Warner disaster would have happened anyway…so no.
There would have never been a WCW Nitro and ECW Thunder. Turner wouldn't allow that product on their network. Do people not remember Sabu's brief run in the late 90s-early 2000s? Sandman...excuse me, Hak?
With Paul's ability to make people most of the main eventers would have hated him more than they did Russo
Once Ted was out of power after the merger WCW was dead. Budget cuts or not... they did not want wrestling on their channels. Ted was the only person that wanted wrestling on TV.
Nothing would have been different. WCW was going down quick.
That was a pretty damn good question. Surprised nobody thought of it sooner.
Heyman hated WCW management, they hated Heyman! There's no way 😂
True, Heyman hated WCW as much as Corny dispised Herd!!
@@williammitchell4417 they both hated Herd. Paul's problem was that Flair didn't like him.
Yeah Jim and Brian are completely off the mark on this one.
The joke inside the WCW office for years: jobs were safe as long as Ted Turner was around to cut the checks. In the end....it was always a correct assessment of the company.
1. Wcw wouldn't bother buying ECW(they probably could've had AWA too).
2. Ecw was mostly Heyman giving a middle finger to WCW after his firing/lawsuit settlement.
3. Going to wcw wouldve killed his relationship to wwf.
4. The aol time warner merger still likely wouldve happened.
5. Probably wouldve had some version of the new breed anyway.
6. Heyman likely wouldnt be able or allowed to negotiate contracts.
I definitely think the booking of WCW would've been far better if Heyman was there but there's no way that Heyman could've outright saved WCW.
WCW's issues went way beyond bad booking.
Paul Heyman definitely has/had a better mind for the wrestling business than Vince Russo
Retrospective hypothethicals are fine. An absolute waste of time, but fun nevertheless...sometimes. Personally, I'm sick to death of the fawning over the Monday Night Wars / 'Attitude Era'. I was a grown-ass man at the time. It was fun (sometimes), but that 'we're' still obsessing about it 25 years on, is verging on the pitiful(?). AOL & particularly Time-Warner did not want wrestling on their network, from the get-go. Turner's position hadn't changed, he still wanted a wrasslin' show, but no longer had the necessary stroke, within the revised corporate structure. They couldn't cancel it immediately, because (co-incidentally) WCW just happened to be making a shit-tonne of money at that particular moment in time ('97, through '98). Two years earlier or later and it's an entirely different scenario. If the network doesn't want you, that's that. End of story. Bischoff saw the writing on the wall, whilst WCW was still 'winning the war'. Granted, going forward it turned into an utter, utter shit-show, but would that have mattered either way? No. The f**king network didn't want it. THAT is the point. Paul Heyman or not, Time-Warner fully intended to bury wrestling. ITV did it in Britain, a decade earlier. No difference. WWF was a wrestling promotion, with a seasoned promoter. WCW wasn't. It was a small part of a corporate entity, that actually resented its very existance. Good luck to anyone, who thought they were going to make a success of it. I used to loathe Eric Bischoff...really loathe him. Listening to the guy now, at his age, with nothing to lose & nothing to gain, he makes total sense. He messed up at times and he knows it, but the over-arching factor was; the channel that hosts your TV show, doesn't actually want you. So probably better if people vented their anger in the direction of Time-Warner, ITV, or whichever TV company rejected the wrestling & saw it as low-brow, working-class (however you want to phrase it), than at guys who were doing their best (at the time) to bring the product to you. I just wish ITV would turn heel on AEW, because that really is the drizzling shits & God knows I tried with it. If a Company ever deserved to die, particularly for crimes against wrestling, it's AEW.
Raw and nitro was two different types of wrestling
Can you imagine Meng (Haku) in a hardcore match against a glutton for punishment like Sabu? There would be nothing left of Sabu but a pair of shiny baggy pants with some red goo.
Would have been an awesome match
With the pending AOL-Time Warner merger, ECW would have never been bought.
Besides that, AOL-Tine Warner would have killed off WCW even if Paul Heyman saved WCW. It was still going to end in early 2001.
They didnt want Wrestling on their networks and it wasnt a secret.
Kevin Nash's perspective on the fall of WCW imo is the most accurate. Spoiler: The cooperate management after the AOL Time Warner merger had no interest in having a wrestling company in their portfolio.
Paul would have had to contend with Hogan, Nash, and Hall's contracts. Hogan especially. If Heyman tried to put anyone over, those three would have been right there to make a mess. After all, Goldberg and LOLKEVINNASH.
Heyman’s strengths as a promoter are that he keeps a finger on the pulse of pop culture-and he has a knack for making the most out of the least. But ppl should remember-this is the guy responsible for the mass transit incident, the Beulah-Alfonso bloodbath, and “I’ll take them both, I’m hardcore.” This is the guy who lied to the NWA promoters to get a few headlines, Tommy Dreamer at one time planned to kill himself on the air because he was so distraught at finding out Heyman had taken him fir a huge ride over money. He’s not some miracle worker, he’s had just as much stupid ideas as good ones, and he’s a total sleaze. Particularly with the state WCW was in at the time, Heyman in charge would have been an absolute train wreck every bit as bad as Russo.
The problem is the AoL time warner exec's had already decided they did not want wrestling anymore. And raided all the funding to other departments. Which legally they could
Paul was never good with money and the business end. He was a great mind for wrestling, he could build stories and characters but WCW was too far gone in 1999. I think Paul could have made wcw worth MORE by the time it was up for sale. Because Vince bought it for almost nothing. They lost TV. Bischoff wanted to buy it with a group of investors. But once they lost tv, it was basically worthless. Vince bought it for 2 million.
I don't think
Time Warner would have allowed the Dudleyz to put folks through tables.
They allowed Public Enemy to do it.
@@Myndir And how are Rocco Rock and Johnny Grunge? No, Time wouldn't allow any of it.
They still would have lost money 😂
By 1999 WCW was a sinking ship. Eric even said he started to see the wheels falling off in 1999. Then they let him go and brought in Russo thinking he was the god behind WWE's success at the time. They failed to realize that Vince McMahon was there to filter all his dumbass ideas. He usually had 9 horrible Ideas and one good one for every 10. Vince was the one behind the curtain pulling the strins. Russo was allowed to run solo and have full control which was WCW's downfall in terms of ratings and TV. the TV sucked by 2000. They had an incredible roster at the time, but the shows were mostly segments and skits and barely any wrestling that made sense because Russo thought Wrestling was supposed to be like a episode of Jerry Springer. He was horrible and by 2001 they figured out he was an idiot who knew nothing about Wrestling and let him go completely. But at that point it was too late for WCW. AOL had merged with Time Warner to become AOL Time Warner and they wanted nothing to do with WCW. They didn't care that WCW had been on turner networks for almost 60 years. It didn't fit their vision of the new time warner. So with Nitro and Thunder canceled, the company was worthless at that point. Once Fusion Media found out, they backed out of the deal which Eric thought was in the books but once they found out WCW programing was canceled they bailed on it because the company was a worthless piece of junk. Vince was the only person left who could take WCW off time warners hands. He bought it for a cheap 2 million dollars. It was almost like he paid $2. Vince got the history of WCW and the name which were the only things left valuable and with WCW came Jim Crockett Promotions, Georgia Championship Wrestling and the NWA. In reality WWE owns the NWA not Corgan. Majority of the NWA history was sold with WCW. That's going all the way back to 1904. 1904 to 2001. Vince got his money's worth. The Invasion angle was a flap because he got only two of the big WCW stars, Booker T and DDP, the rest didn't have much star power. with all that, the show sets and the rings. He got the history of wrestling. That's what he bought.
I miss The Wars era. Ok i was the age group it was aimed at.... Young teenager, but i still watch the old shows on the network (a lot more than i watch current wrestling. Like most of you, i get my current state of Pro Wrestling news from James Cornette!).... However I must also add, that the total mismanagement of the 'Invasion'.... Splitting the brand between the kids etc.., was the most disappointing thing ever.
How they failed to capitalise on a time that was iconic even as it was happening.... It was in the zeitgeist of global media (well US and UK) and everyone was watching it. However they let all that excitement just drift away, and never did anything. Hardly even putting WWE in peril..... They just stomped the competition into the mud, and then it was over (Cornette did a guest booker episode for Youshoot, for that years 'Mania.... And one could weep at the opportunity lost.
Sigh. I realise I'm flogging a dead horse, but some of the young uns simply can't understand how red hot pro wrestling was, at the moment of that Raw/Nitro simulcast. No one knew what was gonna happen next, ans could have been ANYTHING. WWE just let the rivals whither on the vine.
I didn't watch WWE again until the rise and then summer of Punk, and enjoyed it. N seemed to be a rebellious crowd reach show (we want Ryder!) And i briefly thought id be back... But the the extra hour me off, as and then the show allow became you watchable!
So i went back to Impact/ TNA ans RoH among other things. Happy with that too.
Respectfully disagree, Jim. If WCW had ANY animated corpses, let alone the ones you mentioned, WCW would've been the #1 show in the world. Assuming they were ACTUAL animated corpses and not gimmicked animated corpses, anyways...
This never would’ve happened: TNT already had ridiculous restrictions on nearly every aspect of WCW. Kevin Nash said they couldn’t even have a booking meeting without a standards & practice representative sitting in with them. So no way would they A. Buy a promotion as violent as ECW or B. Allow its booker free reign over their TV. We need to remember that TNT executives wanted WCW to fail so they could get wrestling off the network for good.
They ended up not needing it to fail once they got Ted out the way. If we could actual have good accounting I would bet any money lost by wcw wasn't due to wcw. Reducing Eric's budget and telling him to fund thunder out of the nitro budget didn't help.
Maybe i'm playing devil's advocate here, but Eric Bischoff catches a lot of heat for his spending as head of WCW. And sure, some of it was stupid and blatant overspending. But if you were given a blank check book, what else would you do? I don't think he gets enough credit for going "all in" for lack of a better phrase, and actually spending the money. It might just be the biggest contributing factor to WCW's success.
ECW could have regained Bam Bam Bigelow and Terry Funk, beat the extreme back into Mike Awesome, assimilated Raven and The Flock, maybe brought in Vampiro…there were some WCW guys that ECW could have taken to make a believable invasion.
Heyman would have been far better in control of WCW than what Russo ended up doing. Then again, anyone reading this could have done a better job than Russo.
WCW form what I have been told and seen on the WWE Network! WCW was dying and no one could have save it! It was over it!
Why would this have worked? Heyman/ECW vs WWE worked out so well… this would have went the same.
Different audiences
@@JayReaction530 ECW and WCW audiences were even more different than WCW and WWF audiences.
@@Myndir I know in NY where I'm from even the most hardcore ecw fans followed and went to wwf shows ....even though they tried to act like they didn't
Paul Heyman wouldn't have been anymore successful than Russo, because the new execs in place at AOL Time Warner did not like wrestling, and didn't want it on their programming. The only reason they tolerated it as long as they did because WCW was one of the highest rated programs on TNT at the time of the merger. And there's no way in hell they would let Paul E get away with HALF of what he did at ECW, if they wouldn't even let corporate yesman Bischoff take Nitro in new directions.
The Millionares Club vs. The New Blood could have been better if that happened
True 💯