Which WCW arena is going to be in? Look to find out....

(EDIT: As you will read about much further down below in descriptive detail, I was mistaken in this post. It is not the WCW arena I wanted, and in fact is the WCW arena I despise. i.e: The last one that they used, during the two years that it was heading into the toilet.)

(EDIT EDIT #2: Uhm.... I know this is confusing, but I just found out that Marcus was right the first time. It IS the Classic Nitro that I wanted. Wow.)

The following comes from Marcus twitter.

When asked about what WCW arena is in, even though they have not seen it yet, he asked Yukes which one they are currently modeling. And he replies....

AND I QUOTE....

"that's news to me. We have yet to see it, but when I asked they said Nitro arena with the flame floor pads."

There you have it. WCW Monday Nitro. With flame floor pads.

Oh my god yes. Brings back memories of the first time I ever watched wrestling and started thinking "I like this a lot."

It was Monday Nitro at around the start of the whole nWo formation after Hogan Nash and Hall turned heel. So this is a huge nostalgia happytrip for me.

I can't wait to re-enact the Monday Night Wars. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. :D

So.... Since this is possible, here's a question to ponder.

WHAT IF WCW HAD WON???

How would history have changed? Where do you think we would be now if WWE went out of buisness, and somehow the winning streak that WCW started on, never stopped?

What if they continued to be on their roll, and how do you think that would have been accomplished? What changes do you think WCW would have had to do to stay on top? And if they did, where would it be today?

Who would be running it? Who would be the talent? Would Vince McMahon work for Bischoff? Would Bischoff have even stayed as the owner? What would it look like today? How would it have evolved to the current state of the entertainment world?

To answer my own question, first of all...

I can tell you a few things, for sure about what needed to be done for WCW's sake.

But the thing is... they're all things that people would have needed advanced knowledge of the future to know. Which means that unless you had second sight and clairvoyance you probably wouldn't know what to do about certain people who would eventually come to destroy the company.

First, before everything. Fire Kevin Nash, Hogan, and Russo above others. Or at the very least demote them, exert some power and control over them, and don't give them so much free reign to run the asylum at the very least.

Because to be honest, just up and firing them would have proved impossible. They were draws, after all. But they needed to have some power and control exerted over them before it became a mess.

As for Russo though, he should have been canned absolutely. He did absolutely nothing good for that company and no good ever came from him. Or again, if not outright fire, then put a muzzle on his creative say.

I think that's the main problem with WCW at the time. A few of the highest raised voices needed muzzles and they were never slapped with one.

I believe that if that were the case, WCW would still be around today.

If it weren't for Big Sexy, The Hulkster, and New York Douche, I don't believe that they would have evolved into a gluttonous, self-indulgent money wasting behemouth with giant remote controlled, moving signs, unreadable logos, ridiculous gimmicks, bringing in outsides like the influence of Kiss and David Aquette to be run roughshod over everything and everyone, no finger pokes of doom, no nonsensical, clusterfuck of confusing, worked shoots, and lame, barely cooked efforts that were dropped as soon as they were introduced, or in short, wouldn't be making all of the horrible mistakes that TNA is making today.

If they had kept to their strengths as a company without being a self-indulgent exploding piggy bank of failure due to the influences of guys out soley for themselves at the expense of everyone else, Turner would never have had second thoughts about keeping them around when a little trouble came along, if they were still sailing as smooth as they were when they were pounding WWF's ass ratings-wise.

I believe it would be run similarly like WWE today, except still focusing equally on different styles of wrestling like cruiserweights and lucha, women, tags, technical, and entertainment as they had been doing in the mid 90's, instead of relying on roided-up musclebound immobile clods like Khali, and predictable, rehashing, go-nowhere fueds pushed past the point of acceptance like the millionth Cena versus Orton match.

I do believe that Bischoff should have brought other people on to keep the foundation stable, that proved they could do so, instead of simply backstage guys that had his ear or sucked his cock.

Do I believe he WOULD have, necessarily? Knowing Bisch? No. Do I think he would have probably realized that he SHOULD have? Perhaps.

But that's the whole clarivioyance thing I mention earlier. I think he would have had to have SEEN himself failing in the future, to be shocked into doing it right.

But if that had happened... if he had seen his own future, if they had simply stayed on the roll, put a muzzle on some of their guys, and Bischoff stepping back and bringing in people that were trustworthy and able, rather than just guys like Nash and Hogan taking the wheel and driving the ship straight into self-fulfillmentland, it could have stayed as the juggernaut that the WWE was and is.

Simply put, another way... if they had demonstrated their way to stay on top and proven themselves as a contender past the point where WCW ended up breaking in our timeline, and not lost influentials like Benoit,. Guerrero, Jericho and Malenko, and had they had room to grow and be happy with the involvement in the company, others probably would have been jumping ship to THEM, rather than losing to WWF's side.

Then I think that would have turned the tide where you would have gotten the new initiative of talent today, to grow and eviolve, to ebb and flow, come and go, into and out of the company, and updated and keep fresh with the times, without allowing certain people to grab their footholds and bring the house down around them for their own amusement, yeah. I think WCW would have done alright.

Well, there are two things here I need to respond to:

1) The inclusion of the WCW Nitro Arena is excellent news. Its obviously the one we all wanted them to include. Hopefully they might also drop in a few of the old WCW logos and theme musics they own as well.

2) The "what would have happened" question is something I could probably write an entire essay on, and as I do have some work to do in the office today, I haven't got time to consider it now. But I might have a think over lunch and give an opinion. For now I'll just say that even if the WWE had gone out of business, WCW would still have tanked into the ground like a 747 with four blown engines.

Reaper wrote:

Well, there are two things here I need to respond to:

1) The inclusion of the WCW Nitro Arena is excellent news. Its obviously the one we all wanted them to include. Hopefully they might also drop in a few of the old WCW logos and theme musics they own as well.

2) The "what would have happened" question is something I could probably write an entire essay on, and as I do have some work to do in the office today, I haven't got time to consider it now. But I might have a think over lunch and give an opinion. For now I'll just say that even if the WWE had gone out of business, WCW would still have tanked into the ground like a 747 with four blown engines.

I agree, insofar, that yes... if they had kept on going how they were going, yes. Allowing certain individuals to sabatoge and milk the company and it's assets dry, keeping only fame and recognition for themselves while the house burnt down around it, and living like there was no tommorw, making horrific fuckups in strategy, business, and drunk on power without the slightest notion that their wasteful and slothful attitude was going to cause WCW to explode like a rotten fish in a microwave.

I've no doubt of that.

As I mentioned, the only way I think it would have been saved was for Bischoff, and the other day-to-day show runners to basically see into the future and actively pull a 180, reverse all thrusters and go back in the other, sensible direction to ensure survival.

History wouldn't change on just a "what-if", it would have to require a full re-write and a helping hand from God, nothing short of a miracle like A Christmas Story.

Eric Bischoff, Vince Russo, Hogan, Sullivan, Nash, and half of Turner involved in it's production would have had to have been visited by nothing short of the three ghosts themselves in order to turn that ship around.

So, I had 15 minutes spare this morning after all...


So what would have become of WCW if they’d won the Monday Night Wars?



It’s tempting to look at the WWE’s current position of global market dominance in the wrestling business and assume that, had the position been reversed and WCW had won the Monday Night Wars, then they would occupy the same position. However, I’m not convinced.



Everyone who has looked at the Monday Night Wars knows that WCW’s management was incompetent; at booking talent, at wasting money, at letting the lunatics run the asylum, and at writing angles. I’ll get onto the likes of Bischoff and Russo at another time, and consider how their running of the company contributed to the abysmal position it found itself in, and its eventual demise. Likewise I’m not going to speak here about how the talent was demoralised and how the shows sucked as a result.



Instead, I want to concentrate on something else. Because for me the thing that would have killed off WCW regardless of what you did with those guys was simply the ownership of the company, and the position of its parent organisation.



The reason WCW was able to flourish so greatly during the 1990s was because of the man holding the purse strings, Ted Turner. Ted wasn’t just a huge wrestling fan from a personal standpoint (due to it doing well in his early cable days), he was also personally motivated to allow the company he owned to succeed by the fact that Vince McMahon had turned down his offer to buy the WWE in the mid 1980s, at a time when no-one said no to Ted. Turner wanted to show Vince that he should have sold. Revenge is strong motivation.



With Ted basically handing WCW a blank cheque book, they were able to improve the product and hire the talent (though some would argue they had much of the talent in the first place before the Monday Night Wars) which pushed the company to the brink of taking the WWE out. But for WCW the problem was that the very success by Turner that was creating the blank cheques was also knocking the foundations out from under them. When Turner Broadcasting and Turner Enterprises was essentially a one-man band as far as what was allowed to fly, Ted could allow vanity projects like WCW to continue. But as the company grew, took on a more corporate structure, and then merged with others (AOL, Time Warner) the scope for this maverick wing was greatly diminished.



Suddenly WCW had to make corporate sense. It had to fit a corporate profile, and it had to “fit” in with the corporation’s image and balance sheet. In short, it had to conform, and ultimately, that strangled it because the people it had to answer to didn’t like, and didn’t understand wrestling, and didn’t share Ted’s desire to pander to it as a pet project.



WWE, by contrast, is much more of a stand-alone entity. The company has shareholders, but all together these occupy only a minority stake in the firm, with the rest being owned by the McMahon’s. They aren’t beholding to a private company and thus have greater carte-blanche to free form ideas and shape the product without constantly having someone looking over their shoulders. That said, even the E has corporate sponsors, and you need only look at the way the company has been shaped in the last couple of years by those sponsors (the move to PG rating etc) to see how much influence corporate suits can have. Now just imagine the strain the relationship with WCW was under.



Even if WCW had won the Monday Night Wars and acquired the WWE’s talent, this pressure would eventually have driven them under. Arguably the company might have been making more profit (though with the way it spent money like it was going out of fashion, perhaps it wouldn’t) and that might have bought them more grace, but the suits wouldn’t have been any more educated as to wrestling, or any more likely to believe that this gaudy violent pantomime fitted in with the global image they were trying to get across. Wrestling fans were not the sort of people they wanted to attract – they didn’t watch their new shows, or buy their other products. The shows didn’t attract the sort of advertisers they wanted.



Obviously you need to make some assumptions in all of this about when and how Turner may have brought certain figureheads on board to run the ship from the corporate perspective. Might he have hired WWE talent to run it, might he have asked McMahon on board? Who knows? But lets assume he still stuck with the hirings and firings he put in place.



If the Turner brain trust had still decided to place the company in the hands of people like Cowboy Bill Watts, then the fate of the company would still have been the same. Watts’ time at WCW was perhaps best remembered for him doing things like pissing into his waste paper bin (and on one occasion into the atrium at Turner HQ) using colourful and racist language in meetings with Turner bigwigs, and basically offending most of everyone he met. None of his actions exactly enamoured WCW to Time Warner or made it an attractive part of the operation. The TV people that Time Warner were putting in place to oversee the operation didn’t understand that there is a fundamental difference between a network TV series and a wrestling programme, and likewise between a wrestling programme and a weekly sports show. Wrestling straddles the two, and trying to pigeonhole it into one or the other not only strangles the product, but creates severe headaches for the network. Once again you only have to look at the recent Daniel Bryan incident in WWE to see this.



By the time 2001 came around and Time Warner merged with AOL, WCW was already a disaster from a financial standpoint, and you need to look at the factors I set out above to do with the infamous figures of Bischoff/Russo/Hogan etc to sort out why. Ultimately the merger was of course the final toll of the bell for WCW, because that was the point at which Turner effectively lost any and all control. Even when Turner broadcasting merged with Time Warner, Turner’s influence was enough to keep WCW afloat, but under the new corporate structure that safety line was gone. What AOL saw was a part of the company which was haemorrhaging money left and right, and which even when it was profitable had a horrible corporate identity and image totally at odds with the other brands AOL owned, and totally at odds with the key demographics the company was aiming for.



Had the Monday Night Wars been won, and had WCW been profitable, perhaps AOL would have taken a second look and been able to set aside some of their snobbery. But somehow, I doubt it. For a start, its unlikely the profits would have been that huge. The monster ratings both WCW and the WWE achieved in 1997-2000 were achieved precisely because both companies were engaged in such fierce competition. They both drove each other. Again, you need only look at the levels of complacency in the WWE right now, and the corresponding cooling of the ratings, to see how it backs off when one company has it to themselves. By 2001 the ratings were already decreasing anyway, so what AOL would have seen is that the peak period for wrestling had passed, and now that the fight between the two dogs was over, even the winner had its scars and torn ears. Also, as I said, they would still have had the problems with wrestling’s image and core demographic, and would still have been reluctant to give it TV time on the networks.



Perhaps though they would have kept it. Perhaps as the only player in the business and one making some degree of money, they’d have kept WCW going in some form, finding a home for it on some network somewhere and giving it some room. They might have been able to get over the image problem by treating it very much as a stand-alone entity. We can’t know for sure. But that “perhaps” is predicated on the scenario of WCW actually being profitable, and so we are back to Bischoff, Russo, and Hogan again.



Because I actually think the idea of the situation with those guys being any different is pretty unlikely, I don’t think that position as regards profitability was ever going to arise. What I therefore think would have been more likely is that even as the winner of the Monday Night Wars, AOL Time Warner would have simply cut their losses with World Championship Wrestling and sold the names, rights, and tape library to whoever wanted them.

Shand, I must say that after reading that, fully comprehending it, thinking deeply about it and letting it sink in....

....I think you are absolutely 100% right.

I think you hit the nail on the head perfectly, precisely, directly and definitely.

Considering all of these factors you've provided, when I think about it, makes my scenario of "They would have been alright" and "Warner would have warmed up to it" seem extremely charitable and blindly optimistic past the point of what logic makes any sense.

To basically summarize what you are saying....

You're saying that "The odds that WCW would have survived horrible booking, complete mismanagement, and shareholder indifference even after they had decicely won (had this happened in an alternate euniverse) is extremly small. And that even if they managed this miracle, it would still come down to Hogan/Russo/Nash/Bischoff, and nothing would have changed."

And you're right. When I look back at what I said, it seems that my entire theory is pretty much predicated on "wishing for the best makes everything ok", and it doesn't. I agree completely with you.








ALSO, UNRELATED THING, going back to the video game....

Just listened to the CAWScast with Brian Williams. And I am disheartned to mention that I was wrong. It's not going to be the classic Nitro during the nWo wars....

It's going to be that awful fucking set with the stupid post-modern logo that looks like a hood ornament, that ugly silver moving entrance, the stupid DJ, and the gaudy-ass black and silver design which I hate. The one that symbolised their last 2 years of existance, and the one that brings back not only bad memories but just plain looks like shit.

: (

I am a sad panda. I was hoping against hope that it wasn't that abysmal set. And it is. Shit.

Yes, I'm saying that, but I'm also saying that the key nail in its coffin was the corporate restructuring of Turner Broadcasting. First through the merger with Time Warner, and then through the merger with AOL. When those mergers removed the direct influence of Ted Turner in calling the shots on WCW, it was always a matter of time, whether it survived the other issues or not.

Can you post a picture of the set that it actually is then, cost I'm getting confused which one we're now talking about.

Picture of it here

https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img199/4830/scansu.jpg

I wanted it to be this:






It's actually going to be THIS:


BLECHHH.

By the way, Shand.. that picture you posted was ousted to be a photoshopped fake.

Someone found the real advertisement of that exact same image and the picture in question was completely different.

Yes, I found out just after I posted it that it was fake. TBH, I'd have prefered the old Nitro arena, but the new one will do.

I associate a lot of bad memories with it, personally.


When I see this mess...




I think of....



and this...



And this....



And this...



and so on...

Well here's another way to look at it. This game gives you a chance to rewrite history and book WCW how it should have been booked. :0)

Was that a picture of the Big Wiggle? Haha, funnytimes.

And what was most scary about the comparative photos wasn't the state of the sets, it was DDP.

That's enough to scare ANYBODY.

Reaper wrote:

Well here's another way to look at it. This game gives you a chance to rewrite history and book WCW how it should have been booked. :0)

I am going to try... and when I say this, I mean reeeally try, as hard as I possibly can...

To just squint my eyes and pretend it's the other one. Or something. Or just use my imagination and say "ok, it's WCW. Semantics aside, it's WCW for all intents and purposes. I don't understand it, but i'm not gonna try to. I'm just gonna roll with it."

and then proceed to use it for downloaded WCW guys and fool myself into thinking that this ugly thing is the only arena they ever had.