10 Precise Moments When WCW Careers Ended
Transcript
00:00 You want a really sad stat? In 2022 every single WCW career is dead. This is because
00:08 the company is no longer around, but a fact is a fact. There are some fascinating stories
00:12 when you get into it though, especially with these 10 people, so here's 10 precise moments
00:18 when WCW careers ended.
00:20 10. The Giant
00:22 It seemed inevitable that eventually Vince McMahon was going to go after Paul Wight.
00:26 We all know how he feels about giants, and he had actually said to people, "hey pal,
00:31 when I get that dude into my company, I'm not going to use him like they did in WCW,
00:36 I've got a much better plan." Now we can get into that, but probably on a different
00:41 video.
00:42 The jump did happen in February 1999 where he appeared at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre,
00:45 and if you had been watching Nitro the month before this, you could probably see the writing
00:50 on the wall. Because from nowhere Hulk Hogan just said, "listen, NWO, I know like there's
00:55 a lot of people in this group, but there can only be one giant, so later on we're going
01:00 to do Kevin Nash vs. The Giant." And Kevin Nash won.
01:04 As soon as we were done too, the New World Order jumped the future big show, and Scott
01:08 Hall even tased him with a taser. And once again, just go look how Wight sells this.
01:14 I don't really think he was that bothered, because he knew he was out the door.
01:18 The worst part about all of it though is that this just came so out of nowhere, and was
01:22 never explained. Which WCW did a lot in 1999, we've talked about it before, we don't need
01:27 to do it again.
01:28 9. Scott Hall
01:29 Scott Hall mostly struggled in WCW, mostly down to his long documented personal issues.
01:35 This is such a shame, because do not forget when he arrived and debuted in 1996, he quite
01:39 literally changed the game. Everybody was looking around going, "why the hell is he
01:43 here?"
01:44 Four years later he was main eventing Superbowl 2000, and it's just a little bit sad. He is
01:48 taking on Sid, who gives him a powerbomb to win, and it ain't a very good powerbomb either.
01:54 And Roddy Rowdy Piper was a special guest referee who counts the 1-2-3. But when this
01:59 was done, and Scott walked his way back to the dressing room, little did we know we were
02:04 never going to see him in a World Championship Wrestling ring again.
02:07 The crowd aren't into it either, which makes it doubly upsetting, so if you ever do want
02:11 to go through Scott Hall's career, you can just forget about all of this stuff and go
02:15 find his amazing moments instead.
02:17 8. DDP
02:18 And in March 2001 was WCW's last ever PPV. They were about to be bought out by one Vincent
02:24 Kennedy McMahon, so they decided to go out there and have one last hurrah.
02:29 It also saw Scott Steiner taking on DDP, and clearly somebody had gone, well I tell you
02:33 what was a good finish, WrestleMania 13 when Bret Hart took on Stone Cold Steve Austin.
02:38 So why don't we just repeat that? And before you go, "oh my gosh, that sounds absolutely
02:42 terrible", you would be incorrect, and it was quite literally bloody brilliant.
02:46 Because when Scott locked in the Steiner Recliner onto Diamond Dallas Page, who did have the
02:50 red stuff coming from his head and eventually passed out, once again you just looked at
02:55 it and were like, "wow, Dallas, what a hero he is, I want to root for him".
02:58 So this was such an excellent match and actually showed that maybe, just maybe, there was still
03:02 life in WCW, but given that a few days later we had the last ever Nitro and DDP wasn't
03:08 on that show, it was lit for him.
03:11 So I suppose in many ways maybe Page was already negotiating with the then WWF at this stage
03:16 because we know that he was going to make the jump early, and the less said about that
03:20 the better.
03:21 7. Chris Benoit
03:22 The last thing Chris Benoit did under WCW employment was to win the World Heavyweight
03:28 Championship. I mean, that's kind of something.
03:30 Now this was a Hail Mary by WCW because they knew that Chris wanted to leave, so had decided,
03:36 well if we make him the champion and give him that big gold belt, there's no way that
03:40 he would exit.
03:41 So Chris Benoit won it and 24 hours later went to Nitro, handed it to them and said,
03:46 "yeah, I won't be on the television, I'm going home".
03:49 That really did happen too, so he was victorious and sold out in 2000.
03:53 And then 24 hours later, Arn Anderson, who had been the special guest referee, had to
03:57 walk down and go, "oh, silly me, I didn't notice that Sid's foot was under the bottom
04:02 rope, so now the championship is vacant and we'll have to have a tournament to figure
04:06 it out".
04:07 It was so bad, it was drowning in politics and once again was just another way to say
04:12 WCW was not long for this world.
04:15 6. Steve Austin
04:16 Given what he would go on to do, it is kind of crazy that Steve Austin had no WCW send
04:22 off. And look, I get that he wasn't Style Cold at this point, but he was still a recognisable
04:26 name, he had been in WCW for ages and he had won flubbing championships.
04:30 For your trivia odds, his last match came in May 1995 when he took on Eddie Jackie in
04:35 a match that only lasted one minute, and there's still this rumour out there that soon after
04:40 he just walked out on WCW when they told him he was going to have to lose to The Renegade.
04:45 If you don't know who The Renegade was, he was WCW's version of The Ultimate Warrior
04:51 and yes, it was terrible.
04:52 Steve also injured his tricep around this time, so given that they were at odds with
04:56 each other and when Eric Bischoff gave him a call to talk to him, he apparently heard
05:00 Austin in the background going, "I don't want to talk to that son of a bitch".
05:03 So they fired him. That's right, they faxed him his walking papers when he was rehabbing
05:08 the fact that he was hurt. And as you know for a good old while, there was a lot of bad
05:13 blood.
05:14 If you weren't watching on TV and you were used to stunning Steve Austin, one day he
05:18 just wasn't there anymore. I guess he could have been bothered.
05:21 5. Eric Bischoff
05:23 And speaking of the boss, he got booted off TV too.
05:26 If you want to know all the details, make sure you google everything that happened between
05:29 Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo, but the headlines are, they just all acted like children and
05:35 it sounded ridiculous.
05:36 It eventually ended with an angle where WCW's Millionaires Club were taking on the new blood,
05:42 and any long-term fan was able to figure out this was just a rehash of the WCW vs. the
05:47 NWO and by 2000 we had run that into the ground.
05:51 You could see that Bischoff had had enough by this stage and after it had come to a massive
05:55 head backstage with Mr. Russo, we saw him on television and he was all like "I can't
05:59 believe DDP's not here anymore" and that was it. Poof. He only ever appeared via other
06:05 people talking about him. And when the next year would roll around, WCW was gone.
06:10 This did all tie into the fact that the promotion was having a terrible time and the finger
06:14 of blame had been pointed at him, but never underestimate how crazy this was. He had been
06:20 such an integral part.
06:21 4. Goldberg
06:22 This was just awful. Another terrible decision by WCW, despite the fact that Goldberg had
06:29 basically propped up the company in 1998. You go through that 12 months and imagine
06:33 that Bill isn't around, what the flub would they have done? They turned him in in 2000
06:38 before realising that's not going to work so they hit the whoops button and desperately
06:42 tried to turn him back babyface, including at the Sin 2001 PPV where they teamed him
06:46 up with Sergeant Dwayne Bruce and put Goldberg's career on the line.
06:50 Everybody shrugged their shoulders and said "ok, we're doing that, whatever" but when
06:55 Lex Luger pinned him, Goldberg's career was done. WCW never lived up to any of their
07:02 stipulations so he was obviously going to come back at one point, but you already know
07:06 what happened in this year. So that was it for Goldberg. Lex Luger pinned him and he
07:14 was done.
07:15 Seriously, what an awful way to go out for one of your biggest ever stars, Bret Hart.
07:21 The reason this sucks so much is that when Bret left the WWF in 1997 it was terrible
07:26 and when Bret Hart left the WCW it was also terrible. So I tell you, this man never got
07:31 the respect he deserved.
07:32 Do go and find the September 2000 promo, he did indeed cut on Bill Goldberg and Scott
07:37 Steiner though, because it will make you go "holy crap the Hitman has fire in his balls,
07:42 he's talking about the fact that the previous year Goldberg had to retire him and if you
07:46 were a fan like me you were rubbing your hands together because you assumed something big
07:50 was on the line."
07:51 Instead though, he was never seen again. In October, management terminated his contract
07:56 because they didn't think he was living up to his end of the deal, because of course
07:59 he was going through a lot of health stuff. I will never be able to accept that, I will
08:04 never be able to get my head around it. Bret the Hitman Hart just let go like he was nothing
08:11 as opposed to the best of all time, to Hulk Hogan.
08:14 And talking of bad, my word.
08:16 We all remember everything that happened at the Bash at the Beach 2000 where Jeff Jarrett,
08:20 Hulk Hogan and Vince Russo had that thing that was just offensive and it did end somehow
08:25 with the Hulkster being the World Champion and walking out of the place.
08:28 What we all forget though is that we did see him one last time on the show, and as it turned
08:33 out it would be the last time we ever saw him in WCW. But listen to this, he was walking
08:37 backstage without the belt that had magically vanished, which just summed up WCW, and he
08:42 walked past Vampiro and they looked at each other, and said "ok maybe we're teasing
08:45 something here, maybe we're going to do Vampiro vs Hogan". But nope, they just both walked
08:51 out the frame and Hulk Hogan never returned to WCW.
08:54 I mean where was he going, did he hate Vampiro, did he need the toilet? We're never going
08:58 to know.
08:59 Before long too, Hulk would be suing World Championship Wrestling. Honestly, if you're
09:04 bored today, just google this one as well and you will feel miles more mature than everybody
09:10 involved.
09:11 1. Chris Jericho
09:12 One of the biggest jumps during the Attitude Era from WCW to the WWF was Chris Jericho
09:16 in 1999, although if you were in the know of the late 90s this did not come as a big
09:21 surprise because WCW had something with Chris Jericho and decided to do nothing with him.
09:27 While his official last match happened on a house show in July, his last match on Nitro
09:31 was a defeat to Booker T. And in between all that, WCW executives just rubbed their non-existent
09:37 beards and were like "well we know he's leaving, but we kind of feel like we should do something
09:41 with him, but we don't really know what to do".
09:44 The answer was to put Jericho on commentary alongside Tony Schiavone as they tested running
09:47 pay per views on WCW.com, which actually means the last time a fan saw Chris Jericho on WCW
09:55 TV was when he was commentating on Sting vs Ricky Steamboat.
10:00 No seriously, people wonder why did Chris Jericho want to go, it's because there was
10:04 this glass ceiling in WCW and he knew he was never breaking through.
10:09 Know of any other interesting times WCW careers ended?
10:12 Make sure you let us know in the comments below and don't forget to like the video,
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10:23 My name is Simon from WOTCulture, thank you for watching as always, goodbye.