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TVTranscript
00:00Stand by. Here we go. In 5, 4, 3, 2, roll it through.
00:15This is the last Nitro on the Turner Networks and we're going out with a bang.
00:22How do we all feel on this very surreal day for all of us in World Championship Wrestling?
00:28A historic day in sports entertainment and it goes down on our very last telecast.
00:33Where does WCW go from here? What's in the cards? What's going to happen?
00:38If I'm giving a eulogy for WCW, what would I say?
00:43We were WCW. We lived. We breathed. We sweat. We paid the price to be the best.
00:55We gather here today to bid farewell to a wrestling company.
01:00A company that grew from the ashes rose to become the phoenix of professional wrestling.
01:06The legacy of WCW is iconic. I have just such a tremendous amount of reverence and respect for everything that they were able to do.
01:15To know that it went from that to being out of business is a tragedy.
01:21People thinking about themselves and not the good of the company led to the death of WCW.
01:28Thanks to the cash. Thanks for nothing. Go f*** yourselves. I think that would sum it up.
01:36You know, if I look back and try to describe the journey, the ups, the downs, the twists, the curves, the ride all along the way was a rush.
01:49WCW innovated so many things that are still so much a part of the wrestling programming that we watch today.
01:57Going back to the 80s, early 90s, it was a little company that nobody thought was ever going to be successful.
02:04Anytime anybody talked about professional wrestling in mainstream media, they didn't refer to it as professional wrestling.
02:12They referred to it as WWF. The World Wrestling Federation.
02:16If you look at where WCW started from.
02:21We were in a different universe and not a favorable one. That's how far behind we were.
02:27Everybody was very happy to be a distant number two. Except for me.
02:35The difference between WCW in 93 and 98.
02:41We're over 40,000 fans are canned in the Georgia Dome.
02:45We became the most successful wrestling company in the world almost overnight.
02:49Gentlemen, start your engines.
02:52WCW was able to transcend into pop culture.
02:56Wow, the Stinger.
02:57Timmy.
02:59Here comes the NWO. The greatest faction ever.
03:02I don't think I'd seen anything as hot as the NWO. I was like, wow, this company is going to go through the roof.
03:09We were standing on top of the mountain going, how did we get here?
03:12And then little by little, we just fell.
03:16It was like me having a puppy, raising him to be a full grown dog.
03:21And I watch him run across the street and he gets hit by a bus.
03:26Egos, egos, egos.
03:28A lot of jealousy. A lot of problems.
03:30Do I got your attention now, Eric Bischoff?
03:32Think about it. What are wrestlers? They're a bunch of pathological liars.
03:36What a big word for a suit and tie.
03:39The death of WCW is really death by a thousand cuts.
03:43So, what really happened?
03:45Who's responsible for killing WCW?
03:48That's always going to be the million dollar question.
03:51Who killed WCW?
03:53Well, the easy answer is Vince Russo.
03:55It's just idiotic.
03:56Turner.
03:58The organization.
03:59The lack of.
04:00The talent killed WCW.
04:04This is preposterous to me.
04:06It would have to be the person with the checkbook.
04:08It would have to be Eric Bischoff.
04:10Sometimes more than one thing can be true.
04:13There's too much blame to go around.
04:15You want to hear the real story or you want to hear the bullshit story?
04:21You cannot sweep this under the rug.
04:23This is a f***ing television show.
04:25I don't understand what he's doing.
04:26The real reason men commit lies.
04:34Back in the day, back prior to social media,
04:39there was still an internet culture
04:41where wrestling fans seemed to congregate
04:43and had a desperate need for an understanding
04:46of what happened to WCW.
04:49Who have convinced a certain percentage of the audience
04:52that it ultimately comes back to me.
04:56If someone were to come to me and say,
04:58okay, here's a tape.
05:01I want you to watch this whole tape
05:03and it's going to be the entire WCW journey.
05:06And you can decide if you want to do it all over again.
05:09What would I say?
05:13In a heartbeat.
05:15In a heartbeat.
05:17In a heartbeat.
05:19In a heartbeat.
05:21In a heartbeat.
05:23In a heartbeat.
05:26You know, it's really interesting and almost embarrassing.
05:28Before I was hired by WCW,
05:31I didn't know what WCW was.
05:33World Championship Wrestling.
05:35I was an outsider to the business.
05:37I was a sales guy.
05:41Right about that time,
05:42through a good friend of mine, Sonny Ono,
05:44this little thing called Ninja Star Wars came into my life.
05:48You put these vests on and you put one on,
05:50I put one on, we chase each other around the house.
05:52And if I hit you with three of my stars, you're out.
05:54It was like laser tag only with these little stars.
05:57Then it was like,
05:59alright.
06:00How do we sell them?
06:02At the time, the AWA was on Monday through Friday.
06:06And the AWA was Vern's business.
06:08Vern Gagne, thanks for being out here.
06:10My pleasure and I'm glad I got out here.
06:11Vern Gagne, professional athlete, wrestler, promoter.
06:15Don't you dare miss it.
06:16Vern did it all.
06:17Vern Gagne's pro wrestling report.
06:19Here's how to order.
06:20Mail 1495.
06:22I thought, I'm going to call Vern Gagne.
06:26If Vern runs the commercial in his wrestling program
06:29that's seen nationwide, we'll split 50-50.
06:32I took one of the games and went to meet Vern.
06:35I thought I was going to get the deal, right,
06:37that I was looking for, which I did.
06:39But I was also offered a job.
06:40Welcome to AWA Championship Wrestling.
06:43So my job was to travel around the Midwest
06:45and talk independent television stations
06:48and be carrying AWA shows.
06:50It's a sales job.
06:51Sales is sales.
06:52And I think we're going to erase any doubts you've ever had.
06:55I had never met anybody like Eric.
06:57If he thought something was a really good idea,
07:00then he would start to take action,
07:02to breathe life into it.
07:04I'd always been curious how television works.
07:07At night, I just sat in and learned.
07:10Then eventually I was on camera.
07:12My name is Eric Bischoff and you heard...
07:14All this took place over the course of about a year and a half
07:16or two years while I was in AWA.
07:18Buckle up real tight because you're going for a hard, bumpy ride.
07:21I promise.
07:22The last six or eight months of it, I didn't get paid.
07:24He couldn't afford to pay me.
07:26My wife and I and our kids suffered financially.
07:29Now we have two little ones
07:32and we are literally bouncing checks to buy diapers
07:36and barely making rent.
07:39That's how bad it was.
07:40The world heavyweight champion,
07:43he is the living legend,
07:45Larry Zabisko!
07:47Larry Zabisko had worked with me in AWA.
07:49We had become friends.
07:50He'd left AWA, was working in WCW.
07:53Larry told me that,
07:55hey, they're looking for announcers down here.
07:57And within days, I got a call.
07:59See you next time.
08:00I got to WCW, man, I was the happiest
08:02third string announcer that had ever put on a pair of shoes.
08:07I came into WCW so wide-eyed
08:10because I was working for Turner Broadcasting.
08:12He was very nice.
08:14He just seemed like he was not a fish out of water,
08:17but he was kind of uncomfortable
08:19is the way it seemed to start with.
08:20He's got a suit on and he's got perfect black hair.
08:24He looked like a Ken doll.
08:25I'm here with Diamond Dallas.
08:26The talent within WCW?
08:28Unbelievable.
08:30There was Dusty Rhodes and Gordon Soley
08:32and Kevin Sullivan and certainly Ric Flair.
08:35And there was a new generation.
08:37Guys like Sting, Diamond Dallas Page,
08:40Scott Hall was the Diamond stud.
08:42On three, one, two, three, rip it off!
08:45Scott was working in WCW when I was hired.
08:48So was Kevin Nash.
08:49Good-looking guy, great physique.
08:51Yeah.
08:53Poor Kevin Nash has so many different characters
08:55in the beginning.
08:56They didn't know what to do with him.
08:58Cowabunga!
09:01I just shot Ninja Turtles.
09:04And then I believe Dusty took acid.
09:07And he said, baby, you're going to be an ass.
09:10I said, you do realize that the movie is called
09:14The Wizard of Oz?
09:16I am Oz.
09:18You can be the wizard, but you can't be Oz.
09:21Oz is the geographical region.
09:24No, baby, you can be Oz.
09:26I'm just like, all right.
09:28World Championship Wrestling is bringing it to you, baby.
09:31We're taking a look at Oz.
09:32I just show up in this lime green outfit
09:36and an old man's rubber mask.
09:39And then they wrestle a geographical region.
09:44Look at this move right here.
09:45They were trying to put a round bag in a square hole.
09:49They tried to do the gimmicks.
09:51Looks like something's going on down here.
09:53They were bringing, you know, RoboCop.
09:56Woo-hoo!
09:57What strength by RoboCop!
09:58But they really didn't work.
10:00It didn't work.
10:01It was an absolute shit show.
10:03He's getting cooked.
10:04And I think he's well done, guys.
10:06The crowd here going crazy!
10:08WCW had a loyal following.
10:12The defender executives regarded the WCW audience
10:15as being downscale.
10:17It was downscale, very sort of southern and Midwestern.
10:23I didn't care about it.
10:25I wasn't a fan of it.
10:2680% of the people who worked at Turner
10:28weren't really wrestling fans to start with, except for Ted.
10:32Ted Turner wears many hats for his many colorful careers.
10:35He is the owner of the Baseball Atlanta Braves,
10:39Basketball Atlanta Hawks.
10:41He has pioneered television with his own cable network,
10:44which broadcasts 24 hours of news.
10:46Playboy magazine called him a bonafide,
10:48larger-than-life character.
10:50Captain Outrageous, that was one of his nicknames.
10:53He will say anything he wants to, anytime he wants to.
10:57You said network presidents should be lined up and shot.
11:01That kind of guy.
11:03Ted enjoyed the fact that,
11:05I know that you don't like my wrestling,
11:08and that's exactly why I like it.
11:11Dad bought a little TV station here in Atlanta,
11:14and he built an international broadcasting empire
11:19in a few years.
11:20And wrestling was one of those things
11:22that helped build TBS and the entire network.
11:27When you go back to the beginning of television,
11:30wrestling was there.
11:31It was a lifeblood of programming
11:33for local television stations.
11:35Oh!
11:36It could command a loyal audience
11:38in the millions of viewers.
11:40So Ted believed in the power and the loyalty
11:43and the size of the professional wrestling audience.
11:47Ted launched WCW as a result
11:49of purchasing Jim Crockett Promotions,
11:51which was a Southern wrestling company.
11:53Jesus Christ!
11:55WCW was seen as sort of the long-suffering,
11:58distant number two trailing behind the WWF.
12:01The winner of the match,
12:03the Diamond Star!
12:06Scott Hall, Kevin Nash.
12:09They left.
12:10They go to the WWF.
12:12Scott Hall becomes Razor Ramon.
12:14He's a big star.
12:15Kevin Nash becomes Diesel.
12:17Boom, big star.
12:18From a standpoint of the talent,
12:21we always considered WWE the show.
12:24There's no comparison.
12:25From a production value perspective,
12:27from a talent roster perspective,
12:30from a marketing perspective,
12:32from a financial perspective,
12:34WCW lost millions of dollars every year.
12:37I've been warned by my boss
12:39that don't help WCW.
12:42Why? If I help them make money?
12:43No, you don't understand.
12:45Executive management hates wrestling
12:47and wants to get rid of it.
12:48And if you're perceived as trying to help them,
12:50that's career suicide for you.
12:53Other than Ted Turner,
12:54there was not an executive in Turner Broadcasting
12:57that wanted WCW to be in the Turner portfolio.
13:00Put yourself in the position of a television executive
13:04within that corporation.
13:05You have this division that is losing
13:07as much as $10 million on a yearly basis.
13:10And we don't really get the appeal
13:12of this entire genre to begin with.
13:14So, of course, that was going to create
13:16a lot of resentment and confusion
13:19as to why do we even have this on the airwaves?
13:21Mix my blood for two!
13:23That's what really set the conditions
13:25for this dysfunctional relationship
13:27between TBS and WCW.
13:30Bill Shaw was the vice president
13:32of human resources for Turner Broadcasting.
13:34He was given responsibility to take over WCW,
13:37as effective president of it.
13:39So Bill came in, he said,
13:41Ted Turner has made a decision
13:43that this company is going to either turn a profit
13:46or Ted's going to pull the plug.
13:48Ted had made up his mind that enough was enough
13:51and he was going to give WCW one last shot.
13:53And we're going to hire an executive producer
13:57who is going to take WCW
14:00from a wrestling company to a television property.
14:03Wrestling was seen by the wrestling people
14:07as an arena of business.
14:09The only other person besides Ted
14:12that saw it as television was Eric.
14:16So I threw my name in the hat.
14:19A month or so later, I'm the executive producer.
14:22This is your chance to be a part
14:24of professional wrestling history.
14:27What the hell am I going to do?
14:34From Harlem to Harlem Heat!
14:37He comes out of the hands of the Heat
14:39and don't forget that, sucker!
14:43The way my brother and I came into WCW
14:45was a good old boy system gimmick, you know,
14:48for two black guys.
14:50This is a spectacular team!
14:52But you could tell the difference
14:54going from the good old boys era
14:56to the Eric Bischoff era
14:58just by the way he tried to create something.
15:01I was hired as the executive producer.
15:03My responsibility was solely the look and feel of the show.
15:07Saturday night!
15:09The biggest challenge that we had
15:11was the fact that we couldn't attract an audience.
15:13It looked horrible because you had to turn the lights down
15:16to hide the fact that nobody was there.
15:18How do we fix that?
15:20That's when I decided I was going to shoot the shows
15:22down at the Disney MGM Studios.
15:24They had sound stages
15:26so I could control the look of the environment.
15:29And I had a fresh audience coming through five times a day
15:32so I could shoot five or six shows
15:34with a fresh audience each and every time.
15:36Spin them up! Lights, camera, action!
15:39I think Eric Bischoff really wanted to
15:42take WCW away from being a southern wrestling company.
15:46You could see the difference.
15:48You could feel it.
15:50In 94, I ascended from executive producer to vice president
15:55and at that time, nobody thought WCW
15:58would ever be competitive with WWF.
16:02I needed people to take WCW seriously.
16:06I needed Hulk Hogan.
16:10Hulk Hogan!
16:13I don't think we'd be here if there was no Hulk Hogan.
16:17In the 1980s, Hulk Hogan is the patriotic, ultra-good guy.
16:22He's coming out waving an American flag,
16:24fighting off these evil foreigners.
16:26Hulk's not tearing us to pieces!
16:28He was the one who broke professional wrestling wide open.
16:32Commercials, cartoons, kids loved him.
16:36Everybody knew Hulk Hogan.
16:38Whether you're a professional wrestling fan or not, you knew the name.
16:42Eating your vitamins, saying your prayers.
16:44Say your prayers, eat your vitamins!
16:46Ric Flair's the greatest wrestler of all time,
16:50but the guy that was on Sports Illustrated, he's the guy.
16:54He is truly a real American.
16:58Coincidentally, while we were shooting WCW at the Disney-MGM studios,
17:02Hulk Hogan was down at Disney shooting a new series called Thunder in Paradise.
17:07Now Hulk had been out of wrestling for some time because of the steroid trial.
17:12He's like a good role model.
17:14He just did whatever it took to get big, like he took those steroid pills.
17:21And I thought, why not at least try to get a meeting?
17:24But he didn't know who I was, so I went to Ric Flair.
17:27Hello!
17:28I said, Ric, do you think you can set up a call or meeting between Hulk and I?
17:34One night I was sound asleep and the phone rings and I pick up the phone and it's,
17:37Hey brother!
17:38Whoa!
17:39Wake up!
17:40It was Hulk.
17:42Welcome Hulk Hogan!
17:45Being able to work with Hulk Hogan, being on the same roster as Hulk Hogan,
17:50elevated everybody's career and it had immediate impact.
17:53All of a sudden people were returning phone calls much faster.
17:57It's all perception.
17:58That's why we're here today.
18:00For a match between two of wrestling's biggest superstars, Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair.
18:05So Hulk's original deal included four pay-per-views a year and he had creative control.
18:11Essentially it means that he gets a thumbs up or thumbs down as to whether or not he wants to do it.
18:19WCW is about to dominate the globe in professional wrestling.
18:23Talent began to get a little confident that this Turner guy over here is starting to get serious.
18:29Dad always loves competition.
18:31So you get a Vince McMahon who says, Oh this is my territory.
18:35There's going to be problems.
18:38Keep in mind, at that point, I had never had a one-on-one meeting with Ted Turner.
18:44And I walked into the meeting, my boss Harvey Shuler was already sitting there.
18:49Scott Sassa, the heir apparent to Ted Turner at the time.
18:53He was in the room.
18:55So I sat down and immediately, Eric, let me ask you a question.
19:01I can't do a good Ted Turner impersonation.
19:03Oh, Eric, what's it going to take for WCW to be competitive with WWE?
19:12In what seemed like 20 minutes, it was maybe milliseconds.
19:16But it was like watching your life pass before you right before the train hits you.
19:20I don't know what the answer is.
19:22What are my options?
19:23I can't bullshit Ted Turner.
19:24I can't go through that so fast.
19:25Tell the truth.
19:26Truth usually works.
19:27So I'm just going to tell him the truth.
19:29So I said, Ted, they're on primetime.
19:33Monday night, coast to coast.
19:36We're 6 o'clock Eastern, 3 o'clock Pacific on a Saturday.
19:42We can't be competitive with that.
19:45Ted looks over to Scott Sassa and says, Oh, Scott.
19:49Give Eric two hours every Monday night.
19:51Head to head.
19:52WWE.
19:53I thought, how am I going to do this?
19:56And I walked out of Ted's office like myself in my room.
20:00Sat there with a yellow legal pad and said, start thinking of ways.
20:06So at this time, you know, Monday Night Raw was the primary show for the WWF.
20:11And the WWF was at that time the first company to have that primetime show on Mondays.
20:16Welcome to Monday Night Raw.
20:20When Ted said, you know, I want to move WCW to TNT.
20:25It was like, what are you kidding me?
20:28I've been killing myself to build this brand that we were known as the premium network on basic cable.
20:34When I tried to fight Ted on it, I lost that battle.
20:37How can I be better than the WWF?
20:41I can't.
20:43Their production was much better.
20:44The storytelling, it was cleaner, easy to follow and built everything to feel larger than life.
20:51WCW always looked like it was trying to catch up to the wheel that just fell off.
20:58But if I can give people a reason to watch me instead of them, I got a shot.
21:05The one vulnerability was that they were taped every other week.
21:09We should be live.
21:10I went to Brad Siegel and said, I want to do this live every week.
21:13We were so competitive with USA Network.
21:16If we go up against them, we're going to hurt their highest rated show, Raw, on Monday night.
21:22It would be the way that we could win as the number one basic cable network.
21:27He said, we've got a block of action programming called Nitro.
21:31Why don't we thematically keep it the same?
21:34We'll call the show Nitro.
21:36Hell yeah.
21:37WCW Monday Nitro.
21:40But we could not give tickets away.
21:42Keep in mind, this is the first Nitro.
21:44Nobody's ever heard of it before.
21:46Well, if I can't put it in an arena where it's going to look cool, what about Mall of America?
21:52Mall of America at the time was like a big damn deal.
21:55The bargains are coming. The bargains are coming.
21:57Back then, Mall of America was kind of a destination.
22:00Still, the largest mall in the United States.
22:02Just about big enough to hold WCW and its debut broadcast of Monday Nitro.
22:08My hope was that I'd get enough people that were walking by the mall that would stop long enough and watch
22:14that I could get kind of a couple beauty shots, and it worked great.
22:18It looked like a really cool fight club for yuppies.
22:24If you want surprises, this is where you come.
22:27Because our show is live, and you never know who's going to show up.
22:32Lex Luger. Everybody thought that Lex was under contract.
22:36He had just been in WWE the night before.
22:38WWE had no idea.
22:41And it set the tone for Nitro.
22:43When I came there, Eric was testing the waters.
22:46I am Medusa.
22:48I was WWF's champion. I'm like, I got an idea.
22:51And that's what I think of the WWF Women's Championship belt.
22:55That shock value is what we really needed to get the attention.
22:58That's the magic of live.
23:01That's what will make us competitive.
23:14In this country, we love to build people up.
23:20We love to tear them down.
23:23And then we love them to rise from the ashes again.
23:25We weren't seeing the gains in terms of ratings that we had anticipated.
23:30We had kind of leveled out.
23:32Hulk could sense, I think, that the Hulk Hogan character, it was losing steam.
23:37They are taking him apart.
23:39The audience still reacted to it, but not the same way.
23:43I saw the hair boost.
23:45Hulk Hogan making his way to the ring.
23:48The 80s were done.
23:50I needed to change the perception of Hulk Hogan forever.
23:53What have you done?
23:55Hulk Hogan has betrayed WCW.
24:02Randy, what's going on here?
24:04May 27th of 1996, Scott Hall debuted on WCW television.
24:10You people, you know who I am.
24:14Scott Hall worked and performed for WWF as Razor Ramon.
24:18But you don't know why I'm here.
24:24Kevin Nash shows up.
24:26Everybody knew they were WWF guys.
24:30Oh my God, no, no, turn over now.
24:33Razor Ramon and Diesel are on Nitro.
24:36Are they the WWF?
24:38You want a war? We are taking over.
24:42They were bad guys that were like invading the company.
24:45This is different. This is something that we have never seen in professional wrestling.
24:49By not dissuading people, that's what created the perception that perhaps this was an invasion.
24:57But of course it wasn't.
24:59They didn't want to renew their contracts with WWE.
25:02I'm thinking, I need a reality storyline.
25:05Admittedly now, you know, enough time has gone by.
25:08I admittedly allowed them to think that they were showing up on behalf of WWE.
25:14Do you work for the WWF?
25:17No.
25:19I alluded to a third man.
25:21You tell billionaire Ted to break out the money and get anybody he can.
25:27Because the big man and the medium sized man and our surprise buddy are going to carve them up.
25:37Big surprise coming in. Who's the third man?
25:41All while that's going on in television, Hulk Hogan's in California doing a movie called Santa with Muscles.
25:46Keep the milk and cookies warm.
25:47Classic.
25:49I get a phone call from Hulk.
25:51Any way I can get you to come out, I want to talk to you about creative.
25:54Got to his trailer, he's waiting for me.
25:56He says, it's your brother.
25:58Who's the third man?
26:01I already spent two weeks convincing Sting to turn heel and be the third man.
26:06I didn't want to tell Hulk.
26:08But I didn't want to lie to him either.
26:10Who do you think it should be?
26:12You're looking at him, brother.
26:14Oh, wow.
26:15World Championship Wrestling presents The Bearish and The Beach.
26:21I didn't want him to come to the building until the very last minute.
26:24I talked to Kevin Sullivan about the best way to try to achieve that.
26:28Kevin Sullivan sequestered Hulk in Daytona Beach.
26:33He had to babysit him for like a whole night because he was afraid that Hogan might not show up as a mystery third man.
26:40There were a lot of risks to Hulk turning heel.
26:42You have to put yourself in his shoes.
26:43Hulk is a very loyal guy, and he was carrying a lot of people.
26:50If he lost his endorsements, if he lost the movies, maybe their pocketbook would be hurt.
27:00I knew that there was a chance with people around Hulk, he could possibly second guess himself.
27:05We don't know yet who the third man is.
27:07We didn't leave my house until the first match started.
27:11I didn't want anybody to get to him.
27:16Hulk shows up at the building, and I still don't know at this point where his head is at, because we hadn't talked all day.
27:23Lex Luger, The Macho Man, Randy Savage, and Sting will represent WCW to meet these outsiders.
27:31When Hogan came down the ramp, I still wasn't 100% sure.
27:36Hulk Hogan is here! Hulk Hogan's here!
27:39Hulk comes down, we clear out, he hits the rope, drops the leg.
27:46What is he doing? Is he the third man?
27:50The production truck erupted with elation for what just went down and how the crowd reacted to it.
27:57It was a roar like we hadn't heard before.
28:01And it got louder and angrier, and it was building.
28:05They were pissed, really pissed.
28:08What do we got here? We got a fan coming in. He's a hero.
28:11And now the hero's standing in the middle of the ring that was filling up with garbage, telling every one of those fans he was only in it for the money.
28:18It would be like Babe Ruth telling all the fans who had followed him for years and years and years to stick their support right up their ass.
28:25All this crap in the ring represents these fans out here.
28:30It was the biggest turn in the history of wrestling, saved his career.
28:36And then it becomes the three guys with Hulk. Now it's like, who are they?
28:41You can call this the New World Order of Wrestling, brother.
28:47I didn't know what the NWO was about to become.
28:50NWO, take one.
28:52NWO, the thing that really broke everything, what was happening.
28:56And pop culture, they were representing it with their spin on it. It was like street.
29:02We can't have them have any association with WCW whatsoever.
29:06This is our show! We're doing it our way!
29:10Those small elements, the way we shot the NWO interviews, we shot them black and white.
29:16Black and white? Why you do them black and white? Trust me, black and white will be cool.
29:20Not only was it pretty f***ing cool, but also disrespectful.
29:23Not only was it pretty f***ing cool, but also disruptive.
29:27And those guys were the right talent to pull it off.
29:30They did whatever the f*** they wanted to do.
29:33Didn't care whether you cheered them or you booed them.
29:37Zero f***ing to give.
29:42Those guys really set the world on fire.
29:46My son came home from school and asked me if I could bring him four or five NWO shirts
29:50so he could take them to school the next day. And I said, why?
29:54He said, all my friends want them. Well, absolutely!
29:58That's what we began to see emerging with Eric's vision of what the NWO was.
30:03They were bad, but they were cool.
30:05To this day, there's still NWO shirts. I don't see any other shirts from WCW.
30:10The fans were so intoxicated with NWO. It made everything bigger.
30:17And when something gets too big too fast, shit's gonna hit the fan at some point.
30:22And then it did.
30:34You go back and you look at Nitro ratings from the premiere episode
30:38all the way up until the NWO was revealed.
30:41We were doing fine. We'd win a week or two.
30:44WWE would win a week or two. We were essentially even until the NWO.
30:50Legitimately, the NWO was responsible for 80% of our growth.
30:58And I thought, okay, I've got to find a way to maintain the reality.
31:03Something that the audience can't tell whether it's real or whether it's not.
31:07Worst thing you can do on earth in professional wrestling is have a backstage fight.
31:14Everybody that throws a punch backstage goes, ah, ooh, ah. It's so bad.
31:25We want to make the back look completely real, not a wrestling program.
31:32Neil Pruitt came up with the idea of the production people helping.
31:38Up until that time, I never had gone to a producer and said, what kind of shot?
31:43But I went to him.
31:49There was that one night we were in Orlando at the Disney tapings.
31:55We wanted to make it look like NWO just came and wreaked havoc
31:59and took over.
32:06We were inspired a bit by Hill Street Blues as far as the way you move throughout a scene with one camera.
32:13We were all about making it work, making what looked like reality happen.
32:21They're coming around the corner.
32:26And we had baseball bats.
32:30But all the carnage is already taking place.
32:34And it's the old Hitchcock.
32:36You see the knife and then you see the blood.
32:39You let the mind create the violence.
32:44They were picking up props. They were nailing them.
32:48They all worked their asses off to make it look as believable as it could.
32:52And I don't know if it was planned in advance. Only Kevin Nash or Ray Mysterio could tell you that.
32:56Nash picked up Ray Mysterio and threw him against the trailer like a lawn dart.
33:01Whap!
33:03We're going to have Kevin Nash standing there.
33:05And they're going to have Ray Mysterio Jr. jump on him.
33:08There's Ray Mysterio.
33:10Racist, do you think you can throw me through that window?
33:14No, dude.
33:16It's a window.
33:18You'll die.
33:20Let me just throw you off the trailer.
33:21Hey! Head first!
33:24So we were doing things that nobody had ever seen.
33:27It looked like a giant crime scene.
33:30It creates emotion in the audience.
33:32Please somebody help him!
33:34And they forget that they're watching professional wrestling.
33:37We're going to try to get this all back together and we'll be back.
33:41WCW really started to leave their competition in the dust and that was the vaunted 83-week winning streak.
33:48We were pro-wrestling.
33:51And they were playing catch-up for the first time.
33:54I remember when that happened.
33:56I remember thinking, we should do more shit like that.
33:59That freedom, we did not have.
34:03And to see the company not only compete with the WWE, but knock them on their ass for 83 weeks.
34:11Like, straight weeks.
34:13Wow.
34:14It is the number one professional wrestling program around the world.
34:19Once those ratings started, there was no stopping him.
34:22I think the war with WWF was personal with Eric.
34:25He was always chasing ratings.
34:27Eric cared more about ratings than advertising dollars.
34:30This is a television company.
34:32And we're going to run WCW like a television company.
34:36It was this maniacal desire to be number one and to beat WWE.
34:42To be number one and to beat WWF.
34:45There was a competitive pressure that I put on myself.
34:49So Vince McMahon, this is for you.
34:51And I said something like, I'm not going to stop until I drive a stake through the heart of Vince.
34:58Hey, McMahon.
35:00I may have gone a little over the top.
35:07Back up, 1996.
35:10I keep hearing how Vince McMahon plans his stuff out a year in advance.
35:15He knows what he's going to have in next year's WrestleMania 10 months before it happens.
35:20Why can't we do that?
35:22And I saw Sting as the opportunity to do that.
35:28One night, Scott Hall started explaining this idea that he had for a new version of the Sting character.
35:34Based on the Brandon Lee character in the movie The Crow.
35:36And he goes, you're the scary Sting.
35:39And I looked over at Sting and his eyes were like this big.
35:42The Sting Crow character was born.
35:45That's Sting.
35:47So he went up in the rafters that built the anticipation that was needed to really put that character over.
35:52That started what became an 18 month story.
35:55Oh my!
35:57And he started showing up and scaring the hell out of everybody in the NWO.
36:02Sting would finally confront Hogan.
36:04They'd have the match for control of WCW.
36:09It was something really that had not been done to this degree before in the history of wrestling.
36:13Which was making the decision that we're actually not going to pay this off next week or next month.
36:18But we're going to keep this going until the end of the year in our Starrcade pay-per-view.
36:30Sting is going to beat Hogan clean.
36:32WCW is going to come out on top.
36:34Then it's going to be up to NWO to kind of rebuild from the ground up.
36:38That was the plan.
36:40Sting has returned to the wrestling ring to reclaim WCW's title from the NWO.
36:47The original finish, it got convoluted and compromised throughout the day.
36:52There was supposed to be the big boot by Hogan.
36:56The leg drop on Sting.
36:58The cover.
36:59But the referee's supposed to do a fast count.
37:02It wasn't a fast count.
37:04But Bret Hart came in, restarted the match with himself as the referee.
37:10Well, even the idea, the referee and the fast count and the whole thing.
37:14Everyone, they gave it to me.
37:16It was like, really?
37:18Like, that is the lamest ending.
37:20Bret Hart is here tonight as the referee.
37:22Is that right? Is that correct?
37:24It's an awful, stupid and very convoluted ending for the match.
37:30But I remember Eric Bischoff insisting on how it was going to be fantastic.
37:37And the crowd reacted the way you wanted them to react initially.
37:42Yay, Sting finally won.
37:44Heavyweight champion of the world, Sting!
37:50It wasn't until afterwards that people started to realize what a convoluted finish it was.
37:57In our business, you can screw up the whole match.
38:01Do not f*** up the finish.
38:04Then all hell broke loose.
38:07Back in the internet world, all of the purveyors of truth out there,
38:12they all of a sudden became so obsessed over the finish of Starrcade 97.
38:17What really happened between Sting and Hogan?
38:21Why did it happen? How did you let that happen?
38:24I still get heat for that.
38:26Bischoff had kind of hitched his wagon to Hogan.
38:29He kind of listened to what he said more than the other guys.
38:32On the day of the Sting-Hogan match,
38:35it was apparent to both Hulk and I that Sting didn't appear to be nearly as excited
38:43about the opportunity that we'd been working on for 18 months.
38:46There was something about him that day that was off.
38:50Sting left the room, and Hulk and I kind of looked at each other,
38:54and I said, what are you thinking?
38:56He goes, not today, brother. Not today. His head's not right.
39:01Hulk just wasn't feeling it.
39:04So we changed the finish, or lack thereof of a clean finish,
39:07because Hulk Hogan has creative control.
39:10He had creative control. He didn't give two shits.
39:12He'd walk in at 7.30, read the TV, and say, doesn't work for me, brother.
39:17He has free right to pretty much do whatever he wants.
39:21He has no interest in that company other than himself.
39:24That right there can really start turning things a certain way.
39:28I think the only guy that was not political was Sting.
39:33Sting didn't seem to be part of that group.
39:36I think Sting had been convinced that Hulk was going to pull the rug out
39:40from underneath him at the last minute.
39:43He walked into that meeting expecting it, and actually manifested it.
39:49When guys got those kind of agendas, thinking about themselves, that's what happens.
39:54And that's pretty much when the ship started to go down.
39:58StarKid97, Hogan and Sting is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.
40:03We had the audience in the palm of our hands.
40:07But unfortunately, the end didn't live up to the rest of the story.
40:13And certainly wasn't what the fans wanted.
40:16You'll find people who think that was the reason WCW kind of went downhill.
40:21I think that's what happened.
40:23You'll find people who think that was the reason WCW kind of went downhill.
40:28Whatever, wrestling fans.
40:34The WWF had really established a strong creative foundation throughout 97.
40:39If you go back and look at the numbers, you can start to see that gap getting ever closer.
40:43Vince McMahon went on camera and said,
40:45we're going to change the way we do things,
40:47we're not going to insult the audience's intelligence.
40:49The World Wrestling Federation has been an entertainment mainstay
40:51here in North America and all over the world.
40:54As the times have changed, so have we.
40:57I'm happy to say that this new, vibrant, creative direction
41:00has resulted in a huge increase in television viewership.
41:03He's saying, we're going to do what those other guys are doing
41:06because it's really kicking our ass and it's beginning to hurt.
41:09Vince brings Mike Tyson into WrestleMania
41:13knowing that anything that Tyson does, it's a million dollars.
41:19Oh my God!
41:21Tyson! Tyson!
41:23The next night I saw Kevin, the first thing I said to Kev was,
41:27you feel the water? It's getting cold.
41:31In other words, we're on our way to the iceberg.
41:35Me and Disco Inferno, we thought The Rock was cool.
41:39And we thought Steve Austin was cool.
41:42And me and Disco were always in the back watching them, you know, backstage
41:45and we would get heat. Why are you watching the show?
41:48Because it's better than ours.
41:50You know, at that time, I really did not give a f***.
41:53Bischoff, he remembers the big crowds and he was the kingpin.
41:57But the truth of it is, he never knew anything about wrestling.
42:01And then towards the end, basically, he was just yessing to Hogan.
42:05It was a disaster.
42:07Hogan was the bigger talent.
42:09Hogan was the guy that he was going to go with, no matter what.
42:14That's the bond right there, Hogan and Bischoff.
42:17They're both accountable to each other.
42:20That's the secret, is that Hulk Hogan was basically the puppet master to Eric Bischoff.
42:27And Eric Bischoff, he was just a prop.
42:31And that's what killed WCW.
42:34Everything looks easier from the outside.
42:37But once you get inside, you realize just how complicated and nuanced
42:40some things that appear to be so easy and so simple really are.
42:46Who's responsible for killing WCW?
42:49Just look at some of the names who are floating around at the highest levels with internal broadcasting.
42:54They wanted WCW to go away.
42:57They got their wish.
43:05You're leading a night and now you're not leading a night.
43:08There's reason for concern.
43:11We hit a small brick wall.
43:13The wheels started falling off creatively.
43:16What the f*** is this?
43:18WWE's answer was attitude.
43:21They were willing to go further creatively.
43:24That's exactly what we're going to do to kill you off.
43:28Why are we doing this? Is this classy enough for our networks?
43:31That pissed me off.
43:33They started to handcuff us with standards and practice.
43:36You say butt on TBS.
43:38I'm convinced that wasn't an orchestrated hit job.
43:42I don't think that's debatable.
43:44There are too many conspiracies behind the scenes trying to knock him off.
43:47Once you have the monkeys running the zoo, you're in trouble.
43:51The blood was in the water and the sharks will come to get it.
43:54That's the name of the game.
43:57People will try to manipulate.
43:59And who prevented it?