Finally, a lengthy, drawn out and exhaustive study on the downfall of WCW. I can't believe no one has thought to do this before

If only sting showed up to starrcade 97 with a tan and a good attitude....

According to Hogan, he warned Russo about turning Goldberg heel during their trip with Ted Turner to colorize the moon

This is where Dave actually excels these days. Absolutely tremendous deep dive of the time period. More of this please.

I wonder if Bryan turns down the volume until dave stops talking lol

Dave talked so long, I actually forgot Bryan was part of this at the beginning.

Following Dave trying to make a point is like trying to follow 1999 wcw storylines

I heard Wheeler Yuta killed WCW

This isn't a defense of Russo or his ideas. But even Cornette has said people deserve more blame for WCW's demise than Russo. He didn't arrive until late 1999. By that point, WCW's popularity was already in a nosedive. Russo in WCW feels more like a doctor who tried something incredibly risky while operating on a patient, botched it horribly and killed the patient -- who was a 95-year-old man with a series of other health issues unrelated to what was being operated on. WCW might have been savable when he arrived but it was already in a deep hole, which is why they were trying to hire him in the first place.

One of the things that I don't think Eric gets enough credit for is for how great (for the most part) WCW's TV production looked in the Nitro era. Prior to that there was a huge gap between them and WWF. WWF was still better, but WCW significantly closed the gap to the point where I actually preferred the way their product looked at the time.

Dave went a solid 10 minutes without taking a breath… It’s impressive, really. I wish I was as full of hot air as he is.

Dave literally talked for about 20 minutes straight to himself without taking a breath 😂

I can easily believe that Eric knew nothing about WCW before he worked there and didn't hear about it at all u til he was working in wrestling. That lines up with how everyone descrbes him.

It was rikishi...he did it for the Rock

WCW was killed by a lot of different factors that all played a part in it's demise. The biggest one was the fact that it was losing money. Ted Turner was a wrestling fan and did not mind spending the money, but when different people were in charge that were looking at it from a business perspective and were not emotionally invested in professional wrestling, the losses were unacceptable. The creative control clauses that prevented them from building new stars were another factor. Russo was another nail in the coffin. Biscoff relying too much on the NWO was another, as he himself has admitted. Bischoff getting burnt out was another. Much like the situation with AEW and WWE today, WCW began to cool right at that same time that WWE got hot. There were a lot of things going on at the same time that were just too much to overcome.

Are the claims wilder than Meltzer giving Ospreay Roddy 4.75 or Mercedes and Willow 4.5?

CM Punk killed WCW

Is it me or is Dave looking more and more like Count Chocula?

Bryan, I'll argue that Bischoff could be correct in his "never heard of WCW" position. First, this was at the tail end of the territory days, before the internet. So watching other territories or promotions would rely on tape trading or cable/.satellite. Plus, prior to Ted Turner buying out Jim Crockett Promotions, World Championship Wrestling (WCW) was the name of the show as it was the NWA that was promoted. When Turner purchased the promotion it was rebranded as WCW and they broke away from the National Wrestling Alliance. So, had he heard of WCW the promotion? Probably not... he would have viewed it as the NWA.

I think it’s an interesting tidbit to consider that WCW on TBS actually was competitive with the WWF in the ratings at one point prior to wrestling being on Monday night.

Damn Dave, take a breath and let Bryan talk once in awhile. These videos are like Ultimate Warrior in WCW level stream of consciousness now... rambling on and on and on...

people lying on the doc. lol grass is green i cant wait to see the lies.

Imagine saying "it's not worth the losses' back then and now realizing how much the WCW back catalog would be worth today for streaming rights...I bet TNT regrets that especially since now they got back in bed with wrestling in 2019 lol

Eric likely meant he knew NWA but maybe hadn't heard they became WCW at that time, it would have been real early on.

OK guys let's timeline here could we. Eric Bischoff grew up in Minneapolis so he only saw AWA. Then he worked for AWA until it closed which was in 1990. Bischoff was hired in 1991 by WCW. In 1989 Jim Crockett Promotions was bought by Ted Turner and renamed WCW in late 89/early 1990 but everybody still pretty much called them NWA. So you're telling me that Bischoff is lying when he is saying that he never heard of WCW while he was working for a dying promotion and WCW was just becoming WCW at the time? Guys, you're wrestling historians right, it shouldn't be that hard to put together a timeline.

It was me. Sorry everyone.

Dave is the only guy in history who can speak for 15 minutes straight and say nothing at all.

For someone who cares so greatly, and examines the EXACT WORDING of everything - Dave sure has a bunch of examples of leaving things out to tell a story

Dave only touched on it. AOL TIME WARNER post merger was embarrassed having low brow pro wrestling on its programming. Ted Turner was the soul power keeping WCW alive in the lean years. Once Ted lost power in his own company there was no one to protect it from the coorporate world. They simply handcuffed creative and waited til it started to lose money, they did. AOL dumped it. Jaimie Kilner called his college buddy Jerry McDevitt and sold it to Vince.

I like how meltzer isn’t giving Bischoff the benefit of doubt meanwhile how many lies has meltzer been caught in? No sides picked here, simply asking a theoretical question here that is more of a statement that one is gonna claim the other lies yet meltzer has been known to bend the truth as well.

Is this Dave being upset he wasn’t invited to play on the new show?

Hulk hogans cteative control killed it. Started in starrcade 97 against sting to the finger poke of doom

Cue the 40 minute rebuttal from Bischoff in 3, 2, 1…

I’m just here to complain

I imagine Bryan just goes to have a lie down when Dave starts talking. Dude just rambles and rambles. Imagine trying to have a conversation with the guy

Jesus Christ, Dave, it was the first 15 minutes. It’s a four-part series; you’re already giving it a review. You guys are still making yourselves look bad.

Whoa! We’re finally going to find out how WCW died.

Eric Bischoff is very critical of Tony Khan because he WAS Tony Khan.

Jamie Kellner Killed WCW. I look forward to see if this show changes my mind.

Dave continues to talk A LOT without really saying anything at all.

So called experts on KZfaq that are criticizing and advising Tony khan how to book a Wrestling show and run a billion dollar company

Can’t wait for the documentary about the downfall of AEW. Tony Khan will make the ghost of Herb Abrams

Geezus Dave needs someone to bring him back on track every 20 seconds.

Do these geniuses not know the timeline? Bischoff went to work for WCW a year or two after it came into existence. The company had existed for decades under other names, but it had only recently become WCW when he went to work there. In the pre internet days, it is entirely possible that he could have never heard of WCW at that point. Just a couple of days ago on his podcast, Bischoff said that he got into wrestling on a fluke. He was not a wrestling fan, and knew nothing about wrestling before getting into the business.

Guessing there’s some saltiness that there wasn’t an invitation to participate in the documentary?

Meltzer judging honesty is hilarious. Time Warner killed WCW.

Eric loves changing history, doesn't he?

wcw didnt exist until around 89-90 correct? So maybe Bischoff meant he still knew as the nwa, not wcw?

Bischoff lied about the Starrcade main-event finish. If you listen to Bischoff's podcast when he invited former referee, Nick Patrick to join the chat, Nick claimed Bischoff told him to do a normal count. Bischoff acted as he doesn't remember what he told Nick. Nick also claimed 2 guys: Hogan and Sting approached to him, Sting telling Nick to do a fast count, while Hogan told Nick to do a slow count. So if the finish was supposed to be a fast count, why did Bischoff and Hogan told Nick to do a normal and slow count? Normal and slow count are the same. So why were Sting and Bret were told it's a fast count? It doesn't make sense. That means Hogan and Bischoff sabotaged the main-event match. If you watch the match, it was a designed to bury Sting. Hogan was dominating Sting throughout the whole match that Sting barely get any offense. The match was a mess due to miscommunication.

I listen to Eric's podcast quite often and a lot of what he says is total BS. Anytime they ask him about something that happened in WCW he wasn't part of the bad stuff none of the contracts story lines. It's just hard to believe anything anyone says after you know they're lying

Why is Bryan always so fucking smug about everything he talks about. Does he order dinner in the same tone? Crissakes dude.

" You can lie a lot in fifteen minutes." I don't know why i found that so funny.

I loved Big Josh. That was the first time I ever saw Matt Borne. I loved the character as a kid, and I was sad when he left. I got excited as hell when I recognized him as Doink. Borne was super talented.

I think we all know that what REALLY killed WCW was HHH invading Nitro in that tank.

Yes Eric Bichoff knew nothing about WCW before he was hired.He sold himself on a lie that he was competent and had knowledge.He never even bought a wrestling magazine in the early 90's to learn about the business.

I think Dave misunderstood what Bischoff said about Ted Turner. I watch 83 Weeks all the time, and Bischoff has said many times that he genuinely loves and respects Ted Turner, and has said that Turner was the only reason WCW survived as long as it did. A negative comment about Ted Turner is actually the source of the feud between Bischoff and Tony Khan. If Turner ever went to Bischoff and told him he had to turn a profit, it would have been during the time that Turner was being ousted from his company. Bischoff has said several times that Turner essentially gave him a blank check and told him to do whatever he needed to do to make WCW the number one company.

if you look at WCW, DCEU, HBO Max, AOL, Cartoon Network...Warner Bros killed those things

Dave it’s 2024 why do i still hold a microphone. Looks so small time.

Dave,you defend AEW to the death!!

Not hearing of WCW isn’t impossible when nearly everyone referred to it as the NWA until Bischoff was there

We have to assume what Dave says but cannot assume what others wanted to say

Dave is gonna have a hand in the death of AEW

It was a LOT of things that killed WCW, but if you had to narrow it down to 1 individual it would have to be Bischoff. He basically transferred WWF's ratings to WCW by buying all their talent then got really lucky with the nWo angle. That's about it. They lived off that for about a year and a half and then didn't have anything to push them forward. There are things WCW wasn't allowed to do which brought WWF back, such as making it a more adult show. Turner wanted WCW to remain G rated, but there were plenty of things WCW could hae done better. One major thing was the production. WWF's production improved 10 fold overnight. The new set, the loud music, the pyro, making sure each wrestler's theme had that first beat tat immediately let you know who was coming out - having backstage bumpers for every match, the speed of the show. It was far ahead of what they had been doing - and what WCW was doing. WW eventually got a new Nitro set and logo (the infamous Star Trek logo) which was a complete disaster. WWF had the massive video screen and ramp leading down so you could see the wrestlers. WCW just made a giant spaceship in the background. WCW also had the problem of putting too many random matches on Nitro. Do we really need a Silver King vs Disco inferno match? They even did it on PPVs. You'd have 3-4 matches that kind of mattered during a 3 hour show. They always looked like they'd matter, but because no one in the company wanted to do a job, every match had to end in interference.

Why is this guys eyes black, it's so creepy.

I love when dave goes deep into wrestling history. Especially WCW.

Dave: we got fifteen minutes. Wanna talk about it without knowing the context?

Listening to Meltzer is like Listening to a pre recorded piece of audio

It's pretty cool how all the wrestlers & bookers all blame eachother based on personal grievance and the one Turner executive they interviewed was straight-up like 'we always wanted to get rid of wrestling and we never understood why Ted wanted it so bad'

I think what helped wrestling revive after 92-95, is that the people who were 10 in 1985 when Hogan was starting to be in his good guy prime were 20 by 1995/96, and probably flipped through, got nostalgic and stopped juuust long enough to see Hulk Hogan has gone bad and is assaulting people with bats and spraypainting world titles. Wcw took their childhood and grew it up for them to enjoy as adults, at a time where every golden era wwf kid was wanting to branch out into adulthood. Before then, wwf and wcw were stuck in their heyday mindset, still doing goofy colorful stuff even after Kurt Cobain came along and shot himself. Wwf was still doing goofy stuff even when the Crow and Pulp Fiction were in theatres. The combo of ECW and nWo era wcw got the young fans to come back cuz it finally grew up for them. At least to where they were (the more crass stuff at the time worked cuz that was also the age the younger fans had grown to, so that was where our interests were at that time as well).

Who killed AEW will be so much easier to make. "Tony".

This is going to be a newsworthy & definite version on the rise and fall of #WCW even with the "true" WWE Network documentary of the Monday Night War between #WCW & #WWE!

"What did you think of the show?" Dave: (proceeds to start at the very beginning of pro wrestling history)

Dave, this is a 4 part documentary, you said you watch 15 minutes of it, so how can you say all of this when you have barely seen 10% of the whole story.

“Match quality standpoint” isn’t a business metric, Dave!! Hilarious shit.

The irony in this is Alvarez is speaking to the person that "Killed AEW." 😑👈

I hate how Dave talks as if he was there in these meetings between Eric and Ted 😂 bro get real

This was super interesting to hear from Meltzer about those final months of the company and Eric's play to buy it. I may subscribe this month just to hear Dave's breakdowns of each episode.

"You can lie a lot in 15 minutes." Dave would know.

The first episode had good production values, I didnt learn anything but it was fun.

Hogan vs Goldberg on free TV is what killed it

What I think killed WCW was raunchy wrestling known as the Attitude Era.

Dave pointing out anyone isn’t being completely truthful is… well… “hi, pot. I’m kettle. You’re black!”

We love to rag on Dave on a daily basis, but cant argue that hes one of the best historians of the industry

Maybe it was false hustle and Bischoff knew the tv deal was gone so he was just getting scrutiny off himself for it folding or he wanted to flip it to Vince Mcmahon directly but didn't need to once they were off tv.

Sure Bischoff may not have heard of WCW. He wasn't a wrestling guy and only did interviews for them because the regular guy got s DUI arrest while Bischoff was doing sales for the AWA.

The content actually wasn't 'that' different between WWF and WCW in the 2000s.

This is just a perfect “one quick thing” from Dave. 10/10

Eric Bishoff killed WCW

of course, Dwayne Johnson had to crowbar himself into this documentary...he had NOTHING to do with WCW EVER!

Dave lost touch long ago....now hes just losing his mind all together

Dave just let yourself go grey already.

I know everybody on the Conrad podcasts shit on Dave but dude knows his stuff.

Listening to Dave talk about rights fees and turner broadcasting getting a cut of the pay-per-view revenue sounds awfully familiar 🤔. It's funny how Bischoff was the man in the same boat as Tony and he ended up negotiating rights fees that weren't even in play for them to begin with. Made WCW profitable and gets no real respect from Dave. Yes he acknowledges his contributions but he makes it seam so minuscule.

I wish I had the gift of gab like D.M.

Meltzer. What a snooze 😴

Thunder killed it. Even the worst nitro was must see tv. Thunder created a "B show" environment and instead of destination television it became an over exposed mess. My cable station, which had tnt.. .didn't even get tbs until the middle of 99, so as an avid wcw fan I felt left out.

All those old territories were so competitive, that they are all out of bus huh

Dave trying to shame someone for misspeaking continuously misspeaks and corrects himself

I don't understand the logic of WCW not being worth anything without the TV deal. The tape library alone pays for itself long term and it's not like there weren't other networks out there. Even if they had to take a bit of time finding a new TV deal they still could have had ppv's to drum up interest as well as run house shows. I guess maybe all of that would be too much work that Eric just didn't want to do.

Dave's pet AEW wish they had a stretch like WCW had at their hottest under Bischoff.