Follow TV Tropes

There are subjectives, and then there are these. While you may believe a work fits here, and you might be right, people tend to have rather vocal, differing opinions about this subject.
Please keep these off of the work's page.

Following

Horrible / WCW

Go To

"If, as the saying goes, an infinite number of monkeys, given an infinite amount of time, could sit at an infinite number of typewriters and eventually write Shakespeare's Hamlet, then two of them, in a half an hour, could book Nitro and Thunder."
DDT Digest on WCW Monday Nitro, May 3, 1999

WCW was once the second-most popular wrestling/sports-entertainment promotion in the United States (and even beat its chief rival, WWE, for a decent stretch of time). When you're that hot, you can do no wrong. But pride comes before a fall, and the sheer amount of terrible angles, nonsensical matches, backstage politics, bad financial decisions, bi-yearly fatalities, and appearances by Vince Russo led to a company worth $500,000,000 and backed by Ted Turner becoming, in a few short years, a hollow shell of a promotion bought by Vince McMahon for just $4,000,000. The rise and fall of WCW was so sudden that Figure Four Weekly and WrestleCrap co-wrote a book about it, The Death of WCW.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Championships 
  • The WCW International World Heavyweight Championship. This "title" was created from the ashes from WCW's ill-fated partnership with the NWA. When they broke up, the current NWA Champion Ric Flair was stripped of the title, but retained the belt since WCW actually owned it. So "WCW International", a completely fictitious subsidiary, was created and Flair was recognized as its "World Champion" (not to be confused with the actual WCW Championship, held at the time by Vader). The whole thing was a mess, and while the International title did have some top-caliber champions (Sting, Flair, Rick Rude), it was mercifully ended in 1994 with WCW World Heavyweight Champion Flair defeating WCW International World Heavyweight Champion Sting to unify the titles.note 
  • The infamous negative-day title reign, where the Fabulous Freebirds lost the WCW World Tag Team Championship to the Steiners six days before they won them from Doom. People watching on TV were none the wiser because the first match aired on syndicated TV a couple weeks after the second one (which was shown live on PPV), but the 500 people or so in attendance for that first match obviously weren't fooled.
  • To promote Ready to Rumble, WCW had actor David Arquette win the WCW World Heavyweight Title in an embarrassing tag-team title match—him and new champion Diamond Dallas Page versus Eric Bischoff and Jeff Jarrett (fun fact: Russo booked this based off a joke suggestion from Tony Schiavone). The match had a contrived stipulation that basically let Arquette win the belt from Page despite not even pinning the legal man. He spent the next two appearances apologizing to DDP, trying to give the belt back and generally acting scared to death that he might actually have to defend it. He kept it for a while, in order to build up to a triple-cage match at Slamboree 2000 (because the movie had one). He turned heel (which Schiavone called "the ultimate swerve!") midway through, and ultimately lost to Jarrett, making the company look like a joke to pop ratings, and tie in with a movie few of the marks even liked. After this match, Kanyon came out to save DDP from a beatdown, only to get tossed off the second tier of the cage onto the entrance ramp. This near-fatal bump could've been on par with any of Mick Foley's best... except it occurred in the final 10 seconds of the show and got zero replays (another fun fact: Russo also booked this—in the same arena Owen Hart died in). Even Arquette, a lifelong wrestling fan, fought against it—he knew it would annoy the fans—but he was contractually obligated. He quietly donated his paychecks to the families of Owen Hart, Brian Pillman, Bobby Duncum Jr., Brian Hildebrand, and Darren "Droz" Drozdov. WrestleCrap presented their very first annual Gooker Award to Arquette's championship run, and Smeghead talks about everything that happened in Part 2 of his Ready to Rumble review.
  • Eric Bischoff himself held the WCW Hardcore Championship at one point. He gave it up a day later, but he defeated Terry Funk to win it in the first place. And in case you're asking, yes, it was inducted into WrestleCrap.
  • Amazingly, we had not yet reached rock bottom as Vince Russo, WCW World Heavyweight Champion (won from Booker T, no less), was soon to follow. Russo gave himself the titlenote  not long after he gave it to David, getting speared through a steel cage wall and winning via "escaping the cage" stipulation (so at least he didn't "beat" Booker and only won by dumb luck). The one good thing better about Russo's title run in comparison to Arquette's was that it was mercifully shorter: Arquette held the belt for 12 days, while Russo only held it for a week. Russo did vacate the title, but still it's worth mentioning that after Goldberg dropped the belt at Starrcade '98 there were 30 title changes in two yearsnote ; Jerry Lawler himself would have to shake his head, because at least he traded titles with people who met at least two qualifications (athletic and over).
    • Just as an example: Russo's friend, Jeff Jarrett, became a four-time WCW World Heavyweight Champion in the span of a month and a half. Ric Flair beats Jarrett (2nd reign) to win the title. One week later, Russo strips Flair of the title and gives it back to Jarrett (3rd reign) on Nitro. Kevin Nash beats Jarrett to win the title on Thunder, the following Monday Nash hands the title to Flair who then turns around and loses it back to Jarrett (4th reign) the same night. The title changed hands five times in 14 days (as for Nash himself, one amusing piece of trivia is that Kevin Nash, wrestling as Diesel, held the WWF title once and the WCW title five times, but his WWF title reign was almost four times longer than his cumulative runs with the WCW beltnote .
  • Of almost equal importance was the fate of the WCW World Television Championship. True, it was secondary silver in the championship hierarchy, but it had an uninterrupted history of over 25 years dating back to the company's NWA days, longer even than the WWE's own Intercontinental Championship title. Aside from that, the title had also served as a heat-building device in allowing heel wrestling champions to escape with it via a time limit draw of either 10 or 15 minutes from within a wrestling match, and its list of champions is a who's who of names that became legends of pro wrestling.note  The title itself was unceremoniously abandoned on November 29, 1999 by Scott Hall, who literally threw it in a dumpsternote  after he decided onscreen that it was not worth defending. Granted, WCW had already reduced its value to that of scrap metal, but few were the people who'd dared to treat their own titles like garbage. It was fished out of the garbage by "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan a few months later, since he defended it a few times on WCW Saturday Night, but the title itself would soon be deactivated following WCW's reboot. A few months before that skit, Chris Benoit was on FAN 590 (original call letters of CJCL, owned by Rogers Media; now titled Sportsnet Radio 590-The FAN) in Toronto and was asked if he thought that there was a conspiracy to destroy the company from within. He said, "It appears that way". When you have a wrestler straight-up calling a long-running title "garbage", no wonder why Benoit thought that.note 

    Pay-Per-Views 
Perhaps part of the reason fans have so much nostalgia for WCW is that a lot of them never bought a single PPV. If they had actually spent money on any of the following PPVs, they'd probably be furious.

  • The Great American Bash '91, which had the entire Baltimore audience switching back and forth between two reactions: sitting on their hands, and chanting "WE WANT FLAIR!" (including during the main event).note  They were protesting Flair's firing just days earlier. Note that kayfabe was far from dead at the time, and Flair was the biggest heel in the company. Flair, meanwhile, would join the WWF, taking the NWA World Heavyweight Championship with him (since he wasn't paid back the $25,000 deposit he put down on the belt when he received it for the first time). Flair kept calling himself the "Real World's Heavyweight Champion" to antagonize then-champ Hulk Hogan...but everyone knew the Take That! was really meant for Jim Herd, who was running WCW at the time. As a result, the main event featured Barry Windham and Lex Luger in a steel cage,note  fighting for Dusty Rhodes' old Pacific Wrestling Federation belt with a plate bolted over that read "WCW WORLD CHAMPION", since the new belt wasn't finished yet. It was capped off with the first of many unnecessary heel turns by Luger.note 
  • Halloween Havoc '91, which followed The Great American Bash, showed that it would still take a while for the company to escape from the fallout from Bash. Most elements that could have been good were marred by minor issues (the "Refer-Eye" cam making the otherwise good Light Heavyweight Title match hard to see, Steve Austin and Dustin Rhodes botching the slightly-too-late-fall spot in the TV Title time limit draw, the Halloween Phantom being obviously Rick Rude and ruining the surprise reveal, etc.). On top of that there were many glorified TV matches on PPV (The Enforcers vs. The Patriots, Big Josh and P.N. News vs. 2 jobbers dressed up as "The Creatures", Jimmy Garvin vs. Johnny B. Badd). Those were at least redeemable in a vacuum; the truly Horrible moments of this show, however, are the following.
    • The much-hyped opener was El Gigante, Sting, Rick and Scott Steiner against Abdullah the Butcher, The Diamond Studd, Cactus Jack and Big Van Vader in a Chamber of Horrors Match. Putting aside the bizarre premise (a steel cage with an electric chair in the middle, the winner is the first to give their foe a High-Voltage Death) the match was poor. In addition to being marred by the "Refer-Eye" cam above, it was basically a structureless, hard-to-follow brawl with almost no tags. At one point, a masked man jumps out of a casket, is wiped out by Hall, and is carried off by crew in zombie costumes, all seemingly for no reason. The lever for the electric chair gets knocked down into the "on" position in front of camera, leading to a referee outside trying to tape it upright. The match ends when Abdullah is electrocuted by Cactus Jacknote  who mistakenly thinks he's shocking Rick Steiner (despite the chair being obviously in sight for Jack), then Abby No Sells it and attacks Jack and several staff. Pointless, hopeless, clueless.
    • Oz vs. Bill Kazmaier was four minutes with zero athleticism, featuring a man who could barely do the most basic moves being carried by (and defeating, by submission!) the only slightly less green Kevin Nash, who has never been known for carrying anyone.
    • Van Hammer vs. Doug Somers went only a minute and was almost entirely made up of botches. "Highlights" include Doug fumbling a clothesline and tripping on his way to a corner, and Van Hammer almost dropping Somers on his head with his slingshot suplex finisher. So horrid was this that on Wrestling With Wregret, Brian Zane used negative stars for the first time to rate this match. (For comparison, the Chamber of Horrors match was a 0.) Somehow, Van Hammer was not fired for over eight years after this.
    • The main event saw a mostly middling World Title defence with Lex Luger (with Harley Race) vs. Ron Simmons (with Dusty Rhodes) in a 2/3 Falls match. This, however, turned into a perfect capper to this poor event at the end of the second fall, as Simmons dropped Luger over the top rope and was disqualified. Effectively a reminder of Bill Watts' old school rules, this just makes no sense as several times during this very show, wrestlers were thrown over the top rope with no DQ called.
  • Uncensored 1995 was, in story, unsanctioned by the WCW board, so its matches wouldn't be subject to the usual rules (why they were still using WCW's brands and staff for it wasn't clear). In reality, this was just an excuse for more bad gimmick matches than usual. It started off with a "King of the Road" (match on the back of a truck filled with hay) between Dustin Rhodes and Blacktop Bully, which was not only devoid of real action and barely visible due to being filmed at sunset, but resulted in both men and the road agent being fired due to violating a blading ban (which forced WCW to use shots that were too dark to notice the blood, or literally edit the daylights out of the match, despite being billed as Uncensored). The "King of the Road" match was also pre recorded, meaning this was the best they could come up with on the editing table. Two "different style fights" (Meng vs. Jim Duggan in karate and Johnny B. Badd vs. Arn Anderson in boxing) just looked lame and added nothing. Production issues reared their head again, most glaringly the finish of the Harlem Heat vs. Nasty Boys brawl happening off camera. Randy Savage vs. Avalanche ended in DQ because Ric Flair interfered dressed as a woman, despite this event being full of no-DQ matches apparently. The main event (Hogan vs. Vader in a strap match) saw Vader be too heavy for Hogan to believably wrangle him around, so they just had him pin Flair instead! The entire pay-per-view made it into WrestleCrap.
  • World War 3 1995 was headlined by its disastrous titular gimmick match: a 3-ring, 60-man battle royal. Sounds great for a live audience, but godawful for PPV. Just showing it required 3 picture-in-picture feeds with 2 commentators each, but the small screens just made it harder to follow the action (not to mention the fact that at some points, 2 screens were showing the same feed at the same time!). This rendered it a chore to keep track of eliminations and spots. They advertised a "giant in every ring" - the original plan was for The Giant, Power Plant graduate Reese, and a returning El Gigante as "The Yeti", but Gigante had visa issues, so they put Reese in the Yeti suit, then took him out again as his debut sucked. Later plans for The One Man Gang or Loch Ness to appear all fell through for some reason, so they had to advertise Hulk Hogan as the third giant. The finish was painfully lame as Hogan went under the ropes, rather than over them, making planned winner Randy Savage look weak. The end visual being not Savage triumphant, but Hogan bitching at him, did not go over well with the crowd at all, marking the time everyone knew Hulkamania was dead.
  • The 1996 Uncensored was a slight improvement over the 1995 edition, key word being slight. Two matches ended in DQ and no-contest respectively, and a title was defended, again despite this being unsanctioned. A horrid man/woman match between Col. Robert Parker and Madusa wasted time, and Sting and Booker T vs. the Road Warriors saw Hawk and Animal both gassed after 2 minutes and still go 30. But the most infamous match was a 2-on-8 triple-decker cage match with Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage vs. the "Alliance to End Hulkamania", made up of 2 of The Four Horsemen, 4 of the Dungeon of Doom, and two guys whose most notable connection to WCW was being in a movie with Hogan. One of whom was called "The Final Solution" until someone realised that was a Holocaust reference, so they had to rename him to the Ultimate Solution. (And the other of whom was more famous for his role in an urban stoner comedy than anything related to wrestling.) As for the match itself, nobody knew what was going on, and there was no real indication of how to win. Hogan and Savage defeated eight men, that we know, but it's hard to tell how. Bobby Heenan was incredibly hyped for this, and there was no real way to tell why.
    Bobby Heenan: THIS IS GREAT TELEVISION HISTORY! THIS SURPASSES A SUPER BOWL, A WORLD SERIES, ANYTHING YOU WANT TO NAME! THIS IS TREMENDOUS!
  • Slamboree '96, to determine the next contender to the WCW Title, revived the "Battlebowl / Lethal Lottery" from Starrcade '91 and '92 and its own show in 1993. This concept was never good and never drew numbers, but the Slamboree edition managed to plumb new depths in both respects. First problem: they changed the format from 1 round of tag matches and then a 16-man battle royal to 2 rounds and an 8-man, which only drew out the bad matches more. The teams (which were pre-drawn, unlike in previous Battlebowls) were mostly jobbers as usual. In the very first match, The Road Warriors, who had been drawn against each other, attacked their own partners and caused a no contest, taking a giant shit all over the concept right from the off. This somehow wasn't the only partner-attacking incident, as the Ric Flair/Randy Savage enemies team lost their second round match due to being too busy brawling to even start the match. The final battle royal contained no one anywhere near the main event, and was won by Diamond Dallas Page... but then the entire event was rendered pointless on the next Nitro as DDP was stripped of his title shot on a technicality. The shot ultimately went to Lex Luger, who had been eliminated in the first round! A complete, sorry waste of time.
  • Any Hog Wild / Road Wildnote  pay-per-view could fit this page by concept alone. Held at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally (due to Eric Bischoff's love of motorcycles), it was held in the open air and so exactly ZERO people paid for it. The crowd was invariably made out of drunk bikers who wouldn't understand a wrestling match if it plowed them over on two wheels, only cheering blood and violence, and booing anyone who wasn't white regardless of whether they were face or heel. They would also rev their engines at inopportune times, drowning out the commentators. Lowlights of the individual shows include:
    • Road Wild '98 saw a complete botchfest between Brian Adams and Steve McMichael; Goldberg invading an nWo Hollywood vs. Wolfpac battle royal and reducing it to "stand around and wait to be speared and eliminated"; and most hideously, DDP and Jay Leno of all people teaming up to face Hogan and Bischoff, which was just embarrassing for all involved.
    • Road Wild '99 had exactly one decent match: DDP vs. Benoit. Everything else ranged from "mediocre" to "please let this end". The latter end of the scale was reserved for the likes of Buff Bagwell vs. Ernest "The Cat" Miller, Sid Vicious and Sting's agonisingly slow encounter, and the main event featuring face-turned Hulk Hogan having the worst possible version of a formulaic 1980s Hogan match against a Kevin Nash who clearly could not care less.
  • Starrcade '97 was the beginning of the end for WCW. The main event was meant to be the crowning moment for Sting finally defeating Hollywood Hogan and overcoming the nWo. Instead, what we got was a slow, boring affair where Hogan ate up Sting's entire offence and made him look like a joke (apparently, because he thought Sting was out of shape). The finish was intended to have crooked ref Nick Patrick give a fast count, noted screwjob-hater Bret Hart come out and restart the match, and Sting win clean. However, Hogan got in Patrick's ear and had him do a normal count, making Hogan look like the screwed one, Sting like a complete loser, and Bret look like an asshole! Sting never got his crowning moment over Hogan,note  completely cheating the WCW fanbase out of a conclusion to their hottest ever storyline. Then WWF got hot in 1998, and the rest was history.
  • Russo briefly lost his job when he submitted Tank Abbott's name as WCW World Heavyweight Champion. Turns out Abbott was a borderline psychopath. Check out the "Leather Jacket on a Pole" match at SuperBrawl 2000: That wasn't so much wrestling as Tank just mauling someone and then ending the match with a knife to the guy's throat and threatening to kill him. The camera cuts away quickly, with Schiavone saying he was just going to cut off Al's beard. Al doesn't have a beard. The worst part was, Big Al wasn't actually a trained wrestler. Abbott tries carrying the guy up the stairs without using his hands, and the fall alone was savage. Big Al was lucky.
  • Spring Stampede 2000 is about as bad as it gets. It took place 6 days after the reboot Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo hatched after they both came back as bookers, meaning that that all the storylines heading into the show had one night to build (except the Dustin Rhodes vs. Terry Funk feud, which for whatever reason was the only storyline to make it through the reboot). Since all titles were vacated, there were tournaments for the United States and Tag Team Championships, a tournament finals for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, a multi-man match for the Cruiserweight Championship with more wrestlers than time allotted, and a Hardcore Championship match. What fans ended up getting was a 14-match show with only one match going more than 9 minutes. And almost every match had interference.
    • There was also a "match" between Jimmy Hart and "Mancow" Muller, a horrible radio DJ based in Chicago who was/is ripping off Howard Stern. He was brought in solely as a ploy to sell more tickets, i.e. they promoted the hell out of WCW on his shows. Even more stupidly, the two would have ANOTHER match on PPV seven months later at Mayhem.
  • Bash at the Beach 2000 - if WCW didn't jump the shark at the Fingerpoke of Doom, it sure did here. Anything that had a chance not to suck was overbooked to hell... and most of it didn't stand a chance in the first place. The no-hopers included: non-wrestler/truck driver Ralphus getting a mostly-singles match; a wedding gown strip match between Miss Hancock and Daffney that ended with David Flair taking his pants off for no reason; a graveyard-based walk-and-brawl between Vampiro and the KISS Demon conducted completely in pitch-black; Scott Steiner losing his US Title as a result of using a banned move, making him look like a moron; and Goldberg beating Kevin Nash to tear up the contract of Scott Hall, a man who hadn't been employed for half a year. The show is most infamous for Hulk Hogan refusing to lose to Jeff Jarrett, leading to a bizarre shoot incident where Jarrett laid down for Hogan, Hogan cursed Vince Russo out to camera afterwards, then Russo came out and derailed the show with a rambling promo about Hogan's politicking.note  As a result, the first ever World Title for Booker T went completely forgotten. Brian Zane of Wrestling With Wregret gave his first two zero-star ratings in his review of this show, to the Wedding Gown match and Jarrett/Hogan.
  • If someone tries to tell you Russo is a misunderstood genius, show them New Blood Rising, or as it should be known, "Swerve Hell". This show featured Buff Bagwell and Kanyon in a "Judy Bagwell on a Forklift" match, because nothing says wrestling quite like fighting over a wrestler's mother while making constant fat jokes, two KroniK matches somehow, and Lance Storm doing the "heel changes the rules to screw the face over" routine... in Canada, so fans don't know how to feel. Worst match of the night is the "Rip off the Camo" mud strip match between Miss Hancock and Major Gunns; neither can wrestle, it ends in a pinfall despite being a strip match, and it ends in a kayfabe miscarriage.note  And then you have the kayfabe-destroying "Goldberg refuses to follow the script" moment (detailed in the Goldberg folder), as if this show weren't irredeemable already.
  • 51-year-old Paul Orndorff (who had retired due to injury) was a surprise team member for the Filthy Animals when they took on the Natural Born Thrillers at Fall Brawl 2000. Old wrestlers doing one-offs aren't unheard of, but by this point you can see major atrophy (from his career-ending injuries) on the right side of Orndorff's body, most notably in his arm. During an execution of a piledriver, he fell—paralyzed—to the mat, forcing Charles Robinson to call the bout early. It was announced later on in the PPV that he suffered a stinger, a temporary spinal injury. Wonder how many people Russo injured when he was booker?note 

    Angles and Gimmicks 
  • Harlem Heat's original gimmick: "The Posse". Booker T and Stevie Ray, as "Kole" and "Kane" respectively, wore prison outfits and were carried in chains by Southern Gentleman Col. Robert Parker, who won their services in a card game. The initial concept only lasted a single house show, where the audience became outraged by the obvious Unfortunate Implications: they were meant to portray convicts, but looked more like slaves. The team did perform on-screen as Kole and Kane for close to a year, but without the prison motifs or Parker (who would later go on to manage them again alongside Sherri Martel). Curiously enough, pictures of Booker and Stevie wearing the prison suits managed to sneak into the poster for Fall Brawl 1993.
  • The "Lost in Cleveland" storyline was a career low point for Mick Foley (then wrestling as Cactus Jack), which he would be embarrassed by for years afterwards. After being powerbombed on the unprotected concrete floor by Big Van Vader on a 1993 episode of WCW Saturday Night, a series of vignettes were aired that followed a reporter trying to find the now missing Jack. She eventually found him in Cleveland where he was revealed to have developed amnesia and was living with a group of homeless people under the delusion that he was a sailor. The poorly-received segments were halted after only a few weeks and Cactus Jack was soon brought back without any further reference to the amnesia storyline. Foley—who had simply wanted to take some time off to build up anticipation for his feud with Vader—was quite horrified when the idea was pitched to him and says he only went with it after realizing that WCW would be paying him to do nothing for a few months.
  • During the leadup to his Leather Strap match against Big Van Vader at Uncensored 1995, Hulk Hogan hyped up an "Ultimate Surprise" to make the difference, heavily implying that the Ultimate Warrior had signed. Unfortunately, what we got was a Captain Ersatz called The Renegade (Rick Wilson), who Hogan had the audacity to say would "bring Hulkamania into the 21st century". Every bit as bad as his "inspiration" with none of the charisma, he had to be carried through every match. Nonetheless, he got Jimmy Hart as his manager, a six-month winning streak, and the Television Championship that year. WCW seemed to realise their mistake after he dropped the title to Diamond Dallas Page at Fall Brawl 1995; he was jobbed out repeatedly after that and buried live on air by a now-heel Hart. His last significant appearance was as a body double for the actual Ultimate Warrior in the latter's WCW run in 1998 (see below for that one). After his suicide a year laternote , WCW didn't even care enough to get his name right in the tribute, calling him Rick Williams.
  • Roddy Piper's entire WCW run. By that point, the man had no place in a wrestling ring to begin with, as a recent surgery had left him wearing an artificial hip that limited his mobility. He spent most of his time there battling Hulk Hogan and looking dumb while doing it, just to avenge the minuscule number of losses Hogan had eaten in the WWF. The epitome was the main event of Starrcade 1996, where Piper defeated WCW World Heavyweight Champion Hogan clean, to the joy of WCW's fans and locker room... in a non-title match.note  Highlights included holding the United States Heavyweight Championship for all of two weeks, overturning a bunch of finishes as WCW Commissioner, fighting Buff Bagwell in a boxing match refereed by Mills Lane, and being roasted by Jim Cornette on Raw the night after an atrocious cage match against Hogan.
  • For a very long time, all the way up to his death, Scott Hall was known for his crippling alcoholism, which often left him nearly or outright unable to perform. He was apparently getting deep into his addiction during his WCW run, which the company tastefully turned into an on-screen angle in which Hall would slur his words during promos, juke and stumble around, strange "acting" from other wrestlers (especially his long-time friend Kevin Nash), and a segment where Hall vomited all over Eric Bischoff. It got so bad, Hall's ex-wife Dana begged the company to stop and give him help in an open letter sent to a WCW fansite.
"Konnan beat Scott Hall in 12:03. Hall was doing a drunk gimmick, with Vincent holding a drink and Hall frequently taking swigs of it... Hall tried a hair pull on Konnan but there wasn't any...At another point, Hall held Konnan in an abdominal stretch and grabbed the drink from Vincent and began drinking."
—Dave Meltzer, Wrestling Observer Newsletter: September 21, 1998
  • In mid-1998, the WWF was on the rise and starting to get regular ratings wins against WCW. Eric Bischoff, desperate to regain his lead, drafted in the Ultimate Warrior.note  Warrior kicked off by interrupting a Hulk Hogan promo, where he was meant to go 7-8 minutes but rambled for over twenty, with Bischoff not daring to stop him so as not to kill his momentum. His feud with Hogan was defined by hokey (literal) smoke and mirrors, such as duplicate Warriors everywhere and an infamous segment where Warrior was a vision in the mirror that only Hogan could see. His entrance saw him appear in a cloud of smoke in the ring, which necessitated a wooden trap door that was dangerous to bump on; when The British Bulldog landed back-first on it, he broke his entire back and spent over six months in hospital, leading to the painkiller addiction that would take his life. All of this was to build up to a Hogan vs. Warrior match, which was an embarrassing retread of the WrestleMania VI encounter and saw Hogan botch the finish as flashpaper that was intended for a fire spot blew up in his face. This overran so much, the PPV feed was cut off before the (very good) DDP vs. Goldberg main event began, so it forced WCW to lose ludicrous amounts of money offering refunds and re-showing the match free on Nitro. Warrior was gone a few weeks later (lending credence to his theory that he was brought in to give Hogan his win back), having massively devalued everything he touched, including the company and himself.
  • In March 1999, during Vince Russo's stint as WWF booker, Ed Ferrara played a "fan" during a segment in which he did a mocking impression of Jim Ross. Clearly, Russo and Ferrara were so proud of this segment that they turned this into a regular on-screen character in WCW, "Oklahoma", turning the spite up to the max by having Ferrara spout catchphrases repeatedly and mimic JR's actual Bell's palsy. When Oklahoma showed up during Mayhem 1999, you could hear Tony Schiavone mutter "Oh, no..." in a way that makes you doubt if Schiavone's disgust was just acting. And in one of WCW's lowest points, Oklahoma had an agonizing feud with Madusa in which he constantly spewed variations of "women have no place in wrestling", and managed to beat her for the Cruiserweight title despite not even being a cruiserweight or a wrestler; and then he vacated the title on the following Thunder, not putting anyone over on the process and making his match with Madusa a waste of time. After a while, Oklahoma was flanked by "Dr. Death" Steve Williams, which did nothing to win Ferrara any fans. Nobody other than Russo or Ferrara seemed to like the character, with Ric Flair, Jim Cornette and Ross himself speaking out against it — and even Ferrara came to regret the angle.
  • Vampiro was in a creative slump in 1999 when he had the strange idea to bring in legendary punk rock band The Misfits, and WCW were all too eager to do so. Not for a concert or to play his theme song, mind you - they showed up for a number of weeks and wrestled a handful of matches until Jerry Only got hurt during a cage match against "Dr. Death" Steve Williams. Apparently, Vampiro was trying to build a career outside of wrestling, but it came across as an excuse for him to pal around with his favorite band. It did not get anyone over, and the only good thing that anyone got out of it was guitarist Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein marrying Randy Savage's valet off-screen.
  • In January 2000, Stevie Ray turned on Booker T and formed Harlem Heat 2000. The problem? Stevie's threatening new partner was Big T f.k.a. Ahmed Johnson, still as much an unsafe, injury prone botch machine as ever, but a few years more out-of-shape. They were managed by J. Biggs (Clarence Mason from WWF's Nation of Domination) who infamously informed Booker T that he no longer had the rights to the Harlem Heat entrance or the letter T, leading him to come out as just "Booker" with a cartoony stock piece that you'd expect to hear on Leave It to Beaver. The stable expanded with Kash, formerly 4x4 in the No Limit Soldiers, who was somehow worse than Ahmed and so inflated by steroids that his arms couldn't even touch his sides. This left Stevie Ray, of all people, to be the workhorse of a team no one could take seriously. After the Russo/Bischoff reboot, the two heavies were gone, Booker got his "T" letter back, and Stevie Ray reconciled with his brother, retiring to the commentary desk for the rest of WCW's lifespan.

    Goldberg 
After blowing the Sting vs. Hogan feud, including the Starrcade '97 fiasco, about the only thing keeping WCW afloat was Goldberg's white-hot 1998 run. Of course, WCW botched the end of that too:

  • The January 4, 1999 episode of Nitro, highly hyped in the weeks before it, turned out to be disastrous for Goldberg's career and for WCW in general:
    • The first hour had nothing important because it was not in direct competition with the WWF. Then when Raw went live, Goldberg was arrested and charged with stalking Miss Elizabeth (it was going to be a "rape" charge, but Goldberg nixed that idea).

      The storyline was that Goldberg had been scheduled to face nWo Wolfpac leader Kevin Nash in a rematch for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, and that Goldberg's arrest had put the match at risk of being canceled. The big dramatic hook was that Goldberg needed to come back to the arena in time for the match — except every time we cut to this storyline, the announcers mentioned the police station was just across the street from the arena. As an aside, Bischoff was trying to reset the company to 1997, so Tony Schiavone openly spoiled the main event of that night's (taped) Raw:
    Tony Schiavone: Fans, as Hollywood Hogan walks away and you look at this 40,000 plus on hand, if you're even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, fans, do not, because we understand that Mick Foley, who wrestled here one time as Cactus Jack, is going to win their world title. Ha! That's gonna put some butts in the seats.
    • This was also the night where nWo Hollywood leader Hulk Hogan, returning from his yearly football vacationnote , was going to announce his running mate in his bid to become President of the United States. This never happened, and instead Hogan decided that if Goldberg couldn't make it, he would face "that spoon Kevin Nash" in a "retirement match" — and supposedly, to settle the feud between the nWo's split factions.

      Then Hogan and Nash got in the ring. After gesturing around for a bit, Hogan poked Nash in the chest, Nash took the biggest bump of his career, and Hogan covered him to win the belt and reform the nWo. As they celebrated, it was revealed that Goldberg had been released and was arriving at the arena — in a car, even though the police station was across the street. The logical thing to do was have Goldberg utterly wreck the reformed nWo, which he even began to do to massive pops... and then they buried Goldberg to oblivion, taking turns humiliating him by tazing him, spray-painting him, handcuffing him to the corner, etc. Of course, Hogan orchestrated his revenge and regained the world title at the Georgia Dome — the same place Goldberg beat him for the title six months before.

      The episode tore a massive hole in WCW's credibility. It wasn't just that 40,000 fans in the Georgia Dome who wanted to see Goldberg vs. Nash had been ripped off. It buried WCW's hottest star; proved that WCW only had one trick up their sleeve (the nWo); and that they were more concerned with beating the WWF than putting on a good product. In addition, it spat in the face of the younger wrestlers and told them they didn't matter as long as Hogan and friends were running the show.

      To further rub salt in the wound, spoiling the main event of Raw backfired massively in WCW's face, as it was revealed the next morning that over 500,000 viewers switched to Raw to see the Ensemble Dark Horse Foley win the WWF Championship from The Rock.
  • In Summer 2000, WCW advertised The Great American Bash with something that would "change the face of professional wrestling forever"... and it was turning Goldberg heel. Goldberg was WCW's top draw at the time, and the ensuing loss to his credibility devastated the company. Goldberg dragged his feet from start to last, and whatever heelish acts he did do paled in comparison to some of the nWo's, so fans weren't inclined to start booing. The whole thing got cut short when Goldberg suffered an injury, and when he returned, he went back to being a face.
    • To illustrate: on the night of The Great American Bash, Goldberg met a cancer patient with the Make-a-Wish Foundation backstage, only to find her in tears over his heel turn. He ended up feeling so guilty, he later told Bischoff to his face that it wasn't going to work.
    "I had to go out and blast [Hacksaw Jim Duggan] and had a Make-A-Wish girl in the back, with cancer. So I come back after the match and she's in tears — wrestling is wrestling, I get it, the good, bad and evil and trying to storyline people in and out of what they think is going to happen. But I wasn't going to do that. [...] That one little girl destroyed me and I told them the next day that we're going back, immediately."
  • While not the worst match on this list, few matches have violated the tenets of pro wrestling like the semi-main event of New Blood Rising: a three-way match between Kevin Nash, Scott Steiner and Goldberg.

    It was already off to a bad start: while gearing up for the match, the announcers acted confused about who would win, with Scott Hudson explicitly wondering who would "go over". Then for the finish, when Goldberg was about to be powerbombed by Nash, he stopped Nash from performing the move and stomped off anticlimactically. The announcers blasted Goldberg for being unprofessional and signaled at Nash and Steiner to "improvise", leaving the two to wrestle without Goldberg. Imagine if, while playing Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, Mark Hamill refused to climb in an X-Wing, flipped off George Lucas and left, leaving the TIE Fighters to shoot at each other. Read more about it here at WrestleCrap.
  • Goldberg lost a no-DQ tag match to Buff Bagwell and Lex Luger, with the stipulation that if he lost he'd have to retire. On the following episode of Nitro, the wrestlers "laid to rest the career of Goldberg": a coffin filled with Goldberg's book, an actual spear, and an actual jackhammer. Not a bad segment overall, but it goes on for over half an hour in a two-hour show. Luger, Bagwell, Nash, Jeff Jarrett, Ric Flair, Road Warrior Animal, the Steiners, DDP, and Ernest "The Cat" Miller just talking on the stick. No action whatsoever. Mind you, this is all of three months before Vince bought out WCW for mere pennies.

    Other 
  • The infamous "Robin Hood" match from January 13, 1997. In an attempt to promote their new show The New Adventures of Robin Hood (airing immediately after WCW Monday Nitro), the TNT braintrust decided to start a Hulk Hogan vs. Giant match with one minute left to air on Nitro and then promising "live" updates during Robin Hood's commercial breaks. Fans at home were expected to believe that Hogan and Giant wrestled for a half hour, but fans in the building reported that the match actually went about five minutes. And as you probably already guessed, the finish was the usual nWo run-in for the DQ. Both fans and wrestling critics killed WCW for this one, and even the WWF made a couple snide comments about it on Raw. The Turner brass took the hint and never tried anything like this again, and Robin Hood only lasted two seasons. WrestleCrap inducts it here.
  • Columbia, South Carolina was a recipient of the infamous Sting vs. Bret Hart main event match for the U.S. Title that took place on the October 5th, 1998 episode of Nitro. The "match" took place entirely in the back, displayed on the Titantron, and with a screwjob finish to boot. The audience rightly booed it, and many of them likely never paid $40 to see Nitro again. A shame because Columbia was a stronghold for WCW when it was still the Mid-Atlantic NWA region. Oh, and despite what Schiavone said, there would be no U.S. Title changing hands that night.
  • While the back end of 1998 saw some missteps, 1999 was a huge turning point in WCW's public perception — for the worse. With no streak, Schiavone sending hundreds of thousands to Raw, and clueless imitations of the WWF's product, fans began to tune out in droves. But even then, their ratings (which had consistently trailed WWF since Summer '98) remained strong for quite a few months in '99. Unfortunately, it was Kevin Nash's booking that led to the ratings free-fall in '99. Dave Meltzer provided a week-by-week account in The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, and it's really something to read.
    • On March 8, 1999, Nash had the idea to not book any wrestling matches for the first hour of Nitro... on World Championship Wrestling. Nash sincerely believed wrestling matches were passé, and that people would pay to see him and his friends banter and have a good time for 60 minutes. Unsurprisingly, Raw destroyed Nitro in the ratings that night.note 
    • Nash's gauntlet match against the New Blood, on the June 5, 2000 Nitro. They must have been running long that night, because Nash squashed the entire New Blood (about a quarter of the roster at the time) in quick succession, even eliminating some without physically touching them. He didn't even bother to pin them, as the ref slapped the mat as soon as one of the opponents was down — all in less than five humiliating minutes. It perfectly explains why Nash never has anything bad to say about Vince Russo.

Top