YMMV / The Death of WCW

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• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Compare the book's take on Bill Watts's run as WCW booker to Ring of Hell's take. The former portrays him as a diminutive loudmouth, mentally stuck two decades in the past and who had zero respect for the wrestlers. The latter portrays him as the kind of firm authoritarian the spoiled idiots at WCW needed and who would likely have saved the place if he hadn't been lobbied out. In one of Mick Foley's books, he takes the Talmudic route of saying Both Sides Have a Point and arguing that Watts's decent booking sense was held back by his outdated work ethic.
  • While The Death of WCW claims Jamie Kellner cancelled Nitro and Thunder because he found wrestling too lowbrow for Turner networks, Guy Evans's book NITRO: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's WCW paints a different story — not only was Kellner hesitant to keep them on after WCW's $60 million loss in 2000, Fusient Media Ventures wanted unreasonable amounts of control over Nitro's timeslot when negotiating to buy WCW, which caused Kellner to wash his hands of WCW programming for good.
• Funny Moments: Lord knows where RD got that image of a pouting Eric Bischoff for the book's cover, but it is hilarious.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When discussing WCW Nitro's decision to go from two hours to three, the authors insisted in 2004 that "three hours is just too damn long to run a wrestling show, both for the writers and the fans." Fast forward to the present where WWE Raw is three hours (and is often criticised as being "too damn long"). This was promptly highlighted in the tenth anniversary edition.
  • In the 2014 publication's epilogue, a bulleted list of all of TNA's screw-ups over the last ten years since the book's original printing, it was noted that Vince Russo had left TNA in 2012 but was rumored to have been (secretly) rehired in a consulting capacity in 2014. This was eventually confirmed later that same year when Russo accidentally sent an email to PWInsider detailing instructions for Taz and Tenay's commentary voice-overs. It also apparently screwed up their negotiations with SpikeTV for a renewed television deal, as apparently, like Wrestle-1, they hated him and pointedly instructed to Dixie Carter not to rehire him. She rehired him anyway, and told no one, not even the talent themselves.
• The Woobie: Bret Hart. Aside from the obvious (the Montreal Screwjob, his lack of push in WCW), you really feel bad for him when you read about all the crazy stunts he was told to do. It becomes chilling when suggested that it was the same type of stunts that led to his brother's death. In a Harsher in Hindsight moment, Vince McMahon, while being the one who told Bret to go to WCW because he claimed that WWF couldn't fulfill their 20-year contract with Bret, said that if he leaves for WCW, "they're not going to know what to do with you." And sure enough, they didn't. It was almost three to five years on the roster before he got to wrestle again before fans remembered that he was there!

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