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  • Audience-Alienating Era:
    • WCW during Vince Russo's tenure is the point where WCW fans tend to look away due to how ridiculous things got. Tony Schiavone's resigned face at Bash at the Beach 2000 says it all.
    • The period between late 1989-ish and the end of 1993 was also a pretty rough time to be a WCW fan, particularly the 18 months or so that Ric Flair was in the WWF. Case in point: as of 2022, no weekly TV from January 1990 to the first episode of WCW Saturday Night in April of 1992 has ever been uploaded to the WWE Network, presumably due to lack of demand.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Opinions about Tony Schiavone's role as commentator are all over the place. Detractors point out that when the luchadores were killing themselves with suicide dives and chair shots, he was either ignoring it, making fun of the masks/names, droning on about some nWo stuff, or laughing at some vaguely racist joke; and overreacting to something like David Flair winning the Hardcore title, to which he would give his "the greatest night in the history of our sport" slogan and so on (and that stern face he always gives). However, supporters point out that, re-watching WCW in its sad, dying days, the man had to sell absolute car crash TV, but with a vigor and air of professionalism few could muster. Moves are being called, talent is being put over—and when he's in there with Mike Tenay, calling lucha or puroresu matches, he does bring his A-game.
    • Hulk Hogan fits this trope too. Did he have a major hand in killing the company by using his creative control to keep himself in high-profile spots long after he wore out his welcome and bury a bunch of future stars? Yes. Did he pull the company away from the brink of collapse when he got there, at a time when attendance was so poor that WCW had basically given up on running house shows and were taping TV months in advance to save costs? Also yes. Became this to the WCW fans as soon as he got there as well, he did bring in plenty more people into the buildings but the longtime JCP/NWA/WCW fans were not happy to see him and passionately booed him. The latter group ended up winning that battle.
  • The Chris Carter Effect: The problems with the nWo storyline began when it became very clear that there was no endgame about how it would end, and that nWo were never going to lose. This became a big turn-off to the casual fan and resulted in "go away" heat. And away they went.
  • Critical Dissonance:
    • There's a disconnect between those "Worst WCW Moments" lists and the crowds' reactions when you go back and re-watch those shows. In almost every case, the crowd was on fire during those matches. That being said, the negative effects were felt almost immediately afterwards, which why today they are viewed as embarrassments:
      1. RoboCopnote  and David Arquette, World Champion. Both sold out the arena. Though it must be said that after the Arquette match, ticket sales plummeted and ratings dropped a full five pointsnote .
      2. There's a bit of revisionist history regarding the popularity of the nWo since people never got a proper payoff for it. Audiences never really got sick of the nWo: From 1996-98, average attendance from was up 46.7% (5,472 to 8,029), average gate receipts up 90.1% ($87,413 to $166,190), average television rating up 56.0% (2.14 to 3.40), average Nitro rating up 19.7% (3.70 to 4.43), and average PPV buyrate up 17.7% (0.79 to 0.93). WCW in '98 made $350 million in revenue and pumped out over $50 mil in profit; no other promotion in history had come close to that. Sting winning at Starrcade '97 would have been a catalyst for major change, but getting rid of the nWo altogether was out of the question from Eric Bischoff's viewpoint. The nWo re-made WCW; it's what the company was built upon. As for Goldberg, he debuted in front of sold-out arenas. He rode the wave the nWo created.
      3. In hindsight, the Wolfpac are seen as an obvious rehash of the nWo. However, in the summer of 1998, the biggest stars in WCW were in the Wolfpac. nWo Hollywood vs. nWo Wolfpac sold-out arenas that were filled with merch from both. Kevin Nash, who was already white-hot with the crowd, destroyed the stars WCW created all on their own, and got cheered for it. People were jumping up and down like they'd won the lottery (go back and watch Starrcade 98, where Nash breaks Goldberg's streak. The crowd goes absolutely insane cheering Nash when he gets the pin). The Fingerpoke of Doom just made it retroactively worse since there was no real blowoff.
      4. The Fingerpoke of Doom actually fulfilled its purpose, at least initially: not only did it spike their ratings, the following PPV (SuperBrawl) actually got more buys than the WWF's competing St. Valentine's Day Massacre event. It got people tuning in and their ratings remained steady (around 4 or 4.5) until April.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • The Puroresu and Lucha Libre stars (such as Jushin Thunder Liger, Último Dragón, Rey Mysterio Jr., Psicosis, and Juventud Guerrera) who put on phenomenal matches every night, even to the very end, or at least until they all realized they'd never get pushes and started leaving in droves. La Parka in particular was massively over, but he was held back in the Cruiserweight division even though it was clear the crowd wanted more of him. Lifelong midcarders in Mexico like Super Calo and Ciclope were more popular in WCW than in their homeland.
    • Chris Benoit is considered one of the best technical wrestlers to come from WCW. Many would argue that his rivalry with Booker T was the best of either's career. Another plus was the cruiserweight division and the focus on insane athletics and moves that you never saw with the likes of Hogan, Nash, Goldberg, etc. It not only included the aforementioned foreign guys, but also Benoit, Dean Malenko, Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, and Billy Kidman as well: they were the wrestlers who opened up the show to pump up the crowd, and were usually the best match of the night. It pretty much opened the gate for the lucha and puro styles. The Malenko-Jericho feud was one of the best of the year across both brands. It's a shame that WCW themselves never really saw them the same way.
    • Alex Wright (Das Wunderkind!) is weirdly popular online, more so today than in his prime. Possibly the tallest "cruiserweight" of all time (billed as 6'4" in some places). Some of the reasons why he attracted so much interest after the demise of WCW are probably the same reasons why Wright was underestimated in his time (besides perhaps being too young): He had a gimmick of dancing to this theme song, which was techno music, when the U.S. was still trying to forget about disco; and multiple, seemingly unrelated wrestlers did what they could to bury him for no particular reason.
    • Even when it was clear that the company was keeping him away from the main event, Ric Flair was one of the bright spots of WCW during their end. The Wrestling Observer Newsletter's Dave Meltzer used to make a list of the people who drew the biggest segment ratings on Raw and Nitro. He would calculate the rating they drew, who they were up against on the other channel, and how much the rating went up or down from the previous segment. From late 1997 until he got pulled off TV in 1998, Flair was the biggest ratings draw in either company. His television segments were getting higher ratings than "Stone Cold" Steve Austin at this point. When he came back in late '98, he was still consistently in WCW's top 3 along with Hogan and Goldberg. His match against Bret Hart at Souled Out '98 also did a huge buyrate. Back then, PPVs were split into "Hogan PPVs" and "Non-Hogan PPVs", because the buyrates were normally 20-25% higher (at minimum) when Hogan wrestlednote . The Flair-Hart match (which was one of the only decently-promoted matches Flair had during this period) went way above expectations into Hogan territory. It's actually one of the biggest PPVs in WCW history. And to top it off, in 1999 when WCW was losing steam and the nWo angle was fading, Flair and Hogan main-evented SuperBrawl. Both men were years past their prime, and everyone had seen them wrestle 100 times before. It popped a giant buyrate which surpassed expectations. They even did a better buyrate than the WWF PPV that month. Which WWF match did they outdraw? Austin vs. Vince McMahon for the first time.
    • Diamond Dallas Page. WCW's willingness to make him look strong vs. the nWo was huge for him, especially at such a late stage in his professional life (he was seen as the 'old guy' despite being in his late-30's): he turned down membership with the nWo, nailed Scott Hall with the Diamond Cutter, pulled the rope down as Nash charged at him, and then he peace'd out. The Rock was the "People's Champion", but so was DDP (it was proposed in the run-up to the WCW / ECW "InVasion" that he and Rocky feud over who was the People's Champ), and during that brief period in '97 his merchandise was everywhere. He was the original (finisher) OUTTA NOWHERE judging from the WWE Network Vault; part of his appeal was seeing all of the creative ways he'd go for the Diamond Cutter. His main event run from 1997-2001 in WCW was solid from top-to-bottom, whether as a face or a heel. Even his mid-card feuds with Raven and Benoit are considered classics. Some people might grumble about Page's push being largely due to him being close friends with Eric Bischoff, but he worked his ass off to make the most of every opportunity he was handed (something a lot of other people put in similar positions can't claim), and the fans recognized it. The only blip on his career is how WWE misused him (but that's a "blip" a lot of wrestlers have).note 
    • In hindsight, Buff Bagwell made a lot of media appearances outside of wrestling and showed up on a lot of merchandise for somebody who never won a singles title and never really was able to rise beyond the midcard. A lot of people remember the goofy top hat and, "HE'S BUFF, HE'S GOT THE STUFF AND YOU CAN'T GET ENOUGH."
    • Even in the end times, Scott Steiner could be relied upon to produce hysterically-funny promos by yelling about his biceps, something which TNA would capitalise on later. These have earned a cult following on YouTube.
    • Chavo "Chavito" Guerrero Jr. and Shane Helms really stuck out in late WCW (2000); Chavito had a silly gimmick but the crowd were down with him. Even midcard guys like Konnan ("¡ÓRALE! ¡ÓRALE! ¡ARRIBA LA RAZA!") could've theoretically been bigger draws, but WCW just didn't know how to maximize that potential. It's also a shame that Chavo Jr. kind of fizzled out post-WCW.
    • While many people consider him stupid and his Ambiguously Gay / Gorgeous George character would probably not fly today, the fans really seemed to like Johnny B. Badd. If you watch old WCW shows where he appears, the crowd totally pops for him, and lets him put his lip stickers (dubbed "the Kiss that don't Miss") on them.
  • Gateway Series: Moreso than WWE, which over the years increasingly tried to hammer its wrestlers into a generalized, rigid style, WCW fans argue that it always had better wrestling than WWE by virtue that it had a lot more variety, and it was credted with introducing a significant niche of viewers in the United States to genres of wrestling that were new to them. Old-school scientific wrestling, genuine lucha libre, technical wrestling, traditional puroresu, strong style, brawls, and gimmick matches, among others. Even if the style you were looking for wasn't given much respect in terms of booking, chances are you'd still find it in WCW, and fans would be happy to sell you tapes with more of what you wanted if what you saw on WCW wasn't enough.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • For a period in late '96, Ultimo Dragon defended the J-Crown, a collection of cruiserweight/light heavyweight championship belts from various promotions unified into one collective (and cumbersome) title. At Starrcade '96, he defeated Dean Malenko and added the WCW Cruiserweight Championship to the J-Crown in the only time the J-Crown collection was seen on American television. What makes this so hilarious? One of the titles that made up the J-Crown was the WWF Light Heavyweight Championship,note  meaning that Ultimo Dragon was a legitimate WWF championship titleholder and was legitimately defending that title on a WCW pay-per-view, and neither promotion realized it until months later.
    • The infamous Shockmaster costume — namely, a big burly warrior with a black cape and silver-painted Stormtrooper helmet — was always stupid, but it's even funnier nowadays due to coming across less like a "terrible zero-budget last-minute Wrestling Monster-meets-Stormtrooper costume" and more a "terrible zero-budget last-minute Captain Phasma cosplay."
  • Just Here for Godzilla: The old adage during the Monday Night Wars was that one watched WCW for the midcard, WWF for the main events. Nitro offered some amazing in-ring action (WCW always undervalued the Cruiserweight division so guys like Dean Malenko and Rey Mysterio Jr. opening a show was common) and some nice comedic moments (just giving Flair/Jericho a microphone for twenty minutes). Jericho is the biggest example of the company pushing someone non-affiliated with the nWo storyline.
  • Mainstream Obscurity: 2020 closes the books on an entire generation of pro wrestling fans in the US who have largely watched nothing of WCW besides that which WWE has shown them through a revisionist lens. Despite the fact that WCW was WWE's top rival in its heyday, nearly driving them out of business, history was not kind to it.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • "The Darkside of Hulkamania." This whole segment is gold. Why is Hulk Hogan narrating his exploration? One is reminded of the scene in Black Dynamite with the bit actor reading his stage directions out-loud as part of the dialogue:
      1. "I'VE NEVER BEEN HERE BEFORE!"note 
      2. "THERE'S NO HULKAMANIACS HERE!"note 
      3. "IT'S NOT HOT!"note 
    • Hogan's famous Dear Negative Reader moment at World War 3 '95 via burning a copy of the Observer. "OBSERVE THIS, BROTHER!!" "THIS IS WHAT WE CALL A RAGSHEET, BROTHER." note 
    • "THOSE CRUISERWEIGHTS CAN CRUISER-WAIT, BROTHER."note 
    • Tony Schiavone became such a veritable goldmine of (unintentional) comedy that you can actually check out a recompilation of his best hits as Faux Tony Schiavone on Twitter.
      1. "This is the greatest night in the history of our sport!" The man had a gift for hyperbole.
      2. "FANS WE ARE ALL OUT OF TIME"note 
      3. "It's STIIIIING!"
      4. "That'll put butts in the seats."note 
    • Bobby Heenan: "BUT WHOSE SIDE IS HE ON?!"note 
    • Kevin Nash: "Look at the adjective!"note 
    • Dusty Rhodes: "HE GAWT A BI-THICKLE!"note 
    • Mongo McMichael as a kooky commentator earned his own segment on Botchamania, prefaced with "Never mind that shit, HERE COMES MONGO!"
    • "[x] corpsing? SEND FOR THE MAN!"note 
    • "Call the WCW Hotline, I don't give a fuck"note 
    • "I booked myself to be pleased with this"note 
    • "Hold 265: ARM!!!!! BAR!!!!!"
  • Mis-blamed:
    • It's really easy to blame the wrestlers for politicking, many being overpaid for their work, lack thereof or any other myriad of reasons, but they only accounted for roughly half of WCW's financial losses. Pretty much every aspect of the company was troubled.
    • Russo often gets blamed for unmasking Rey Mysterio Jr. and Juventud Guerrera. While it sounds like something he'd do, his hands are clean (he was still with the WWF), this one was all Bischoff (and maybe Nash).
    • Suffice to say, David Arquette got a lot of flak after winning the WCW world title, but Arquette was actually against winning the title, knowing fully well that it would go down as a bad idea. When he was finally persuaded by Russo into becoming champ, he chose to give all his earnings to the families of both Owen Hart and Brian Pillman. He also paid for everyone's drinks because he grew up hearing that a new world champ should always buy everyone a round at the bar. Though nothing can vindicate Arquette-as-champion, Arquette himself was Vindicated by History; he's now recognized by most wrestling fans as a man trapped in the nightmare of getting what he always wanted in the worst possible way.
    • Poor Tony Schiavone has got grief for over 20 years because of that Mick Foley call, which was a direct line from Eric Bischoff himself. He even admitted that he called Foley to apologize for it and that, if he were a viewer, he would have changed the channel, too.
    • Kevin Nash didn't book himself into ending Goldberg's undefeated streak, Kevin Sullivan did. Nash didn't take over as booker until two months later. Nash did lobby to be the one to end Goldberg's streak, but he actually fought against his stable (the Wolfpac) reuniting with nWo Hollywood. However, it is said that the reason why the Fingerpoke of Doom happened was because Nash would have refused to lose to Hogan in an actual, competitive match.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The unique sound made by WCW's rings (prior to mid-1999) whenever wrestlers bumped on it, which has been described as a "wooden clank". Even many detractors of WCW will admit that their rings had the best collision sound in the business, or at least sounded better than WWE's rings, both in the past and the present.note 

    N-Z 
  • Narm:
    • Halloween Havoc 1991's "Chamber of Horrors" cage match. It ended with Abdullah the Butcher getting "electrocuted" in an electric chair, which looked more like Abdullah had sparklers lit on top of his head.
    • During a DDP vs. Jarrett match on Thunder, Schiavone yells, "THIS WON'T STOP UNTIL SOMEONE DIES!" This would've already qualified for this, but right afterwards, the match ended in DQ (by then usual for matches on Thunder). It even gets a mention in The Death of WCW.
    • It seems like Hogan made a personal commitment to drop a steaming pile annually at every Halloween Havoc. Before the infamous Hogan vs. Warrior match in the 1998 event, two other Hogan abominations had took place at said pay-per-view back in both 1995 and 1996. The 1996 event itself is only remembered thanks to Hogan's spiky hair toupee (which led to jokes about it giving Zack Ryder ideas). Hogan and Savage were great characters but they were incapable of adapting their ring work to stand out in 1996—not to mention all of the shenanigans, with so much outside interference from The Giant, Ted DiBiase, and Miss Elizabeth that one wonders why a referee was even present there in the first place. Hogan's 'best' showing at Havoc might have been at the 1995 event, in which he "fought" in a monster truck sumo match vs. The Giant, who was supposedly there to avenge his "father" André the Giant. That's the one where The Giant fell off a tall building and then reappeared 15 minutes afterward, not even limping his way to the ring. Hogan acted like he was dead.
    • Spring Stampede 2000. Hogan keeps screaming "I'm going to eat your ass on Nitro" at Bischoff, until a cop pulls a gun on him. Did Hogan mean he was going to "beat his ass"? The close captioning agrees he's going to eat something.
    • "THAT'S THE WALL, BROTHER!", observes Hogan...from about 3 miles away and 15 stories down from where The Wall is currently standing.
  • No Problem with Licensed Games: THQ, who used to specialize in licensed wrestling games, did a polished job with this one. Their PlayStation title, WCW vs. the World and its Nintendo 64 sequels, WCW vs. nWo: World Tour and WCW/nWo Revenge, are widely viewed as some of the best wrestling games of the fifth generation. Both come with a decent multiplayer mode which is still fun today.
  • No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: One infamous example that worked against WCW's favor: Tony Schiavone's announcement of Mick Foley's title win. Let's break it down: Longtime WCW fans who remember Foley as Cactus Jack will tune in to see him win the title, fans who watch both WCW and WWF will shout "FOLEY'S WINNING?" and tune in, and people who don't know who Mick Foley is will hear Tony's disgust at the notion of this Foley guy winning the title and tune in to see what the fuss is about...and instead see an incredible moment which highlights all of WWE's talent at the time: DX, Foley, Rock, Kane, Vince, and Austin.
  • Overshadowed by Controversy: Many of the greatest wrestlers of the era worked for WCW and they put on great matches, even had a few entertaining angles. But when people think back on WCW they tend to remember the wrestlers it did not use, the wrestlers it used solely to bury, the silly gimmicks, the sillier angles and the overspending. Even when people think of their favorite WCW wrestlers, matches or angles the subject tends to drift to how they were underused, why they were never followed up on or why they petered out.
  • Padding: A clear indicator of when WCW really started to go off the rails. Even for much of '98 (when they were still incredibly popular), there were episodes of Nitro that started off with a promo, went to commercial, came back to Tony Schiavone interviewing someone, cut to a promo backstage, went to commercial, and then came back to recaps...They had some bad direction, or none at all, by the summer of '98. Just one example: Kevin Nash once cut a promo where he asked if Goldberg would tag with him in the main event. Then Goldberg came out, going through his entire entrance, which takes anywhere from 2-5 minutes from the locker room, to fireworks, to the ring, only to come into the ring and say "you got it." Then he left. There's a reason why for the first 70 years or so of "modern" professional wrestling the TV shows were only one hour long.
    Dave Meltzer in 1999: They showed so many clips of Scott Steiner and Kimberly and Ric Flair and Bret Hart and Roddy Piper that I thought I was having nightmares about having been a horrible human being and being sent to Hell, and when I got there, I was sent to a room with all the evil wrestling promoters past and present and they made me sit in the chair next to people like Fritz Von Erich, Herb Abrams and Nick Gulas and forced us to watch Nitro episodes like this 24 hours a day.
  • The Problem with Licensed Games: While WCW had some great games (see No Problem with Licensed Games above) there were also some really, really bad ones. 30 years later and still no one has figured out exactly how to play WCW SuperBrawl Wrestling for the SNES, WCW Nitro and WCW Thunder were worthless outside of the hilarious promos shown in the wrestler select screen (which weren't even present in the Nintendo 64 port of Nitro), and WCW Backstage Assault is widely regarded as one of the worst video games ever made in any genre and easily the worst wrestling game ever released.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: David Flair's mental breakdown made a good introduction for Daffney and Crowbar, both of whom became fairly popular and actually helped elevate David, if only for a while.
  • Rooting for the Empire:
    • A classic case of this: the Dynamic Dudes (John Laurinaitis and Shane Douglas), who were basically every Totally Radical stereotype crammed into one tag team (right down to skateboarding). When they received a push by having Jim Cornette turn heel on them and join an opposing faction (The Midnight Express), the audience cheered Corny.note 
    • Hall and Nash basically defined the idea of heels getting cheered with the nWo revolution, and Nash in particular later continued this with the Wolfpac.
    • In the summer of '98, The Ultimate Warrior (known simply as "Warrior" in WCW) had a disastrous comeback. His debut on Nitro, where he interrupted a Hollywood Hogan promo, was well-received. The crowd were losing their minds after literally every sentence. The Warrior formed the One Warrior Nation (oWn) to counter the nWo. That was supposed to be the big selling point: the man Hogan couldn't beat. It wasn't long before Warrior was getting booed heavily, despite playing a face to Hogan's heel. His gimmick was outdated for 1998. He couldn't do anything except bellow out his 1990-style promos. The event Hogan vs. Warrior would take place, Halloween Havoc 1998, was hyped up as a momentous event, and it wound up being one of WCW's worst ever pay-per-views: the undercard was middle-of-the-road at best, Warrior vs. Hogan was the drizzling shits, and the saving grace of the show (Goldberg vs. DDP) ran over and was cut about 90 seconds innote . WCW paid Warrior $3 million to work three PPV matches, but Warrior got hurt after two (at Fall Brawl). Even Bischoff admits the whole thing was a huge mistake on WCW's part. WCW stopped using him once they realized how stale his act was, and Warrior was on a short contract so he was gone quick. It was widely-assumed that Warrior was signed on so that Hogan could get back the loss he suffered at WrestleMania VI.
    • The No Limit Soldiers, a stable of rappers led by Master P, were formed by WCW in an attempt to rope in the urban/hip hop crowd on Monday nights.note  WCW then formed a country music stable, the West Texas Rednecks, to feud with them.note  Yes, WCW, whose primary fanbase consisted of southern white males, formed a stable of country music-loving rednecks, and made them out be heels battling a hip-hop stable, who were supposed to be the faces. Yeah, that'll go over well in the South.
      • If you were watching at the time, you probably don't remember the Rednecks doing anything heelish. In one of the segments where Master P actually bothered to showed up, the No Limit Soldiers came across as heels since they were the ones who started the feud: NLS threw Master P a birthday party and the WTR came out to give him a ten-gallon hat as a gift. The NLS proceeded to gang up on and throw birthday cake at them. Master P also wasn't viewed by hip hop enthusiasts as a particularly good rapper at the time, and after he was booed during his first appearance, note  he simply refused to return. The remaining members consisted of re-packaged veterans and rookies no one had ever heard of before.
      • Meanwhile, the Rednecks recorded the riotously-funny "Rap is Crap"note . They held their own against the No Limit Soldiers despite being outnumbered almost two-to-one, plus they were led by "Mr. Perfect" Curt Hennig, widely-considered one of the greatest wrestlers in history. Once fans cheered the Rednecks and booed every time the Soldiers chanted "hootie-hoo," the angle ended barely a month in.
    • Bischoff was partnered with former head of WWF creative Vince Russo and launched two new stables: New Blood, the new generation being held down by the old, and the Millionaire's Club, a cabal of veterans who were only interested in keeping their top spot. The idea was to get the young talent over without burying the veterans, but the booking showed a lack of preparation and thought put into it: Shane Douglas in his thirties complaining about getting held down and being the "future" of wrestling just doesn't wash. Both factions disbanded once management realized the angle was a flop, as the Millionaire's Club got most of the fan reaction. Russo holding the book in 2000 didn't help matters, as he said he doesn't believe in pure "heels" or pure "faces". Indeed, the New Blood came off as heelish right away: violently attacking the established stars, spray-painting their chests, mowing them down with 4x4 vehicles, and printing t-shirts declaring "TRADITION SUCKS". Bryan & Vinny of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter have reviewed this saga and pointed out on how screwed up it was that Billy Kidman is supposedly the babyface of his feud vs. ex-girlfriend Torrie Wilson and her new kayfabe boyfriend Shane Douglas, yet Kidman released a revenge porn of Torrie, made a video of some fat woman pretending to be her at Torrie's birthday party, then physically abused her to the point where she nearly fell off a balcony, risking either paralysis or death. How exactly were Shane and Torrie the heels in this feud?
  • The Scrappy: To fans of WCW, the most likely candidate for this trope would be Hulk Hogan. For a decade prior to Hogan's debut in WCW, Hogan was the face of their chief competition, the World Wrestling Federation, carrying the company on his shoulders as its most frequent champion and otherwise winning audiences with his charisma and overly energetic promos. In 1993, after Hogan left WWF as they entered the "New Generation" era, the wrestling icon jumped ship (which makes sense given that then-head Eric Bischoff was a HUGE fan of the Hulkster—perhaps to a fault), and WCW audiences immediately welcomed him with open arms. Right...? Not exactly. You see, World Championship Wrestling was a home-grown southern promotion, and its fanbase did not care for anything related to "the promotion up north", especially a stale heroic goody-two-shoes like Hulk Hogan, as opposed to someone like Sting, their homegrown hero who was said to be the southern wrestling equivalent to the Hulkster in his heyday, and these audiences preferred realistic "wrasslin'" to WWF's colorful, larger-than-life "sports-entertainment" product. If that wasn't bad enough, WCW fans had to watch that damn hotdogger and grandstander Hulk Hogan make quick work of their promotion's talent, like Ric Flair and Vader, and then, to add insult to injury, he brought in many of his wrestler friends to fill the roster, and they would be followed by Lex Luger, Bret Hart, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and many others, much to the displeasure of WCW's fans, who tended to audibly boo Hogan's very presence. Thankfully, he was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap when he turned heel and formed the nWo.
  • So Bad, It's Good:
    • The Shockmaster turned a worthless segment which everyone would have forgotten about into one of the most memorable botches ever. It would have been laughable even if he hadn't fallen on his face, but Sting's failed introduction (and the disbelief of his co-stars) has more entertainment value today than just about anything from that era of WCW. The Shockmaster actually did wrestle a few matches: he lost the fur coat and helmet and had about a 6-month run, repackaged as a klutzy construction worker. (Maybe an electrician, thus the "Shockmaster"?). Weirdly enough, his finisher was a perfect Tombstone Piledriver... but upside-down. The only thing it finished was his knees (they included the move with Typhoon in the new DLC pack, though in that version he doesn't drop to his knees, just a straight slam).
    • Hail Lord Yeti, we await your return o bandaged one.
      Schiavone: I've been asked why I called it the YETAY, but I figured that since I was in the middle of a bullshit angle, I'd do bullshit commentary. At least we all got something memorable out of it.
    • nWo Souled Out '97. This is well-documented as one of the worst/most bizarre PPVs ever (i.e. it's a must-watch). Cackling bad guys riding in on garbage trucks for 10 minutes, with no voiceovers or music. Wrestlers in dad-jeans. All-black everything and the fisheye lens shots. Fake live bands. Eric Bischoff attempting to be cool. The "Miss nWo" contest. Jeff Katz and his silly questions. Poor Nick Patrick having to ref every match. Poorly-thought out production ideas. Calling Eddie Guerrero a "Mexican Jumping Bean". It was a neat idea. It was duly inducted into WrestleCrap, and if you can find the video of Bryan & Vinny reviewing the show, it's thoroughly entertaining; especially when it comes to the Miss nWo contest.
    • Souled Out 2000 had Kidman and Malenko competing in a "Catch-as-Catch-Can" match which could be won by pinfall, submission, or both feet touching the arena floor. About two minutes in, Malenko actually forgot about that stipulation and went out of the ring like normal, meaning they had to end the match right there.
    • If you cut out Thunder completely and watch Nitro/PPVs from 2000 (preferably with buddies/a drink), they are at least not dull. The wrestling is not good, the angles are usually stupid and offensive, but it is very entertaining. Contrast it with the summer of '99 when Nash held the book. 3-hour Nitros where the first hour was just promos and recaps, nothing live whatsoever.
    • Judy Bagwell On A Pole. Goldberg refusing to "follow the script." Tank Abbott's nipples. Stacy Keibler's miscarriage. THIS IS NEW BLOOD RISING. It's an alright show, if you're the kind of person who likes to watch train wrecks. It's rotten, but it's rotten in a way which was never seen before and will never be seen again. Bonus: It's called New Blood Rising, yet the main event is three older guys in a triple threat match. Kevin Nash saying "I'm gonna go over" in the opening package really defines the state WCW was in.
    • Bash at the Beach 2000's Wedding Gown Match between Stacy (known at the time as Ms. Hancock) and Daffney. The first opponent to rip the other girl's gown off wins. The backstory is that David Flair is engaged to Daffney, but has started seeing Ms. Hancock on the side. This was Stacy's second match in her career and her first singles match overall. It ended with Ms. Hancock voluntarily stripping herself of her wedding gown to give a lap dance to the men in attendance and Daffney hitting her square in the face with wedding cake as a big food fight ensues. The really funny part comes after the match, with the ring crew trying their best to clean up the cake mess at ringside, but they can't, so they just end up flipping the ring mats on the other side because a multi-million wrestling company somehow couldn't find a mop which worked. This match was rated -1 star by Dave Meltzer.
  • Spiritual Successor:
    • The Outsiders invasion angle (which led to the nWo) and the Heartland Wrestling Association both started in 1996. Both were successors to the failed invasion / talent exchange WCW previously tried with Smokey Mountain Wrestling, which shut down in 1995.
    • TNA, both the good (like its early focus on the X-Division / cruiserweights) and bad (kayfabe-breaking and Reality TV smut). Bonus: Jarrett founded it to replace WCW in the first place. As of 2016, TNA has officially been in business longer than WCW, as has ROH. And both companies have been around almost twice as long as ECWnote .
    • All Elite Wrestling is the true spiritual successor to WCW: its flagship show Wednesday Night Dynamite (remind you of anything?) originally aired on TNTnote , it's backed by an influential billionaire, and it even employs quite a few people who'd once worked in WCW both in front of and behind the cameras, such as Chris Jericho, Dustin Rhodes, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Diamond Dallas Page, Christopher Daniels, and even Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone together again on commentary. In late 2020 they even managed to get Sting on board, despite him having retired 5 years earlier after his botched WWE run ended in a supposedly career-ending injury, and in 2021 the Big Show, who'd debuted in WCW as The Giant in 1995, jumped ship to AEW after his WWE contract expired. In 2023 they signed Ric Flair.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • WCW had such a staggering amount of polished women wrestlers pass through with little to show for it. Leilani Kai, Misty Blue, Jacqueline, Sherri Martel, Malia Hosaka, Brandi Alexander, Lexie Fyfe, Luna Vachon, Little Jeannie, Starla Saxton are just among the better known names stateside. From GAEA in Japan there were the additions Toshie Uematsu, Chigusa Nagayo, Devil Masami, Infernal KAORU, Meiko Satomura, and Sonoko Kato immediately available with many more they could call plus other Japanese wrestlers like Bull Nakano. Other international names included Susan Sexton from Australia and Monster Ripper from Canada. Under the impression all of those names would be the foundation of a great WCW women's division, Madusa and "Reina Jubuki" Akira Hokuto were willing to give up being champions of the WWF's and CMLL's, the former of which disappeared in 95 and wouldn't be right again until 2003 (and that return to form wouldn't even last two years but the independent circuit would pick up more of the slack by then), the latter of which became less active until going dormant completely in '03, and would not get back on track till 2005. This means WCW also played a hand in reducing women's wrestling to near-death for seven years in the US. (Luchadoras lucked out because Mexico's scene is much less monopolized than north of the border).
    • Ladies and gentlemen, the company who sent Chris Jericho checks for zero dollars and zero cents (true story, they also had a habit of sending him FedEx envelopes with nothing inside them).
    • The rot had already set in there to a degree, but Russo acted like a supercharged enzyme which sped up the whole process. The cruiserweights were stacked to the gills with international talent; they even put the belt on Jushin Liger for a while. It was an integral part of the company, and it came as a complete shock when Russo butchered it. Russo later claimed that the misuse of cruiserweights was their biggest problem, without acknowledging that he had put the belt on "Oklahoma" during his first run as booker.
      Vince Russo: I'm going to tell you something right now that you will absolutely not agree with, but I've been a wrestling fan my whole life and I will live and die by this. It's hard enough, believe me, I write this shit, it is hard enough to get somebody over. You will never ever, ever, ever, ever see the Japanese wrestlers or the Mexican wrestlers over in American mainstream wrestling. I'm an American. If I'm watching wrestling here in America, I don't give a shit about a Japanese guy. I don't give a shit about a Mexican guy. I'm from America, and that's what I want to see.
    • It just never felt like Bret Hart was the big deal he should have been. It was pretty bush league of WCW to use the biggest match in WCW history (and that's saying something) in order to take a cheap shot at the WWF. And to do it, they sacrificed Hart's debut and the happy ending promised with Sting's return. Then they have him take on a few nWo jobbers, only to have him pseudo-join the nWo a few weeks later.
    • It was strange how both the nWo and The Four Horsemen always lived in separate worlds. It's like WCW wanted them both to look strong, but didn't want to have them face each other, or have one side lose. It always seemed like the natural progression was the Horsemen emerging as the dominant force to take on the nWo on behalf of WCW (begrudgingly, since they could never be trusted). Probably the younger fans don't remember Flair and Hogan having such a heated rivalry, except for when they first arrived in WCW/TNA and then had some bad matches in '99/'02.

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