What Could Have Been / WCW

The teaser poster for the WCW pay-per-view The Big Bang, to be held on May 6, 2001.

There are so many examples that it could fill its own page. Or a book. That too.

Main Roster

• In the early-mid 1990s, WCW signed Swedish amateur wrestler and Olympic bronze medalist Frank Andersson to a contract. Andersson was very good in the ring and got great reactions, but lasted less than a year. Had he stayed on, WCW might have had an amateur-turned-pro wrestler half a decade before Kurt Angle signed with WWE.
• In 1995, when Greg Gagne was working for WCW, he and his father Verne had several meetings with Aleksandr Karelin, the most decorated amateur wrestler in history. (Best known in the United States as the man Rulon Gardner beat for his 2000 Olympic gold medal upset.) Karelin was interested in retiring from competition and getting into professional wrestling after the 1996 Olympics. Karelin was a freakish athlete and would have been built into a monstrous heel challenger for Hulk Hogan. This would have led to a three-match series starting at the Great American Bash, a hypothetical pay per view event in Russia, and culminated at Starrcade '97. However, since Greg Gagne met with Karelin behind Eric Bischoff's back (after Bischoff had stolen credit for Gagne's ideas twice before, Gagne alleges), Gagne was fired. Karelin was only interested in being trained by Greg and Verne Gagne (he respected Verne's amateur background). Once the Gagnes were out of the picture, Karelin decided not to get involved with professional wrestling. Karelin would have been only 31 in 1997. He was renowned for his freakish strength and endurance. Greg Gagne has said in shoot interviews that his push would have been a lot like Goldberg's, only as a heel. And instead of being rushed through the power plant, he would have been trained by Verne Gagne, who trained most of the biggest names of the 70's, 80's, and 90's. Aleksandr Karelin would have been young, well-trained and could have carried the company for the next 10-15 years.
• The Rock was nearly poached by Billionaire Ted.
• Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends episode on wrestling takes place at the WCW's training ground, The Power Plant, as staffed by DeWayne Bruce a.k.a. Sarge (called Sgt. Buddy Lee Parker when doing jobs on TV). It features rare footage of some now familiar wrestlers such as Chuck Palumbo being trained. There are strong hints that Sarge's brutal training regimen was to blame for WCW's failing ability to build its own new stars, as many wrestlers (such as Dave Bautista) walked out before they got a chance to sign with the company.
  • Chael Sonnen was at the Power Plant circa 1999 or 2000, but Sarge's brutal training ran him off. This was a two-time All-American wrestler at Oregon, and he thought it was too brutal. Chael opted for the greener pastures of Mixed Martial Arts instead. One can only wonder how Chael would have fared as a pro; given his antics and persona where he was, effectively, a wrestling heel in the world of MMA. Given his athletic base and ability to run his mouth, he could have been a huge star. ^note  Years later, Sonnen became infamous after saying he wanted to buy WWE when he retired from MMA, which he obviously didn't do. Hilariously the holding company that owns UFC did buy WWE in 2023.
• Dusty Rhodes once pushed for Rick Steiner to win the World Title from Ric Flair at Starrcade '88 because Flair and Lex Luger couldn't agree on a finish. Before the idea could come to fruition, Dusty was fired (WCW went through a revolving door of bookers and presidents in those days). His replacement George Scott decided to keep the title on Flair and brought in Ricky Steamboat for a series of matches that wound up being legendary^note That was really the only positive note of Scott's time in WCW, as pretty much everything else he did drove business into the toilet. He was fired after his refusal to promote a Clash of the Champions show (because he believed putting a 2 hour show on free TV would hurt house show gates, not grasping that Turner bought WCW for TV content and didn't gave a damn about house shows) meant that it drew a shameful 5,400 people to the Louisiana Superdome, a building that normally hosts NFL games. Hilariously Jim Cornette and The Midnight Express would get fed up with Scott and give their notices, figuring they'd come back when Scott was inevitably fired, only for Scott to get shitcanned before they finished up. However, think about how much different history might have been if Rick had won the title back in 1988. Would The Steiner Brothers have quickly reunited once he lost the title? Would Scott Steiner have broken out ten years sooner as a singles star in his own right? Would the Steiners have gone to WWE? How much different would the tag team landscape have been without them in the '90s if one or both of them had been singles stars?
• Among the various people that WCW didn't think were worth a main event push were:
  • "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, who was promised a World Title run. That never happened, because Hulk Hogan main-evented at Bash at the Beach '94. Austin saw the writing on the wall and left for WWE to become the biggest star since, well, Hulk Hogan. From World of Wrestling in 1995:
    When the Hogan camp got into power, they dismissed Austin as a highly-paid wrestler who was a good worker with no charisma and in their view of wrestling, workrate meant next to nothing. The Hogan clique basically consisted of WWFers from the mid-80s when wrestling was hot and thus, could dismiss any wrestler who came along later as being 'unable to draw money' (forgetting that most of those who drew money in the mid-80s became suddenly unable to draw money either when the business lost popularity).
  • Either preceded by or soon to be followed by Mick Foley, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Jericho, Triple H, The Big Show, Rey Mysterio Jr.^note Who was with the company until the day it closed (and even won the WCW Cruiserweight Tag Title on the last episode of Nitro) and doesn't really belong here, and the guy who would become The Undertaker. ALL of these guys became celebrated world champions when they left for WWE.
    • It's also worth noting that Scott Hall and Kevin Nash worked for WCW before becoming Razor Ramon and Diesel, respectively (twice before in Hall's case^note Shawn Michaels is the only Kliq member that never worked for WCW). Nash actually mentioned this during a promo on Nitro. The wrestling world would look a lot different if they never go up north, then come back to form the New World Order.
    • Of course the nWo, along with most of the other things mentioned on this page, wouldn't have happened at all if Vince McMahon would have hired Eric Bischoff when Bischoff auditioned for a WWF announcer job after he left the AWA. After being rejected by the Federation a call to his buddy Diamond Dallas Page got Bischoff into WCW as a backstage interviewer, and he quickly weaseled his way into running the whole show within a couple years. Bischoff would sign with WWE in 2002, but only as an on-air character.
• Bischoff also fired Jim Ross because he thought he wouldn't go over well with mainstream America. Of course, now Jim Ross is widely considered the greatest commentator of all time.^note That might have been the reason Bischoff gave publicly, but the real reason was just to get him out of the way. Ross and Bischoff were the top 2 candidates for the executive producer job vacated when Bill Watts was canned, with it basically being a given that whoever won would immediately fire the loser. Tony Schiavone was also angling for the job, but he stuck around when he got promoted to lead announcer after J.R. left.
• When Psicosis finally won the Cruiserweight Title, the initial plan was for him to have a multi-month reign. Then, Vince Russo decided that having tons of rapid title changes would be good for business, and Psicosis dropped the title back to Rey a week later.
• In the year 2000, WCW considered building a proper women's division around Madusa and Mona. They brought in several female wrestlers based on talent, and had some good matches on WCW Saturday Night and even a few on Thunder. Then someone (probably Vince Russo) decided to try and compete with WWE's eye candy and built the division around Miss Hancock, Major Gunns and some of the former Nitro Girls (none of whom had any wrestling training whatsoever). Mona got released and went to WWE, Madusa retired, and in early 2001 a decree from TBS resulted in almost every woman employed by WCW being fired (along with a large portion of the male roster). The Women's Championship (held by Akira Hokuto) and Women's Cruiserweight Championship (held by Toshie Uematsu) were stranded in Japan as a result.
• Interesting fact: "The Dog" (Al Green) was a last-minute replacement for Sabu, who was originally supposed to be in a "Hardcore" faction alongside Brian Knobbs and Fit Finlay. Sabu was supposed to jump to WCW, but contract issues put an end to that.
• Another example of a last=minute replacement - Ron Reis as the Yeti. The original plan had been to get Jorge Gonzales, otherwise known as El Gigante in his first WCW run and as Giant Gonzales in WWF, to play the character. However, Gonzales was too unhealthy and wasn't able to get cleared to wrestle, so a replacement had to be found. Prior to becoming The Yeti, Reis had been playing a jobber-to-the-stars named Big Ron Studd, so the mummy bandages may have been to keep him from being recognized.
• Rick Martel was something of a hot up-and-comer in late 90s WCW, working a "good guy with a temper" gimmick. He won the WCW Television Championship and was booked to retain it against Booker T and Perry Saturn in back-to-back matches. Booker screwed up a Beal toss on Martel due to the smaller-than-average ring,^note The 18' x 18' ring WCW used was actually considered the standard size at the time, though it is smaller than the WWF/E's 20' x 20' ring, which seems to have become the standard today (for example ECW also used an 18 foot ring, but AEW uses a 20 foot ring). At any rate Booker had been working in 18 foot rings for years at that point, so the ring wasn't the issue and Martel hurt his knee on the ropes badly enough that they had to re-book the match then and there, with Booker winning (and winning the followup match against Saturn, too). Martel's knee never really recovered and, after a short attempt at a comeback months later, he retired.
• The Quebecers/The Amazing French Canadians (Jacques Rougeau and Carl Ouelette) were brought back to WCW to be part of Lance Storm's Team Canada. However, after his first night, Rougeau refused to job to Ernest "The Cat" Miller and was fired. Shortly after that, Ouelette came down with visa issues and had to quit.
• Sometime in 1989 or 1990, The Four Horsemen had been reduced to only Ric and Arn Anderson. There was a plan reform the Horsemen by adding The Midnight Express to their stable. Flair, Arn, Bobby Eaton, Stan Lane, and Midnight Express manager Jim Cornette were all very enthusiastic about the idea. Apparently they pitched the idea to then-WCW president Jim Herd who signed off on it. Then Cornette went on vacation and came back, and Herd decided not to form the stable. This ultimately led to Cornette and Lane leaving WCW and Flair going to WWE for three years. Arn would team with Eaton and win the tag team titles in the interim.^note Eaton ended up being WCW's longest-tenured employee, joining the company all the way back in 1985 (when it was still Jim Crockett Promotions and under the NWA banner) and outside of a short break in 1991 stayed with WCW until finally being released in 2000.
• WCW almost got The Undertaker back from WWE when he was sidelined for injury in 1999, according to Kevin Nash. The near-jump led to 'Taker overhauling his gimmick from the Deadman to the biker-centered American Bad Ass when he returned to the WWE ring the following summer.^note "Almost got the Undertaker" is overstating it a bit. He was offered a contract, yes, but no one save for maybe Nash thinks he seriously considered accepting it, especially at a time when even Ray Charles could see WCW was about to fall off a cliff.
• Sometime in the mid-'90s, a young wrestler named Adam Copeland was hired by WCW as a jobber under the ring name Damon Striker. WCW considered signing him but ultimately deemed Copeland's gimmick worthless, and he was fired after two shows of WCW Pro (here's one of them). Copeland, who was struggling with debt, nearly spiraled into depression until he was encouraged by Bret Hart's agent to send one of his house matches to WWE. Eventually, WWE found talent in Copeland, sent him to a two-year training program, signed him to a contract, and Copeland used his personal struggles to rechristen himself under a new ring name, Edge. The rest is history. One reason that WCW went out of business: poor talent scouting.
• Randy Savage originally acquired the Gorgeous George gimmick and character from Robert Kellum (the great-nephew of George Wagner, the original Gorgeous George, and who once wrestled as Gorgeous George III and later, around that time, as "The Maestro") to give to his brother Lanny Poffo, but it never happened, so it was given to his then-girlfriend, Stephanie Bellars. Lanny was still under contract though, and since no one else could come up with something for him to do he just sat home and collected a check. For three years. One more reason WCW went out of business: poor financial management.
• Steve Corino was signed by WCW shortly after ECW imploded in January 2001, but never made it to TV. One guy who did make it to TV was AJ Styles. Both were laid off (along with pretty much everyone else in the company) two days after the last episode of WCW Monday Nitro. Another guy that made it to TV was Christopher Daniels, he was axed during a massive roster purge in late 2000. Picture a WCW that's still alive to sign what would eventually become the X-Division and the core group from the early days of Ring of Honor and all the ECW guys left out in the cold. What a waste...

New World Order

• Before the nWo, Scott Hall was supposed to be part of another Power Stable in WCW: The Dangerous Alliance in 1992.
• Before the Outsiders angle even began, Bret Hart was approached about jumping ship to WCW to be the third member, but he said he was comfortable where he was. This inadvertently set into motion events which culminated with the Montreal Screwjob: According to his book, Shawn Michaels asked for his release from WWE shortly after the nWo began, and would have likely signed with WCW since he missed traveling with The Kliq. Instead, Vince McMahon turned him heel and pitted him vs. Bret Hart, which eventually led to their fateful match in '97. While WCW later enticed Bret Hart to join, it would've been interesting to see how HBK would have fared in WCW.
  • The original plan would have had Lex Luger or Randy Savage turning heel, but since so many people had already guessed those two names, WCW toyed with making Sting the "third man", but Sting was very reluctant to play a heel. The shock of the industry's biggest icon turning heel would never have happened, and the nWo wouldn't have had the same impact it actually did. There was also concern that Hogan may change his mind at the last minute, as he's been known to do that, and plan "B" was for Sting to turn heel if that happened. (He would eventually become an nWo member when he joined the Wolfpac.)
  • Davey Boy Smith was originally intended to be a member of the nWo in its early days (as a stable of elite "invaders"), but Vince refused to let him leave WWE, likely for that reason.
  • During the height of the nWo's popularity, Booker T was approached with the opportunity to join. He turned the offer down because he felt the group had way too many members. A wise move in hindsight, instead of becoming another guy in the background mugging for the camera while Hogan and Nash cut promos he became one of WCW's top babyfaces, and won the WCW world title (for the fifth time) on the very last WCW show. It's telling that Booker was the only guy that joined WWE during the Invasion angle that wasn't completely buried and the only one of that group to have any sort of long-term success up north, in fact he's still working there as of 2024.
  • Charles Wright, best known in the WWE as Papa Shango/Kama/Godfather, was asked to become the bodyguard for the nWo. Although Wright and the WCW came to an agreement, he never heard back from them. Instead, Virgil got the position. While Wright was angry about the situation, it did inspire him to create the Godfather character, making him one of the few wrestlers loyal to the WWE during the Monday Night Wars.
• WCW came up with the Raw vs. SmackDown idea first: Depending on who you ask, either Nitro or its B Show Thunder was going to be the nWo's show. Bischoff was trying to build them up as a true separate brand from WCW. They wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. You'd have the standard WCW, and then the more adult-oriented nWo. You'd have brand warfare from time to time, and huge events where they clashed. (At its peak, WCW's roster probably could have supported three brands.) That changed when neither an nWo-hosted Nitro nor nWo Souled Out performed as expected.
• The nWo itself was supposed to end at Starrcade '97, which means that the Fingerpoke Of Doom would have never happened.
• In 1998, Hogan wanted to turn Wolfpac Sting heel as part of Hogan's feud with Kevin Nash. Sting refused despite heavy lobbying. The next candidates were Lex Luger and The Giant. The Giant is who Hogan settled for.
• The original idea was that splitting into nWo into halves would break their monopoly, with Hall and and Nash running the Wolfpac. Basically, it would been a pissing contest between former Kliq members, like a feud carried over from the dorms of an Ivy League school. In hindsight, Nash was going to build a new Kliq using undercard wrestlers. The Fingerpoke of Doom ended up damaging people other than just Goldberg.
• WCW planned its "White Hummer" angle (a mystery man driving a white Hummer who intentionally rammed Kevin Nash) around Sable being the driver. Sable was in talks with WCW, and was even spotted in the stands during a June '99 episode of Nitro. Those plans were shelved due to the conclusion of Sable's lawsuit against the WWF not nullifying the no-compete clause in her WWF contract. The angle bounced around with no resolution and repeated pointless call-backs while bookers tried to figure out an appropriate finish, but never did. It ended up being a triumphant example of WCW's scattershot booking. The resolution was so anti-climactic that many fans don't even remember it. (Eric Bischoff was revealed as the instigator the same night the New Blood/Millionaire's Club angle started.)
• In the WWE iteration, there was the beginnings of a storyline involving Triple H being approached to join them. It would have marked the first time that Kevin Nash, Shawn Michaels, and Triple H had worked for the same company since 1996, and could have given the original nWo and DX a run for their money. Unfortunately, Nash's quad tear put a stop to the angle, and Triple H quickly turned heel on Michaels again.
• Throughout 1998 and 1999, when Owen Hart was being humiliated on Raw as a form of retaliation against his brother, he was repeatedly offered the chance to jump ship, join the NWO, and feud with Bret out of revenge for "abandoning" him. Owen was seriously considering early retirement, but the offer of such a big day for a short term contract was intriguing to him.
• Konnan told a story in an interview about how after Paul Wight left for WWF, he contacted Yokozuna about possibly signing and becoming the faction's new giant. However, the negotiations eventually fell through, as at this stage in his life, "morbidly obese" would've been an understatement regarding Yokozuna's health.
• According to the Big Gold book by Dick Bourne and Dave Millican, there were plans for the nWo to be given their own world heavyweight championship belt, with Hogan, Hall and Nash even discussing melting down the Big Gold Belt and introducing their own championship on the Nitro after Hog Wild 1996. Concept art for the new belt was even featured in the book.

Crossovers

• WCW tried to negotiate a talent exchange with All Japan, but internal politics brought an end to it.
• WCW's partnership with Smokey Mountain Wrestling was killed before it could get off the ground, due to Bischoff feuding with Cornette and Ole Anderson. Also, some on the side of Management were offended by what Cornette said about them in a promo, which was supposed to kick off the angle.
• Brian Pillman was under still contract when he went to ECW. To guarantee that he'd go to New York once his contract with WCW ran out, WWE were paying him, as well. Bischoff had an elaborate plan to bring him back with the 'Loose Cannon' gimmick, but he didn't expect him to jump ship to WWE. Side note: According to the Ladies and Gentlemen DVD, ECW didn't pay a penny for Pillman due to his unique status as both WCW and WWE property. Basically, Paul Heyman is a clever bastard.
• The InVasion Angle (WCW & ECW vs. WWE wrestlers). There is a reason it is considered one of the greatest What Could Have Beens in pro wrestling:
  • WWE hired 25 WCW wrestlers. They owned the tape library. They had several former WCW talents under contract already. They had the trademarks, music, and the advantage of owning the brand. In comparison, WCW hired Razor Ramon, Diesel, 1-2-3 Kid, and an old, tired-looking Ted DiBiase. They had no rights to any WWE trademarks, music, or branding, and had to rely on washed-up former WWF stars. Even with all these disadvantages, they created one of Top 3 money-making story lines in wrestling history. So... No excuse. And WWE could have hired more WCW stars if they wanted to. Would they have had to pay big money? Probably, but everybody knew at the time it was worth it. InVasion got 750,000 buys with the people they had, plus the awful booking, but Vince was apparently worried about locker room morale if he paid the WCW guys more. The other issue is that audiences had no idea who guys like Buff Bagwell were, which compounded with them having a poor introduction in WWE, made for a perfect storm of suck, as exemplified by the infamous Booker T vs. Buff Bagwell match, which was inducted into WrestleCrap.
  • WCW jobbers were supposed to do a run-in at WrestleMania X7, but Shawn Stasiak blabbed about it on the radio, so they were resigned to cameos. (Buying tickets for a skybox◊ is "invading"?)
  • WWE made tentative plans to revive WCW on another network, but still under their umbrella. They shopped Nitro around with the promise that they'd likely move The Rock (and maybe Angle and a few others) to the WCW show to help boost its profile because they didn't have Nash, Hall, Hogan, Goldberg, etc. The Rock was the WCW World Heavyweight Champion at one point. But when UPN (who had ironically aired WCW Worldwide in some markets at around 1:30 in the morning) took one look at WCW's books, they crapped their pants and decided they wanted nothing to do with it. To this day we have no idea what Vince would have actually done with the company had he managed to find a network for it, but the rumor is the new show would have competed with Raw à la the whole Brand Extension stuff they've done on-and-off in the last decade.
  • And the biggest "what if?" of all: what would WWE look like today if WCW hadn't folded like soggy cardboard? Both companies had their renaissance at the same time. Now that one is gone entirely, the other can't recreate the magic.

Other Angles

• Jim Herd, a TV station manager and Pizza Hut executive with no experience in wrestling, made the biggest blunder of all. He was absolutely convinced that Ric Flair, who at the time was in his early 40s, was too old to draw. He asked Flair to drop the "Nature Boy" persona, shave his head, and take up a gladiator gimmick. On top of that, he wanted to remove Flair (his biggest draw) from the main event, and he wanted him to drop the belt to Lex Luger. Flair refused, because he wanted Sting to win the World Title. This led to Flair being fired prior to the Great American Bash in summer '91. Herd believed it was a risk-free maneuver, assuming that nobody else would want him either. Flair jumped ship to WWF, taking the Big Gold Belt with him. (WCW didn't return the deposit he'd paid on it, so he didn't have to return it.) Flair immediately began a main event angle with Hulk Hogan in WWF, and not long afterward Herd was fired from WCW in disgrace.
• Another Jim Herd lowlight: he came up with the tag team group The Hunchbacks, with their gimmick being that they couldn't be pinned due to their humps on their backs. It was rejected outright by WCW's booking committee - Ole Anderson in particular commented that the hunchbacks wouldn't be able to escape a spinning toehold either. This idea somehow morphed into the bell-wearing bell-ringing Ding Dongs.
• The Black Scorpion angle, in which Sting was tormented by a masked and shrouded figure who kept making references to having known Sting in the past, was originally planned with the Ultimate Warrior (Sting's former tag partner when they were the Blade Runners) in mind. However, WCW was unable to poach Warrior from WWE, and so the angle floundered around for several months with no plan, until Creative decided to make Ric Flair the Scorpion.
• Road Warrior Animal was originally going to be the fourth member of the babyface WarGames team at Fall Brawl 1993, he would of course be infamously replaced by The Shockmaster. Evidence of this can actually be seen on the WWE Network, the thumbnail for the show curiously uses the original promotional poster featuring Animal^note And also featuring Harlem Heat in their original slave gimmick, which (for obvious reasons) never made it to TV, who ended up accompanying the babyface team at ringside. It's unclear why he got bumped,^note as while this was shortly after Animal suffered the severe back injury that forced him to retire until 1996, his tag team partner Hawk was also signed to the promotion and could easily have replaced him, though nepotism was possibly involved, as the man under the glitter-coated Stormtrooper helmet was Dusty Rhodes' brother-in-law.
• Sid Vicious was penciled in to win the WCW title from Big Van Vader at Starrcade 93, but Sid was fired for trying to stab Arn Anderson to death a couple months beforehand. Because WCW shot their syndicated TV up to six months before they aired it footage of Sid as champ had already been filmed, it's unknown if this footage exists in the WWE archives (WCW most likely recycled the tapes once they knew they wouldn't ever see the airwaves), but at any rate it's never been seen by the public. Who knows how well a Sid title reign in 1994 would have gone, but just remember he would have won the title in December, and softball season starts up in April...^note Though had he not got fired, and had WCW convinced him to work through the spring, Sid would have likely suffered the same fate as his replacement in that Starrcade match, Ric Flair. That is, doing a Face–Heel Turn and getting fed to Hulk Hogan at Bash at the Beach 1994.
• Diamond Dallas Page was considered when debating how to end Goldberg's streak at Halloween Havoc '98. Dusty Rhodes pulled Page aside and told him he would go to bat for him: his idea largely centered around the shoulder injury spot Goldberg and Page had already incorporated into the story, and the fact that Page's Diamond Cutter finisher had been carefully booked and protected as a match ending weapon who could beat anyone. However, since Goldberg was going to be appearing on the next week's Entertainment Weekly with the World Title belt, Page and Bischoff agreed that it was best to leave the title on Goldberg for the time being. Given how Goldberg's streak ended up being broken, Page probably would have been the better choice overall.
  • Disco Inferno claimed in a shoot interview that Scott Steiner was originally pitched to end the streak, but Kevin Nash booked himself instead. In fairness, considering that the fate for eventual streak-breaker Nash was to lay down to the returning Hollywood Hogan in the Fingerpoke of Doom, it was extremely unlikely that Steiner would be willing to cooperate with Hogan anywat.
• Russo wanted to do a Royal Rumble-style match with Tank Abbott: go one-on-one with the last few guys, knock them out clean, and win the vacant world title. Considering the stuff WCW would do later, it's actually not that bad an idea, if it weren't for the fact that Tank Abbott was an actual borderline psychopath who made New Jack look calm and reasonable. There's also the fact that Tank hadn't remotely connected with WCW fans up to that point and was about as over as your average lower-midcard act. Upper management at Turner was so horrified by this idea that they sent Russo home^note They couldn't outright fire him because of his contract and had Kevin Sullivan replace him, which led Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, and several others to request (and for most of them, get) their immediate release. Russo would return a couple months later to finish the job of killing the company by putting the title on David Arquette.
• According to Jeremy Borash, a WCW employee floated the idea of attacking Shane McMahon during the Raw/Nitro simulcast on the latter's final show. Borash convinced the employee to stay put since he felt it would ruin the whole moment.
• When Lance Storm made his pro-Canada heel stable Team Canada, the original plan for the stable was a lineup of Storm, Elix Skipper, and the Amazing French Canadians (Jacques Rougeau and Carl Oulette, better known as The Quebecers in WWF). However, Rougeau was fired after one night for refusing to job to Earnest "The Cat" Miller, and after a couple weeks Oulette came down with Visa issues and was forced to quit. This led to All-American Face "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan turning heel and joining Team Canada, an angle that was not well-liked by the fans. It would have been interesting to see how Team Canada would have gone had the original lineup worked out.
  • During the mid-90's, there was an ongoing angle where Harlem Heat would often be seen talking on a phone to a mystery advisor. Although said person ended up being Sherri Martel, WCW apparently filmed some segments revealing Johnny Attitude (one of their many "Jobber to the stars") as being the team's new manager. It's possible this was the original plan, as Stevie Ray once claimed the person they were talking to was male. ^note  Though this also could've been to hide the surprise of who it ended up being.

Planned Revivals

• Eric Bischoff’s vision for a "new" WCW would have taken them off the road. The idea was to host it in a single venue, with a steady stream of tourists. This would allow WCW to rebuild their audience so they could tour again. Las Vegas and Orlando were among the locations mentioned.
• To the very end, management hoped to find a home for Nitro on another network, and even had more Sin-themed PPVs in the works to compliment March 2001's Greed: Envy (April), Deceit (May), and Pride (June).
• Even after it was announced that WWE had purchased them, there were rumors of Bischoff and Fusient entering talks with Fox over a possible new promotion. It never came to fruition. Funny enough, Jeff Jarrett took his idea and used it to launch Total Nonstop Action wrestling in Orlando.
• Before it was acquired by WWE in March 2001, WCW had a PPV called The Big Bang to be broadcast on May 6, 2001, which would have marked a "creation of the New WCW"; advertisements were featured in the second-to-last issue of WCW Magazine, and it would have been greenlt if Fusient had agreed to purchase WCW. You can learn more about it on WWE's website.

Miscellaneous

• In 1993, Jim Crockett launched an ambitious new company, the World Wrestling Network, in cooperation with Paul Heyman. They hoped to create a HDTV wrestling show which would also utilize the internet. Sounds like they were a bit too ahead of their time for it to work. By about 20 years. (HD wasn't even a thing yet in 1994, and the internet was nowhere close to being able to handle video since most people were probably still on 28.8 modems.)
• Bischoff talked Stacy Keibler out of a Playboy spread because her father was against it, and there would have been no benefit for her career aside from a small payday. Biggest heel in the history of the business. Side note: Stacy became one of the more wholesome divas to come out of that raunchy era of women's wrestling. (And we also know how many bigger and better things Sable, Chyna, Torrie Wilson, Candice Michelle, et al. got up to after posing nude.)

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