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SPECIALIST - WWE 24/7's "Legends of Wrestling" Roundtable: "The Monday Night Wars," pt. 2 of 2
Sep 7, 2007 - 12:27:00 PM |
By Alfonso Castillo, PWTorch 24/7 Specialist
We pick up the second half of the roundtable with a clip of Hogan vs. Sting with Bret as the referee at Starrcade 1997, with Sting winning and celebrating in the ring with the WCW babyfaces.
The conversation shifted to Bret Hart, with saying WWE couldn't afford to keep Bret at the time. He added, "I have all the respect for Bret Hart, and that may make me in the minority in this company." He asked Bischoff how serious the negotiations had been with Bret. Bischoff said he liked Bret a lot, and got along with him well because they shared a lot of interests, including American Indians and Canadian history. Foley talked about how he and Bret used to trade books on the Civil War.
Hayes said Bischoff had a talent for negotiating with wrestlers, and Bischoff said it was because, "I'm a salesman. I've always been a salesman."
Ross briefly went over the Montreal screwjob, and Hayes said Ross shouldn't gloss over the fact that "there was a ton of talent" that refused to go on TV the next night, including Foley. Ross recalled fielding calls all night from upset wrestlers. Bischoff said he didn't think McMahon becoming a TV character would have been such a big deal, even though Zane Bresloff warned him about it at the time. Hayes said, no matter who screwed Bret, WCW messed up by waiting so long to debut him. He said WCW should have jumped on the story. Bischoff said he didn't recall why he took so long to debut him, but he did remember writing Bret a big check for guaranteed millions. Hayes said, "It was just to take him away from us." Bischoff resented Hayes' statement and said, "No it wasn't. There we go again." He said the main reason he signed Bret was because Turner was adding an extra two hours of WCW programming in the form of Thunder, and he didn't want to cannibalize his talent. He said adding a third hour of Nitro, "overkilled it." Hayes asked Bischoff if he regretted the move, and Bischoff said he didn't have a choice.
In a weird moment, Lawler interjected and asked, "Was it my imagination" or could the entire Montreal incident have been a "concocted situation between Bret and Vince?" Ross said he didn't think so, although Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara were at the helm at the time. Ross said he believed that if Vince wanted to keep Bret in WWE "as the Babe Ruth" he would have.
Foley said at that time, WWE was only a few months away from Mike Tyson's involvement, and then it was "off to the races" with WWE taking over on Monday nights. He asked, with both companies doing so well at the time, was it more important for Bischoff to just have WCW do well, or to beat WWE. Bischoff said he wanted to beat WWE, and in doing so, WCW would be successful. Foley said he heard Bischoff took it hard when WWE was beating WCW, even as WCW was still doing very well in the ratings. Bischoff admitted that he was having a hard time, but it largely a matter of being "fried" at the time and not having a lot of help in dealing with talent. Lawler said that talent was likely telling him whatever was in their best interest.
Foley talked about stunned Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko were when they came to WWE and saw everyone changing in the same dressing room. Bischoff said it was a good point, and that he screwed up by not keeping everyone on more of an even keel in the WCW locker room and allowing hierarchies to develop. Ross noted that any wrestling companies that gives some wrestlers private dressing rooms, "are begging for major issues." Out of nowhere, Hayes accused Lawyer of being the worst offender as far as keeping his own dressing room in the Memphis territory, to which Lawler got defensive and said it was also a matter of him being the owner of the promotion. "This has nothing to do with me," Lawler said. Hayes said he now understands why Lawler did that back in the day.
Ross shifted the conversation to the night when the "beloved" Mick Foley reached his lifelong goal of winning the WWE title. Foley talked about how Tony Schiavone dismissed all of his accomplishments with his line: "Wow, that's going to put asses in the seats." Bischoff said he would say things like that all of the time, and specifically brought up a time when he made fun of Shawn Michaels' weak-looking superkick. Foley said he believed it was personal in his situation.
Getting emotional, Hayes talked about how inspiring Foley's victory was, and how it changed the course of pro wrestling. Foley thanked him. . A clip of the match, in which Mankind defeated the Rock to win the WWE title, was shown.
Foley said he knew he was just a transitional champion, but he still considered the win a lifelong achievement. He said it was arguably the best night of his career, and recalled gathering with his family to watch it on TV - first watching a "lame" edition of Nitro. Then he heard his name mentioned by Schiavone. "You took a night that was this big for me and you just took everything out of me… That was mean spirited," said Foley, who added that he knew Bischoff was behind Schiavone's words.
Foley talked about how that Raw was taped in Massachusetts, while Nitro was live from the GeorgiaDome, the night after WCW's biggest pay-per-view of the year when Goldberg's undefeated streak came to an end. And still, WWE took 100,000 fans away from Nitro when Foley fought for the title. "It was at that point that people started saying, ‘Maybe this guy is a player." He said, in that way, Bischoff actually did him a favor.
Foley talked about how he called Schiavone and left him a message, and Schiavone called back very apologetic and said he had respect for Mick and that he was forced to say the things he did. Bischoff said he didn't recall whether he produced Schiavone that night, but said he usually didn't. He said he never told him to "bury this son of a pitch," but rather that the whole tactic was just the way he did business as the time, and had nothing to do with Foley personally.
Lawler said nothing ever made Vince as mad as when Bischoff would give away the results of a taped Raw live on the air. Bischoff talked about how his theory was to give away pay-per-view quality matches for free on Nitro, and Ross interjected, "We do that many times on Raw right now." Bischoff talked about the Hogan-Goldberg match, and how it was Hogan's idea to put Goldberg over. He said he didn't regret it.
Lawler asked Bischoff if he thought there was one thing that caused the demise of WCW more than anything else. Bischoff said there was no single thing. Ross talked about the importance of homegrown talent, and pointed out Sting, whose career was made against Ric Flair in 1988. Ross said, in hindsight, WCW should have pushed more homegrown stars instead of relying "on a lot of old legs and manipulative individuals." Bischoff said that between 1996 and 1998, WCW did create a lot of stars, but Lawler said they were never able to push out the older guys. Bischoff said one of the problems was that in 1998, when WWE "went Attitude," it started doing the edgier material better than WCW did. "You kind of out-Nitroed Nitro," he said.
A clip of the DX "invasion" outside a Nitro event aired.
Bischoff said that while WWE was developing an Edge, WCW was facing more stringent rules from standards and practices. He said he was no longer able to refer to people as "stupid" at the risk of offending the parents of learning disabled children. He said WCW was being forced to become a family-product just as WWE was developing its attitude. Hayes said Bischoff was being handcuffed when he needed to fight. Bischoff said that was part of the problem, but he didn't want to use it as an excuse. In a bit taken almost word for word from his book, Bischoff talked about being called into a meeting with Turner ad execs who were telling him where they wanted WCW in 18 months, despite not even knowing what night of the week Nitro aired and never having watched it.
Bischoff gave the story of his firing, saying Harvey Schiller told him to go home. When Bischoff said he had a pay-per-view that Sunday, Schiller told him, "Not this Sunday you don't."
In a very strange rant, Ross talked about knowing all too well what being fired feels like, comparing it to "being the bottom guy" on the TV show Oz. Ross said it in his own case it was all because he "didn't have the right look." He said he's still battling those problems today and is sure he will be replaced one day. Ross called former WCW exec Bill Shaw a "blatant liar" for whom he had no respect because he told him he would bring him back after six weeks, but never did because they had a different vision for WCW. He said Shaw couldn't hire five guys to take his spot. He ranted about Shaw wanting to demote him to announcing syndicated shows. "The bottom line is you walked into the same meeting I walked into with Turner." Wow.
Bischoff said he was very stressed at the time by people telling him what to do, and that his biggest regret was that he didn't quit WCW a year earlier in 1998, when he would have had more leverage. Ross asked Bischoff is he believed all the hype about Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara and whether they would be WCW's saviors. Bischoff said he barely knew either of them. "I wouldn't have recognized them if they came to my house and delivered a pizza," said Bischoff, who added that he didn't believe that they were the force behind WWE's success, because if they were, Vince would have never let them go.
Bischoff said he remembered watching Guerrero and Saturn debut on WWE and telling his wife that he expected to get the call for him to come back any day. ((I'm guessing they edited out Benoit's name.) And he did. He talked about Nitro's ratings having gone from the 5's into the high 2's. He recalled being asked if he could work with Vince Russo. He said he had met Russo once and that he was charming. He said their partnership lasted just 60 days.
Ross asked Bischoff where he was for the final Nitro. Bischoff said he couldn't watch, especially since it was his "baby" - referring to the Panama City spring break edition. Ross asked if it bothered Bischoff not to be there, and Bischoff said it did because part of him still felt like WCW was his. He said Jamie Kellner had put a stake in the heart of WCW. He said he thought he had a deal finalized to buy the company through Fusient Media and had even told his family to expect that he would be gone for long periods of time soon, like he did during Nitro's glory days. Then he found out that Turner would only sell Fusient the tape library and the trademarks, but not the distribution rights. Without it, he said WCW was worth nothing.
To close, Ross noted that his was the final voice ever heard on WCW Monday Nitro.
Overall thoughts: On so many levels, this was an absolutely fascinating 90 minutes of WWE-produced television to watch. At points, you really got the sense that these guys had forgotten that the cameras were on. As always, it's wrestling history through the extremely-biased and foggy filter of WWE brass as well as the completely oblivious Bischoff. Almost everyone on the panel came off badly in spots, with the WWE guys as a whole being total hypocrites and babies when talking about how malicious Bischoff was in trying to put poor little WWE out of business. Hayes was especially resentful, but also came off as the most knowledgeable of the bunch. Foley also came off as a bit of a baby regarding Schiavone's "asses in the seats" line. Ross seemed more intent on sending out cryptic, insider messages to fans and WWE management, and relating everything back to himself, than anything else. Bischoff came off as the same clueless self-promoter that he was in his book, but he was definitely unfairly piled on by the rest of the panel.
Up until now, this "Legends" panel has been somewhat underwhelming, with Foley and Bischoff not having as much of a reserve of great, old road stories to draw upon as Dusty Rhodes and Pat Patterson from season one did. However, for this topic, this panel was almost ideal - with Foley having been one of the center pieces of Raw at the time, Ross and Lawler having been at ringside for every week, Hayes having been behind the scenes; and of course Bischoff running WCW. It would have been nice to get another WCW guy on the panel, like Booker T, to give some more balance, but I get the sense that they grab whoever is in the hallway and tape about 10 editions of the "Legends" series at a time.
A really fun hour-and-a-half of WWE-style shooting. The "Legends" series is reason enough to subscribe to WWE 24/7.
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