WWE Presents The Rise & Fall of WCW (3-Disc DVD) -- August 25, 2009

[DonRSD]

best wrestler ever.............SHANE McMAHON!!!!

that guy always made me laugh for excitement with his crazy elbows from the turnbuckles to halfway across the ring....lol
i was watching RAW last monday with my son and shane was fighting......what a treat

best match ever = undertaker/mankind hell in a cell OR the TLC matches with edge/christian, 3d & hardy Boyz......those were instant classics

[Nerdkiller likes BD]

Originally Posted by DonRSD

best wrestler ever.............SHANE McMAHON!!!!

that guy always made me laugh for excitement with his crazy elbows from the turnbuckles to halfway across the ring....lol
i was watching RAW last monday with my son and shane was fighting......what a treat

best match ever = undertaker/mankind hell in a cell OR the TLC matches with edge/christian, 3d & hardy Boyz......those were instant classics

Remember the match from earliar on in the week? It just made me laugh when Batista came out ages after Shane got whooped. I mean, what was he doing backstage, fearing that a basketball would come out and get him (trust me, you have to visit WrestleCrap if you want to get the reference)?

[Beast]

Originally Posted by Nerdkiller likes BD

Ahem...






Uh oh. Looks like you're next.

Plus don't forget the best WCW star, who's never signed with WWF.



WWF sucked during that era. And continues to suck. Which is a shame.

[bandit29]

Sting was always good...Goldberg though...just awful. If you ever saw him wrestle in person you'd see how bad he was...it's his fault Bret Hart had to retire...

I'd take WWF back then with Stone Cold, Undertaker, the Rock, DX etc. over lame WCW and its NWO, Wolf Pack, LWO and their total misuse of Bret Hart.


WWE nowadays bleh...I can hardly watch it...all they do is talk..no one wrestles. There's a few good (mostly veteran) wrestlers: Jeff Hardy, Edge, Randy Orton, Chris Jericho, CM Punk and the Undertaker...when he can perform..he's really pushin it...WWE has done a poor job of creating younger talent to replace the older guys.

And please get rid of the current ECW. It's a disgrace

[Nerdkiller likes BD]

Originally Posted by bandit29

Sting was always good...Goldberg though...just awful. If you ever saw him wrestle in person you'd see how bad he was...it's his fault Bret Hart had to retire...

I'd take WWF back then with Stone Cold, Undertaker, the Rock, DX etc. over lame WCW and its NWO, Wolf Pack, LWO and their total misuse of Bret Hart.


WWE nowadays bleh...I can hardly watch it...all they do is talk..no one wrestles. There's a few good (mostly veteran) wrestlers: Jeff Hardy, Edge, Randy Orton, Chris Jericho, CM Punk and the Undertaker...when he can perform..he's really pushin it...WWE has done a poor job of creating younger talent to replace the older guys.

And please get rid of the current ECW. It's a disgrace

Well Sting nowadays is an aging warrior. Whats he like, 50 now? Don't forget Kurt Angle. All he does is push his body to the limit, which has me worried. If he keeps up with this, he's gonna end up like Bret Hart. He needs to retire soon, unless he wants to risk his life.

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally Posted by toefer

Sorry for the big picture, but here's the ratings for all Raws/Nitros from '95-2001.

The color key is in the bottom right.

Thanks for this. Great chart.

It's interesting to note that at the highest point of the Monday Night Wars, the shows combined for around a 10 rating. The episode of Raw from a few days ago drew a 3.3. That means nearly 70% of people watching wrestling on Monday nights 10 years ago are no longer watching.

[toef]

Originally Posted by DetroitSportsFan

Thanks for this. Great chart.

It's interesting to note that at the highest point of the Monday Night Wars, the shows combined for around a 10 rating. The episode of Raw from a few days ago drew a 3.3. That means nearly 70% of people watching wrestling on Monday nights 10 years ago are no longer watching.

Yeah, I wonder if wrestling will ever become that popular again.

There was the Golden Age of the mid/late 80's, and then the huge popularity during the Monday Night War years of the mid/late 90s.

If the peaks were coming every 10 years, it seems like we missed it this decade.

The consolidation of wrestling seems to have hurt it a lot. The drop in ratings is a big reason why WWF decided to do the whole draft thing, in an attempt to recreate the idea of competing brands. It just doesn't seem to work at all. The shows seem too similar to really feel like they're supposed to be separate.

[jadedeath]

Originally Posted by toefer

The consolidation of wrestling seems to have hurt it a lot. The drop in ratings is a big reason why WWF decided to do the whole draft thing, in an attempt to recreate the idea of competing brands. It just doesn't seem to work at all. The shows seem too similar to really feel like they're supposed to be separate.

Too much crossover.

Logan

[Nerdkiller likes BD]

Originally Posted by toefer

Yeah, I wonder if wrestling will ever become that popular again.

There was the Golden Age of the mid/late 80's, and then the huge popularity during the Monday Night War years of the mid/late 90s.

If the peaks were coming every 10 years, it seems like we missed it this decade.

The consolidation of wrestling seems to have hurt it a lot. The drop in ratings is a big reason why WWF decided to do the whole draft thing, in an attempt to recreate the idea of competing brands. It just doesn't seem to work at all. The shows seem too similar to really feel like they're supposed to be separate.

Well that only happened after Vince bought WCW. I'm not sure if making the 2 brands whole again is a good idea right now. If they did, there would be many superstars getting "future endeveored", ya get what I'm saying?

[Musashi]

The Stone Cold vs Vince McMahon era enhanced by Triple H, Undertaker, Foley, The Rock, and various others was the peak of my interest.

I was amused when Vince bought WCW, and I like seeing their old shows on Demand, but Vince completely missed the boat on that one. I heard that originally he really was going to sign it over to Shane, move Nitro to a different day, and have Shane manage it as his own business.

Goldberg: he has amusing qualties and impressive strength but he's a big prima donna and essentially a 2-move wrestler.

Wrestling nowadays I watch half-heartedly while cooking/eating dinner. It's ok, but not really great. My PPV watching has reduced to just getting Wrestlemania, which is generally fun.

There's things I like about TNA but I've had trouble watching it cuz I find it too angsty. Mick Foley claiming "No one's talking about that other April wrestling show anymore" was a worth a quick chuckle and a channel change.

Back to the original topic: I'm curious about the release, but I can;t take it seriously if it lacks Eric Bischoff's input. The guy has matured a lot over recent years and should have a retrospective say in it.

[toef]

Originally Posted by Nerdkiller likes BD

Well that only happened after Vince bought WCW. I'm not sure if making the 2 brands whole again is a good idea right now. If they did, there would be many superstars getting "future endeveored", ya get what I'm saying?

Well that was my point. When Vince bought WCW, the ratings started to go down, so I guess they figured people liked the idea of having multiple brands of wrestling. So Vince (or whoever, but I assume Vince) decided to break up his huge company into "brands" that were supposed to re-create the idea of different wrestling companies, but even that didn't seem to work.

I don't think turning it into 1 giant company would make things better. I think the right idea is having multiple groups, but that more needs to be done to distinguish them from each other, other than the day of the week that their show is on.

If they want to turn Smackdown into the family friendly wrestling of the early 90s, with lots of random character-based wrestlers, then cool, that's fine.

Have Smackdown be more like the young-kid wrestling from the early 90s, make Raw the edgier Attitude type of wrestling, and make ECW more like what ECW used to be, or stop calling it that.

Or if they don't want to take the early-90s approach, and instead want Raw and Smackdown to remain somewhat similar, at least change one of them to the WCW name. I know it wouldn't fool anybody into thinking they weren't owned by the same company, but why not bring back the name? At least that helps make the two groups seem a bit different.

In the end, I don't really care that much, because I stopped watching wrestling in the late 90s, and my interested peaked between WM9 and 11.

[djluis2k6]

Ok, story lines, yes they were bad. Management, yes it was bad. nWo all over TV, horrible. But let's not forget that WCW did have a lot of great wrestling. WCW gave the cruiserweights a lot more exposure than WWE ever thought about giving them, even giving them Cruiserweight Tag Team Titles. Sure it was at the end, but they thought good of it enough to go that far with that division. Not to mention being in the guys from ECW and giving them national exposure, eventually leading them to the big time with WWE. I watched WCW for its great wrestling, and not much for anything else. World War 3 was a great concept and I wish they would do that in WWE.

[PCiAM]

Originally Posted by Nerdkiller likes BD

Was that when he gave the results of the Mankind/Rock match, by saying that he won the title? That showed that Mick Foley put fans asses in their seats.

Yeah I believe it had the adverse effect--fans heard the announcement and actually turned the channel to watch Mick Foley win.

I'm in the minority, but I always preferred WWF even in the late 90s when they were getting hounded by WCW. Sure, they had Hogan, Savage, and the like, but they were all played out anyway. The cruiserweights were interesting, sure, but I thought wrestlers like Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart were the most fascinating to watch back then when they were in their primes. Of course Bret went to WCW but they shamefully mis-used him--his short period on WCW was a small blimp in his career.... partially due to the fact that he got injured but WCW also didn't know how to use him apparently.

Even Ric Flair, who was a huge NWA/WCW icon talks about how poorly managed WCW was. And like another poster mentioned, they gave their stars far too much leverage in creating/mapping out storylines.

WWF may have hit a hard spot for a bit but I was glad I stayed loyal--I always preferred the younger, more interesting roster. I would watch WWF first and then watch Nitro during Raw commercial breaks. The NWO was interesting for about a year but WCW kept that going way too long, and pretty much everyone on the entire WCW roster was apart of the NWO at some point.

The rise of Stone Cold and The Rock helped WWF take back its throne, though I agree with another poster about WWE today... it's pretty painful to watch. In a two hour Raw telecast, you may get like 45 mins total of wrestling. The rest is useless talking. I know they hated each other, but I miss the gold old days of Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels matches. Despite their hatred for one another, they could put on one hell of a match.

[steve1971]

I miss the days of the Hulkster, Macho Man Randy Savage, Andre The Giant, Paul Mr Wonderful Orndorf just to name a few. Wrestling now days? Right now the ONLY reason I watch it is because of 2 people and they are Triple H and The Undertaker other then thats its a pile of you know what! I do like the current story line involving the McMahons and Triple H vs Randy Orton. Orton is having his way big time and I never thought I would see that happen. That being said I would love to see the Hulksters best matches come out on blu but will it happen? No.

[Mike53421]

Ugh, thinking back to 2001 just reminds me how poorly handled that WCW invasion angle was handled. The first time WCW guys popped up on RAW was awesome (Lance Storm in Alberta, I think?), they should've maintained both shows and had occasional crossover but keep them separate.

EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFVu0LiGpwQ

Nice. Now I'll be on a wrestling YouTube spree til 24 comes on...

Kidman vs. Gregory Helms: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH3yevq_K5s

I can't believe they gave the opening main event slot to Buff Bagwell.

Heyman's shoot from One Night Stand 2005 (FOUR years ago!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_xzLijve40

"The only reason you were WWE champion for a year is because Triple H didn't want to work Tuesday!"

[lettucenpico]

Wrestling has changed so much throughout the years. I wish they left ECW alone and let them do there own thing like they did back in the days. I miss those matches like Sabu/RVD vs The Dudleys, or Sabu vs Tazz..etc... I went to three ECW shows here in Orlando several years back when they did all those crazy stunts.

IMPACT PLAYERS!!!

[lettucenpico]

Originally Posted by PCiAM

Yeah I believe it had the adverse effect--fans heard the announcement and actually turned the channel to watch Mick Foley win.

I'm in the minority, but I always preferred WWF even in the late 90s when they were getting hounded by WCW. Sure, they had Hogan, Savage, and the like, but they were all played out anyway. The cruiserweights were interesting, sure, but I thought wrestlers like Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart were the most fascinating to watch back then when they were in their primes. Of course Bret went to WCW but they shamefully mis-used him--his short period on WCW was a small blimp in his career.... partially due to the fact that he got injured but WCW also didn't know how to use him apparently.

Even Ric Flair, who was a huge NWA/WCW icon talks about how poorly managed WCW was. And like another poster mentioned, they gave their stars far too much leverage in creating/mapping out storylines.

WWF may have hit a hard spot for a bit but I was glad I stayed loyal--I always preferred the younger, more interesting roster. I would watch WWF first and then watch Nitro during Raw commercial breaks. The NWO was interesting for about a year but WCW kept that going way too long, and pretty much everyone on the entire WCW roster was apart of the NWO at some point.

The rise of Stone Cold and The Rock helped WWF take back its throne, though I agree with another poster about WWE today... it's pretty painful to watch. In a two hour Raw telecast, you may get like 45 mins total of wrestling. The rest is useless talking. I know they hated each other, but I miss the gold old days of Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels matches. Despite their hatred for one another, they could put on one hell of a match.

Not only did they keep NWO going for as long as they did, they overpopulated the group. Then they all seperated and did there own group. Wolfpac, Black & White, LWO. etc.... I also miss those mid 90s match in the WWF. With Hart vs Michaels iron man match, Razor Ramon Michaels ladder match, etc... Best thing that came out of WWF was the rise of Degeneration X. S*CK IT!!!

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally Posted by lettucenpico

Not only did they keep NWO going for as long as they did, they overpopulated the group. Then they all seperated and did there own group. Wolfpac, Black & White, LWO. etc..

The LWO had nothing to do with the nWo. It was Eddie's group rebelling against "the man" for discriminating against the Latino wrestlers, not giving them adequate TV time, title shots, etc.

[lettucenpico]

Well whatever. They put too many World Orders out there. NWO, LWO, BWO. etc....I never got into the late 90s WCW around the time the rise of NWO. I use to watch the original wcw shows with Ric flair and his four horsemen, ricky steamboat, sting vs vader matches. etc....

[tommyboy81]

Originally Posted by Nerdkiller likes BD

Was that when he gave the results of the Mankind/Rock match, by saying that he won the title? That showed that Mick Foley put fans asses in their seats.

That would be the one.