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Dark Side Of The Ring season 4

Sandman admitting he beat his wife in DSOTR might be a first. Of course, most of the other guys are dead.

This series is also toast. It's been bad for awhile but it sucks at this point and hopefully dies with Vice.
 
AtlantaWhaler said:
Yep...the death of WCW for me was constantly trying to chase the Outsiders and Hogan/NWO swerve for years. The NWO stuff got boring after several months and definitely after a year, but they insisted on trying to chase that one swerve to bring the fans back.
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AOL/Time Warner merger aside, I felt it went downhill the minute they decided to increase Nitro from 2 hours to 3, along with now a 2 hour Thunder show. It wasn't like Bischoff had a choice, Ted Turner wanted Thunder for his TBS station. 2 hours became 5. Way too much.

Yet, NWO was still red-hot into mid-1998. The fans were begging for a face version to cheer for and they got it. It's rarely acknowledge how over NWO Wolfpac was. You look at them in mid-1998 they had a hot angle with NWO Wolfpac vs. NWO Hollywood, and a scorching hot Goldberg as US champ with his unbeaten streak. Those two angles could of carried them all the way to Starrcade.

Instead they hot-shot Goldberg beating Hogan to pop a rating against WWF Raw's momentum. Should of been saved for Starrcade. And Hogan didn't want Hall in NWO Wolfpac which made no sense storyline wise but Hogan never wanted to see the Red and Black version without him flourish. He didn't want all the "cool" characters on the other side.

If executed right, they could of came out of Starrcade 98 with an still unbeaten Goldberg as WH champ, a uber-popular babyface nWo Wolfpac selling T-shirts and merch by the truckload, and killed off the NWO Hollywood group once and for all.

Instead we got the finger poke of doom, and the downward spiral couldn't be stopped at that point.

I still say one of WWE's biggest missed opportunities was not doing NWO Red and Black Wolfpac babyface faction post WM 18. It would of been a license to print money.
 
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BruinDust said:
AOL/Time Warner merger aside, I felt it went downhill the minute they decided to increase Nitro from 2 hours to 3, along with now a 2 hour Thunder show. It wasn't like Bischoff had a choice, Ted Turner wanted Thunder for his TBS station. 2 hours became 5. Way too much.

Yet, NWO was still red-hot into mid-1998. The fans were begging for a face version to cheer for and they got it. It's rarely acknowledge how over NWO Wolfpac was. You look at them in mid-1998 they had a hot angle with NWO Wolfpac vs. NWO Hollywood, and a scorching hot Goldberg as US champ with his unbeaten streak. Those two angles could of carried them all the way to Starrcade.

Instead they hot-shot Goldberg beating Hogan to pop a rating against WWF Raw's momentum. Should of been saved for Starrcade. And Hogan didn't want Hall in NWO Wolfpac which made no sense storyline wise but Hogan never wanted to see the Red and Black version without him flourish. He didn't want all the "cool" characters on the other side.

If executed right, they could of came out of Starrcade 98 with an still unbeaten Goldberg as WH champ, a uber-popular babyface nWo Wolfpac selling T-shirts and merch by the truckload, and killed off the NWO Hollywood group once and for all.

Instead we got the finger poke of doom, and the downward spiral couldn't be stopped at that point.

I still say one of WWE's biggest missed opportunities was not doing NWO Red and Black Wolfpac babyface faction post WM 18. It would of been a license to print money.
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I just think they dragged the nWo into the ground. The Hogan turn was one of the biggest storylines in history and gained WCW a ton of viewers and media. But, for the few years, they tried a swerve like every week. New members, new nWo's, face turns followed by heal turns....it was tiresome.
 
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AtlantaWhaler said:
I just think they dragged the nWo into the ground. The Hogan turn was one of the biggest storylines in history and gained WCW a ton of viewers and media. But, for the few years, they tried a swerve like every week. New members, new nWo's, face turns followed by heal turns....it was tiresome.
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It does take a turn in late 1996 when Bischoff is revealed as an NWO member and in storyline forces WCW wrestlers to join. You then get a bunch of guys added who didn't belong (except Bagwell who fit the group). Konnan was added later wasn't a huge swerve but also fit the faction. Conversely, I liked Curt Henning's turn but once that was over, he didn't fit in. Dennis Rodman doesn't get enough credit for the mainstream spotlight he brought in '97 and '98 coming from the biggest show in sports at the time, Jordan's Bulls.

Come late 1997 into 1998 you get bad swerves like Bryan Adams and Dusty Rhodes. Bret Hart as this pseudo-member of NWO Hollywood that they never followed up on. I felt Sting joining Wolfpac was ridiculous and made a angle built on blurring reality into just another wrestling angle. Luger joining wasn't much better. Bad decisions scrambling from Savage's injury and Hogan using his stroke to keep Hall in his group. Bischoff taking on more and more of a wrestling role wasn't needed or wanted. See Road Wild 1998 and the terrible TV leading up to it (NWO Nightcap anyone?). It's been said that once Bischoff became an on-screen character and "one of the boys", it was all over.

As a storyline, by early 1998 it had run it's course and it's only the splintering of the group kept it interesting. The two rehashes really hurt the long-term view on the NWO angle. As bad as the 1999 nWo Elite rehash angle was, the NWO 2000 rehash that Russo tried was 10x worse.

While the story got old, there is no denying the incredible popularity of the faction itself and as a faction and not a overarching storyline, there was still plenty of money to be made had it been executed correctly and allowed the babyface Wolfpac faction to continue on.
 
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Full episode 1 on YouTube, they kinda rushed through or at least more than I expected. We'll see what the next three episodes focus on. As anticipated, no real new info for those who already know the story. But I still enjoyed the trip through memory lane.
 
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Brodeur said:


Full episode 1 on YouTube, they kinda rushed through or at least more than I expected. We'll see what the next three episodes focus on. As anticipated, no real new info for those who already know the story. But I still enjoyed the trip through memory lane.
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Yeah I was surprised they basically burned through the first like 4 years of WCW, but in a show about its death, I guess its rise wasn’t that important. It’s what’s next that is to be psychoanalyzed. Emphasis on the psycho.
 
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It's cool how many people they interviewed for it. I've only ever heard about Janie Engle and was shocked to see her interviewed. If anyone knows about skeletons in WCW closets, it's her.
 
I was less than 100% mentally for the second episode, don't recall much other than the Goldberg segment and Kevin Nash being named booker. Goldberg didn't come off looking great about the kick that ended Bret Hart's career.

Looks like the next episode will focus on Vince Russo. I'll admit that teenage me thought that Russo was going to turn WCW around.
 
I’m looking forward to seeing the contrast between what made Vince Russo a genius in WWE and an imbecile in WCW.

Once anyone at Turner figured out that Nash was booking instead of Bischoff, that should’ve been the end right then and there.
 
Goldberg came off to me as someone who is annoyed and tired of having to apologize for everything. He’s had to hear about how he enabled he was, even though he was immensely successful given how short his time was, and how he was actually bad because he couldn’t work when that was never his job.

But he also plays into that by generally having stupid shit to say about wrestling that proves those points.
 
GKJ said:
Goldberg came off to me as someone who is annoyed and tired of having to apologize for everything. He’s had to hear about how he enabled he was, even though he was immensely successful given how short his time was, and how he was actually bad because he couldn’t work when that was never his job.

But he also plays into that by generally having stupid shit to say about wrestling that proves those points.
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GKJ said:
So, Tony Schiavone killed WCW?
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So I haven't watched the latest episode, but heard they were eluding to Schiavone killing it with his idea.

Just like Goldberg, Schiavone was an employee that had people above him in the food chain that made the end of the day decisions.

Part of being at the top of the food chain(in any business) is promoting guys when they are ready and filtering through all the ideas people below you are pitching.

At the end of the day this is what killed WCW, the people at the top of WCW allowing so many stupid ideas to go through.

Even take out the whole AOL Time Warner merger, WCW was killing itself and probably would've been in trouble regardless of what influence executives at AOL Time Warner were having towards wrestling.
 
joestevens29 said:
So I haven't watched the latest episode, but heard they were eluding to Schiavone killing it with his idea.

Just like Goldberg, Schiavone was an employee that had people above him in the food chain that made the end of the day decisions.

Part of being at the top of the food chain(in any business) is promoting guys when they are ready and filtering through all the ideas people below you are pitching.

At the end of the day this is what killed WCW, the people at the top of WCW allowing so many stupid ideas to go through.

Even take out the whole AOL Time Warner merger, WCW was killing itself and probably would've been in trouble regardless of what influence executives at AOL Time Warner were having towards wrestling.
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Yeah, but when it comes to Schiavone’s idea, I’m talking about David Arquette
 
GKJ said:
Yeah, but when it comes to Schiavone’s idea, I’m talking about David Arquette
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Sure, but who was Schiavone's boss? I mean if the guy was serious and not joking around he should've been demoted and not allowed back into creative idea meetings. Not let's run with a moronic idea

Somebody allowed that idea to go through
 
joestevens29 said:
Sure, but who was Schiavone's boss? I mean if the guy was serious and not joking around he should've been demoted and not allowed back into creative idea meetings. Not let's run with a moronic idea

Somebody allowed that idea to go through
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According to Vince Russo, it was Vince Russo.
 
GKJ said:
I didn’t realize just how short it was
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For the longest time we really only had one option in Canada to watch wrestling and it forced you to watch WWF. Then things became available and gave us the option to watch both WCW and WWF.

The beauty was once WCW started pissing me off I just did the natural thing and went back to watching WWF primarily. Still due to other lucky factors would watch the PPV's of WCW, but I really was picking and choosing how much of Nitro/Thunder I would watch.

Probably due to this I too never realized how short Russo was in WCW until I looked it up today. I really didn't realize until recently how little I ended up following WCW towards the end. There was so much that happened those last few years that I just didn't realize how much other garbage I was missing from WCW. In hindsight kind of thankful I didn't religiously follow WCW the way I did when I first had access to it.
 
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