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Chapter 3: The Road To War
BISCHOFF’S DEPARTMENT HEADS did a double take upon hearing the news. It would take a monumental effort, they thought, to compete for ratings supremacy with the WWF, who despite suffering a marked drop-off in business, awaited them as the familiar incumbent.
In fact, the previous decade had been an astounding one for Vince McMahon’s company. The advent of pay-per-view and increased penetration of cable television provided an ideal platform for iconic stars such as Hulk Hogan, Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage, ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper, and Andre the Giant to become household names. By virtue of a timely association with MTV - and specifically, the pop singer Cyndi Lauper - the Stamford, Connecticut-based promotion transformed itself into a pop culture phenomenon. In 1985, McMahon successfully gambled everything on the promise of the first Wrestlemania, “changing the landscape,” according to Bischoff. “Wrestling was no longer the regional territory model it had been up to that point,” reflects Bischoff. “The 80s saw an amazing amount of growth - an explosion in popularity - with the Wrestlemania format and [McMahon’s] efforts on cable.”
McMahon was relentless in his desire to dominate the American wrestling scene, breaking the unwritten rules of the industry as quickly as he did attendance records. He poached talent from regional organizations, displaced existing wrestling programming by buying up local airtime, and committed to a grueling schedule that often featured multiple live events occurring simultaneously around the country. It was an aggressive approach, seen as predatory in the eyes of rival promoters, and one that would have disappointed Vince McMahon Sr., the widely respected boss who ran the company until 1982. “Had my father known what I was going to do,” Vince Jr. revealed to Sports Illustrated, “he never would have sold his stock to me.” As a result of the younger McMahon’s audacious tactics, his company was a juggernaut by the end of the decade, grossing an estimated $150 million in 1989.
“For years, the very mention of pro wrestling would cause the eyes to roll, and the voice to chuckle,” said Bob Costas in an NBC feature on the WWF-sparked ‘80s wrestling boom, inferring that the widespread perception of the spectacle was at last evolving. But televised wrestling had enjoyed a long history in the United States. Network executives in the late 1940s first realized its potential as an inexpensive form of popular programming, with the pioneering Dumont Television Network drawing huge viewership for their weekly airing of matches from Chicago’s Marigold Gardens. “The rise to prominence of pro wrestling came alongside the whole idea of spectator entertainment,” says Sam Ford, Professor of an MIT course on professional wrestling. “The idea of the arena as this huge, spectator sport locale is something that accompanied the rise of mass media.”
In the 1950s, similar to how the advent of television popularized the ‘slugger’ style of fighting in boxing, professional wrestlers of the time also adapted their presentation. The televised wrestler, now more than ever, played the role of a performer, with the narcissistic villain Gorgeous George becoming the first breakout star of the genre. His flamboyant antics made him a hated bad-guy, or heel in wrestling parlance, as he masterfully exploited the social conservatism of the period. Gorgeous George Gets Hair Curled, protested one Washington Post headline, seemingly inviting fury from its male readership.
George antagonized fans so much that he is credited for generating more sales of television sets than any other factor of the time, thus making pro wrestling the first real TV ‘hit’. He was admired by fellow showmen Muhammad Ali, who studied his act as a young Cassius Clay, and James Brown, who incorporated his theatrics on stage. Bob Dylan would even write in his autobiography that “[George gave me] all the recognition and encouragement I would need for years to come.”
At its peak in the ‘50s, more than 200 stations carried wrestling. However, by the end of the decade, its popularity declined. Networks that had eagerly moved to cash in on the fad’s novelty caused the programming to be overexposed, and new, alternative programming caught the interest of casual viewers. The wrestling promoters of the ‘60s, forced to accept that the ‘golden age’ was no more, moved to produce their shows for the purpose of syndication, with small, local stations able to provide them with cheap late-night time slots. Regional mega stars such as Verne Gagne, in the Midwest, and Bruno Sammartino, throughout the North East, were created as a result of breakaway organizations from the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), a powerful body of independent promotions. Gagne and Sammartino represented the most significant of these entities, the American Wrestling Association (AWA), and the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF), respectively; the latter of which would eventually become the World Wrestling Federation (WWF).
But even with the WWF’s expansion nationally - and internationally - throughout the 1980s, and Ted Turner’s eventual entrance into the rasslin’ business, pro wrestling found itself on a downswing by the early 1990s. A series of sex and drug scandals cooled the WWF’s momentum, while the impotence of WCW did little to inspire an industry revival.
It was a state of affairs not lost on WCW management. In one late 1992 memo, Executive Vice President Bill Watts unloaded in frustration, emphasizing the need to finally realize Ted’s vision:
As professional athletes and independent contractors, it signifies you have attained the highest level in your sport.
…While WCW does want each of you it has contracted, you are not indispensable except possibly in your own mind and in the minds of a few you may happen to influence.
…Our industry is in a crisis - you have been a part in getting it there - you cannot just blame it all on management as some are wont to do.
…[So] may 1993 bring us all together on a mission to make WCW set the standard and to save our industry. Read the signs and dedicate yourself to helping us make WCW a profitable entity for TBS.
…The bottom line here at WCW is “our way or the highway” and you had better make your bookings and once there give it your all to make the event (not just yourself) successful for the fans, your peers, and WCW. If you do that, 1993 will be remembered as the year WCW began resurrecting wrestling from the ashes of ridicule and chaos on the verge of collapse. TBS has invested millions in WCW, ‘93 is the year we begin justifying Ted’s vision.
By 1994, mainstream publications were lamenting the industry’s decline, with one challenging its readers, ‘quick, name the World Wrestling Federation’s champion.’ In mid-year, McMahon narrowly avoided jail time on steroid distribution charges. “I think mainly because of some of the challenges that the WWF experienced, the popularity of the product began to diminish somewhat,” reflects Bischoff. “It just got stale, as a result of some of the distractions.”
The WWF looked increasingly to its overseas markets, and WCW, losing as much as $10 million in one year, remained a remote number two, achieving approximately a quarter of the revenue of its competitor. “WCW might as well have been number twenty two,” jokes Bischoff. “It could have been considered, at that time, a national brand because of its distribution with [TBS], but it wasn’t nearly as popular as the WWF was, even though the WWF had been suffering diminished success.”
Understandably, there existed “some apprehension” about competing with the WWF, recalls Alan Sharp, WCW’s former Head of Public Relations. “It was like, ‘what have we done? We’re gonna go head-to-head against Raw?’
“We thought, ‘this could get ugly’.
“It was daunting.”
The preceding excerpt was taken from the new, expanded version of the book, NITRO: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's WCW. It has been reprinted with the express permission of author Guy Evans.
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