Who Really Killed WCW?

SUSPECT 4: Vince Russo

At Bash at the Beach 2000, Hogan faced Jeff Jarrett for the World Heavyweight Championship – in the middle of the card – where the plan was that Jarrett would lay down for Hogan at the request of Russo because, in storyline, Hogan played his Creative Control and he wanted to win the title.

So Jarrett, rather than do the wrestling match, would just lay down for Hogan and he’d win the belt. Hogan would then cut a promo on Russo saying that this was bulls**t, and he would leave, with a new World Champion being crowned in the main event between Jarrett and Booker T.

Hogan would then later return for a big show later in the year – either Halloween Havoc or Starrcade – and have a Champion vs. Champion match to crown a true world champion.

The first half of this went fine. Hogan came out and pinned Jarrett who laid down for him, and Hogan cut his promo calling it bulls**t.

Hogan then left for real, and therefore wasn’t there to see Russo come out later in the show to cut a promo on Hogan where he called him a ‘bald son of a bitch’. Hogan later heard what happened, and sued Russo and WCW, and never returned.

The truly dumb thing about all of this is it wasn’t just the fans they were trying to work: it was also the talent in the back. Hogan and Russo had an argument in front of everyone, Hogan claimed that he was ‘double-crossed’ when Jarrett laid down for him, and Bischoff flew home during the show and wasn’t at Nitro the following night.

The problem was, very few believed it was real. And that might be because this wasn’t the first time they’d tried it. They literally did an angle at Halloween Havoc 1999 where Hogan whispered into Sting’s ear before their title match and laid down for him to retain his title, which he later lost to Goldberg in the main event.

All of that was done, by the way, because Russo really wanted to turn Sting heel. Sting of all people.

Bearing in mind that WCW turned a profit of $30 million in 1998, in 1999 WCW lost around $9 million. In 2000, the company lost $62.3 million – with reports that they were on track to lose $80 million before they started cutting costs.

And in 2001, the company went totally under and was sold to Vince McMahon for around $3 million. The Monday Night War was over.But while all of that huge revenue loss contributed to the fall of WCW, there was something larger that was the Death of WCW.

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• eric bischoff
• WCW
• Vince Russo
• Hulk Hogan

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