Ted Turner and TNA?

[dwith]

Now we had an older post on this issue (Ted Turner investing in TNA) back this summer, but I found this new article that had been posted back in OCTOBER 2011, and it jus tmade me think again.. what if.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote:
By THE Wrestling Times - According to a source I spoke to at AOL within the past few days. Ted Turner has purchase a majority stake in the company,Turner could seriously clean house, a source tells me "AOL and Panda Energyis a million dollar wrestling dream machine ".



Ted Turner helped reinvent interest in professional wrestling when he owned one of the most popular wrestling companies of the middle to late 1990s known as World Championship Wrestling (WCW). The Monday night show that it put on was the highest rated on cable and helped boost Turner's channels of TNT and WTBS.


Earlier this week news broke out on the 9QA Talk Wrestling Live online radio show that airs exclusively on TheWrestlingTimes.com Bobby Star, a wrestler and promoter who has worked closely with such names as Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash; and worked in the National Wrestling Alliance when it merged with World Championship Wrestling, revealed shocking news about the potential future of the wrestling industry. Star mentioned that he has heard stories of Ted Turner having interest in getting back into the wrestling business, but recently Turner has been considering it more seriously.


TheWrestlingTimes.com did not report on this initially because we felt it was a pipe dream for Ted Turner to get back into the wrestling industry after losing his company WCW. The reason we did not report on the story was not because Bobby Star is not credible source, but because the story seemed surreal. As someone who has lived through the 1990’s as a wrestling fan, I fully understand what Ted Turner in the wrestling business means.


Earlier this week it became not just a rumor, but evident that Ted Turner’s interest in getting back in wrestling has not just caught the attention of the Internet wrestling community, but also major movie theater companies such asScreenvision.


About SCREENVISION


Headquartered in New York, N.Y., Screenvision is a national leader in cinema advertising, offering on-screen advertising, in-lobby promotions and integrated marketing programs to national, regional and local advertisers and providing comprehensive cinema advertising representation services for its theatrical exhibitor partners. The Screenvision cinema advertising network is comprised of over 15,000 screens in 2,400+ theatre locations across all 50 states and 94% of DMAs nationwide; delivering through more than 150 theatrical circuits, including 10 of the top 15 exhibitor companies.


News broke earlier last week about TNA’s Mexican America’s involvement in a Hispanic Day parade in New York with participation from Time Warner Cable, which is partially owned by Turner.


It seemed like Hogan had retirement plans booked for after his final wrestling match with Sting scheduled for October 16th, 2011 at Bound for Glory, however those plans have seemed to changed. When Hogan became aware of Turner’s potential financial endorsements, he rethought his retirement plans for the incentive to earn more money with Turner’s involvement. Why wouldn’t he reconsider hisretirement plans for the chance to make extra money? Who would turn down millions? This could easily be the biggest breaking news wrestling story of 2011.

If True....
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It could me a great deal to the wrestling world. Obviously nothing is in writing yet, or we would have seen major change already, but it does mention that HOGAN was supposed to retire, and that changed quickly.
If it were to be true, and TURNER threw millions of dollars into TNA, I think TNA would erupt, and put a real hurting on WWE as a whole. Obviously the WWE MARKS will disagree, but TNA would already be huge if it weren't for lack of money. They could afford the BATISTA'S, The JERICHO'S, THE NASH'S, and LESNAR'S.
I personally pray this happens. It could be years before anything solid would be in place for TURNER, and maybe that's why we haven't seen anything yet. A lot of work I'm sure goes into these joint ventures or sales of major companies, and I hope one day it is announced that TNA has joined forces will multi billionaire TED TURNER.

 

[thebarber]

it doesnt matter who they can afford, if Turner wants to have NON WRESTLING poeple running a wrestling company, he could have Austin in his prime and it would still fail,. There is a reason these promotions end up bankrupt, poor booking. Money is great to have, but even Turner knew when to stop flushing money down the toilet. WCW should have been the number one company for ever and a day, but inhouse politics due to idiots running the business and talent running storylines destroyed the company. TNA have enough talent on their roster ten fold better than WWE, but they have zero good booking agents, shit storylines, poor crowds, shitty little arena for tv......Turner is not goingt to invest in TNA, Panda Energy have enough money invested and look at the return:::: burning millions of dollars. Great tax write off,. but it doesnt last

 

[[cL]]

I agree with the Barber.
I think that in order for this to succeed Ted Turner would have to literally clean the backstage out and throw some serious money at Jim Ross. You bring in Jim Ross and Paul Heyman and they could literally keep the same roster they currently have and take over. Just my opinion.

 

[akathelaw]

It's definitely an exciting prospect, considering the heights WCW reached in the '90s. TNA has done a pretty good job of creating a niche market of nostalgic fans, and is finally attempting to establish some of their own top-card talent. To be fair WCW was the WWF of the south, a big scale show that took itself a bit more seriously than Vince McMahon's "Rock 'n' Wrestling" approach. WCW reached its pinnacle when Bischoff was in charge, and since he's now affiliated with TNA there's a possibility Turner may take interest in the company.

Personally I have tuned out of TNA due to frustration with the product. It feels like they simply go through the motions with different WWE free agents of the past. Of course I'd like TNA's booking to make better business sense because it makes for better shows and growth of the industry as a whole. If Turner became involved in TNA, I'm sure a lot would change, but here's what I'd like to see:

-Change the company's name for good. "TNA" is a holdover from the mind of Vince Russo, who refuses to admit the attitude era ended. Call the whole thing Impact Wrestling if you must, but I'd personally prefer a snappy 3 letter acronym with a W in it or two.

-Broadcast on TBS and TNT. Hogan complained that Spike is simply not available in every market, but TBS and TNT sure are. WCW fans will be glad to catch wrestling on the networks they used to tune in to every week, plus new audiences will find the shows easier.

-Utilize big name wrestling stars properly. Hogan, Sting, Flair and whoever else TNA signs are great for exposure and brand recognition. These individuals should NOT compete for championships when you have a full roster of young athletes trying to make a name for themselves. Sting in a managerial role on Impact is a good example of how to use these guys.

-Tour the country. Demolish the Impact Zone once and for all! Or make it a wrestling school. I'm sick of that stupid soundstage. Wrestling should be in arenas, filled with excited fans. If you can't fill arenas, you're not doing it right!

 

[three count bout]

Interesting no doubt...but what Tna IW needs is what they're currently doing and that's trying to make the best weekly product they can. If the product is good, interesting, and edgy word of mouth will help naturally grow the brand. The one area I can think that would benefit from an endless money stream is production, but again what good is a beautiful ring and set and lighting with wrestlers who aren't over because of a creative department which is clueless. I'm certainly not saying this is the case just illuminating why to ME, working on story lines, long term feuds, character development, and ummm....Total nonstop action are wayyy more important.

 

[GameOver]

Ted Turner didn't reinvent anything, he didn't even have a clue about the business
He didn't do anything except throw money at a rassling company at the request of people he thought knew what they were doing because they were "stars" of the past, WCW may have been big but it was all a facade

They won the ratings because of the eternal bank wallet that allowed them to pull out all the stops and steal WWF's biggest names/staff, soon as Ted realised he was throwing money away on a daily basis he dropped all association with it and the rest is history, WCW was dead within a year.

TNA has all the opportunities they can afford and what has it gotten? virtually nothing. They are still in the same position they were years ago, just with assumedly higher paid stars. Money is not the answer, smart administration is and spending what money you do have on getting the message out there and investing in the future.

WWE did it in the past, god knows they aren't seemingly investing in the future of WWE wrestling now, but in the past they did it and it allowed WWF to survive WCW's onslaught.

 

[GameOver]

Interesting no doubt...but what Tna IW needs is what they're currently doing and that's trying to make the best weekly product they can. If the product is good, interesting, and edgy word of mouth will help naturally grow the brand. The one area I can think that would benefit from an endless money stream is production, but again what good is a beautiful ring and set and lighting with wrestlers who aren't over because of a creative department which is clueless. I'm certainly not saying this is the case just illuminating why to ME, working on story lines, long term feuds, character development, and ummm....Total nonstop action are wayyy more important.

Well sorry to agree in part, yes they need to make each week exciting and eventually it will build up, but they are failing miserably. At best they get 1 or 2 segments interesting and the rest is just moronic and PPV's are abysmal.

There's the issues, CONSISTANCY, Piss poor PPV's and for god sakes spend money on some production/creative talent not stars that are only there for a paycheck because WWE doesn't want them anymore. captilise on WWE's failures by doing it right, WWE will only go downhill or steadily be lowish for so long, eventually they will do a 180, they've done it twice b4 and it's nearing that era mark to do it again.

 

[mechawarrior]

Ugh. Lets get some of this all straight.

Ted Turner does not own Time Warner, I don't even think he is even a principal stockholder of the company. He stepped down from the board in 2006.

Ted Turner did not abandon WCW because he was 'throwing money away'. At the time of the Time Warner buyout of Turner Broadcasting and all of its products (CNN, TNT, TBS, WCW, etc.), Ted Turner was not solely in charge of his product, but instead the corporation gave the helm to other managers within. They thought WCW was low brow and wanted to take it off of the air. Whats funny about that is that the same corporate vultures, in trying to reshape Turner broadcasting properties into their own whitebread and boring visions were fired within five years of selling WCW's library to Vince Macmahon for not producing any real results. Nowadays, the TNT and TBS channels are very different from their Ted Turner days, where they both aired Atlanta Braves games to an increasingly national audience, WCW, the NBA, syndicated shows, Dinner and A Movie and the like and has now become more like the Raw and Smackdown Brands themselves where TBS is geared toward MLB and comedy and TNT is geared towards Drama and the NBA.

With all that said, I will have to agree with sentiments first brought up by thebarber, Ted Turner was not the reason that WCW succeeded. Ted Turner bought WCW because he saw it as a wise investment and a boon for his networks that originally catered to a southern audience. In the 90's Turner was motivated to have WCW beat the WWF and looked for someone he thought who was able to do that, and gave them the budget (what you all like to call the checkbook) in order to buy talent and produce a show. That person was Eric Bischoff. Again, Ted did not abandon WCW, but was pretty much separated in the Restructuring Shuffles that Time Warner was going through from 1997-2000, where Turner Broadcasting was acquired, and then the larger company merged with AOL. The managers who took helm over TNT pretty much chased Bischoff off by telling him that he could not air a product to compete with Attitude Era WWF, and he left, and those managers brought on the chaos (Nash as a booker, Vince Russo as a writer and all the craziness that followed).

Ironically enough, the one person who probably has the clout and contacts to try and bring wrestling back to Time Warner airwaves is Eric Bischoff. I'd suspect though, that he would not be able to get it to air on either TNT or TBS though. He'd most likely be only able to get slots on TruTV, where more of the less organized things go anyway (College Basketball in March, MCW which is produced by Bischoff, etc). TNA would probably fit right in on TruTV, since everything else on there is scripted and sold as 'actuality' anyway.

Whats Ted Turner doing these days? Repopulating Bison in the Midwest. He doesn't 'own' Time Warner, get your facts straight before you try and validate some fantasy, guys.

 

[dsotm5150]

It doesn't really matter how much money you have backing your company, if your not running it like a company or letting people that know how to run it like its suppose to be run, then you'll have the same downfall that WCW did. Could TNA benefit from having someone with the cash flow of a Ted Turner? Of course it definitely could just like WCW did back in the early 90s where it was used to bring in what was needed to better the product like, better equipment, allowing the shows to be taken on the road and bringing in better talent. What it all amounts to though is, if all Billionaire Ted is going to do is allow every Joe Schmo to just have a blank check like he gave Eric Bischoff in the 90s(not saying that Eric was foolish with the cash flow, at least not at first anyway) then it will have the same fate as WCW. If(and I do mean If because none of this is confirmed of course)Turner does buy a stake in TNA then he needs to make sure that who ever is in control of that cash flow is going to use it properly, bringing in new but relevant talent, increasing the production, getting out on the road more often etc and of course making sure it is on a network that wants wrestling, because I do believe that WCW's downfall from the start and people like JR and Dusty Rhodes even alluded to this in the WCW DVD a few years ago is that it was owned and run on networks that didn't want or understand wrestling but only kept it around because it brought in the highest ratings of anything else on TBS and TNT at the time, and as soon as it no longer was bringing in the ratings or the money that it was in its heyday, Ted and Turner Sports could no longer justify to AOL/Time Warner having it on the roster or the books anymore.

 

[Chrome]

Last I saw Ted was still net worth of 2 bill+ meanwhile McMahon was worth 800 mill.. if the story is true then Ted could do a lot for TNA, but chances are its total bullshit. But Ted seems to STILL have funds and resources to make a splash if he wanted too.


For facts here ya go..

Ted Turners forbes listing for 2011 net worth is 2 Billion
http://www.forbes.com/profile/ted-turner/

Here is Vince McMahons forbes listing 800+ million
http://people.forbes.com/profile/vincent-k-mcmahon/87153

 

[thebromm]

If Ted Turner did INDEED buy a large portion of TNA here is what would need to be done:

1) Fire Vince Russo. He may be the worst thing ever to happen to the industry.

2) Keep Eric Bischoff. Strictly as an on-air talent. He can generate a pretty good amount of heat. Otherwise WWE would have never signed him to be the RAW GM. KEEP HIM AWAY FROM THE DAMN CHECKBOOK. Last thing Ted needs is that monkey in control of his money.... again.

3) SERIOUSLY throw dough at Jim Ross. Show Jim you WANT to compete at some point. Show Jim the respect he deserves and WWE refuses to give him. A lot of people give Vince McMahon most of the credit for being a genious, but, he had Jim Ross behind him from 1993 on.

4) Get OUT of the Impact Zone. True they won't be selling out MSG anytime soon, but there are loads of small 3,000 to 10,000 capacity arenas in small cities all over the U.S. Build, build and build the fan base from the ground up. They obviously are still stuck at the starting gate. Once you do build a decent fan base, pay whatever you need to put an Impact or PPV at MSG. That'd really piss off Vince McMahon and make his skin crawl.

5) Get Jim Cornette. Say what you want, but the guy knows the business better then nearly anyone. He knows what true wrestling is and he would work his ass off to deliver that.

Ted Turner has the money to eventually compete with Vince McMahon. Leaving guys like Bischoff and especially Russo in charge would basically doom it just like WCW. If we wrestling fans WANT another golden era, this is about the only shot we got for the forseeable future. I'm not saying TNA could one day be number 1 in the ratings and beat WWE consistantly. But I'm not saying they cant either. Wierder things have happened. Hell, in the mid-90's who the hell thought Dubya C Dubya on the good ol' boys network would have gone toe to toe with the E and won? Remember, part of the reason WCW went under is because AOL Time Warner wanted it too.

Probably wishful thinking, but heres to a better COMPETITIVE future for professional WRESTLING..... f$@k entertainment..... WE WANT WRESTLING damn it!! Not denial of what we all love.

 

[Grizzly0u812]

Ted Turner and TNA, back when the Monday night wars was going on, Vince and WCW had many top healthy talents to use, WWE does not have Stone Cold anymore, Undertaker and Triple H do not wrestle full time schedules anymore, some good ones have passed on, others have retired or will be retiring.

WWE does not have the steam they once had back in the day, Rock came back but where is he, Jerico comes and goes and so on, what I am saying is a lot of top guys on both sides that made the Monday night wars are Older, retired, passed away or set to retire so, if TNA has the money to back them, Ted Turners connections they might have a chance to start bringing in better talent, better writers have better story lines etc.

WWE has used celebrity host, cheesy story lines, etc, what will they do if TNA revamp and rebuild and become a bigger threat will Vince finally start producing real story lines and make things believeable again.

 

[ilapierre]

Lots of annoying smarks posting on here tonight. Must be a Friday evening.
It absolutely does matter how much money you have backing your company. If WWE didn't have all the money it has it would have been long gone years ago. The business side of the company has been run very well, but the programming I've tried to watch since 2003 is not very exciting. If you think wrestling is worth watching now, then you've gotta be a diehard obsessed kid who grew up in the stale TV age of the past decade.
The entertainment quality of WWE is really at an all time low and Stephanie McMahon and Triple H have done just as much as Vince Russo to ruin wrestling. The thing is Russo isn't employed by WWE. WWE isn't going anywhere. Every other company disappears because WWE can buy whoever out. Or the competition doesn't care as much and sells for squat. The 'downfall' of WCW, lol, words straight from someone who buys every word of WWE revisionist history. WCW could have continued on and done quite well whether competing with WWE or not. WCW simply folded because the people in charge of Ted Turner programming decided there could be more money made by producing a non-wrestling show. The plug was pulled not long after WCW was at its peak. Had Ted Turner really wanted he could have used his money to put Vince McMahon out of his business. Turner originally just wanted to have a little fun with Vince and show him that he could do just as well or better if he truly wanted to.

I also have a problem with the idea that Eric Bischoff threw Turner's money away foolishly. Eric Bischoff revolutionized wrestling. Turner has all the money in the world and he could use as much as he wanted without even noticing a loss. Bischoff signed the best and biggest names in the business, what he did make wrestling amazing for the fans. Turner needs to make sure he brings in relevant talent if he invest in TNA. First of all, he'll have nothing to do with it. Second, Eric Bischoff brought in way more relevant than WWE ever did at that point in history. He signed Rey Mysterio Jr, Eddie Gurerrero, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Hogan, Savage, Luger, Warrior, The Giant, Curt Henning, Rick Rude, Ultimo Dragon, Nash, Hall, Piper, Hart you know I could go on for years. He signed the biggest names in America, he signed the best wrestlers from Japan and Mexico, he was one of the forces behind molding the NWO. Turner couldn't have picked a better person to run WCW. Had he hired Paul Heyman WCW would have been off the map by 1999 just like ECW.

I don't know why Ted Turner would want to get involved in 'rasslin' again. Today wrestling is not exciting, it gets very poor ratings compared to a decade ago, and there are not a lot of guys in their prime or a little past it like there was 15 years ago, like Hogan, Savage, Hall or Nash,that can be signed and put TNA over the top. WWE has piles of money and resources at their expense to combat TNA if they have to and Turner has already proved once that he can make Vince his bitch. WWE give retirement contracts to big name guys like Shawn Michaels so that they don't anywhere else. TNA can't just 'blow up' and become bigger than WWE building no names that don't mean anything. TNA would need 5 to 10 ex WWE guys of the past 5 to 10 years to have any relevant effect. Turner would only get involved if he knew his money would be spent to bring such wrestlers in. What's the point of getting involved if you're doing it to get 1.2 ratings consistently for years in a subservient position to WWE. Turner won't get involved with TNA, it's wishful thinking. Although it is cool to think there could be competition again lets be honest. There's no potential audience out there who wants to watch 'new wrestlers' develop and there's not enough big name wrestlers out there to steal the WWE audience and bring back the audience of the late 90s. There's just nothing in it for Turner except to get Vince temporarily riled up. The 'downfall of WCW' video should instead have been the 'downfall of wrestling' since when WCW died so did competition, so did ratings, so did all the amazing old wrestlers and their careers and so did mainstream interest. Wrestling was at its peak in 2001, maybe not in WCW, but WWE's overall product slipped with the buying of WCW. You'll never hear that watching a WWE-slanted video. But that's what happened and all you wrestling smarks just think your WWE is just SO entertaining. Ironically, WWE started becoming hard to watch right after they put the word entertainment into their company name.

 

[papahut420]

i actually made an effort to sit and watch every minute of tna this week and i did. what i came away with is the show is very old school. what i mean by this is the promos and the style of booking hearkens back to the territorial days of shotheastern championship, mid-adlantic and the others.just basic im gonna get you promos and youll pay for what you have done. then i saw this ted turner post and thought well it does kind of fit. watching the whole show i feel bobby roode is doing an excellent job as a heel champ. and sting is making a great authority figure. the whole wcw vibe of tna right now is huge. i just dont know if the wwe type audience will ever like it compared to the e's more glitzy style.i grew up in the territorial days and found the show entertaining but boring in spots.teds money if it happens may or may not help if the style of booking remains the same.

 

[Grizzly0u812]

Like I said before, TNA with Teds backing could be a threat cause WWE has been cutting talent, scaling back on pyros etc because they are not making the money like they use to, their top money making guys are gone, retired, passed on or going to retire or wrestling a limited schedule.

I am finding WWE for a long time now has been getting boring and stale which its hard to say since I grew up watching it since I was about 7 years old and I am going on 39, I use to watch it religiously now I just record it and skim threw to anything that looks like a wrestling match, yeah TNA does not have the money to have all the fancy things WWE does but they still put on some good matches, if they could revamp their product bring in some more guys cause I am getting tired of seeing the same guys fight each other all the time, but then again its on both shows, point is there are a lot of talent out there, young hungry and other guys who have been let go from WWE, maybe with the right money and stuff they could come in.

Both WWE and TNA do not have a lot of great talent like back in the day when WWF and WCW went at it, they will never get that much buzz again, but again, WWE is not as strong as back then cause a lot of top guys are no longer around or a threat anymore, TNA might have a good shot and then Vince will have to be on his toes again

 

[Rayne]

One of my favorite topics to discuss on these boards is WCW's demise. You can take someone who opens up every third post by railing about the smarks, present to him a scenario where WCW fails because of falling revenue and lack of a future, and 99 times out of 100 said poster will start railing about the evil corporate overlords at Time Warner who destroyed wrestling because of an unexplainable personal vendetta against programming that was not up to their tastes.

Before I really get going:

It doesn't really matter how much money you have backing your company, if your not running it like a company or letting people that know how to run it like its suppose to be run, then you'll have the same downfall that WCW did.

They won the ratings because of the eternal bank wallet that allowed them to pull out all the stops and steal WWF's biggest names/staff, soon as Ted realised he was throwing money away on a daily basis he dropped all association with it and the rest is history, WCW was dead within a year.

TNA has all the opportunities they can afford and what has it gotten? virtually nothing. They are still in the same position they were years ago, just with assumedly higher paid stars. Money is not the answer, smart administration is and spending what money you do have on getting the message out there and investing in the future.

These are the only guys who get it in the entire thread. Yeah, money matters. You can't pay wrestlers, purchase camera equipment and rent arenas on smiles and good intentions. But you can't simply throw more money at a problem and expect things to get better because of that. Success = Money x Management.

It could me a great deal to the wrestling world. Obviously nothing is in writing yet, or we would have seen major change already, but it does mention that HOGAN was supposed to retire, and that changed quickly.
If it were to be true, and TURNER threw millions of dollars into TNA, I think TNA would erupt, and put a real hurting on WWE as a whole. Obviously the WWE MARKS will disagree, but TNA would already be huge if it weren't for lack of money.

Every time TNA/IW does *anything* these days, it's "I could see this being a huge thing for TNA", which people have been saying now for two years. TNA/IW's still waiting on that huge thing.

Nice usage of "WWE MARKS", btw- implying that anyone who disagrees with your opinion is a mindless slave of a rival company, before anyone else had a chance to respond to your post. I think it's quite easy to disagree with the idea that blindly throwing money into any business is a poor idea. It fueled a bubble of growth in WCW that popped quite dramatically when the tap ran dry. It takes a special breed of idiot to purchase a company with the intention of pissing money away into it and not making a profit. Would dumping a huge cash flow into TNA/IW result in getting a huge cash flow back, plus a percentage? If it were my money, professional wrestling would be one of the last places I'd put it right now. Nothing in the industry, from any company, suggests strong future profitability. (If you've got a couple of years to kill, you want to short gold right now, general stocks are just no good to be in currently.)

Ted Turner did not abandon WCW because he was 'throwing money away'. At the time of the Time Warner buyout of Turner Broadcasting and all of its products (CNN, TNT, TBS, WCW, etc.), Ted Turner was not solely in charge of his product, but instead the corporation gave the helm to other managers within. They thought WCW was low brow and wanted to take it off of the air. Whats funny about that is that the same corporate vultures, in trying to reshape Turner broadcasting properties into their own whitebread and boring visions were fired within five years of selling WCW's library to Vince Macmahon for not producing any real results.

Ted Turner didn't abandon WCW because he was throwing money away- he was no longer in the position to do that. The managers hired by the people that owned AOL/Time Warner abandoned WCW because it was throwing money away. Yup, they got their asses canned in a few years too- you don't have to be an all-star to realize that shit smells like shit. Personal opinions don't have to enter into it, unless you're insistent upon holding a grudge. WCW was in a tailspin. Ratings were continuing to decrease and revenue was drastically below expenses. Dear God, AOL/Time Warner put an accountant in charge of WCW, and people here will still insist that money was never part of the equation for WCW's demise. I'd get rid of a program like that no matter what the subject material.

WCW simply folded because the people in charge of Ted Turner programming decided there could be more money made by producing a non-wrestling show. The plug was pulled not long after WCW was at its peak. Had Ted Turner really wanted he could have used his money to put Vince McMahon out of his business. Turner originally just wanted to have a little fun with Vince and show him that he could do just as well or better if he truly wanted to.

Ah, my favorite "I don't like Madden so ima pretend ima journalist" poster returns. WCW's peak was from approximately 1996-98, with them folding in 2001. Three years is an eternity in professional wrestling. But I stuck around for the "Ted Turner could have" line. One of the most popular lines I hear in life is "well I coulda done that". BUT THEY DIDN'T. This ain't a coulda world; you either shit or get off the pot. What it looks like Ted Turner could have done is pumped a lot of money into a company, achieved a degree of short term success before the poor infrastructure of the company collapsed. (Yes, I know, I know, WCW was a brilliantly run business, this is why they mailed checks to wrestlers that they didn't know worked for them.) Ted Turner could have put on a cape, jumped out of his window, and saved his company by altering the rotation of the planet, but he didn't.

As far as making more money with non-wrestling programming? I'd do the exact same thing if I thought that was the case. That's the object of business, at least as I understand it. If I'm supposed to be running a charity cause for people's entertainment, someone should probably stop me before I run to the bank with another handful of checks from clients.

Second, Eric Bischoff brought in way more relevant than WWE ever did at that point in history. He signed Rey Mysterio Jr, Eddie Gurerrero, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Hogan, Savage, Luger, Warrior, The Giant, Curt Henning, Rick Rude, Ultimo Dragon, Nash, Hall, Piper, Hart you know I could go on for years. He signed the biggest names in America, he signed the best wrestlers from Japan and Mexico, he was one of the forces behind molding the NWO.

And what did this all result in? (I'm not sure you'd want to mention Warrior or Rick Rude's WCW runs as a positive for Eric Bischoff, unless you're trying to present him as a kind man looking to help worn out wrestlers down on their luck. But then again, I remember the Hogan-Warrior Halloween Havoc match.) Most of those wrestlers went to the WWE, where their fame multiplied. Some of those wrestlers wouldn't get the outsized contracts they got from Time Warner from the WWE, so they sat out until those expired, THEN worked for the WWE. The others died.

I've never taken away from Eric Bischoff that he had a very good run in the mid-90's. This was followed by the late-90's and the 2000's, where he didn't do shit except talk about how great he was in the mid-90's.



That's all for now folks, you may now proceed to criticize my opinion by claiming that I must be a zombie for the WWE or something equally inexplicable.

 

[ilapierre]

Rayne, you take what posters say and analyze the little things to death. For example, posters say something that does very little to advance their argument and you attack or argue it even if it is close to what you yourself think. I don't disagree with much of what you said here although I do not agree with those posters who you think 'get it'. Sure they seem to have a better handle than pure marks on how a business should be run in today's world. Sure, they get how WCW 'woulda coulda shoulda' worked using your own words. But they seem to be missing the point on the reality of the mid to late 90s. They also have the benefit of 15 years of 'hindsight' and revisionist WWE documentaries. Bischoff did as good a job as anyone during those years regardless if he hasn't done a whole lot amazing since. Had he been more conservative and tried to grow WCW the way WWE grew, the economy still would have went down the shitter and WCW executives would still have pulled the plug on WCW. The 'throwing away' of money didn't cause the downfall of WCW, it motivated a lot of wrestlers to come to WCW and caused a temporary wrestling boom. It was not a good long term strategy but it did threaten WWE and made for entertaining television programming. I'm a mark, in the 90s and early 00s i preferred to watch all the best wrestlers square off in dream feuds than to get all smarky about the business side of things like some of you know-it-all business experts. And there have been a lot of exaggerations of how much WCW stars were paid. A common myth is everyone was making millions when that is far from the truth.

In critiquing my simple afterthoughts, Rayne, you're right about Rude and Warrior not having worthwhile runs in WCW. I enjoyed Rude appearing on two shows at once and I did enjoy what i thought was going to be a long Warrior vs NWO feud. Warrior was a shitty wrestler but he was a major draw. A lot of fans felt the way i did about both being signed. And WCW ended in March 2001. Nitro still had massive ratings in the winter of 1999. WCW was still in its peak years in 1999 although the lower end. WCW folded 'only' two years later. So, i'm not really wrong in saying WCW folded not long after it was at its peak. WWE has existed 10 or 11 years now after its peak. It's not even so much because of good business as it is Vince McMahon's life and only option. If McMahon owned WCW instead of WWE in 2001, then WWE would be defunct and WCW would be seen as the better run company. Wrestling was not Ted Turner's reason for living. It wasn't what his network, his fortune or everyone employed by him at any level relied on. Turner could have thrown hundreds of millions away without even noticing. WWE exists today and WCW doesn't because WWE is owned and run by the McMahons.

One last thing: I'm still 'pretending' to be a journalist because being full of shit is what people do here when they don't agree with you. But i'm not pretending when i say i like Madden's columns a lot more lately. I actually haven't had a problem with his anti-WWE columns. They are a lot more objective and interesting than the 'i hate Hogan' ones.

 

[Rayne]

Rayne, you take what posters say and analyze the little things to death. For example, posters say something that does very little to advance their argument and you attack or argue it even if it is close to what you yourself think. I don't disagree with much of what you said here although I do not agree with those posters who you think 'get it'. Sure they seem to have a better handle than pure marks on how a business should be run in today's world. Sure, they get how WCW 'woulda coulda shoulda' worked using your own words. But they seem to be missing the point on the reality of the mid to late 90s. They also have the benefit of 15 years of 'hindsight' and revisionist WWE documentaries. Bischoff did as good a job as anyone during those years regardless if he hasn't done a whole lot amazing since. Had he been more conservative and tried to grow WCW the way WWE grew, the economy still would have went down the shitter and WCW executives would still have pulled the plug on WCW. The 'throwing away' of money didn't cause the downfall of WCW, it motivated a lot of wrestlers to come to WCW and caused a temporary wrestling boom. It was not a good long term strategy but it did threaten WWE and made for entertaining television programming. I'm a mark, in the 90s and early 00s i preferred to watch all the best wrestlers square off in dream feuds than to get all smarky about the business side of things like some of you know-it-all business experts. And there have been a lot of exaggerations of how much WCW stars were paid. A common myth is everyone was making millions when that is far from the truth.

Well, your original post wasn't as out there as most of them, so I couldn't go wholesale against it. I had to pick the ridiculous parts out. Saying "this guy gets half of it" doesn't make for an entertaining read, and we're all textually *********ing here, aren't we?

If you're a mark for wrestling, that's cool. I have nothing against posters that have no interest in the business aspect of professional wrestling. It's when you start talking about all the stuff Ted Turner could have done with his money that you open yourself up to the business aspect of it. (I don't consider myself a know-it-all about business, but I do consider myself more qualified than most posters here to speak on business matters, seeing as I just finished closing the sale of my first business and I'm building my second.)

It made for great television, absolutely. How much money is WCW producing now? Are you suggesting that Ted Turner was running WCW for shits and giggles, deliberately running it at a loss, because people who have money just throw it away for shits and giggles when it's fun?

It's not even so much because of good business as it is Vince McMahon's life and only option. If McMahon owned WCW instead of WWE in 2001, then WWE would be defunct and WCW would be seen as the better run company. Wrestling was not Ted Turner's reason for living. It wasn't what his network, his fortune or everyone employed by him at any level relied on. Turner could have thrown hundreds of millions away without even noticing. WWE exists today and WCW doesn't because WWE is owned and run by the McMahons.

Holy shit, you actually are.

Success in business is not a "because I have no other options" proposition. That is what someone who has never scrapped for themselves thinks, someone who hasn't actually had to earn anything besides what they could find handed to them easily. You are successful in business for two reasons; money and effort. If Vince wasn't in professional wrestling, he'd be doing something else successfully. People don't "dumb luck" into success in business. I've met Vince personally on a few occasions, and am closely related to someone who worked directly for him for a few years- I can personally attest that Vince isn't dumbfounded at how he's been successful. (Although about wasting money casually... he usually tells his pilot to leave the plane running at Westchester so that he doesn't have to once he gets to the airport. That's the power of merchandising at work.)

 

[Weems2k]

I still don't get all the love that Paul Heyman is still getting. Sure he made ECW into a national name. But he also bankrupted it too, and sold it out to Vince; only to have him make a total mockery of it. This is the same Paul Heyman who's plan for TNA awhile back was to bring in Danieal Bryan, and squash everybody on the roster under 2mins? How is that different than Hogan bringing in outsiders to be on top of the roster?