Controversy Creates Cash (36 page)

Internally, those of us at WCW were concerned. We were in a real fight, and we hadn’t been in one in a long time. It put some pressure on us, but we weren’t pulling our hair out, going around crying, “Woe is me.” In some respects, we embraced it. In many ways, I felt it was healthy and would help grow the business.

And the truth of the matter is, it did. Where the total Nielsen TOO MUCH

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share in 1997 might have been around 7, as the WWE came on, the share ran close to 10. Instead of us having a 5 and them having a 3, they had a 5 and we had a 4, or we had a 5 and they had a 5. The bottom line was, more people were watching wrestling than ever before.

I didn’t want to be on the short end of the stick. My ego was too big and my pride was too powerful. But I wasn’t looking for something sharp to slit my wrists with.

Ric Flair

Just as we found ourselves in a real fight with the WWE, Rick Flair went AWOL. His absence from the ring in April 1998 led to a bitter dispute. Because of it, he didn’t wrestle for several months.

Ric has been vocal in his point of view. He contends that he gave proper notice and was entitled to take the time off. While I don’t want to
not
talk about the controversy, I also don’t want to take cheap shots at Ric Flair, or even give people the impression that I am.

In my opinion, he was in breach of contract. Obviously, we have different views of what happened.

The contract was very specific. There was no ambiguity. It didn’t allow Ric to pick and choose when he was to perform. There was a procedure in place to follow if anyone wanted time off. In my opinion, Ric didn’t follow that procedure.

What happened next was unfortunate. Ric wanted to prove a point, and I had to prove a point. He drew a line in the sand, and I felt I had no choice but maintain my position. If I allowed Ric or anyone to decide when and where they could show up to work at that point, I would have had a massive problem. To this day, I would do the same thing.

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Pages from Our Book

WWE Invasion

Just in case no one realized that the World Wrestling Federation had latched on to our formula, they launched D-Generation X, a group of wrestlers who could have been nWo’s third or fourth string. Then D-Generation X—usually known as DX—tried to “invade” WCW, showing up at our events and corporate headquarters. It echoed nWo’s “invasion” of WCW a few years earlier. It was probably more amusing than anything, but it left no doubt that we now had real competition.

Ironically, the decision I made to fire Syxx—Sean Waltman—in early 1998 inadvertently helped the angle. Quite frankly, firing Sean was one of the biggest favors I did for WWE at the time.

Sean Waltman, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall were like the Three Amigos, thick as thieves and inseparable on-screen and off. They stuck together and watched each others’ backs. Sean was able to take advantage of his friendship with Kevin and Scott. In many ways, Sean was lucky to even have a job.

Don’t get me wrong. Sean had talent, and was a great performer when he was sober. The problem was, those periods were few and far between. But even then, he wasn’t very articulate and didn’t have the ability to do a promo that well. His role in nWo was perfect for him. He didn’t have to say all that much. He relied on his looks and his work rate, which at the time ranged from good to amazing, depending on what his chemical balance was.

In late 1997 or early 1998, we’d come to a verbal agreement with Sean on a new contract. We agreed on terms and sent the written contract to his manager, Barry Bloom. We also started paying him under the terms of that agreement.

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Sean hadn’t signed the contract, and I called Barry and said, “Let’s get this thing signed and get it out of the way.” And I was hit with, “Well, we want to talk about the terms of the deal.”

That pissed me off to the point where I fired Sean immediately To me, that was just a sleazy way to conduct business, and I’ve been exposed to a lot of sleaze.

There were reports at the time that he was released because he was injured, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t even fired because he was an average talent with an above-average paycheck. He was fired because we had agreed to a deal and, rather than fulfilling his obligation, he tried to renegotiate. It wouldn’t have mattered to me if he had a broken neck, cancer, AIDS, typhoid, and the first domestic case of the bird flu virus—I still would have fired him. He wasn’t worth the pain in the ass he’d become.

DX

The timing was great for WWE and DX. Sean signed with them and brought the renegade, bad-ass nWo attitude and credibility with him.

He cut his promo on me, criticizing me on air and claiming that Scott and Kevin wanted to quit WCW as well and come with him.

Like I said before, he wasn’t the first guy to use me to get over.

Still, he did it very effectively. From an artistic point of view, it was perfect.

DX would not have had the impact it had were it not for Sean.

It was more about coincidence and circumstance than talent. It may have been a blatant rip-off of nWo, but it worked. The fact that they had balls big enough to come over and show up at CNN Center and WCW headquarters only made it cooler.

Part of me said,
I wish I’d been able to do that.

The truth is, we’d thought of doing the same thing with nWo.

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back in 1996. We’d sketched out a raid on Titan Towers—WWE’s headquarters. We’d even thought of buying tickets to WWE events, making sure we were in the “hard camera” side so we’d be seen.

There were several drawbacks to the idea. For one thing, the nWo cast would have had to skip a
Nitro
show to pull it off. More importantly, we were on the receiving end of a lot of litigation from WWE. Invading WWE would have given our corporate lawyers massive coronaries.

Once the nWo angle went over with the crowd in a big way, there was no reason to do it. We stopped talking about the idea, at least seriously.

While the creative side of me dug the DX invasion bit, the business side of me said,
Okay, now what do we do?

The answer was to take it up a notch or two—or ten.

Calling out Vince

After DX “attacked” the CNN Center in May, I went on the air and put it back in their faces.

“Sean, you come out to WCW headquarters when you know I’m not there. You’re calling me out and talking about what an evil bastard I am. But the truth of the matter is, you’re nothing but a puppet. You’re doing Vince McMahon’s work.” I took a piss on Sean and then said, “If Vince has a problem with me, maybe he should step into the ring with me. We’ll settle our conflicts like men.”

We had a Pay-Per-View
Slamboree
coming up in Worcester, Massachusetts, and I invited Vince to meet me there. I knew it would create a tremendous amount of controversy and probably get under Vince’s skin. And from what I’ve been told, I succeeded.

I went backstage, and all the wrestlers were kind of cheering me on—“Hey, whoa, that’s cool, I can’t believe you did that,” and that sort of thing.

I thought it was great until Hogan came up to me and said, TOO MUCH

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“Brother, you realize what you’ve done? He’s going to take this seriously. There’s no way he’s not going to come and try to kick your ass.” And I said, “Great. It’ll make one hell of a Pay-Per-View, no matter how it turns out.”

I continued calling Vince out on television in the week or weeks before the Pay-Per-View. I turned it up pretty heavy, goading him and making fun of him.

I fully expected Vince to show up. We had security waiting outside at all the exits. They had explicit orders that if Vince or any WWE representatives showed up, they were to be escorted to the locker room and ring posthaste, no questions asked.

Paul White, better known as Big Show, came to me just before the match. “Boss, what are you going to do if this goes bad?”

“Paul,” I said, “as long as it doesn’t look as if there’s going to be any long-term permanent injury, don’t get involved.” I was fully prepared to get my ass kicked. I didn’t think I would—my kickboxing skills were still there, and I thought I could work the ring. But there’s always that chance. I’d had my ass kicked so many times before in my life that getting my ass kicked on a Pay-Per-View of this magnitude wouldn’t have bothered me a bit.

Unfortunately, Vince didn’t come. His daughter Stephanie was graduating from college that weekend. Whether that was the reason or whether Vince had decided he wasn’t going to take the bait, he didn’t show up. If he had, it would have been the most talked about event
ever.
It would have helped both promotions.

Were We Stale?

Over the second half of 1998, WWE won the Monday Night Wars, the head-to-head competition in the Nielsens, more and more.

There were a number of reasons.

One was that we had gotten stale.
Nitro
had been around for a number of years. We’d done a lot of crazy things that had never been done before. In raising the bar as high as we did every week, we’d 280

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made the audience expect more. We overdelivered for two, two and a half years, until finally we couldn’t meet their expectations.

But we were also held back by a number of other factors. One was WWE’s lawsuit, which was slowly wending its way toward res-olution. It wasn’t because we were doing anything illegal, or had been prior to their suit. It’s just that the lawsuits forced another layer of corporate involvement in WCW, dampening what we could and couldn’ t do.

Suddenly, corporate legal started watching WCW and what was going on in the shows. They started dictating what we could and couldn’t do. Not wanting to undermine their case, they shied away from any angle that attacked WWE or even mentioned it. An nWo counterattack against DX at Titan Towers, for example, would never, ever have passed muster. At a time when I needed to take the gloves off and get more aggressive than I had ever been, I had one hand tied behind my back and the other handcuffed to my desk.

Ideally, we’d have gone down to Titan headquarters. Ideally, we’d have had a fistfight in the parking lot and taped it. We would have showed up at a WWE event and caused as much shit as we could possibly cause. We’d have done any number of things other than just laying back and letting them have their fun.

From a creative point of view, it was the beginning of the end.

Feeling the Pressure

We felt the pressure not just from competition, but from the large expansion of our house show business, the addition of
Thunder,
and the decision to add a third hour to
Nitro.
Our infrastructure—or lack thereof—showed the strain. Trying to turn things around that summer, I let my vice president, Nick Lambros, go.

Nick had come over to WCW from the Turner legal side a few years before. I’d been looking for a good, strong legal guy to oversee the business side of WCW, and when Bill Shaw referred Nick to me, I signed him up.

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In the beginning it was a good move. We got along great. He had a good handle on the business side of things, where he brought experience and aptitude to the management team. But our relationship eventually started to go downhill. Nick was a lot more political than I was. I think Harvey Schiller also felt more comfortable with Nick, because he was a button-down executive and I wasn’t. I think Nick sensed an opportunity to get close to Harvey, and Harvey acted accordingly.

By 1998, it was my opinion that Nick was no longer as committed to WCW as he was to using WCW to climb the Time Warner corporate ladder. That became apparent to me on a couple of different occasions. Over a period of a few months I saw Nick furthering his own career rather than doing what would have been in the best interests of WCW.

I would complain that there were a lot of things that needed to be done—licensing, marketing, and merchandising, for example—

but were somehow not getting taken care of. Whenever I dug into why this was happening, I would find a stack of things on Nick’s desk that hadn’t been touched. Finally, I had to make a decision to let Nick go.

It was a tough, tough personal decision. I liked Nick a lot. In the very beginning, he and I were very close. He was all about WCW and the brand. He was very much a partner and a big asset. But as things deteriorated and the pressure got worse, Nick became a liability.

The reaction at first was positive—but ultimately, I think it was an indication of what some of the people who were working below me were really all about.

The minute I let Nick go, the people who reported directly to him came to me and told me what a great move it was, how supportive they were, how they had always hoped to report directly to me. Now they would be able to solve all sorts of problems and get a lot of work done.

My initial reaction was,
Wow, I guess I made the right decision. I
wish I had acted sooner.

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In retrospect, I was watching a lot of very insecure and unprofessional people trying to save themselves. They weren’t necessarily being honest with me or themselves. They were just taking advantage of the situation to save their jobs or further their careers.

Is it unusual? Probably not. Do I wish I would have recognized it for what it really was? Yes.

The Real Reason (Men Commit Crimes)

Some personnel issues that year were pleasant to deal with. Sting’s movie was one of them.

Sting was taking acting classes and was very much interested in becoming an actor. I supported that. I think performers need to expand their horizons to become better performers. Sometimes it’s a lot of easier to develop your talent through other forms of entertainment.

I found I could improve my own ability as a performer by doing live radio. For some reason, learning how to paint pictures and connect with an audience via a microphone helped me on-camera. I also did some acting on television; during my time at WCW I appeared on
The Jeff Foxworthy Show
and
Arli$$
on HBO. I found that working off a script in an environment I wasn’t used to made me a better performer at WCW. So I encouraged other people to do the same.