WCW’s Last-Ditch Effort For Survival

It was time for a change in World Championship Wrestling.

In April 2000, the company was going into their fourth booker/booking committee. Eric Bischoff was sent home in August 1999 in favor of Vince Russo, who was relieved of his duties in January 2000. A booking committee was put together as a Band-Aid for a few months, but with declining ratings and wrestlers leaving for WWF, it was time for a change within the organization. Russo and Bischoff were then brought back in an attempt for them to steer the ship around. Even though they couldn’t stand each other, WCW executives told them to “make it work.”

Coming off of Uncensored in March, Dave Meltzer in his Wrestling Observer Newsletter had speculated that the tentative plans for the April pay-per-view were Hulk Hogan vs. Sid Vicious for the WCW Championship in the main event, alongside Sting teaming with his “Brother in Paint” Vampiro against Ric Flair and Lex Luger, plus Buff Bagwell vs. Jeff Jarrett. Amazing to read this and see what could have been compared to what actually happened on the show. Just proof that WCW always relied on the older wrestlers of the early ‘90s rather than build new stars – Vampiro being the exception in this case.

Going into the shakeup episode of Nitro on April 10th, Bischoff would do an interview with Alex Marvez (yes, to my knowledge, the same Alex Marvez that is about to be one of the lead announcers in AEW). He told Marvez why he thought that WCW would never be on the same level as WWF. Bischoff blamed it on not wanting to embarrass Ted Turner by doing anything that would cause them to do any major damage control, despite wanting to get into the mainstream media. He discussed hitting the reset button on WCW in the coming week and wanting to get the WCW Title off of Sid and eventually get the title onto Scott Steiner, who would begin a program with Goldberg. However, Steiner wouldn’t win the championship until November 2000 when Bischoff and Russo were no longer in power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olBvm7a4mUk

During Nitro on April 10, the reigning ECW Heavyweight Champion Mike Awesome showed up and attacked Kevin Nash. Depending on what story you would like to believe, in my research I found some shoot interviews where Awesome claimed that his contract was breached due to back payment. Thus, he refused to honor it, allowing him to go to WCW. (At least that is what he told WCW.) Heyman had claimed that he was under contract for three years and even brought it to a TV taping and showed it to everyone.

Meltzer had speculated that WCW was looking to raid the ECW roster of its bigger stars such as Awesome, Lance Storm, Sandman and Kid Kash (Storm and Awesome were the only ones to go). Heyman would reportedly hold WCW in a potential legal battle until negotiations were settled. Once done, WCW would pay ECW a “low six-figure payment to give Awesome his release, and in return, Awesome wouldn’t bring the ECW title to television. Instead, he would appear in street clothes to do his angle with Nash and WCW would allow him to wrestle at the ECW show on April 13 to drop the title in the ring,” Meltzer reported. One would think that if Awesome’s contract was breached, then WCW would likely fight to not have to pay anything to ECW to keep the former champion around. Yet, Heyman won another court battle. I guess it helps when you grow up in a family of lawyers.

Heyman would put in a phone call to Vince McMahon and suggest using WWF-contracted wrestler Tazz to wrestle WCW-contracted wrestler Mike Awesome for the ECW Championship on April 13 in Indianapolis. The idea being that Tazz would defeat Awesome for the title and then would lose the title at the next ECW event to Tommy Dreamer. Vince, having had already worked with Heyman in the past, even bringing him and some of the roster to RAW 1997 to help promote ECW’s first PPV, agreed to the terms. Heyman conceded to the fact that Tazz would lose the match to Dreamer thanks to interference from Perry Saturn, who was in the middle of a storyline with Tazz on WWF TV. (Saturn never appeared at that show.) I don’t think Vince thought it was that big of a deal as he probably saw most of the writing on the wall for ECW at that point. In the end, Awesome made a big mistake in leaving because of what he would become in WCW.

The movie that every wrestling fan knows and loves – Ready to Rumble, starring David Arquette and Scott Caan – was released on April 7. The movie is about two stereotypical, dimwitted WCW fans who go on a journey to bring back their hero, Jimmy King, to avenge his loss to new heel champion Diamond Dallas Page and evil promoter Sinclair. Overall, the film received negative reviews with most critics saying that the comedy in it was too mature for children, yet too childish for adults. (That’s actually what makes it funny to me.) The show was budgeted for about $24 million, according to IMDB, and pulled in $5.3 million on its opening weekend and grossed about $12.5 million overall. The movie was a major loss for WCW, but for fans like myself, it quickly became a major part of my childhood. I’ll still watch the movie to this day when I find it on TV.

Let’s get to that fateful Nitro on April 10, 2000, the first show under the Bischoff/Russo era.

The show opened with all the wrestlers, sans the top names, in the ring after being called for a meeting of sorts. Jeff Jarrett came out to a chorus of boos from the Denver crowd and introduced the man he coined “Vince McMahon’s best-kept secret” Vince Russo, who appeared on WCW cameras for the first time. Russo would talk about being outed by the “good ol’ boys” network, meaning the tops guys who were scared to loss their spots on the card, when Russo was more than determined that he had turned the company around in the three months he was there. He knew the change that was coming in January and said that he, Dean Malenko, Chris Benoit, Perry Saturn and Eddie Guerrero all knew it sucked and that they left.

Bischoff would interrupt the promo and come down to the ring to embrace Russo and agree with everything he said. Both men proceeded to bury Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair and call out the other top guys in the back, Lex Luger, Sting, DDP and Sid Vicious. It was shortly after this that Russo would tell Jarrett to “trust him because it’s a new WCW and all titles would be stripped tonight.” Bischoff would proceed to get up in the face of Sid Vicious and demand the WCW World Championship. Sid would reluctantly give up the title and Bischoff would end the segment with “See you on the 16th, Spring Stampede. That’s when the real world champion will be crowned.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WZKDB3L9c

During the show, Jarrett would be automatically inserted into the world title match six nights later at Spring Stampede but Sid, Luger, DDP and Sting would have to compete in a one-night mini tournament to determine Jarrett’s opponent. DDP would defeat Luger after interference from Buff Bagwell…Sting would defeat Sid thanks to interference from The Wall…and in the main event, DDP would beat Sting after Vampiro interfered. (Notice an obvious trend there?) It would be announced that on top of Jarrett and DDP for the WCW Heavyweight Championship, all new champs would be crowned at Spring Stampede, but no other matches were announced or how those champions would be crowned. They were walking into a “New WCW” PPV with one match announced and the major promise of new champions during the show.

At Spring Stampede in Chicago, there were an astounding 14 matches. All of which except the main event lasted under nine minutes. The New Blood faction ran by Russo and Bischoff would walk away with all but one championship. Terry Funk, who was a man of his own allegiance, won the Hardcore Championship against Norman Smiley. Chris Candido won the Cruiserweight Title in a 6-way match after interference from his debuting wife Tammy Synch (Sunny). Buff Bagwell and Shane Douglas would outlast Team Package (Ric Flair and Lex Luger), Harlem Heat 2000 (Stevie Ray and the former Ahmed Johnson) and The Mamalukes (Johnny The Bull and Big Vito) in a four-team tournament to win the Tag Team Championships.

Scott Steiner defeated Sting in the finals of an eight-man United States Title Tournament that also included The Wall, Mike Awesome, Ernest Miller, Booker T, Vampiro and Billy Kidman. In the main event, Diamond Dallas Page’s wife Kimberly would lay out her husband with a guitar and allow Jarrett to win his first World Heavyweight Championship. This fulfilled a promise that Russo made to Jarrett back in October 1999, when he told Jarrett that he would be anointed “The Chosen One” if he jumped from WWF to WCW.

The show overall isn’t bad, but does fall short of good finishes thanks to lots of interference. I understand exactly what was trying to be accomplished, but it appeared that Russo and Bischoff were doing their best to squeeze in two episodes of Nitro and a PPV over the course of a two-hour and 45-minute event.

By this point, WCW was unfixable. Although in front of the camera there was an attempt to save the company, there was still chaos behind the scenes. Despite the reset, the company wouldn’t last another year. This was the last Spring Stampede show of any kind. Russo and Bischoff wouldn’t even see the end of the company as both men were gone by the end of 2000.