Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
Long before the WWE’s dual broadcast of Monday Night Raw’s 25th anniversary special that emanated from both Barclays Center in Brooklyn and the Manhattan Center in New York City, WCW had a similar idea. First off, the Manhattan Center has held its fair share of wrestling shows through the years. Not only WWF/E shows, but shows from Ring of Honor, ECW, TNA and even the ill fated World Wrestling Network run by both Paul Heyman and Jim Crockett Jr.
In 1999, the World Wrestling Federation had long moved Monday Night Raw out of the smaller venue of the Manhattan Center and on to much bigger arenas. The Attitude Era and the Monday Night Wars were in full swing with the WWF winning almost every battle. Also during this time, World Championship Wrestling was beginning their tailspin from hottest wrestling promotion to utterly ice cold.
It was July of that year and WCW already had made their plans to return to Sturgis, South Dakota during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally to host their annual ‘Road Wild’ pay per view. The event was traditionally held outdoors and usually in front of bikers who were non wrestling fans. They were given free admission to this event and just had to pay for the beer and other concessions. Road Wild was the brainchild of Eric Bischoff, who was a motorcycle enthusiast and used this pay per view as an excuse to also attend the rally and ride his motorcycle.
The shows in Sturgis were usually disasters both creatively and financially for WCW. Not only were they expensive to produce, but they would often encounter numerous problems with the bikers that attended for free. It would range from fights in the crowd, to bikers throwing things like rocks in the ring and sometimes even a racist chant or two at some of the minority wrestlers. Despite all that, Bischoff continued to produce the show from there.
By July of 1999, Turner executives weren’t seeing the huge profits from the company as they once did. Ratings, pay per view buy rates and attendace from live shows were all down and down drastically. The higher ups decided that the 1999 version of Road Wild in August would be its last. The cost of producing another live show in Sturgis just didn’t make anymore business sense. The Turner executives were already starting to tighten their purse strings with WCW.
Eric Bischoff still wanted to make Road Wild a reality in the future, so an idea was pitched to hold the event in two places simultaneously. There would still be a small contingent that would go to Sturgis, but the bulk of the show would take place in New York City at the Manhattan Center. Yes, someone had the idea to hold the WCW branded show in Vince McMahon’s backyard. A majority of WCW’s roster were all in favor of returning to New York and avoiding Sturgis. Most of the wrestlers hated the Road Wild pay per view and no longer wanted to travel there to do it.
Kevin Nash, who by that time was not only a wrestler, but the head booker creatively…was a big proponent of holding the show at the Manhattan Center. He knew that himself and many former WWF stars would get over huge in a traditionally “McMahon territory.” As the idea seemed to be gaining more and more appeal and traction to becoming a reality….somebody realized what the Manhattan Center looked like. This wasn’t Madison Square Garden that could hold 18,000 fans easy. This place was much smaller and intimate and at best could seat only about a one or two thousand tops.
Suddenly, the sexiness of hosting an event at the Manhattan Center was gone and the entire idea was scrapped. The final Road Wild did in fact take place in its entirety in Sturgis as originally planned. As expected, the show was both a creative and financial disaster for the struggling company. Now looking in hindsight, who knows if a show at the Manhattan Center would have been any better. Sure, it was a lot smaller and might make WCW look “minor league,” but for one show I am sure it might have been loud and crazy. It might have brought a little edge back to the faltering company. Then again, this was WCW in its downward spiral, so who knows?
David Fullam
No shock why they folded.