Brian Damage
In the year 2000, the wrestling war between the WWF and WCW had become completely one sided. TV ratings, pay per view buys and attendance figures were all in favor of Vince McMahon’s company. Despite the overwhelming advantages that the WWF was having over its main rival WCW, there was a belief by some within the Ted Turner/Time Warner owned promotion that professional wrestling could still sell…on a perhaps smaller scale at least.
In October of 1999, Ted Turner launched a small regional cable network named Turner South. It was a channel that focused on southern living with shows and sports programs that appealed to residents of the South. Turner South was only available to cable subscribers that lived in Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Alabama and Virginia. The cable network was struggling and there was a belief that Turner South could have easily folded within the first year of its existence. That’s when the idea came about to introduce viewers to the one thing that Ted Turner could always rely on…professional wrestling.
Pro wrestling saved Turner’s WTBS Superstation with airing Championship Wrestling from Georgia years prior, so why not put that type of southern wrasslin’ on his new cable channel? So on July 15, 2000…Turner South introduced a a show called ‘WCW Classics.’ Basically, the premise of the show was simple…it aired classic matches from both the NWA and WCW starting from the 1970’s up until the early 1990’s.
The show was hosted by the legendary ‘American Dream’ Dusty Rhodes, who incidentally was no longer employed by WCW. He was hired directly from Time Warner and was in no way affiliated with WCW outside of hosting this show. WCW Classics aired once a week for 30 minutes each episode. It was filmed at the WCW Power Plant training facility.
One of Dusty’s greatest rivals in the ‘Nature Boy’ Ric Flair guest hosted an episode with Dusty and the two had a few comedic interactions with one another between voicing over some classic matches in the vein of Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan from WWF’s Primetime Wrestling.
WCW Classics lasted two seasons on Turner South, with the show surviving Vince McMahon’s acquisition of WCW in March of 2001. McMahon and WWE had to honor the contract that Time Warner had with the show as the deal was “grandfathered” in. Therefore, while WCW was no more… Turner South was still airing WCW Classics every week until July of 2001. One episode actually aired the same day of the WWE’s Invasion pay per view which had WCW “invading” WWE. Once the contract with Time Warner ended and WWE were no longer obligated to air any more shows, WCW Classics faded away.
