Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
March 26th, 2001 was one of the darkest days in pro wrestling history. On that date, World Championship Wrestling (WCW) folded and was sold to Vince McMahon and the WWE, its main rival. What could have been, what should have been? Those are questions that sadly, we really never got the opportunity to find out. Oh sure, we as fans got to see a very watered down version of WCW in the WWE, but it wasn’t the original plan.
The original plan was not going to involve the WWE at all. You see, a company called Fusient Media Ventures aligned with former WCW head Eric Bischoff to purchase the dying wrestling promotion. Bischoff would regain power and control the day to day operations of WCW. That was the plan and for a while, that plan came very close to becoming a reality. However, as the late, great Gorilla Monsoon used to say, “close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”
The business transaction kept on hitting speed bumps and was continually pushed back. Not a very good sign at all. The deal finally fell apart when AOL Time Warner, the then owners of WCW, decided to cancel all WCW programming from their stations TBS and TNT. Without a firm television deal in place, the deal disintegrated and Fusient dropped out of the purchase. That allowed Vince McMahon and WWE to swoop in and buy the company.
While McMahon was more interested in acquiring WCW’s video tape library, he did see the potential of a cross promotional feud between the two different wrestling brands. In McMahon’s original plan for WCW, he would first reestablish the promotion on its own. After introducing fans to the new WCW, he would eventually book a feud between WCW and WWE. That was in a nutshell Vince’s plan, but of course, things happen.
The main “thing” that happened was the infamous Booker T versus Buff Bagwell match for the WCW title on Monday Night Raw. The match was so bad, and the fans were so dead, that Vince scrapped all of his plans for a relaunch of the WCW brand. To be fair, while the Booker T/Bagwell match was bad, the fans reaction to it shouldn’t have been a true indicator for Vince. The match took place in front of WWE fans who paid to see WWE stars. It also didn’t help that the match took place in Tacoma, Washington, not exactly a WCW hotbed.
Regardless, Vince saw the match and heard the negative reactions to it and went immediately to his next plan. This was the plan that we all got to see and it was basically an invasion angle with less than top tier WCW names involved. Despite the lack of star power, the feud did start off relatively hot, but ultimately fizzled out. The rest is history as they say.
While both Eric Bischoff and Vince McMahon’s big plans for a new reinvigorated WCW fell by the wayside, what exactly would these new versions of WCW look like?
We will probably never know fully, but we did get some hints. First up, Eric Bischoff. His plan featured him taking WCW off the air for a few weeks and finally debut new sets, new logos and even a new announce team. Dave Meltzer reported that before Fusient’s deal fell through, Bischoff had some preliminary discussions with Joey Styles and Don Callis.
Bischoff would also bring back some of its top stars like Hulk Hogan and Bill Goldberg and was also very interested in adding Rob Van Dam to the mix. Younger wrestlers would be pushed more heavily. Bischoff’s WCW would also not travel anymore, instead, would find a home in one location which was going to either be in Las Vegas, Nevada or Orlando, Florida. The Big Bang would be WCW’s first event to signal in a new era for the company. Alas, it never happened.
Next up is Vince McMahon and his plans for WCW’s relaunch. He too was planning a new set, new logo, which we got, and a new announce team. Vince was reportedly very interested in obtaining either or even both Scott Hudson and Mike Tenay. It looked like Tony Schiavone was out in both Bischoff and McMahon’s scenarios. Vince also actually had a television slot lined up for WCW. It would air on TNN on Saturday nights from 11pm to 1am. Not the most ideal time slot, but that is all TNN was willing to give Vince at the time.
Vince and TNN were also very interested in bringing in many of WCW’s prime wrestlers like Sting, Goldberg and Diamond Dallas Page. The problem with that, is most of those wrestlers were signed to big money contracts and for Vince to get them, he’d have to buy those contracts out. If McMahon did that, it would set a bad precedent with the WWE roster who were making less money. So Vince opted not to purchase the bigger named stars and signed as many of the lower card talent instead.
Vince planned to fill the void with signing top free agents from ECW like Rob Van Dam and have a few WWE wrestlers “jump ship” to WCW. That didn’t exactly excite TNN at all. In the end, however, neither plan went into effect and what we got from a revised WCW is what we got. Looking back, who had the better vision for WCW? Was either idea any good? Would WCW still be around today with either idea in place? The world will never know.