CW Network could be a possibility for AEW too. We haven’t really talked about that too much.

I'm hoping for TNT/TBS but CW would be the next best option. Any FOX or NBC stations aren't happening because WWE. Some random ESPN Ocho wouldn't be good... WGN would be..meh. I forgot it existed.

Well, my heart was on TBS or TNT too, but the CW actually has higher viewership, I believe. But do they want a network show or a cable one? There are probably “pressures” with a network show. I could see them simply cross-promoting due to the Cody/Arrow connection, or running Clash/SNME equivalents. They’re all under the Warner banner though.

Low-key hoping for an AEW/Mortal Kombat crossover.

I always forget that CW is a network channel.

Damn do I want that TNT AEW Tuesday Night Dynamite, tho

I think that’s always been the goal. Hence the name of the show.

Word

Not that WCW was anything but shit in the end but that AOL merger was one of the worst things to happen to wrestling.

WCW made it a common sense decision to cut them off. They were losing so much fucking Turner money, and there was no end in sight.

True. I still believe the brand could have been saved. Restructure contracts, purge Russo, etc.

TNA is still alive, after all.

The contracts weren’t going to be restructured and they were probably going to be used on to, and they weren’t going to draw anymore. They stumbled with Sting, fell on their ass with Goldberg, rolled down a hill with the Fingerpoke and then fell off a cliff with the Flair/Hogan double-turn. It was done by 1999.

TNA may be technically operating, but they have ~20,000 viewers (including Twitch), and hardly alive. The day the plug is pulled is not the day they were officially brain dead.

I have heard a few rumblings about CW. It makes sense, Aarow is one of their most successful shows, and the cross promotion would be the easiest thing to do with Cody and Stephen Amell, who I'm sure has at least a voice/opinion the network would listen to.

And CW's lineage does include a weekly wrestling show with Smackdown, so it's not a total unknown for them either.

As far as AEW goes, while it's not a big 4 network channel, it is still Network TV, and a Network deal right out of the bat would have to be the best case scenario over any cable channel.

If you take Eric Bischoff at his word, which I do cause his story hasn't changed in almost 20 years, and he did try to buy it for further proof, but he said WCW wasn't really losing that much money.

When the merger happened they classified WCW as "other" with a bunch of other things at Turner that were losing money also, with the intent of unless I adding all of it to make the merger look good.

WCW didn't go out of business like ECW did where they had to declare bankruptcy, AOL/Time Warner just didn't want wrestling in their portfolio so they pulled the TV deal and took nothing for it.

They could have sold WCW for $45 Million with its current TV deals, and instead they cancelled the TV deals and sold it to Vince instead for $40 Million less.

They were willing to lose all the ad revenue that Nitro and Thunder brought, and an additional $40 Million instead of airing wrestling. Plus they still had to keep paying the full contract of every single wrestler who didn't take a buyout so they could go work for Vince.

Vince only took on like 6 contracts when he bought WCW, Booker T, Chavo, 2 other really low paying guys, I think Hurricane might have been one, and 2 of them were Torrie and Stacy who weren't making crap either. Everybody else in the Invasion got a lump sum buyout from AOL/Time Warner, so that is also more money they gave away just to get rid of wrestling.

Hogan, Hall, Nash, Goldberg, Sting, Flair, Mysterio, Steiner, Savage, Mr Perfect, those guys all sat at home getting paid their full amount until their contracts expired.

I only work on hindsight

I don’t take Bischoff on his word at all. Dude is a used car salesman that could only sell new cars.

If WCW was making money, and Bischoff was not a cunt to deal with, there is no way they would have chopped it. They chased away ad revenue, ratings, revenue streams, and all hope of it ever being profitable. Jamie Kellner didn’t shoot WCW in the head, he simply pulled the plug.

They could have sold WCW for more, but I’m willing to bet they just wanted it off their hands by then, and were ready to write off the loss. You also have to consider who would have even bought it. It was a dead brand, and when Vince tried to get it on networks later in 2001, no one was having it. And not even Vince was willing to buy those AOL-Time Warner contracts.

WCW had a lot of assets, but the value of what they could bring to TV. It cost more money to operate than it was making. That’s the ultimate factor there. There is no sane projection where WCW could come back.

You explained it better than I could. that

:y:

Every show in 2000 was a money loser. They were running the same sized arenas and getting much smaller crowds (1,800 paid seems to be the average). They had cut their third hour so television ratings would have needed to soar in order to compensate for lost ad revenue. They went down.

Everything was just as expensive, if not more (factoring in talent) and they were getting less and less back. $67 million in one year is nothing to sneeze at. On top of that there was the Hogan litigation. It was a headache.

I get kind of annoyed seeing Kellner portrayed as the villain. WCW was run incompetently into a wall. They were returning less and less and costing more and more. It’s a no-brainer.

They probably could have milked Vince for more money. But despite having their best profit year ever, he was also tied up in the XFL. I doubt he would have been willing to come up much.

I only believe Bischoff cause his story has remained the same. Look at any other professional bullshitters, over the long haul they change details.

In 1999, WCW lost money, only a little, and that was their own fault. The whole Kiss demon gimmick was supposed to lead to a New Years Eve WCW/Kiss Concert PPV, which would have put WCW in the green for the year.

Then with the Merger, the big wigs got scared of putting on a live show because of Y2K fear. That actually happened, and they pulled the PPV off the table, along with turning a profit for the year.

WCW was still watchable at that point, but the decision makers got taken by the real used car salesman Vince Russo. WCW sent Bischoff home, essentially firing him while paying out the remainder of his contract.

Then in a few short months Vince Russo blew up everything WCW had built up for the last 3-4 years so quickly, including letting Benoit and company walk and show up on Raw. So WCW asked Bischoff to come back as a consultant and work with Russo, which lasted a few months until Russo went into business for himself with the whole Hogan thing.

The misconception about that is it wasn't the worked shoot of Jarrett lying down, it was the fact that after the match Hogan and Bischoff left, and then Russo cut a promo on Hogan and rebooked the title match, which is where the contract breach occurred in terms of Hogans creative control.

That was the year WCW lost that $67 or whatever it was million.

Russo and whoever put him in charge in combination with the merger as well as AOL/Time Warner not wanting wrestling in their channels is what killed WCW.

It wasn't one thing, just a combination of a bunch of bad circumstances. Of course WWE's narrative is they kicked WCWs ass out of business, but the victors get to write the history.

It’s a combination of a bunch, but Bischoff had already started to run WCW into the ground well before Russo came in. Russo certainly made things worse, but 1999 was not a good year for them.

Thunder killed WCW.

WHAT TIME DOES AEW COME ON TONIGHT GUY'S???

It came on earlier today on YouTube

Hogan killed WCW, Bischoff killed WCW, Nash killed WCW, Russo killed WCW, three hours killed WCW, Thunder killed WCW — take your pick.

WCW killed WCW

an scot steiner is part of it

Baring a NJPW-AEW partnership forming, seems the odds of Ibushi showing up at a future AEW event is even lower than before.

He hinted in a recent interview that he wants to retire in NJPW and his current contract with them was the last decision he made for his career.

Shit well in that case I’m calling Ibushi as G-1 winner right now.

Sounds like Undertaker's been pulled from Starrcast

Vince probably threw another guaranteed deal at him

Yeah Ibushi said he had a big money offer from AEW to work there exclusively and they wanted him to move to the US permanently (bear in mind his English is practically non existent, to the point he brought over a translator when he was in WWE). Weirdly this seems to be what has made him decide to commit to New Japan instead, he thought going to AEW would be the end of his career as he would never be able to go back to Japan and be a top guy. He said it really made him realise that he doesn't care about money at all, he just wants to be able to put on his best work and feels he can only do that in New Japan.

Taker's info is listed again on Starrcast

AEW has put up FB/Instagram posts about Sonny Kiss. No real surprise but loads of people in the comments section are now revealing themselves to be homophobic pricks who now aren't gonna watch the show because "eww, gay wrestler"

Bullet clubalos being shitty. *gasp* I'm shocked.

According to the Observer, there are at least 3 networks seriously interested in signing a tv deal with AEW and more networks have become interested due to the buzz generated from Double or Nothing's ticket sales.

In terms of if AEW could beat RAW on its first week, Meltzer stated only 1 of the 3 potential networks could possibly pull that off.

Vince took on a lot more than 6 contracts.

He had people under contract who didn't even show up on TV like Above Average Mike Sanders.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Looking forward to seeing what MJF does in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AEW?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AEW</a> Part 1 (from MLW) <a href="https://t.co/ujgIODQprL">pic.twitter.com/ujgIODQprL</a></p>&mdash; Kenton (@Kenton_la) <a href="https://twitter.com/Kenton_la/status/1098846458680410112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 22, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>


<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Looking forward to seeing what MJF does in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AEW?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AEW</a> Part 2 (from MLW) <a href="https://t.co/4J2qjSjY5D">pic.twitter.com/4J2qjSjY5D</a></p>&mdash; Kenton (@Kenton_la) <a href="https://twitter.com/Kenton_la/status/1098847050920353792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 22, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>


<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Looking forward to seeing what MJF does in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AEW?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AEW</a> Part 3 (from MLW) <a href="https://t.co/Ro6TWqXiP6">pic.twitter.com/Ro6TWqXiP6</a></p>&mdash; Kenton (@Kenton_la) <a href="https://twitter.com/Kenton_la/status/1098848082928783361?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 22, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Off the top of my head, Buff Bagwell, Booker T, Palumbo and O'Haire, Kanyon, Shawn Stasiak, Torrie Wilson, Stacy Keibler, Nick Patrick, Charles Robinson, Mickey Jay (I think) Mike Awesome, Chavo, Helms, Kaz Hayashi, Elix Skipper, Johnny the Bull, DDP, Mike Sanders, Kidman, Lance Storm.

I'm sure there's more that I'm missing.

Also Arn Anderson and Mark Madden for a bit.

Scott Hudson