83 Weeks - WCW Invasion of the WWF [Show Notes] (Patreon)

Our topic today Eric is the WCW invasion of the WWF…how it all went down…what you would’ve done different…

We start with your failed purchase of WCW…you wrote in your book that you reached out to Brad Siegel to purchase WCW even with Vince Russo in charge and Siegel told you that AOL Time Warner would never sell the company and within a month of that conversation - he called you back to ask if you were serious. How serious were you to purchase the company at that point in 2000?

Do you think it was something you could run on your own without AOL Time Warner?

You wrote about how you reached out to many people but Brian Bedol was the guy running Fusient Media Ventures with Steve Greenberg. Why was he the only guy that was serious about it?

Was Fusient the only one interested in giving you an ownership stake?

Why was that important to you to have an ownership stake?

How did the number $67 million come into play?

So Brian is negotiating with Turner and you’re working on the go-forward strategy…did you ever see yourself working with the WWF to expand the brand?

Did you even think that was ever a possibility?

Were there any talks or thoughts about the WWF being a partner in what you were trying to do?

Do you think working with the WWF would’ve been something that would’ve helped or hurt WCW?

There’s been a lot of talk about Stu Snyder and the role he played in the WWF’s purchase of WCW. Do you know what went on there?

How many times did you tell Brad Siegel during this process fuck you?

It sounds like the WWF was very close in the fall of 2000 to purchasing WCW but Viacom blocked them…do you think that was the right move by Viacom?

Were you at all surprised that the WWE was interested in purchasing WCW?

How burned were you by these negotiations to purchase WCW?

You wrote in your book you didn’t think Siegel was acting in good faith…why was that?

Was AOL Time Warner’s merger the ultimate nail in WCW’s coffin?

When you & Fuisent signed the letter of intent…did you hear from anyone in the WWE?

Did you know at that time how important the tape library was?

Coming from a basis of a company that began on a tape library - why wasn’t that part of the deal…obviously the WWE Network took years to form afterwards…but was there value to the tape library without running the actual product?

You wrote in your book you’re on the beach in Hawaii when Jamie Kellner canceled WCW programming from TBS & TNT. How hurt were you?

Could you had found a way to make a deal work for what the WWE ended up buying it for - advertising on Turner and the tape library and a few contracts?

Was anyone interested in any type of deal like the one WWE got?

How close were you to having FOX or FX air WCW?

How different is the business if that deal goes through?

Did you watch the Raw/Nitro simulcast?

Did you feel sick to your stomach seeing Vince on WCW TV like a lot of WCW longtime staffers did?

Did you think Vince had been handed the greatest story in professional wrestling history?

Did you ever think AOL Time Warner would be interested in purchasing the WWE if Vince had really fallen on hard times and couldn’t pull it together in 96/97?

Did any of those thoughts ever run through your head? Austin vs. Goldberg? Michaels vs. the nWo type of thing?

Did you feel any loyalty to the WCW brand and what it was about to become?

That last Nitro went off the air with Ric Flair and Sting doing one last WCW match before it was simulcast with the Vince McMahon/Shane McMahon story of Shane purchasing WCW…did you feel any certain way about that?

WWF - in it’s attempt to not upset the salary structure - only purchased these contracts: Lance Storm, Chuck Palumbo, Sean O'Haire, Mark Jindrak, Mike Awesome, Elix Skipper, Shane Helms, Shannon Moore, Stacy Keibler, Chavo Guerrero Jr., Mike Sanders, Hugh Morrus, Shawn Stasiak, Kaz Hayashi, Yun Yang and Billy Kidman.

We all think at the time it was a mistake to attempt to launch WCW as it’s own brand without its top stars…but did Vince piss away millions to save millions?

Do you think Vince wasn’t willing to sell his guys - the Undertakers, Steve Austins, Triple Hs…on how beneficial it would be to bring in the top stars like Goldberg, Hogan, Nash…and generate more income and more business that way?

What was your plan with the big WCW contracts…buy them all and renegotiate them or let WCW keep paying the bigger ones and see what happens?

Can you imagine having the biggest story in what is potentially professional wrestling history, and you cry poor after buying the company for just $2 million plus advertising?

The WCW invasion sort of begins at WrestleMania 17…when WCW wrestlers are up in a skybox watching on as Shane McMahon defeats Vince McMahon…but also the WWF ends up turning Steve Austin heel at the end of the night with him aligning and shaking hands with Vince McMahon himself. Do you think the WWF cost themselves the same amount of money by not signing the big stars from WCW as they did when Austin turned heel?

There’s a lot of rumor and innuendo in what the plans are for WCW…house shows…possibly rebranding Raw as WCW…were you in the loop with anyone at this time in say…late April?

What could the WWF had done if handled correctly in your mind?

Were any WCW talent reaching out to you regarding their contractual status with Time Warner? Any looking for advice?

If they did reach out - would you had told them…take the pay cut and sign with the WWF? Your value would never be higher than right now?

Did you ever envision the WWF restarting the brand by having Lance Storm run out of a crowd and superkick Perry Saturn?

Could the WWF present WCW in a way that would maintain or keep the WCW viewers?

When WCW closes - on average 2 million people were still watching WCW - more than double what the viewership is now for AEW and a little bit more than what is watching Raw same day…do you think those fans just realized WCW wasn’t going to be going forward and if it was just the WWE presenting a professional wrestling product…they weren’t going to watch?

The plans - as reported in the Observer - was that WCW would run shows every Saturday night…and do live-to-tape…and it really sounds like the plans are for WCW to be developmental. Was that the WWF’s ego getting in the way or do you think that was the only way they would operate the brand?

Did you have any contact, any reach out, anything about anything from the WWF towards this?

What would’ve been your ideas or plans if WCW was turned into your project by the WWF?

Could WCW have operated under the WWF brand?

It’s reported in the Observer in late May that not only did the WWF lose all of the WCW audience but they themselves were down 16 percent in their core audience over a seven week period from the end of WrestleMania. Did you imagine when WCW closed its doors that that many people would stop watching professional wrestling?

What do you attribute that to?

When WCW got hot, and the WWF was hot also…there were almost 10 million people watching professional wrestling on any given Monday night. Do you think the fun of competing brands is what drove that business?

Did the WWF lose that when WCW closed?

The WWF would eventually run out of patience of doing the relaunch and have Shane McMahon be the face of WCW while at the same time wrestling Kurt Angle…did the perception of the WCW brand in the WWF office stand in their way of making money in your mind?

After Lance Storm kicks off the invasion literally…it almost seems like it was a disaster from jump street. The only “high end” talent that ends up signing with the WWF is Booker T & DDP…and we all know about DDP and the stalker angle with Undertaker would eventually play out…are you watching the WWF or the product at this time?

Did you think they were making a massive mistake with how they were operating WCW?

Looking at the lack of foresight…Raw has a big show at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta in July…and the week before they’re in Tacoma. So the WWF announces that for the first time ever…WCW will have the main event of Raw is War. It’s Booker T and Buff Bagwell…and man does the crowd make it feel like they could give a shit. They work a WCW style type match…but all the years of the WWF programming its viewers that WCW was the lesser…there’s nothing here that could be saved.

Did you watch this match?

Were you shocked by the reaction from the crowd?

Were you shocked they didn’t wait until Georgia to run something like this? Do you think it would’ve mattered?

There was a lot of inside baseball that went on at this time, when DDP cuts his promo about stalking the Undertaker he talked about how he’d never been to the “shizow” or that he had never been a star…was the WWF’s ego too big to allow something like WCW, a brand not developed by Vince McMahon…to succeed?

Everything is scrapped after the Tacoma deal. No WCW Raw. No show on TNN. It’s that bad. Was this the WWF literally fulfilling its own prophecy that WCW was a dead brand and that it couldn’t succeed?

Dave Meltzer called the WCW invasion the most important angle in the history of the business…would you agree with that?

Dave has said he had discussed the WCW invasion with Vince before it took place…are you surprised to hear that?

Look Buff wasn’t great in that match and I’m sure he’d be one of the first to tell you that…but the fans are chanting boring, this match sucks and Goldberg…how does the WWF not pivot and sign someone like a Goldberg to salvage this?

For as bad as it was…the next week Paul Heyman joins the Invasion as does Stephanie McMahon and ECW and WCW come together in Atlanta to form the Alliance…did you see this shit?

How could Vince McMahon…the greatest professional wrestling promoter of all-time…fuck this all up?

If you had the ability to program it….and all the creative and financial freedom…and you combined the two rosters in 2001…what’s the story you run? What’s your top matches?

For all the things we can say in retrospect…the first Invasion pay-per-view…where in the main event Booker T, the Dudleys, DDP & Rhyno defeated Chris Jericho, Kane, Kurt Angle, Steve Austin & the Undertaker…only after Austin turned heel to join the Alliance…was the highest grossing non-WrestleMania pay-per-view in WWE history up until that point. 775,000 people purchased this show…how stunning is that Eric?

Does that show that sometimes the story isn’t what’s important..but just the general idea?

Somehow…the WWF doesn’t take this as meaning anything and runs the Invasion until November where finally the brands of WCW & ECW are killed off officially when the WWF wins the war. There’s no big stars brought in outside of DDP & Booker…WCW is treated as midcarders and with the creative influence of Paul Heyman…ECW in some way gets presented as a bigger deal…how do you think this all takes place Eric?

Did you ever watch any of this? Any of this get to you or feel like it was the WWF biting its nose off to spite its face?

Were any of the talent reaching out to you asking if you were watching it and were shocked how the WWF handled it all?

Was there anything at all during this that would’ve inspired you to come in and play creative or were you just pushed that far out of the wrestling bubble at this time?

Was it depressing or anything like that to you?

Could a real invasion or talent trade or exchange ever work while you were in WCW or had purchased it?

Ric Flair debuts the night after the Survivor Series on Raw as the guy who helped bankroll Vince & Stephanie in buying those two companies…eventually the nWo would join the WWF in February…you would join in June…Goldberg in 2003…but what could’ve been…right Eric?

Why do you think WWF always looked down at WCW in the long run?

Next week Eric…another long form topic…the downfall of the nWo. How it got too big…when it stopped working…why couldn’t WCW pivot from it until it was too late.

In the next few months we’re going to be talking about Sting’s 1999 before you left, the transformation of Hulk to Hollywood, SummerSlam 03 and your match with Shane McMahon, becoming EVP, WCW’s relationship with Canada and so much more!