McGuire’s Mondays: Who killed WCW?

By Colin McGuire, ProWrestling.net Staffer

Pro wrestling is as much celebrated for its current day iterations as it is the memories that continue to paint the minds of those who watch it or work in it. Without the legends, the stories, the meteoric rises and the catastrophic failures, pro wrestling would just be another soap opera on television. Case in point: look at all the podcasts hosted by guys to haven’t been active in the business for decades. Look at the success of the WWE Network. Look at how some of these people can continue to make a living just by merely signing autographs and taking photos with fans 30, 40, 50 years after their prime. The obsession with pro wrestling’s past is enough to promise that there will be a pro wrestling future for years to come.

But to what end?

That’s the question I grappled with each of the last three weeks as I’ve carved out time to watch the latest re-telling of the re-telling of the re-telling of the story that chronicles WCW’s demise: Vice’s “Who Killed WCW?” At first, I figured I’d give the series a pass – between “The Rise and Fall of WCW” DVD that came out 15 years ago and the endless Conrad Thompson trove of shows featuring characters from WCW’s best days, I was convinced there wouldn’t be much more information that yet another series on the end of World Championship Wrestling could provide.

And now, after seeing the first three episodes, in a rare turn of events, I realized I was right. I’ll surely tune in tomorrow night to cap off the series by sitting down with the fourth and final installment of the documentary – I’ve come too far now to not digest how they put a bow on things – but at this point, it doesn’t really matter who says what to close this retrospective out. And why doesn’t it matter? Because I’ve had enough. Too much, actually. WCW was a fun moment in pro wrestling time, and the constant rehashing of its history was even a nice novelty for a second or two. But at this point … what are we even doing out here, man?

I guess what we’re doing is allowing Eric Bischoff to frame the story in a very WWE-esque way, reshaping the narrative to fit around all the things he’s been yelling about on “83 Weeks,” his Thompson-hosted podcast, for the last several years. Standards and practices … blah, blah. The Time Warner merger … blah, blah. Corporate never liked pro wrestling … blah, blah. The allocation of money … blah, blah. Vince Russo is a disgrace to the industry … blah, blah. Every possible way a person can say, “Yeah, I’ll take blame for this … but not really take blame for this … but can you really blame me? … but it was my fault … but it wasn’t really my fault … hey, let’s have a beer” – Eric Bischoff has mastered that.

As such, I can’t even really say that I’m mad at it. WCW played a very important role during a very important time in modern wrestling history. Fair play to Bischoff for his part in that, both good and bad. It isn’t that he doesn’t deserve some credit for WCW’s success; it’s just that I’m not so sure he – or anyone – needs to be reminded of these things this often. My only problem is that at this point, those reminders come mostly at his own request.

There are books about WCW not written by Guy Evans, but Bischoff has long championed Evans’s telling of the story, and so which author do you think gets screen time here? Bischoff is clever enough to know a dissenting voice is imperative in things like this, so who gets the call? Bret Hart, who is beloved by most every wrestling fan in the world and can be forgiven for calling people imbeciles because … well, because he’s Bret Hart, damn it. I’m not saying Bischoff curated, directed, and wrote this series; I’m just saying even from a million miles away, it feels like this docu-series is eerily similar to things Bischoff has long argued and even after he’s first fired from WCW in episode two, the fact that we get a smorgasbord of executives and colleagues waxing poetic on how wonderful he is kind of/sort of makes the proceedings feel a little contrived.

But again. I’m not mad at it. Instead, the bigger issue for me is that this docu-series even exists at all. We’ve traveled far past the “enough is enough” stage with the WCW story – so much so that it’s making anyone who talks about it now look worse the more they talk about it. The stories never quite line up perfectly. There’s an obnoxious amount of finger-pointing (of doom) all while an undercurrent of entitlement of praise for the company’s success bubbles underneath anything anyone ever says. And, of course, all these years later, everyone knows better than everyone else. Take a look at Kevin Nash’s seemingly stoned ass on these episodes. Even I, someone who tends to enjoy watching people being smug for smug’s sake, have a hard time sitting through his soundbites on this thing. Put the bong down, man. At least own up to something? Maybe? Possibly?

He won’t. Or, at least through the first three episodes, he hasn’t. And neither has anyone else, really. Such is why revisiting these things amounts to a live action version of Twitter (or X, for those keeping score). WCW documentaries are echo chambers. There’s nothing remotely insightful about any of them anymore. It’s grown adults justifying their own existence at the expense of other people’s memories or even reality itself. We’ll never exactly know what happened to that company because anyone who wants to tell us, tells us to serve their own agendas. It’s the most pro wrestling thing about all this stuff: You can never really fully believe everything that’s being said because everything that’s being said is designed only to raise the profile of whomever is saying it.

In the case of this four-part series, it’s particularly frustrating because the makers of it are supposed to be the ones we trust – as in, this isn’t a WWE production. Because while I’m probably in the minority in saying that I don’t really mind WWE productions, there’s no denying that anything produced under such a banner is often wildly slanted towards a narrative that best suits the company. Exhibit A: All the ECW material that the WWE house creates, including an episode of one of the A&E shows that just aired where they couldn’t even get Paul Heyman to sit for brand new interview footage (I maintain that “Barbed Wire City,” while sometimes hard to watch, is a better warts-and-all look at the company). But I digress.

Evan Husney has Dark Side Of The Ring clout on his side while Brian Gewirtz is best buds with The Rock, so there was reason to have hope that the series might be something other than what it became. But then again, what else could it become? The characters needed to tell the WCW story won’t change. Someone can go back and find all the Turner executives a wrestling fan can shake a stick at and gather every jobber who ever stepped foot in a WCW ring, but you can’t really tell this story without Bischoff or even Nash, who played such a pivotal role in some of the company’s most dissected turning points. This is a story that will be etched in speculative history as it stands now, forever and ever, amen.

And that’s precisely why it doesn’t need to be told anymore (same for the aforementioned ECW, but that’s a subject for another day). We get it. The company came. Had some success. Gave WWF a run for its money. Ultimately found itself in the hands of Vince McMahon. And has been the subject of debate by those who worked there in the decades sense. In a lot of ways, it’s probably not unlike every other failed pro wrestling company, so why don’t we get some of these types of documentaries on them. “Who Killed Mid-South Wrestling,” anyone?

That’s wishful thinking if only because there aren’t enough people left to sit around and debate how or why it failed, and who, above all else, deserves the credit for the success it had. And in many ways, thank God for that. Sometimes, history is best left in the past. Studying and learning from it is essential, of course, and we’d be foolish if we turned a blind eye to the mistakes that helped shape it. But at this point, there’s no reasonably intellectual reason to give that company or the people who talk about it a platform to do so anymore. All the stones have been turned. All the perspectives have been considered. All the stories have been recounted, true or false. Blurry or clear. Insightful or aggrandizing. That’s it. It’s over. Let it go.

And so, who killed WCW, you ask?

Who cares?