That's not why WCW died... that's how WCW beat WWE 84 weeks in a row!
Ted Turner was never going to run out of money, that's why he let them do that. That's why he ever had that money in the first place, that's why he is as successful as he is, this is not a stupid person lol.
WCW decided to end it because of their merger of AOL/Time Warner or else it would still be here. Ted had no fear of Vince ever making him run out of funds or a Network to show his content on.
Yeah, it is how they beat WCW for 84 weeks. But it is also why they died. Guaranteed contracts had to be paid whether the wrestlers were working or not. There's no way out of it. They promised a LOT of money to these wrestlers and it paid off in the short run. However, because Bischoff was so obsessed with the Monday Night Ratings, the PPV buy rates suffered. And they went from making 80 million profit a year to losing that much a year. And there was nothing they could do about it because they couldn't fire wrestlers and not pay them because the contracts were guaranteed.
You cannot say that the only reason WCW died was the AOL/Time Warner merger. If WCW were making the kind of money they were making at the height of the Monday Night War, they would not have been cancelled. But they became a money pit and a liability because they were losing tons of money. Ted Turner protected them before the merger because he felt a loyalty to WCW, so it continued even though it was losing money. But it was the many, many stupid mistakes by Russo and Bischoff and Hogan that made the show boring, repetitive and uncreative that made the ratings drop and PPV buy rates drop. They lost a LOT of money and that is why they were cancelled.
If you got your information from WWE produced documentaries, I suggest you read "The Death of WCW" which goes on a week by week study of WCW during the war, giving all ratings and PPV buy rates and they explain quite well why WCW died. The AOL/Time Warner merger was just the decision to cancel it. And that decision was based off the fact that WCW was awful, getting horrible ratings and losing 10s of millions of dollars ever year. That is why it died.
Would WCW still be alive if the merger never happened? No one really knows that. If Bischoff and his group succeeded in buying it, there was no guarantee it would have gotten better. We really don't know what would have happened. Honestly, I think Bischoff proved to be an incompetent business man who mortgaged the future to get results in the present. His incompetence, coupled with the wrestlers creative control and stupid confusing booking and repetitive and boring story lines killed WCW. And that's pretty factual whether you want to accept it or not. I do not believe if Fusient had purchased WCW, I am sure Bischoff's incompetence would have led to an eventual cancellation. Fusient didn't have the finances to sign big contracts because they didn't have Ted Turners money and the ONLY thing Bischoff ever did was sign people to huge contracts.
So undoubtedly, in my viewpoint, WCW would be dead regardless of the merger. The only thing that could have saved WCW was if Hogan put his massive and stupid ego aside and agreed to have Sting beat the hell out of him at Starrcade, thus giving the fans exactly what they had been expecting for 18 months. But no, even though Hogan claimed he didn't use his creative control clause, it's obvious he did. BIschoff claimed he didn't have Sting destroy Hogan because Sting was out of shape... which was utterly stupid and utterly bull crap. Sting was in amazing shape at the time and even if he wasn't, it didn't matter. Sting's shape didn't affect the fact that he could beat down the entire NWO on a weekly basis without getting hurt by anything. It was Hogan not wanting to look weak because that is the ONLY rational explanation as to why that match got so messed up.
So they pissed their fans off. And they kept doing it after that. They kept pissing them off and doing dumb things like Nash beating Goldberg for the belt and the finger poke of doom. It was a downward spiral. I have no doubt WCW would be dead unless Ted Turner would have bought it back, which I don't think he could have legally done since he was the biggest share holder in AOL Time Warner (I am not sure on that).
I look forward to scoring another disagree from you :emoji_stuck_out_tongue:
