Chapter One: This Might Be The Real Deal
March 26, 2001. You’ve heard it before. A million stories have started with that date. It has long been generally considered the “End of the Monday Night War,” and this is true to the outside world- to you non-wrestling folks. The truth is that WCW being bought by WWF created a new “war.” This war was almost as ruthless and cut-throat as the Monday Night saga pitting WWF and it’s Chairman, Vince McMahon against WCW and their senior Vice President, Eric Bischoff. The difference now was that everyone was employed by the same corporations, World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, WWFE (the publicly traded arm of Capitol Sports and Entertainment).
Much ink has been spilled about what happened immediately after Vince McMahon paid a measly 6 Million Dollars for the WCW name, media library and a handful of contracted wrestlers. I don’t think anyone is as qualified to give the rundown of events and a perspective of them as me. Who am I? Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Jake Santangelo, but everyone calls me “Saint.” I’m pretty sure that’s more of an ironic nickname, but this book isn’t about me. I was the Executive Vice President of WCW from March 26, 2001 until May 29, 2006. This role put me in charge of many things- talent acquisitions, licensing, scheduling, the booking committee. I also had a hand in several other things- advertising, ticket sales, promotional tactics, I even spent a few sleepless Monday nights trying to get catering set up for our shows- settling on Subway sandwiches and once even grilling 300 chicken breasts myself to feed a hungry talent pool.
Basically, I tried to do it all and for a while, I did it as well as anyone could have hoped or imagined. But anyways this story has a beginning, and it starts in late November 2000, when I received a surprising phone call from my former boss, Eric Bischoff, who had an interesting proposal: he was going to buy WCW, with a few millionaires and he would be the vice president, and I would head up talent relations with an opportunity to invest. I was taken aback.
“You think we can do this?” I asked a very excited Eric. Eric has always been an up-and-down personality, apt to act quickly on emotion often, but occasionally he would ponder and analyze a decision for so long, the opportunity would pass him by.
“Well, I know we can DO it. The question really is, can we do it the way it needs to be done on Turner? I think we can, but my guys are starting the process now. Ted is going to be forced to sell WCW. I just got off the phone with Harvey (Schiller), it’s happening.” Dr. Harvey Schiller was a retired Brigadier General in the United States Air Force, who had been one of Ted Turner’s right hand men and the Director of Turner Sports when I originally worked for WCW in 1997. Harvey was a straight-shooter, at least with me. “Harvey was definitely going to run the idea of AOL TimeWarner selling to us by Ted.”
“Who is us?” I added, grabbing a pen and paper. I was definitely interested but I couldn’t let Eric know that yet. If I gave him the impression I was even remotely interested, I would be stuck whether I thought we could do it or not.
“We’ve started a corporation to handle this. Fusient Media. Cool name, right?” Eric quickly spit out.
“Yeah, I like it. Who’s the money? This going to cost like 50 Million Dollars Eric. I don’t have anything to put in right now.” I quickly lied. The thought had crossed my mind that Eric had called for investment. I had been saving my whole life and lived pretty frugally. I had plenty of money to invest, but I didn’t want to contribute one cent until Eric had this plan laid out and I could properly analyze it.
I quickly tapped my thumb to the backside of my pen’s clicker, rapidly causing the tip to pop in and out of the base. “Uh, have you ever heard of ESPN Classic? I’m trying to think of what else these guys are invested in that you would know” Eric finally spit out after several moments of silence.
“Sure.” I responded. I hadn’t, but ESPN was ESPN, and everyone at least had an idea of the global reach of the first sports network.
“Well these guys, Brian and Stephen, they sold ESPN these massive classic sports libraries they had been collecting over the years, including old AWA stuff. They got PAID, man. They love wrestling, They’re great. You’ve got to meet them!” This was the Eric I had become accustomed to finally showing through. When he got excited, when he finally stopped playing coy, he would explode in quick, frantic sentences, trying to cram as much information into short bursts as possible. Eric always left pauses for questions when I was his direct subordinate, as the VP of Talent Relations in 1997, but I learned quickly that questions were for the end and the end was more effectively known as “never.”
“Ok. Let’s meet.” I didn’t know how much this statement would change my life. Knowing the inner workings of WCW from 1997, I knew this would require me to leave my job as the General Manager of the Albany River Rats and the Assistant GM of the New Jersey Devils. I hadn’t been enjoying this job as much as I had hoped. Being an assistant to Lou Lamoreillo was definitely an amazing experience, but being under such a massive name meant that I had been overlooked for the potential to be the GM of another NHL team. In fact, after hanging up with Eric, I made a call I had been planning for some time, but hadn’t pulled the trigger yet. I called Lou and told him I was stepping down from my Assistant GM position and requested to finish out the season as a scout. I really struggled with this conversation and tears welled in my eyes.
My longtime dream of being an NHL GM was at least being put on hold, but my lifelong passion of wrestling had reared its ugly head again. I started up my computer and went to the WCW website to look at the roster. “Aw jeeze,” I muttered several times as I scrolled through the list. Half of the names were stars of the 1980’s, well past their prime and the other half we’re names I had never heard before. I had just left the company in August of 1997 and I couldn’t picture a great deal of these names.
Perusing the rest of the website was a struggle. There was nothing exciting about this at all. The website was a mess and I even found myself picking up the phone to call Eric and try to un-fuck my life’s latest terrible decision. “Just go to Wyoming and meet with Eric.” I repeated throughout the day.
The rest of the day I caught myself daydreaming about my WCW days in 1997. I thought about that first day in the office in Atlanta, where Eric pulled me, a lowly staff writer, aside and talked to me for 4 hours about my plan. Eric and I had hit it off immediately. “Hockey? THAT’S your dream? There is so much money right here my man!” Eric spurted out in his quick burst of energy. Seeing Eric in the office on a Wednesday was apparently rare, and he looked haggard. He was dressed in blue jeans and leather boots, and donned a slightly too large black t-shirt. He had bags under his eyes and his hair, while perfectly groomed, was showing more grey than I had ever noticed on TV.
I vividly recall looking down at my way-too-black suit and overly baggy shirt, with the checkered tie I had taken from my father’s closet and then looking back at Eric. He caught my stare. “Yeah, we don’t have to wear those clown suits. Unless we’re going upstairs. Someday, you may go up there- but not for a while.”
My scrambled brain flashed forward to 3 weeks later when I was in the meeting where Eric, Scott Sassa, the true number 2 of Turner Broadcasting, and Harvey Schiller went back and forth for 4 hours about WCW adding another show. I had already bucked authority as I sat there in my usual blue jeans, heavily worn along the thigh and knee, and t-shirt with my “band of the day” adorning the front. Burned into my brain is that I was wearing a Sex Pistols shirt when the richest man I would ever meet entered the room, surrounded by three other people, all in impeccable suits. Ted Turner was 6 feet from me as I wrote on a legal pad taking notes of Eric’s ideas for the name of the new show.
“Where we at, Scott? Harvey. Eric. Eh….” Ted Turner had nodded quickly at Harvey and Eric, and his eyes settled on me.
“Sir, Im-” I started. “That’s my number two, Ted. His name is Jake. He’s been here a month or so, but he’s sharp.” Eric cut me off. Two things had just happened. I had met the Chairman of my new company and Eric had given me a field promotion.
“Oh. How are ya?” Ted quickly spit out. He then turned back to Scott Sassa. “So? How’s this Thursday thing going?”
“Well, it seems like we’re making some progress but Eric has some major concer-” Scott started.
“It’s all good. We’re going to figure it all out- it’ll be fine.” Eric cut Scott off. I saw something in Eric I hadn’t seen before. He was exuding a nervous energy. In his way, he pushed through the nervousness by trying to quickly put information on the table that would change the subject. “We were thinking of this show being all n.W.o. We were brainstorming some names. Saint?”
I nervously looked down at the paper. I had been writing a few things Eric and the others had said, but nothing was really that great. I had doodled in the corner of the paper mostly. I stared at that piece of paper and pretended to be organizing the ideas in my brain. “Eh…” I started my eyes darting across the page. My eyes settled in the upper-right hand corner where I had crudely scribbled a lightning bolt. I had been thinking about Metallica while Eric had been going on and on about the WCW’s metal motif on Nitro. A million words rushed across my brain but I spurted out, almost accidentally, “Thunder… uh…” I went to continue.
“That’s it. That’s the name,” Turner cut me off. My heart was racing. Had this really happened?
Eric stared at me, mouth slightly open, but eyes bulging from darkened and baggy eyes.
The rest of that meeting is a blur, but I recall going back downstairs with Eric and him taking me into his office. “Well VP. Congrats. Very nicely done.” That same day, I got a major pay raise and a new office.
The next few months were a blur. I didn’t tell Eric about the first two or three calls I had gotten from the Albany team about being a scout.The pull of my hockey obsession quickly became too much to resist. I was working diligently on the Thunder project with Turner executives I had, prior to these meetings, no idea existed. The tedious work drove me away from wrestling entirely.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
“You’re what?!” Eric screamed as I told him the news. “A fucking scout? What are they going to pay you?”
“I don-” I started
“Fuck it. Whatever it is, we’ll double it. I need you here. You’ve been pointman on this Thunder shit.” Eric cut me off.
“Well, that’s the thing Eric. I came here to be a writer. That’s all I wanted to do here. All this other stuff.. Honestly, I’m in way over my head. The scouting job isn’t about the pay. I want to be an NHL exec. This is, like, I don’t know. Not the same.” I must have sounded like a scolded child.
“What the fuck, dude. I’m… What can I do to make you stay?” Eric said in almost a whisper and the words rushed out in a heavy breath.
Make. That was the word that ended it for me. I wanted to be there because I WANTED to be there, not because I was being forced. I tried to find the words. “I just don’t think there’s anything here for me. I want to be in the NHL.”
“Alright then. I guess I need everything on Thunder.” Eric sighed.
And with that I moved from Atlanta to Albany, New York and began scouting. The next time that stands out is being in Scranton, Pennsylvania on Thursday, January 8, 1998, and watching a replay of Thunder in my hotel room. I was refining my notes on a prospect I had just watched play earlier in the evening. My attention was so divided, I knew I would have to turn off the TV to get any work done. The fax back to Lou and his staff was due by midnight for filing, and I glanced at the clock. 11:43. The decision was an easy one. I put the paper back into my binder and grabbed the remote. I pushed the volume button forward and melted back into my true passion.
--------------------------------------------------------
The next thing I knew, a few days had passed and I was in Wyoming, waiting for Eric to pick me up. I had expected to be sitting in an old classic muscle car or even some old beat up farm truck. My heart fluttered a bit when I saw a black Lincoln Limousine parked along the pick up lane, with a driver holding a sign with the name “Saint” on it. This might be the real deal. Eric’s fucking done it again.
