INTRO
Database info:
This is a TEW project using the Here Comes The Money mod created by Mr. Canada. The basis for the database is a quite simple one: “what if Shane McMahon had actually purchased WCW?”
There is not much concrete lore built into this scenario. The extent of the lore basically boils down to Shane McMahon striking out on his own, with his father’s blessing, purchasing WCW and taking it over in May 2001. But do not worry, I will establish the lore later in this post to explain to everyone the angle that I’m approaching this from, however dubious and unrealistic it may be.
The roster is of course quite scant given how many of the top stars left in WCW at the time of its closure were on Time Warner contracts. Therefore, the likes of Goldberg, Hogan, Flair, Steiner and Nash are off the table. And though he makes sense as someone who could be kept around to be a foundational piece of “The new WCW”, Jeff Jarrett will also be out of the picture due to having heat with the McMahon family. The roster that WCW starts out with in this mod is essentially the wrestlers who were a part of The Invasion.
I did personally decide to lower the popularity of WCW slightly from what the original data had it at. One reason being that I think the gap between a relaunched WCW and the red-hot WWF would be greater than what the data reflected. WCW still had a strong fanbase going until the end, but it’s clear which direction both companies had been trending in for a while. The other reason being that without much of the main event talent that even dying days WCW had, the company’s popularity was likely doomed to decline within the game anyways. So I’m basically just nerfing it ahead of time to be more suited to the less star-studded roster that I’m working with.
Establishing some lore:
I don’t feel the need to rehash the series of events that led to the demise of WCW. At this point, we should all be very familiar with the story. If not, Google will get you sorted out. All we really need to cover here is how Shane McMahon came to own WCW.
The writing was on the wall that the WCW that the world had come to know was nearing its end. As early as late 2000, it was a not-so-well-kept secret that WCW was being shopped to numerous potential buyers. At the start of 2001 however, the most realistic buyout scenario for WCW was shot dead.
With the completion of the AOL-Time Warner merger, a new chairman was brought in to head up Turner Broadcast Systems and he was looking to get WCW off of their networks ASAP. Eric Bischoff and his partners at Fusient Media Ventures had all but solidified their plans for purchasing and relaunching WCW, but when they learned that the company would be left without a television home after March 2001, those plans quickly went up in smoke. Pursuing the purchase of a company like WCW with no guarantee of having a platform for their product to be shown on just didn’t make good business sense.
As WCW remained in limbo approaching the end of its run on television, Vince McMahon became very interested in buying out his competition, whom he had effectively squashed at this point. With Vince essentially being the only suitor at this point, the price tag for the company was shockingly low. As he pondered this business opportunity and confided with those close to him about the possibility of buying WCW, he was caught off guard by his own son, Shane McMahon, expressing interest in buying the company himself.
Shane was eager to strike out on his own and build his own fortune, independent of his father. Vince of course was averse to this idea initially and proposed absorbing WCW into WWF, making it its own brand, and giving the reins of the new brand over to Shane. However, this wasn’t enough for Shane. Seeing the determination his son had to forge his own path, Vince decided he’d back off and give Shane the opportunity to buy his rival company.
At the very least, Vince knew WCW was of little value without a TV deal and the roster would be gutted due to many of the top stars having Time Warner contracts that would allow them to sit at home and be paid millions. In Vince’s eyes, WCW was already too broken to be rebuilt into any sort of real competition to his own company and, in all likelihood, Shane would likely be looking to sell the company himself within a few years once he realized what he’d gotten himself into.
So, Vince relented and granted Shane a window of opportunity to get a plan in order. Shane was quickly written off of WWF programming amidst a McMahon family feud that was set to come to a head at WrestleMania X-Seven in order to get an offer to acquire WCW ready. In lieu of Shane’s absence, the proposed Vince vs. Shane match at WrestleMania was switched to Vince vs. Mick Foley to cap off the long-running conflict between the two men.
Shane then quickly got to work on trying to acquire WCW, and was able to use his established connections to create a venture capital fund. Shane would be the primary investor, but also received significant contributions from investors, including Kenneth Feld of Feld Entertainment - a powerful live entertainment company known for producing shows such as Monster Jam, Disney On Ice and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Shane submitted his bid to take over ownership of WCW, and the purchase was approved in March 2001, just days before the final Nitro was broadcasted on TBS.
WCW was now off the air, with a new owner in Shane McMahon, who was taking a huge roll of the dice with his purchase of the company. There was no way of knowing if the fans that once lifted WCW to wrestling supremacy would remain committed to the new WCW, especially after so much instability over the previous three years. Shane was immensely ambitious, but also woefully inexperienced at running any company, nevertheless a wrestling company that had been hanging by a thread for some time now. However, with WCW off the air, there was an opportunity to create a totally fresh start for the company, rebuilt under a new vision, headed up by someone young and hungry to prove himself. Would that vision be realized? And where would it take the company? That was all yet to be seen.
Additional notes:
So, I’ve done a couple of 2001-based projects before, both with WCW and WWF during The Invasion. I don’t want to retread a lot of the same stuff that I’ve done before, so I’m definitely going to be looking to go outside of the box as much as I can, within reason, for this project.
My last WCW 2001 project began after WCW Sin and was based around the idea of Bischoff and the Jarretts buying WCW and moving it to Nashville. It was certainly going to trend in the direction of a more Southern-style entertainment inspired pretty heavily by early TNA and WCW tradition. Therefore, you can expect this project to go in a pretty different direction.
I’m taking the clean slate that I have for WCW at this time and I’m going to do the most I can to create a new identity going forward. As always, I’m going to try to put myself in the mindset of the individual that I’m playing as in this game. Meaning that many of the decisions I make are going to come down to asking myself some form of the question: “what would Shane McMahon do?”. With all of that in mind, I want to give a fair warning to anyone who is really married to the identity of WCW as you know it that this new WCW is likely going to diverge quite a bit from what it has been historically.
Anyways, we’ll see how this goes. It shouldn’t be a huge challenge to keep the company afloat, since we aren’t in a dire financial situation, nor are we saddled with too many outlandishly large contracts. It will definitely be a challenge to get back to competing with WWF, but I do hope to reach that somewhere (way) down the line. The biggest, most pressing challenge for me is just going to be making the company interesting with the pieces that I have at my disposal and essentially starting from scratch creatively.
Before I start, I need to shout-out Big Papa, whose old TEW projects are the inspiration for the format I’m going to be using with this BTB.
Anyways, wish me luck.
