2009-10-26 - Georgia on my Mind

Georgia on my mind: Scott Bowden recalls the heritage of Georgia Championship Wrestling while watching WWE's version of THE RISE AND FALL OF WCW

World Championship material: Ric Flair shined on GCW and, later, WCW.

By 1982, it was clear to almost anyone paying attention that whomever controlled cable TV would rule the business. And unlike a lot of longtime NWA promoters, young Vince McMahon Jr. was paying very close attention. (Not everyone in the NWA was blind--Terry Funk saw the effect that the WCW show was having on his local business, when fans of the thrilling two-hour cable broadcast began asking why Atlanta stars like Rich weren't appearing in Amarillo. The Funks eventually sold the family's Amarillo territory.

Of course, nothing lasts in the wrestling biz. GCW booker Ole disliked Barnett and accused him of stealing from the company in an effort to oust him, a power struggle Anderson would win. By the end of '83, with Barnett forced out, WCW was a mess, a combination of bad booking, poor management and stale stars, most notably, Rich, who had started to go downhill fast because of his lifestyle. The Road Warriors pumped some life into the promotion, but there were inherent limitations in booking two inexperienced muscleheads whose gimmick was to eat up long-established stars like the Brisco Brothers and Mr. Wrestling I and II. Ole clearly demonstrated that he was in over his head booking a suddenly national promotion, pulling crap like the Brett and Buzz Sawyer defeating the Warriors for the National tag titles in several cities throughout the week...and then Hawk and Animal showing up on TV the following Saturday with the straps and no mention of a title change or reversed decision.

Yes, the real history of WCW is fascinating stuff. But none of this is mentioned on the DVD.

The doc does mention how Crockett seized the mantle of the strongest NWA promotion, fueled by amazing run of Ricky Steamboat/Jay Youngblood cage matches with Sgt. Slaughter and Don Kernodle in spring 1983 and closing with the Flair vs. Race feud for the World belt and Starrcade '83. While Anderson and GCW were struggling to present coherent storylines and major stars in '83 and '84, Crockett's promotion was running on cylinders, with most NWA players jockeying to enter his territory and garner some hefty paydays. Crockett also had brought in Dusty to take over from Dory Funk Jr. as booker, which was an immediate upgrade in the creative department, and he had his home-grown star Flair entrenched as the World champion. The only thing Crockett didn't have was national TV.

Vince Jr. did have cable TV, on the USA Network, taking over the Sunday noon ET timeslot formerly reserved for Joe Blanchard's Southwest Championship Wrestling. USA at that time, however, was more like the less-talented kid brother of WTBS. The story of how McMahon took over the valuable WTBS timeslot by purchasing controlling stock from the Briscos could have been far more detailed in the DVD. Following his removal of power in the NWA, Barnett had become an important ally of McMahon and helped put the stock deal together. I would love to have seen the look on Ole's face when he showed up to tape TV at the WTBS studio and found McMahon there. Usually, I cringe when Gerald Brisco shows up on WWE DVD releases, but the one time his comments would have actually contributed to a production, he's nowhere to be found. OK, OK, the man is recovering from heart surgery, so I'll give them a pass here. Thankfully, Steve Lombardi is also absent from the documentary--a major plus to any WWE-produced DVD.

Peachy keen: With stars like Jack Brisco and Ted DiBiase, and announcer Gordon Solie on the mic, Georgia Championship Wrestling was a hit on the SuperStation.

Again, the documentary claims that McMahon took Crockett's timeslot away when he stepped in front of the now-famous WCW logo along with Freddy Miller to welcome the WTBS viewing audience to his sterile version of sports entertainment as opposed to their usual rasslin' show. Fans were outraged that Gordon and the stars of the NWA were gone, flooding the WTBS switchboard with complaints. As bad as Ole's studio show was in 1984, it was still better than the taped WWF matches involving the likes of Big John Studd, many of which had already aired on USA Network. In response to the fans' outcry, Turner gave Ole and Solie an early morning Saturday morning timeslot, featuring a brief NWA "merger" involving Anderson, Crockett Jr. and Memphis promoter Jerry Jarrett. That union was doomed from the start, so Turner turned to Bill Watts, whose Mid-South Wrestling TV show was arguably the most entertaining the country. McMahon was embarrassed when Watts' Sunday afternoon show on WTBS got much better ratings than his Saturday night show on Turner's network.

Supposedly, Turner was going to put his money behind Watts and take Mid-South's power and prestige to a new level by giving him the Saturday night slot as well when Barnett brokered a deal for McMahon to sell controlling interesting in Georgia Championship Wrestling to Crockett...along with the 6:05 ET slot. Crockett paid $1 million to Vince to take over the timeslot. The course of wrestling history changed with that move. Instead, Watts was forced to go national on his own, transforming Mid-South into the Universal Wrestling Federation. The UWF still produced great television, with the likes of the Freebirds, Hacksaw Duggan, Ted DiBiase and Steve Williams as his top stars, but had trouble drawing fans outside their established area. (I recall a UWF card at the Mid-South Coliseum in 1986 that drew less than 500 fans in the 11,300-seat arena. Even the wrestlers didn't want to be there--several no-shows, including half of the main event.) When the oil industry bottomed out, affecting attendance in Watts' key cities, he was finished. He sold to Crockett, who overpaid him for the promotion. Instead of promoting a UWF vs. NWA feud, which would have been a natural, Crockett allowed Dusty to bury Watts' wrestlers, killing what would have likely been a huge moneymaking program.

The DVD rushes through the boom period of JCP in '85 to '87, along with its initial downfall. In one sense, booker Dusty doesn't get enough credit for the great run the company had in '85, '86 and most of '87, but they also let him off the hook for keeping himself on top and helping to doom the company with his stale booking and horrible finishes to major matches on the big shows. (The dreaded Dusty finish to the Starrcade '87 main event of the Roadies vs. Tully and Arn immediately comes to mind, as does Ron Garvin appearing as World champion on the same show.) Crockett Jr. admits his shortcomings as a businessman and takes a lot of the blame, as he should. As bad as Dusty was in the end, Crockett should have reeled him in. But Crockett was blinded with his own American Dreams of grandeur, not content with being a big fish in a little pond. His overspending on corporate jets and fancy new offices in Dallas didn't help matters.

Moving Starrcade '87 to Chicago only served to alienate his home base of the Carolinas, and things were never the same heading into 1988. Starrcade '87 was really the final nail in Crockett's coffin as he was counting on income from PPV to pay off some of the steep balloon contracts he had signed his stars to prevent them from going to the WWF. At first, Crockett's PPV prospects looked good, as a number of cable systems were looking to package the NWA show with McMahon's newest PPV creation, the Survivor Series, which would also take place on Thanksgiving Day. But as part of the predatory, monopolistic business practices by which he expanded his WWF circus tent, McMahon, coming off the hugely successful WrestleMania III, had enough clout to intimidate the cable companies: He mandated that any cable system that didn't offer Survivor Series exclusively instead of Starrcade would not get WrestleMania IV. The cable companies didn't call his bluff, and Crockett's Starrcade cleared only a tiny fraction of the markets he had been anticipating. This key moment in history is ignored on the DVD, with nary a mention from Crockett or McMahon. Damn shame.

The DVD whisks through Crockett selling to Turner after JCP's accountant informed them in 1988 that they were millions of dollars in the red, including some poignant comments from David Crockett, who clearly didn't want to sell.

The Jim Herd era and Ole's stint as WCW booker following the sale to Turner are covered in the doc, accurately portraying Herd as the buffoon he was really was. A notable omission from that time period: WCW World champion Ric Flair's jump, with the belt, to McMahon and the WWF. An in-depth look at Sting, one of WCW's biggest stars, is another notable omission.

The DVD quickly covers the Watts era in 1992, which aside from a remarkable initial TV taping in Baltimore, was a notable failure in WCW history. The business had passed Watts by at that time, a point that was made on the DVD by Michael Hayes, who achieved some of the greatest success in his career under the Cowboy's watchful eye in Mid-South. Watts, for example, once again tried to recreate his successful Junkyard Dog formula of 1981 by making Ron Simmons the company's first black World champion. Of course, Simmons was regarded by the fans as a mid-card tag-team champion at best; he was an above-average worker but had little charisma and didn't have a prayer of carrying the company. Jim Ross, who got his break into the business in Mid-South, claims on the DVD that Watts was too much his own man so he didn't fit in with the WCW brass, which led to his resignation. That's a partial truth, but Watts' biggest problems were bad television, misery in the locker room over reworked contracts and his stringent rules and resulting stiff fines. Even then, Watts might have remained in power a little longer had it not been for an interview he gave to the Pro Wrestling Torch in which he made racist statements. Comments from the interview were faxed to baseball icon Hank Aaron, who had recently appeared alongside Watts as part of a Starrcade segment at the Omni. Aaron was livid over Watts' remarks, and the Cowboy was put out to pasture shortly thereafter.

Although the corporate suits made it difficult for Watts and future WCW bookers, it was really their inept booking that did them in. I had to laugh when Rhodes was portrayed as a returning savior to book the company in 1991, but he didn't have corporate support to succeed. As captivating as Rhodes' booking could be in the '80s, he was a failure in the early '90s, trying to copy WWF's glitzy, cartoony style with silly gimmicks and himself as color commentator. (Dusty even had his own Piper's Pit type segment on Saturday nights, appropriately titled "The Bull Drop Inn.")

I began to lose interest in the DVD when focus shifted to Eric Bischoff, as that's material that's been covered previously in WWE releases THE MONDAY NIGHT WARS and THE RISE AND FALL OF ECW. (Bischoff refused to be interviewed for this latest release, so his comments are pulled from those old DVDs.)

Flair admitted in his book, TO BE THE MAN, that he initially pushed for Bischoff to take control of the company because "he has some ideas." And he did. Many of them brilliant. As the DVD recounts, for a while NITRO had something for everybody: actual quality wresting with the under-card guys like Chris Benoit and Eddy Guerrero, the breathtaking moves of the luchadores and the familiarity of established stars like Hulk Hogan (and as a heel no less), Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Randy Savage, Sting and Lex Luger. In many ways, it was the perfect wrestling program.

Bischoff, however, eventually showed that he was truly no different than any other wrestling booker from the past. The Bisch caught fire and then refused to change the formula when his product became stale to the point of insanity over a period of two to three years. No wonder Bischoff himself nearly went insane when it all started to crumble.

He clearly thinks that he was far more clever and innovative than he actually was, which is evident by his smugness every time he discusses WCW's glory days. Um, hey, Eric, you lost the war, remember? Yeah, he had the sense to raid talent from ECW to strengthen his under cards, but he didn't have the foresight to develop them into stars to replace the aging main-event guys. Not so smart.

And then there's that other mid-card guy who Bischoff let get away: Steve Austin, who went on to become one of the biggest stars ever for the competition. Had he taken his head out of Hogan's ass long enough he might have seen Austin for the talent he was. OK, no one could have foreseen how big a star Austin was to become, but he was easily becoming one of the company's best overall workers in the ring. (Some might even say a ring master. Ahem.) Hell, the very first chance Austin got to prove himself on the mic in ECW (a short time after his WCW firing), he shined.

The parallels are similar between Bischoff and Vince Russo, two ever-so-slightly intelligent, creative and forward-thinking men who managed to work their way up in the business because they thought outside the squared circle. And for a while, both were incredibly successful.

Bischoff helped turn WCW into the most popular wrestling promotion in the world, sinking the WWF's ratings and revenues in the process, but he never really understood the business. Jerry Jarrett, the longtime Memphis promoter, recently told me the story of how desperate Bischoff was to have his service after the elder Double J resigned from the WWF. Jarrett made it clear that he had no interest in traveling to Atlanta for meetings...and Bischoff came back with a six-figure offer just to have monthly chats with Jarrett over the phone. Ridiculous.

Meanwhile, Russo, a former writer for the WWF Magazine, was instrumental in McMahon's comeback, with fresh angles centered hot talent like Steve Austin, Mick Foley, the Rock and repackaged Satanic Undertaker.

Perhaps not so coincidental is that both men would eventually be responsible for killing WCW, showing us that it not only takes above-average intelligence and creativity but also passion to stay on top in the business.

While Bischoff unquestionably steered WCW into the wrong direction in the end, it was Russo who slammed on the gas. Several Russo gaffes are highlighted on the DVD, including the David Arquette-as-World champ debacle and the Hogan PPV disaster with Jeff Jarrett. Russo's misuse of Bret Hart (trying to make him a heel months after his brother Owen died) was omitted as was any of the controversy over Bischoff's signing of the Hitman.

Although guys like Mick Foley swear at one time Russo could be creative, I never saw even the slightest evidence of it during his WCW run. Hired to run WCW along with his crony, the unequally untalented Ed Ferrera, Russo pissed on the remaining fan base with ridiculous, confusing storylines that were often given up on midway through, although some might say that was a blessing. Along the way, he even managed to crown himself World champion, despite the fact that he swore he'd never even appear on television. Really, Russo made Bischoff look like a genius.

The ascension and subsequent death-inducing dissension of Ted Turner's wrestling group is better documented in THE DEATH OF WCW, the book written by R.D. Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez, the authors of WRESTLECRAP and FIGURE FOUR WEEKLY, respectively.

WCW's status as the No. 1 promotion in the world was fleeting, even for the wrestling business. A lot of hardcore fans already know this story, as WCW's death came at a time when the number of Internet marks was peaking, although there were never as many as some in the company believed. A more groundbreaking, fascinating DVD would have been the HISTORY OF GEORGIA CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING, a release that will likely never happen.

Still, there's some entertainment value, I suppose, in seeing how WCW's fall played out as you see a lot of the bumbling antics and outright stupidity that killed the company. (Speaking of which, Kevin Nash gets appropriately buried in the DVD, which was nice as well.)

The saving grace of the three-disc set is the match selection, which includes the Flair vs. Magnum TA $1,000 challenge angle, two excellent Midnight Express bouts, the entertaining Sting, Luger vs. the Steiners matchup, the memorable-if-not great Big Van Vader title win over Sting and a few excellent cruiserweight matches featuring Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko and Eddie Guerrero.

EMAIL THE AUTHOR | ARCHIVES