The Art Of Overdoing It... (Well, It Gives Us A Lot To Look At!)

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Man - if that video still works for you, you will see the BEST WRESTLING ACTION EVER, OF ALL-TIME, THAT THE INDUSTRY COULD EVER HOPE TO PUT TOGETHER IN A BILLION YEARS TIME...!!!

"Multi-level" action coming at you from everywhere all at once - action like you've never seen before and never will see again!!!

Vince McMahon must have been CRYING and/or cringing at the sight of this!

His erstwhile top scribe, Vince Russo, was at the helm of the rival WCW which had very nearly put McMahon's circus out of business for good just a few MONTHS earlier (and the only one who saved the then still known as "WWF" WWE from complete and utter disaster had been... Vince Russo, with his Stone Cold Steve Austin versus his boss scenario that truly "caught on" with the feeble-minded masses!)

And WCW was still VERY MUCH apt and willing to go for McMahon's jugular!

What's more, with a line-up like this, WCW should have, logically, succeeded!

In this short few minutes of footage alone (taken from WCW's Thursday night "Thunder" show, on Superstation TBS, the one cable network where wrestling truly honed its craft!) you will see one of the culminating points of a GREAT storyline that pitted the ELITE wrestlers (the big names, the superstars, all together because all were envied by the newcomers and up-and-comers - and together they were called "the Millionaires Club" no less!) up against all the envious jackals, "the New Blood" of course! (Note that this storyline was copied -of course, like everything else the NWA/WCW did since the 1980s- by McMahon's circus which is NEVER the originator but always the imitator who imposes its alleged monopolizing stamp on things! In that, McMahon and the WWE are much like Bill Gates and Microsoft! But I am digressing...!)

In this "Thunder-ous" event (truly worthy of the flagship show, WCW Monday Nitro, or actually truly worthier of having been presented as a Pay-Per-View event!) you will see such a stable of talent as EVEN Vinnie Mac has NEVER HAD (and never will have!)

Nature Boy Ric Flair
DDP - Diamond Dallas Page
Jeff Jarrett
the late Chris Candido
Billy Kidman
Hollywood Hulk Hogan
Shane Douglas
the late wrestler then known as "The Wall"
Buff Bagwell
Shawn Stasiak
the late Mike Awesome
Macho Man Randy Savage
and, all along, we get the expert commentary of one Tony Schiavone and Bobby The Brain Heenan (that annoying guy from Pittsburgh wasn't there yet to do his very good Heenan-Weasel impersonation - and Mike Tenay wasn't there to bore us to tears either, not on this night anyhow! Not sure what Larry Zbysko was doing either...)

Verily, such a spectacle promised so much - 

that the company would be able to reach 

another pinnacle as they had 

in the nWo days... 

(which were not so long ago anyway!)

Bret "the Hitman" Hart makes a cameo also (but on the wrong side of things, as always with him - crazy dumb Canuck that he is!)

Only ones shining conspicuously by their absence here are GOLDBERG.

And the Stinger himself.

But BOTH were with the company 'til the end - history recorded...

Only Sting would be on the final Nitro, though...

And there were tons more of noteworthy talent in that company not seen in this exciting BATTLE ROYALE match on Thunder, many of them within the ranks of WCW's New Blood:
the Natural Born Thrillers that included Mike Sanders, Sean O'Haire, Mark Jindrak, Chuck Palumbo and Reno.

Juventud Guerrera, Rey Mysterio JR (why drop the JR, Rey?) and the Filthy Animals.
Vampiro and the KISS/Gene Simmons-influenced "Demon" (both under the tutelage of The Great Muta from Japan in a carnivalesque faction...!)
Lash Leroux, Hugh Morrus and the M.I.A.
Crowbar, David Flair, the Jung Dragons...
Lance Storm, Elix Skipper and... whatever else made up "Team Canada" (there wasn't much!!! But what they did have, had tremendous potential!)

On the "millionaires" side - the established names were there aplenty too:
not seen here are the Steiners... Lex Luger... BOOKER T... Stevie Ray... Kevin Nash... Scott Hall (who could have always been brought back too) and any and all of the leftovers from the nWo!!!


And the always promising to be born anew legend of the Four Horsemen too!

And who had the hottest valets in the industry - Stacy Keibler, Tammy Fytch/Sunny, Asya, Daffney, Leia Meow, Madusa Miceli, the late Elizabeth Houlette, Mona/Miss Madness/Molly Holly, Torrie Wilson, Gorgeous George (!) and Major Gunns (!!)  - to tittilate all the male fans (and some female fans too!) into succumbing and buying the product...?
WCW did, that's who!

Handled right, the WCW had all the tools to consistently surpass the competition's product - and eventually outlast it and outlive it as well!

It is unfortunate that the "AOL/Time-Warner" conglomerate that swallowed Turner Broadcasting whole simply did not have the guts to go through with "the plan" and pulled the rug from underneath WCW's feet shortly after this - a mere few months into 2001.

Jeff Jarrett and a handful of these talented performers refused to go (back) to McMahon's control when his WWE bought out what was left of WCW...
They formed the NWA/TNA (now simply known as TNA) and it has since attracted many WWE performers to jump ship and join THEM...
Defections have NOT gone both ways, as of yet...

"The New Blood vs Millionaires Club" storyline was eventually royally ripped off and "adapted" to the subpar product offered by McMahon's circus company - the ECW (a pathetic pastiche of the REAL ECW which was also acquired by McMahon.)

Not surprisingly, the WWE's ECW adaptation of the above was as atrocious as their version of the nWo.

McMahon, as the true vampire that he is, signed up every bit of talent he could find in the wreckage of the fallen WCW and pressed the lemon dry on each one - O'Haire, Stasiak, Jindrak, Awesome, Morrus, Kidman, Booker T himself - all were subsequently and unceremoniously released. The surplus of talent made them ditch most of their dead wood (which they had kept in a vain effort to match the diversity that the WCW talent pool offered each and every week) and those guys (A-Train aka Albert, the Dudley Boys, the Oddities, Luc Poirier aka Rambo aka 1001 other names - to name a few!) were ditched even more abruptly and unceremoniously!

Even Ric Flair eventually joined the WWE in late 2001/early 2002.

For a brief shining moment, WCW ruled in all the facets of the game - pay-per-view buy rates, TV ratings, market share... heck, even merchandising!

When all that began to falter -and the window of opportunity to achieve a monopoly, driving the competitor all the way down to bankruptcy, shut down completely- Turner, which was soon to merge with Time-Warner and AOL as well, started to think differently - they began to prioritize which fields they truly wanted to work in, potentially dominate outrageously... They began to cut loose all the distractions and ventures that were not meant to be as profitable.

And AOL/Time-Warner is now doing with Netscape Navigator and Netscape Communicator as it did with WCW - pulling the plug on what they deem to be a mere "financial liability"...


No matter how much potential and tradition it has.