The Rise and Fall of WCW
Now all the highs and lows of WCW are chronicled into a fantastic documentary (albeit with WWE’s version of history, needless to say they took a few liberties), titled “The Rise and Fall of WCW.” WWE has done a tremendous job putting together documentaries based on other promotions they have put out of business over the years like ECW, AWA and WCCW. For newer fans of wrestling this is a great cliff notes version of the southern promotion, though avid fans of the squared circle will be bummed that they only covered so much ground in the 100 minutes this documentary runs (compared to WWE’s ECW DVD, which was based on a company that was around for a far shorter time that lasted over three hours).
For fans like myself who were not into WCW before the 90s, there is a great summary of the roots of WCW when it was the major player of the NWA (a group of wrestling territories from around the country) and was going by names of Jim Crockett promotions and Mid-Atlantic Wrestling. It covers a lot of ground from how WCW was one of the first promotions to get featured on a coveted cable timeslot, to its tumultuous management problems throughout the 80s that led to the company getting sold to Time Warner which led to another rotating door of management problems until Eric Bishoff came in and getting the promotion on the right track.
The DVD dedicates a fair amount of material to recapping the Monday Night Wars and how ruthless Bishoff was competing with RAW by making Nitro live every week and taking advantage of that and giving away RAW’s results at the top of the show (back when RAW was mostly taped several days before hand). The whole Monday Night War portion of the documentary is the most interesting since I was the most familiar with it and it does a an outstanding job at covering what drove WCW to new highs in the 90s (namely the explosive Cruiserweight division, Goldberg and the mega-popular nWo). I would have liked more detail on the demise of WCW, especially since they paid barely any attention to a couple pivotal moments of the Monday Night Wars that helped propel the downward spiral of WCW – the mishandling of Bret Hart and complete mess of a payoff to the year and a half build up to Sting vs. Hulk Hogan at Starrcade ’97.
I can see some reasons to why Sting is not highlighted (other than briefly seeing him in montages throughout the feature), mostly because he is currently one of the main acts on WWE’s competition, TNA Wrestling. If that were the case however, than why does this DVD take the time to bury two other key TNA figures in Kevin Nash and Jeff Jarrett? Speaking of non-WWE employees, I was surprised that WWE tracked down several figures of WCW past to get comments from in the feature like former WCW executives Jim Crockett, JJ Dillon, Harvey Schiller and even the man, Bill Goldberg himself. Eric Bishoff oddly refused to be interviewed for this documentary, but WWE had enough archival footage of Eric’s past interviews from older WWE documentaries to make his comments relevant in this release.
Rounding out this package is the usual wealthy amount of bonus matches WWE includes with every DVD release. There are 20 bonus matches, most notable are the excellent Chi-Town Rumble bout between Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat, Hulk Hogan’s WCW debut against Ric Flair and Goldberg vs. DDP at Halloween Havoc ‘98. While this is not the most fully detailed history of WCW it could have been, it does cover a lot of ground in a short period of time. WWE also released a couple other DVDs that would be terrific supplemental viewing to The Rise and Fall of WCW, so if you want to know more about WCW after watching this than I highly recommend tracking down “Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen” for a detailed look at WCW in the 80s and 90s, and “The Monday Night Wars” for a extensive look at one of the most exciting times in wrestling.
August 28th, 2009 at 10:44 am
I haven’t seen this, but my guess is to why WWE buried Jarret & Nash so much is because both of them burned their bridges w/ McMahon pretty badly. If they spent more time on the demise of WCW, I might consider renting it because that’s the most fascinating part. I remember having friends over every Monday and toward the end, we’d watch the first hour of Nitro to make fun of and then switch over to Raw. WCW had it’s moments, esp before it turned to crap. Jericho’s man of 1001 moves (arm bar) was great. Lance Storm capturing 3 of their titles and re-branding them with Canadian names. Classic stuff. It also sounds like they also completely ignored the WWE’s horrendously botched WCW resurrection w/ the invasion angle, etc. That was every wrestling fan’s wet dream, and they fucked it up so bad. Hell, maybe I’ll netflix this thing anyway.
August 28th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
yup, they completely ignored the invasion ecw/wcw angle
and for the record i did not pick this photo for the article…….damn you guys!
August 28th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I have no idea what you’re talking about. I thought that photo was completely appropriate. I Googled “WCW” and that picture came up immediately.
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August 28th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I saw this documentary, and I found it a little disappointing. They did a fantastic job covering the origins of the company, but they don’t take the care covering the stuff wrestling fans under 50 really care about: the mid 90′s up until the Russo years. This documentary is about half as long as The Rise And Fall of ECW, and given the pdigree of WCW (There was a two year span where WCW was kicking WWE’s ass in the ratings), it deserved a better documentary. Hell Vice Russo alone could fill a 90 minute documentary entitled “How to torpedo the greatest wrestling promotion in the world in one year”.
And helicine covered the Sting thing. He didn’t get ripped because he didn’t do anything to get ripped. He’s probably the most famous wrestler in the world to never work in the WWE. Jeff Jerret and Kevin Nash on the other hand did plenty to piss off just about everyone involved in professional wrestling. Jerret started TNA pretty much because NOBODY wanted to work with him (and after sleeping with Kurt Angle’s wife, TNA doesn’t even want to work with him)
It’s okay, but it doesn’t really compare to the ECW or WCCW documentary’s. Maybe someday some independent filmmakers can make the true stroy come out.
August 28th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
I understand why they ripped Jarrett, rightfully so too and especially Russo, but Nash is a little bit of a head scratcher. Last time I heard he was on good terms with WWE, they offered him a contract recently but Nash declined because he disagreed with a couple of clauses, and while under TNA employment he was the only TNA talent that was invited by WWE to attend Wrestlemania 24 when it was taking place in TNA’s home base in Orlando. Your right about Sting though, he did not burn any bridges and that is why I figured they did not take the time to bash but not really feature him either (except he is in three or four of the bonus matches). And in revisionist wrestling history and obvious reason, Benoit does not exist anywhere anymore, except for finding his name on title histories.
Wish it could have been longer too, but like I said in the review the 4 Horsemen and Monday Night Wars DVD are perfect supplemental viewing and covers a lot more of the highs this disc omitted and/or briefly touched on.
August 28th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Ah, the Monday Night Wars. I remember when I was younger that I was the only one of my friends who still watched RAW when the nWo was in it’s heyday. Once the original nWo hit everyone switched over. I even did too but I would still tune into RAW to watch the Undertaker and gang. All of my wrestling friends would look at me like I was growing a 3rd eye when I brought up something that happened in the WWF in those days. And yes, WWF, fuck the WWE.
Of course once WCW started to get really bad I tuned in more. It was like a train wreck. From their complete failure to promote the talented young wrestlers to the painfully bad Hogan/Ultimate Warrior feud. Seriously, that was just bad and so funny to watch. Then you had nWo go from a few guys to a quarter of the WCW roster.
And once the WWF bought WCW their suckiness went with it. That invasion angle was dumb, now granted the WWF has had it’s share of horrible ideas…. like having the Undertaker sacrifice Stephanie McMahon. But the invasion angle was so great that it had to work, right? Wrong. Seeing the WCW/ECW wrestlers beat up all the WWF guys to have Steve Austin come in and just kick all of their asses with a few punches was lame. I couldn’t believe what I was watching as he made his way through the arena.
I haven’t really watched any of the wrestling programs in years and from the small things I see as I click through the channels I don’t think I’ll be a regular watcher again.
August 28th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Good article and either John’s Google-fu is weak, or he’s just in it for the junk.