In Who Killed WCW Part 3, we get introduced to Vince Russo, who has been blamed for why WCW going out of business. This episode also focuses on the true downfall of WCW as things start to go south and they have David Arquette win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. How did this episode compare to the last two? Let’s review!
Bill Busch has taken over the day-to-day operations of WCW and made his first big hire a month into his job by hiring Vince Russo, a former WWE writer. In the early ’90s, Russo worked for the WWE magazine and began pitching his creative ideas. Shortly after this, he became the head writer for WWE which helped WWE gain control of the ratings once again. As Smackdown was starting up and Russo was burnt out he left WWE and called WCW for a change and a lighter schedule.
Bischoff’s favorites were not happy with the new direction and they were starting not to trust Russo from the beginning. Things were quicker, matches built and the backstage morale was not relaxed, it was stressful. Russo had forgotten about the wrestling part as things were more focused on storytelling. He was trying to attract a crowd that was not watching wrestling, but a lot of the talent was becoming more frustrated the more this went on. Bill Busch said that they wanted to do a committee instead for creative, Russo tried to fight it and said that his contract said he had to be the head of creative so Russo went home for them to figure it out. Kevin Sullivan took charge and a lot of the undercard talent was not used as much and they were frustrated. Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, and Dean Malenko left WCW to go to WWE — becoming The Radicalz. Watching with his wife Bischoff said he had a feeling he was going to get a call to come back and fix the mess of WCW, and then they were off to the races.
When the four of them jumped it was huge, they were the first ones to go from WCW to WWE, and many of the day ones of WCW were shocked. As the ratings were dropping at a rapid pace they signed Bischoff to a new deal as he and Russo were going to work together. Bischoff was hired to oversee the creative process of Russo, which Russo denies. However, WCW was becoming worse. Bischoff’s idea was to do the Millionaires Club vs the New Blood as a reset for the creative team. There was tension between both teams that stemmed from real life, as the veterans did not want to give up their spots, whereas the new talent wanted more opportunities and more money. As this was going on Ready to Rumble was set to star a lot of WCW talent as a way to bring more exposure to the company. This sets up a tag match between Eric Bischoff and Jeff Jarett vs. DDP and David Arquette where Tony Schiavone had the brilliant idea to have Arquette win the title to help promote the movie. DDP and others thought this was a terrible idea and that it was not going to work.
Despite Russo thinking that this would be a good idea, the crowd did not think so. Arquette told a story that after he won the title he was in the locker room with Booker T and he had asked him how many times he had won the title. When he said none, Arquette’s mood changed as he slowly realized that this was not the best idea for WCW to do. The new problem was to answer the question of what was next for the new champion and no one was able to answer. Although Russo loved that WCW was getting coverage from top media outlets he did not realize he was slowly losing his wrestling audience to WWE because of these new decisions he was making. Arquette cut a promo saying that he does not deserve the title and other wrestlers on the roster who worked harder deserved it more. This opened the door for Booker T, who had become a new fan favorite to finally win the World Heavyweight Champion. However, there was a fear that the battle he had taken to get to the top was only the beginning of his fight.
This all led to Bash at the Beach 2000, where tension was already high and both Russo and Bischoff had different ideas. The promo that Russo had cut after Hogan and Bischoff left was not part of the original plan as he went into business for himself. This led to Booker vs. Jarrett for the WCW, later that night and Booker was going to do everything in his power to make sure that he walked out that night the champion. Booker got a standing ovation as he achieved the impossible and won the title. Hogan wanted to sue Russo since his contract was not fulfilled. Hogan had complete creative control and Russo changed that which was a breach of contract. After the pay-per-view, Bischoff and Hogan went home as creative was changing once again. A booking committee led by Russo was in charge of the show, and now Russo was being written into the show every week. He felt like he could deliver bigger ratings than the current WCW roster, which was not the case.
The episode ends with going over how much Russo was killing the product. He had put the title on himself as well as constantly trying to book himself, which was not over with the fans. Although Russo was trying to entertain an audience, he was not doing that and Russo had believed that the wrestlers were injuring him on purpose. After Goldberg had speared him into an iron rail, Russo did not want to wrestle anymore and he claimed that he was done. In October of 2000, he had finally written his final episode of WCW and he was done and did not care if he was in WCW anymore. He said that the business had mentally killed him and it is the reason why he does not like being involved in the wrestling business anymore.
Overall: Compared to the other episodes I thought this was rushed. Russo did a lot of negative things in WCW and I felt like they only talked about the bigger things, whereas the other episodes went into detail about everything that was going on during that time. Other than that, this episode was fine as we shape up for the season finale next week and we finally answer the question, Who Killed WCW?
