Crockett

As a kid growing up in New York City without cable tv until 1989, there was short time where there was a UHF station called U68 before being bought by Home Shopping Network who would show Crockett NWA, UWF, World Class, and California Championship Wrestling. So I was a big Crockett fan in 1986-1987.

We all know that the straw that broke the camel’s back was Jim Crockett buying UWF after having had to buy our Florida and Central States.

So aside from the UWF purchase, what’s Crockett’s biggest mistake: 1) buying territories instead of trying to destroy them like Vince did, 2) going after markets that went beyond traditional Carolina-Baltimore-Atlanta-Philly (Chicago and New York), 3) having Dusty book himself and all those Dusty finishes, or 4) concentrating on the house shows and closed circuit when pay per view was the future?

I’m always convinced that Crockett could have been a successful #2 without having to sell to Turner which only killed the product 13 years late

​Oh, Jim knew that, much like Donald Trump, PPV was the future​ and the money-making goose that lays the golden egg. That’s why he fought so hard to get his shows onto PPV and why Vince screwed him over so much.

Crockett’s failure was entirely financial. He bought territories that came laden with debts for the purpose of expanding the syndication empire, and then managed to spend all his money on back-end expenses like the Dallas offices and flying guys to shows for four different Crockett properties on the private jets. Houses were down but not catastrophic or anything and he could have survived as a touring promotion with PPV, but propping up the corpses of those other territories got him in the end. Hell, he still owed millions of dollars to Bill Watts at the time of the Turner sale and never saw a dime out of that UWF purchase, for example, unless you count Sting.