Cornette and Dillon on the Monday Night Wars

Hey Scott. Hope all is well. I heard an interview with Jim Cornette and JJ Dillon and was wondering if you could clear some stuff up for me.

They were talking about the Monday Night Wars and how WCW was ruling the ratings. However, Cornette argued that things weren’t really that bad for WWF because house show attendance was the same for the two companies in 96-97, and Dillon said that McMahon was light years ahead of WCW in terms of merchandise and licensing. The consensus between the two was that wrestling wouldn’t stay that hot forever, and Cornette argues that you didn’t need the crash TV/swerve stuff (i.e. Russo) to sway ratings because they would have evened out anyway.

I always thought that WWF was in pretty bad shape during that period, no? What do you think of Cornette’s view that WCW would have just cooled off anyway and hence you don’t need to shake things up?

​Given that WWF was on a downward trajectory, I don’t know how you can argue that things would have just evened up. They were in very real danger of cancellation at various points in the 90s, or at the very least having the network step in for major restructuring of the show, especially in 97 when the product wasn’t showing any signs of life. It’s not like now where WWE is the only thing propping up USA.

​Just makes it all the more astonishing the WCW was in that position and managed to fuck it up so badly.​
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