Before They Drove Themselves Off The Cliff
By Scott Keith on October 21, 2022
Back around 1998 and 99 pre Russo, what was the overall opinion by people like Meltzer, yourself, and other journalists about WCW's fate? Was there optimism that they could turn it around before it was too late, or a feeling that the decline was irreversible?
The feeling was that it was a series of bad signs that could be fixable, all the way up until the end of 99, when it became apparent that the company was going off a cliff and there was no saving it. I think the double turn with Hogan and Flair was really the tipping point, although obviously the Fingerpoke of Doom is a more convenient place to pin down the doom of the promotion. But even when they were at their peak, the feeling was that they were being so stupid about certain things that they COULD conceivably manage to blow an insurmountable lead over the WWF, which was mind-blowing in itself. I mean these days the WWE is built to be completely idiot proof, but WCW had no such foundation of money and reasonable competency behind it.
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