Michael "Canyda" Jenkinson

If You Love WCW, Set It Free

Rather than look back on the events in WCW over the past week and count down the days to the company's demise, it's quite tempting to examine the chaos which has engulfed the company and wonder what all the fuss is about.

This is a wrestling organization, after all, which has only had three profitable years in the last 12. It lost $10 million last year. And it's done stupider things than everything we saw transpire over the past week.

Stripping Chris Benoit of the World title less than 24 hours after he won it was not nearly as monumentally foolish as giving him the title in the first place, after he had threatened to walk out of the company.

But both incidents pale in comparison to WCW letting Ric Flair walk out of the company in 1991 with the world title and straight into the waiting arms of Vince McMahon. The immediate result of that was one of the worst PPVs in company history, the 1991 Great American Bash, known generally as the Ric Flair protest show, and a two year stagnation of the company's product. And of course, when WCW finally got Flair back after a not-so-impressive WWF run, they made McMahon's booking of Flair seem almost inspired by comparison.

Which brings me to my point. This past weekend didn't mark the beginning of WCW's death spiral. This company has been barely breathing since Ted Turner bought it, and arguably even before that. It has never, save for one brief period, been a serious contender against the WWF. It has never consistently been able to deliver compelling storylines or interesting characters. It has never been able to develop its own stars. It has never been able to elevate its midcarders in any kind of orderly fashion. It has always had backstage political infighting resulting in stupid booking decisions.

The question today isn't so much will WCW survive. Given that it's owned by Time Warner, which is now owned by AOL, and is part of the largest media company in the world, it's not going to go bankrupt tomorrow. The question the suits at Time Warner should be asking is why WCW has never been competitive in the first place.

Part of the answer to that is contained in the question: the suits at AOL Time Warner. WCW is a very small cog in a very big wheel. The guy nominally in charge (these days it's Bill Busch, but pick Kip Frey or Jim Herd if you wish) normally has no wrestling experience at all. Even Busch, who admittedly is a fan, is really there just as the numbers guy.

But a numbers guy can't run a wrestling organization. Because to get the numbers, be they PPV buyrates, butts in seats, TV ratings or merchandise sales, Busch has to rely on his underlings to actually put together the shows, book the angles and promote the pay-per-views; guys who, almost without exception, have all been given the book previously and have all failed.

For whatever reason, however, the higher-ups at Time Warner never seem to see that far. All they see is that the guy they put in charge of that wrestling division never seems to be making any money. So they replace him with someone else who ends up with the same guys playing the same political games. And then they wonder why nothing ever changes.

Even in the one time WCW goes outside its own shallow booking talent pool and brings in an outsider, Vince Russo, the displaced bookers immediately start plotting behind the scenes to ensure that the outsider is ousted as quickly as possible.

At a very simple level, the fundamental problem WCW faces is one of ownership, both from a literal corporate point of view and a more symbolic one. Vince McMahon owns the WWF, both in the literal sense as a major shareholder and symbolically as the public face of the company. In the same way, Paul Heyman owns ECW.

Who "owns" WCW? Time Warner, right?

Sure. But who owns WCW in the same way McMahon and Heyman "own" their companies by their sweat and blood, not just their pocketbook? Bill Busch? Vince Russo? Standards and Practices? Ted Turner? Kevin Sullivan? A booking committee? The wrestlers?

The answer to that isn't as easy as you'd think. And that's why WCW landed up in the soup prior to Souled Out. Busch tried to run the show that Russo thought was his to run, while other voices, ranging from Sullivan to Kevin Nash to the wrestlers in the locker room all claimed they had a stake which could not be ignored.

No one "owns" WCW, not the executive VP, not the booker, and certainly not the wrestlers in the communal/community sense of the word. WCW just basically exists. The buck never stops anywhere.

WCW's fundamental problem is its dysfunctional corporate culture. As long as the company is owned by a monolithic, faceless entity, and the wrestlers and bookers know there will be an endless stream of anonymous suits ostensibly overseeing the day-to-day operations, WCW is going to stagnate.

If Ted Turner really loves his "rasslin'" league, the best thing he could do for it is to sell it, ideally to a single investor who would let the company succeed or fail on its own merits. No other wrestling organization in the world could survive losing money two out of every three years. The only thing which will shake WCW out of its lethargy is to stare bankruptcy straight in the face, and make changes.

Michael "Canyda" Jenkinson awaits the day Chris Benoit hoists the WWF belt over his head, and doesn't have it taken away from him the next day. E-mail comments to canyda@the-newsroom.com.

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