My World w/ Jeff Jarrett - The 90% Drop! [Show Notes] (Patreon)

Nitro May 8th, 2000 

You returned to WCW in April of 2000, to form an unlikely partnership with Vince Russo, to run WCW.

For some of our new listeners, talk about what brought on your return to WCW

When did you first meet Vince Russo and what was your opinion on his involvement in how the WWF took over the Monday Night Wars in 1998 onwards?

Was this era of WCW the most chaotic time in a wrestling promotion you ever dealt with?

We are one month removed from the Vince Russo/Eric Bischoff relaunch of WCW. 

This Nitro took place at the TWA Dome, in St. Louis, MO. It drew 6,545 fans, which was 3,388 paying $132,995. Meltzer wrote - Considering the size and cost of running a show at the TWA Dome, this was the biggest money losing event for WCW so far this year. This is the same building that just 17 months ago, WCW, in a blizzard with zero walk-up, drew 29,000 paid 

When you see that number - 29,000 to 6,545 in just a 17 month drop - that’s some stunning erosion of an audience isn’t it?

The show opened with them showing Kanyon in a hospital room with Page visiting. Awesome, Bischoff, Kimberly and Jarrett showed up in the hospital and attacked Page, including pouring the contents of Kanyon’s bedpan on him. They cut to live where the New Blood with Arquette came out. Bischoff, clearly feeling the heat of the criticism of Arquette and the ratings, attempted to portray it as if they had this angle planned long in advance by showing back footage. Unfortunately, because they didn’t, none of this made sense. 

If the idea was to get the belt back from Page by using Arquette, why would Page win the belt due to Arquette in the first place? If Abbott laid down in a fake fight to Arquette to fool Page, why did he lay down for Page’s finisher unless Page was also in cahoots with the entire plan. I guess they realized how badly they hurt the angle for Goldberg’s return so it was important to rebuild Abbott. Page showed up back from the hospital and cleaned house on everyone, and laid Arquette out with a diamond cutter to a very weak pop, although it was a hard crowd until late in the show. The heels then came back to all beat on DDP until Sting made the save.

A lot to unpack here from Meltzer - first off - Kanyon’s bump in the same arena that Owen Hart sadly fell at leading to his death - did you think that was in poor taste?

When you look at what could’ve been - you, Bischoff, Kimberly & a fresh out of ECW Mike Awesome…that could’ve been a hell of a stable if the whole promotion wasn’t split into two the month before in the New Blood right?

The whole backtracking and trying to make things make sense after swerves - that’s not the smartest creative decision is it?

Does it just show sometimes that less is more?

Bischoff sets up you & Sting for the WCW Title later that night - that doesn’t exactly make the most sense if he’s in charge does it?

In this week’s retirement stipulation in their attempt making sure no gimmick will ever draw money or a rating again because people won’t take it seriously, Funk won a match over Smiley & Ralphus to keep the hardcore title in 3:17 when he pinned both after a million shots with a cookie sheet. So both have to retire. As entertaining as it was the previous night, it was one of those jokes that were great that aren’t nearly as funny the second time. By the way, both Smiley & Ralphus were on their sides while being pinned, so I guess the ref screwed them. 

Terry Funk on national TV against Ralphus…and there’s Ralphus ass crack with a shirt that says SAY NO TO CRACK…bro

Liz was back with Luger, even though Bagwell carried her off at the end of the show last night. Flair came out and called out David. Flair put on a good performance but it’s pretty hard to watch this knowing they did the exact same angle last year and are pretending it never happened. 

Daffney came out with David as well as Russo, who to rub it into Flair, is pretending to be David’s surrogate father since Ric was a lousy father. Ric came out with a copy of the old NWA title belt he used to wear in the early 80s when crowds of this size would have caused Sam Muchnick to think he’d lost his touch rather than think he was a genius. They even mentioned Muchnick’s name a few times in the interview, along with a bunch of wrestlers that used to sellout St. Louis like Bruiser and Jack Brisco and the Funks with Flair putting them over and Russo mocking them. Even 17 months ago, when Flair mentioned those names, the crowd was reverent at the mere mention of the names. Now, that audience is long gone and the few that are left didn’t seem to care. 

Flair was sweating bullets he was working so hard. Then, in the single dumbest thing on the show, Flair pulled out the cell phone and told David that he’d get him a job with Vince McMahon and he could be on Raw next Monday, and the entire crowd cheered. Why not go on your own show and by the crowd reaction and your own positioning, tell everyone your a bush league promotion. 

Holy shit Jeff what are we doing here?

Ric & David hugged, so naturally Ric turned his back on David and got jumped and David grabbed Ric’s old title belts and left. Ric then got in the limo and left, and told Luger he was quitting wrestling. Aside from the predictability and the references to McMahon and Raw, this was really good TV. Well, that makes three in the first hour. 

Palumbo came out to do an interview. The poor guy was so far from ready that he was dying out there until Luger saved the day and you know things are bad when Luger is the one saving a segment. Palumbo hit Luger with an old muscle twister from the 60s comic books. Russo yelled at Liz telling her he was trying to make her a star but she was resisting. 

The attempt at rebranding some of these guys…but having them be copy cat gimmicks…didn’t work out too well did it?

Before we get to our next 1 minute match because that’s all it really is until the last 30 minutes of the show…let’s talk about some of the house shows that happened before Slamboree…

On April 26th you’re on top losing to DDP in Glens Falls, New York - a show that drew 2566…AND THAT’S IT. The rest are Nitro & Thunder tapings including you at your old stomping grounds of the Mid South Coliseum for a Thunder taping featuring the infamous 41 man battle royal that has both Bret Hart & Randy Savage’s last official team in a WCW match…did you feel the slow painful death coming of WCW?

Stasiak beat Captain Rection in 1:07 with a fisherman suplex when Hennig caused Rection to lose. I wonder if that means Hennig lost the match on purpose on the PPV too? Nash came out to power bomb Stasiak after the match. Kidman, Konnan and Misterio Jr. all did a run-in. Nash was killing them one-on-three once again until he finally sold for Misterio Jr. They got five seconds of heat before Hogan made the save, to set up a match later in the show. 

There’s so much going on that nothing has time to breathe does it?

Awesome beat DDP in a stretcher match in 6:30. They had real problems working together and the match was filled with missed spots. Awesome clocked DDP with two chair shots and Page juiced. After a power bomb through the table, Bischoff grabbed Page’s hand and made him sign his divorce papers that he’d ripped up earlier in the show. 

Scott Hudson, who works in the criminal justice branch of the Georgia government in real life, informed everyone that he didn’t think that would hold up in court since there would be videotaped proof of the nature of him signing the papers. Can you imagine actual common sense right in the middle of a wrestling show. 

Is this where the boys just sat in the back going - what are we doing?

Did you ever raise your hand to Vince Russo & Eric Bischoff about anything - your creative - anyone else’s creative - or was it just run the play as called?

Steiner did an interview and Abbott came out and gave him a low blow and a knockout punch. Finally Tank’s punch worked against a real wrestler. The segment was real good. 

You were good friends with Scott - what did he think of Tank Abbott? What did you think of Tank Abbott?

In what was supposed to be a tag match with Kronik against Harlem Heat, Mamalukes (who had Disco Inferno as their manager still) and Harris Twins ended up in a total mess. 

The teams who were supposed to be partners all fought each other with no even attempt at an explanation. Finally Mamalukes and Harris Twins were eliminated. Stevie Ray then turned on Big T and hit him with a slapjack for no apparent reason, other than Stevie must have been pissed after all these years having to put up with such a lousy tag partner and Kronik double choke slammed T for the pin at 4:23. 

What were the Harris Twins like to deal with at this time?

Disco Inferno - very polarizing person in the wrestling community - what did you think of his work?

Steiner came out to challenge Abbott. Abbott did a ring entrance to mock Goldberg, which would draw a lot more heat if it hadn’t been done so many times by so many others already. 

Crowd did pop for the Goldberg music. Steiner and Abbott’s brawl was tremendous, and maybe the most exciting thing on either show, which is amazing since Abbott was involved. Steiner was killing Abbott when Rick Steiner ran in, and of course, turned on Scott. The announcers were stunned that a brother would turn on a brother, except that every brother combo in WCW turns on each other every third week and these two feuded for years while almost never actually wrestling each other, which is a great gig. 

Couldn’t they just had brawled? It was so good and the turn just felt meaningless didn’t it?

Are you watching the show in the back with Sting putting your match together going - man no way we have to worry about following any of this or is the crowd going to be too dead by the time you get out there?

Liz beat Daffney via DQ in 39 seconds when Madusa interfered. Mona then made a save. Liz hit Madusa with a chair. This was tons better than it had any right to be and it was because of Liz. 

The stips were that if Liz won, she’d get to go back with Luger and be freed of her contract. Madden then explained that since Liz lost, she was stuck with Russo, which would have made more sense if the ref hadn’t have called for the bell when Madusa interfered making Liz the winner. 

Think about this Jeff - this is Liz’s first singles match against a woman. It is only her second official match - she had a match with Meng back in November of 1999 when Russo was starting to lose his shit - but when you think of her career - to do this much without ever really being in a match…quite something isn’t it?

Hogan & Nash went to a no contest with Kidman & Konnan & Misterio Jr. & Awesome in 2:28. Awesome joined the group because those old guys would never sell for guys that size all by themselves. Actually, they didn’t sell at all even 4-on-2. Finally Hogan brawled with all four, not selling for any of them until finally they wore him out with a baseball bat and put him in the trunk of a car. 

Nash was distracted by a missile dropkick by Juventud Guerrera but he power bombed him. I’m not sure how this makes the five guys into big stars. They tried to kidnap Hogan, but the Goldberg monster truck blocked them and Hogan, with his magical powers, since I guess he saw the Houdini biography special, escaped the trunk. 

Now it’s time for the main event - and here you are - defending the WCW Title against Sting on a live Monday Nitro coming off a pay-per-view. This is the situation you wanted to be in your whole career wasn’t it?

Jarrett retained the title pinning Sting in 5:34. This match had great heat and Sting was really enthused doing a plancha onto the ramp and a flying clothesline from the ramp over the top into the ring. Sting put on the scorpion and then the worst thing happened. The crowd, sensing a world title change, got really excited. Well, actually, in unison, they turned their heads to backstage waiting for the run-in. 

The first time I ever saw this happen was in 1988 watching Jim Crockett Promotions and I think it was when Sting had the scorpion on Ric Flair in world title matches when it was first noticeable. The reason I bring that up is because the cities the fans did that in drew smaller crowds every month until by November, the entire company was out of business. The only difference is these guys don’t have to make money. Actually the fans were looking in the wrong direction since Vampiro came from under the ring and pulled Sting under. 

Jeff - is this something noticeable? Like do the boys recognize this?

Next was the collective groans which come from a crowd that hates the finish, not in the good way that draws money for the next show, but in the way that tells them the next time they come to town, they have to give away a lot more tickets. Sting came up from the hole all bloody and Jarrett pinned him. 

Look - a win is a win - doesn’t matter how it happens. But how big a deal is this to you?

The NB all destroyed Sting with a bat until Hogan & Nash by themselves beat up another gang. It’s so great to see how unselfish Hogan has become of late. The Goldberg monster truck then ran over Rick Steiner & Abbott’s car. Now, the announcers knew this, so logically, if they knew Rick Steiner & Abbott came in the same car to the building in the first place, well, thankfully no other TV drama is written so well? And this was one of the better Nitros of the year 

This episode of Nitro did a 2.8 rating, while Raw did a 6.2

MELTZER ON BISCHOFF & RUSSO

Although Russo has been prone to exaggerate statistics greatly, as he garnered more creative power in WWF, the company went from a company that grossed $81.8 million, and suffering losses of $6.5 million in 1996-97, to when he left in 1998-99, the company grossed $251.4 million and had a pre-tax profit of $56.0 million with TV ratings starting out at about a 2.4 clip on Mondays to 6.1 average when he left.

Russo, when leaving, protested that he never got his full credit for his part in turning the company around. He did such a great job of media relations that when he left, the big question in and even out of the industry was which Vince deserved the credit for the amazing success of the WWF. Unfortunately for Russo, the next few months seemed to answer the question that it was the other Vince. WWF never missed a beat, and TV ratings, house show revenue and all forms of income have increased, in some categories greatly, since Russo left, and that’s during a period WWF was without its biggest stars of the previous year, Steve Austin and Undertaker, and during a period where McMahon kept himself off television in order to establish Stephanie McMahon and Hunter Hearst Helmsley as superstars.

To their credit, Bischoff did take a company that was one Ted Turner vote away from being closed down, to the company that revitalized the industry and through the implementation of Nitro, made Monday pro wrestling night among a peak at one point of 12 million Americans each week. Russo did play a big part in the decision making process of the WWF dropping a failing family entertainment context, and largely copying the strip club Paul Heyman formula of sex and violence which turned the company around.

In October, Russo’s first month in power, the attendance averaged 4,628 per show for a product already destroyed by the Nash regime, the Nitro rating averaged 3.08 and the Havoc buy rate was 0.52. By January, the last month under his watch (Russo was in power through 1/14, but live show attendance were tickets bought largely in December and the entire PPV hype was completed before he was done), attendance was averaging 3,593, the rating of 3.10 due to the switch from three hours to two was the equivalent of about a 2.9, and the buy rate was down to 0.26.

 His style of writing resulted in ratings declining at a slower rate than before, but they still declined, but devastated the other two business categories. Just six weeks later, the ratings have declined at an even faster rate, house shows are falling at a slower rate, and the fiasco from January, which is more Busch’s fault than anyone’s (although a Battle Royal with Tank Abbott ending up as world champion wouldn’t have been a positive either), have resulted in the already anemic buy rates being cut in half. 

Meltzer wrote - Vince Russo was on WCW Live on 3/28. He said that on 1/14, Bill Busch told him the company wanted to focus less on ratings and entertainment and more on wrestling. He didn’t agree, refused to work as part of a committee and told Busch he was hired for his style of writing. He said they presented the idea of Tank Abbott winning the title on the Souled Out PPV show, where he would first win a Battle Royal and then beat Sid Vicious, when he found out on two days before the show that Bret Hart was going to miss the show.

He claimed he and Busch were so far apart that he knew the idea would be rejected and it didn’t matter. He said he wants Konnan and Shane Douglas back, and said they did the right thing by standing up to Busch and said Douglas was an impact player who could make a difference (there are things being done to get Douglas back but the WCW legal department at this point is a roadblock because of Douglas’ behavior in dealing with the department and his threatening a lawsuit).

He claimed he boosted ratings from 2.5 to 3.5 in 12 weeks (he simply can’t make an honest claim that he boosted ratings for Nitro. Ratings dropped every month he was on the job until January, and that was illusory growth caused by the show cutting to two hours and NFL season ending. The first week Russo wrote television the rating was a 3.30 and the average for that month was 3.08. It is true that an absolutely horrible lame duck show written by Nash the week earlier did a 2.61, but that was a one week aberration as the show was averaging much higher numbers than that. The average rating in September, the month before he took over, was a 3.38. 

His final three hour show with football competition on 12/27, a heavily hyped New Years Evil show from the Astrodome, which is the only way to make a direct fair comparison, was a 2.86 and the monthly average was 2.98 so the only accurate statement about ratings is they dropped 12% over a less than three month period. They have realistically dropped far faster, the equivalent to 20%, over the following three months after he left, and given what everyone in TV programming knows about the “lag effect” of ratings, some of the drop during his period can be attributed to the horrible product before him, just as some of the drop after he left can be attributed to the product he produced. The 1/10 show in the two hour format did a 3.38, but had that been a three-hour show with football competition it was equivalent to a 2.9 under the old standards. 

That number does look great today when compared with the 2.5s and 2.6s of late. Russo did increase the ratings of Thunder head-to-head with Smackdown from a 2.06 over the four weeks prior to his arrival to a 2.32 averaging his last four weeks, an 11% gain. Most of that gain was because of a pushed television policy of “making Thunder special again” after the previous regime by Nash seemed to have the goal to kill the show so that the guys could get another day off each week. The increase was considered disappointing at the time because of the increase in expense in bringing all the top stars to the show when before, virtually none of them would appear. 

Russo’s best talent as a writer is in promoting his own writing ability, as the increases in Nitro ratings early on came largely because of the promotion of new writers from New York coming in, just as I expect an increase for the first few weeks out of the curiosity and the hype on 4/10. 

It didn’t last the first time and dropped to lower levels quickly enough. The “make Thunder special” campaign also increased ratings, which declined when the people who took over didn’t make Thunder special. To Russo’s credit, he worked much harder on writing than his successors did, who basically gave very little thought to Thunder and that explains its ratings decline and why after the few week increase from the hype, the ratings should plateau at higher than the current level because realistically the company just being “bad” would be an improvement over what it has been of late. The Thunder number has since dropped to a 2.00 average over the four weeks leading to Sullivan’s ouster, a 14% drop even with the ratings advantage the new bookers had of moving to Wednesday and not having competition from Smackdown. 

The only claim regarding Nitro ratings he can make is that the new crew did even worse when it came to ratings falling and buy rates falling, but part of that was the hand they were dealt with coming in and even more large a part is that they did a really bad job. When it came to the arena business, the Sullivan crew did better as they temporarily stopped the decline, although going in the direction they were headed they had just hit the point where selling tickets for events was just about impossible so while arena business did fall faster under Russo’s watch, I’d almost tab the Sullivan regime as doing equal if not more damage but we’re arguing over which tornado did more damage).

He said he and Bischoff would be the main creative forces with help from Bill Banks, Ed Ferrara and Terry Taylor. He claimed he wanted to bring Bischoff back to TV when he was writing but nobody else liked the idea and everyone was undermining him. He is correct that people were undermining him, because the unfortunate nature of the corporate structure where nobody respects authority, because of how fleeting it is, combined with the natural instincts of people in a cutthroat business almost guarantee that happening. If he even gets a short honeymoon period, after that, it is guaranteed to happen again. He claimed he made no mistakes at all creatively in his first tenure as booker. He said the NWO needs to be brought back and made a big impact with Bischoff. He said he plans on rebuilding the cruiserweight division (like he did when he was there before?) and adding more personality to the wrestlers.

He claimed WWF turned it around in the ratings when DX went to the WCW arena with a rocket launcher. (Somehow, I thought a better attribution was the popularity of the Austin character which the entire shows were built around because nobody else was anywhere close to as over, bringing in Mike Tyson and at the same time McMahon’s heel heat coming off Survivor Series 1997 may have been slightly more important reasons). He said that WCW will now go after WWF and that No. 2 should throw rocks and stones at No. 1.

On the April 10th Nitro, we saw a very shocking debut. The ECW World Champion, Mike Awesome debuted in WCW and attacked Kevin Nash.

Meltzer wrote - In a strange series of circumstances, it appeared that Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo, in their attempt to re-create the debuting impact of Nitro in 1995 with Lex Luger’s surprising walking on the set, combined with the incident where Madusa threw the WWF womens title belt in the garbage can, since they were unable to secure any WWF talent, made a huge pitch to garner ECW’s heavyweight champion.

Awesome, who apparently had more than two years remaining on a deal through the late summer of 2002 with ECW, started the weekend by no-showing matches on 4/6 in Cleveland and 4/7 in Warren, OH. There had been some rumors the previous weekend regarding Awesome jumping, with Paul Heyman claiming it would be impossible because of their existing contract. Heyman and contracts have always been one of those strange deals because of the widespread belief, justified numerous times in the past, that wrestlers claimed by the promotion and even in many cases by the wrestlers themselves as being under contract to the company, actually weren’t. Sabu represented himself to WCW as not having had a written contract with ECW, which as it turned out, wasn’t the case, which has left him in temporary limbo.

When Awesome missed the first show, there was no cause for concern since he stated that his flight from Florida was grounded and he had never missed a show previously. The next night, he claimed his flight had been delayed again when he hadn’t arrived, and just before show time, reports from the arena claim Jeff Jones talked with him and he said he had landed and would be at the arena shortly. But once again he never arrived, which raised legitimate suspicion even though nobody in ECW up to that point was aware of internet reports of his leaving for WCW. 

By that evening, word was getting around about a report on the Bubba the Love Sponge radio show that morning in Tampa, a known wrestling fan who has worked with all three major promotions when they run the city and is well known for being friends with Terry Bollea and Jimmy Hart, claiming that WCW had made Awesome a high six-figure per year offer and he was joining the company. By the next day, it was fairly common knowledge in wrestling that he had accepted the WCW deal and was not going to return to ECW and drop the title before leaving. It was generally regarded, whether Heyman had or hadn’t treated him fairly, that by no-showing the final weekend and not dropping the title in the ring before leaving, he was acting unprofessionally, whether by his own designs, or through encouragement of WCW to throw the belt itself in the garbage can on Nitro and make a statement regarding questions about whether ECW had surpassed WCW for the No. 2 spot.

Heyman showed up on 4/8 in Buffalo for the TNN tapings and showed several people what appeared to be a three-year contract with Mike Alfonso for slightly over $600,000 in total over the duration. The contract contained initials on several pages and a signature. The nature of the business being what it is, there were those who even questioned whether the signature was real, particularly since friends of Alfonso and apparently even Alfonso himself were insistent that he had never actually signed his contract. Backstage the stories went around that WCW had made offers or inquiries about several ECW wrestlers including Storm indirectly (this is definitely true), Sandman, Rhino, James Vandenburg, Mikey Whipwreck and Kid Kash. 

On 4/10, there was an attempt to get a temporary restraining order against Awesome appearing on Nitro, which didn’t happen, but the previous night, due to the existence of the contract, it appeared Awesome was being pulled from the show the next night anyway. Negotiations went back and forth all day between WCW and ECW, ending just prior to the show going on the air with the agreement that WCW would pay ECW a figure reported in the low six figures to give Alfonso a release from his deal, and in return, Alfonso would not bring the ECW belt on television, would appear in street clothes to do his angle with Kevin Nash, and WCW would allow him to wrestle in Indianapolis for ECW on 4/13 to drop the title in the ring. 

This would be his final ECW appearance, so ECW could broadcast the news of the title change the next night on TNN before he actually wrestled his first match on WCW television. In addition, on Nitro, Awesome would be billed as ECW champion and they would plug the upcoming title defense in ECW and the TNN show on Friday. 

The situation got even more complicated because WCW sort of plugged that Awesome had a title defense upcoming but in a vague way where it really didn’t mean anything, never plugged the TNN show, and apparently, also violated the agreement by Awesome cutting an interview on the show. This led to a situation that went back-and-forth prior to the WCW Thunder tapings on 4/11 in Colorado Springs, CO which Eric Bischoff termed that afternoon on Wrestling Observer Live something that he had spent most of the day working on, and termed Awesome’s eventual work destination as far as WCW or ECW being “a jump ball” while sources in ECW claimed the original settlement because of the violation may be out the window.

Meltzer wrote - Bret Hart’s deposition in the Owen Hart lawsuit which was scheduled for this week was moved to late June due to Jerry McDevitt, Titan’s main attorney being involved in a trial. Although he had gotten the week off for the deposition, WCW called him the day before Kansas City and asked him to work it as Vince Russo actually wanted to do some sort of an angle where he would be on camera on the rafters near the ceiling of the building. Now whatever they did with Kanyon may be a debatable point, but putting Hart in the rafters in Kansas City isn’t 

From several accounts, Bischoff does only very minor editing of the show, usually on things that are insignificant and it’s Russo show.