Wrestling thread

[Warlord]

I grew up watching the NWA/WCW. Almost all my favorites were bad guys. I loved Rick Rude the most, followed by Steve Austin (when he was Stunning Steve), Big Van Vader, Cactus Jack, etc...

The only babyface I liked was Sting, whom I liked a lot back in the day.

In the WWF, no question it was Shawn Michaels. Not as much when he was the heavyweight champ, but when he was the intercontinental champion.

As for which guys I've grown to appreciate more now, I'd have to say a lot of the old guys. Flair, Steamboat, the Andersons, etc... I always liked Arn and Flair, and Steamboat too, but getting a chance to go back and see them in their primes has been awesome. You can really appreciate the stuff they were doing when you compare it to the shit being done today.

It's interesting to go back now and put together how WCW went from second to first to bankrupt. A lot of people blame the guaranteed contracts WCW was giving guys at the time, but I don't believe it. They had to have guaranteed contracts to lure guys over from the WWF, and it was those guys (Hogan, Hall, and Nash) that helped WCW nearly put the WWF out of business.

The thing I think that killed the WCW was a lack of vision and leadership in the locker room. Bischoff got lucky with the NWO taking off the way it did (thanks to Hall, Nash, and Zbysko), followed by the greatest heel turn in history with Hogan joining.

After that Bischoff ran it in the ground. How do you have Hogan, Flair, Sting, Bret Hart, Macho Man and a host of second tier guys (Hall, Nash, Vader, Sid Vicious, Luger), along with a phenom like Goldberg, and go bankrupt and get gobbled up by the competition?

It's funny how the WWF took a ton of WCW rejects (Steve Austin, HHH, Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Big Show, etc...) and won the Monday Night Wars, while WCW took the WWF's biggest stars (Hogan, Savage, Hall, Nash, Hart) and ran their company into the ground.

I guess Hogan was right all along. Nash was during an interview where he said one night on a plane ride back to Atlanta, he was sitting behind Bischoff and Hogan. WWF was on the ropes, and Eric said, "I'm going to put him (Vince) out of business."

To which Hogan replied, "Brother, you ain't never gonna put that man out of business."