History of World Championship Wrestling - WCW Under Ted Turner

WCW Under Ted Turner

To preserve the inexpensive network programming provided by professional wrestling, Jim Crockett Promotions was purchased outright by Turner on November 21, 1988. Originally incorporated by TBS as the Universal Wrestling Corporation, Turner promised fans that WCW would be the athlete-oriented style of the NWA.

1989 proved to be a turnaround year for WCW, with Ric Flair on top for most of the year as both World Champion and head booker. Flair helped bring in Ricky Steamboat and Terry Funk, and his pay-per-view matches with Steamboat were financially and critically successful. Young stars such as Sid Vicious, Sting, Scott Steiner, The Road Warriors, Brian Pillman, The Great Muta and Lex Luger were given major storylines and championship opportunities. 1990, however, would be an entirely different story, as Flair would be fired from being head booker in March 1990 after WCW talent began to argue that Flair was booking things in his favor. One of these examples was Flair's refusal to drop the WCW World title to Lex Luger, as he had already promised to drop it to Sting, who himself had been injured earlier in the year. Flair was eventually replaced by Ole Anderson.

Despite this influx of talent, WCW soon began working to gradually incorporate much of the glamour and showy gimmicks for which the WWF was better known. Virtually none of these stunts—such as the live cross-promotional appearance of RoboCop at a pay-per-view event in 1990, the Chamber of Horrors gimmick, and the notorious Black Scorpion storyline—succeeded. In addition, house shows were also dropping to record lows after Ole continuously pushed older wrestlers who were loyal to him during the shows. Behind the scenes, WCW was becoming more autonomous and slowly started separating itself from the historic NWA name. In January 1991, WCW officially split from the NWA and began to recognize its own WCW World Heavyweight Championship and WCW World Tag Team Championship.

Both WCW and the NWA recognized Ric Flair (who was by now no longer the head booker) as their World Heavyweight Champion throughout most of the first half of 1991, but WCW, particularly recently-installed company president Jim Herd, who was once a manager of Pizza Hut, turned against Flair for various reasons and fired him before The Great American Bash in July 1991 after failed contract negotiations. In the process, they officially stripped him of the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. According to Flair's autobiography, they refused to return the $25,000 deposit he had put down on the physical belt, so he kept it and brought it with him when he was hired by the WWF at the request of Vince McMahon. Flair then incorporated the belt into his gimmick, dubbing himself "The Real World's Champion". On a sidenote, Flair eventually received his deposit which with interest was over $38,000. WCW later renegotiated the use of the NWA name as a co-promotional gimmick with New Japan Pro Wrestling and sued the WWF to stop showing Flair with the old NWA World Title belt on its programs, claiming a trademark on the physical design of the belt. The belt was returned to WCW by Flair when Jim Herd was let go and he received his deposit back plus interest. It was brought back as the revived NWA World Heavyweight Championship.

Meanwhile, the creative product of the company sank in 1991 and 1992 under the presidency of the inexperienced Herd, and subsequently Bill Watts. Ric Flair, who had conflicts with Herd, once stated that Herd "knew nothing about wrestling, other than the fact that the station he ran had a hot show." According to Flair, Herd also wanted him to drop his entire "Nature Boy" persona, shave his head (even though Flair's bleach blonde hair was one of his most recognizable trademarks) and adopt a Rome gladiator gimmick by the name of Spartacus in order to "change with the times". This didn't sit too well with Flair and the committee (Committee member Kevin Sullivan was quoted as saying, "After we change Flair's gimmick, why don't we go to Yankee Stadium and change Babe Ruth's uniform number?"). This backstage feud hit its breaking point when, during contract renegotiation, Flair refused to take a pay cut and be moved away from the main event position (despite the fact that he was by far the company's biggest draw). He also refused to drop the title to Lex Luger as Herd wanted. Herd accused Flair of holding up the company. Flair tried to compromise to Herd and offered to drop the title to fellow Horsemen Barry Windham, saying that Windham deserved the title.

1992 would also prove to be another bad year for WCW as well, as new booker "Cowboy" Bill Watts made top rope moves - which were common by Brian Pillman and the Steiner Brothers - illegal during wrestling matches. After clashes with management over a number of issues as well as feeling pressure from Hank Aaron over a racially sensitive piece of correspondence, he resigned. He was subsequently replaced by Eric Bischoff.