Controversy Creates Cash (14 page)

I thought that was absolutely necessary for our success. Having never been a wrestling booker or having worked on the creative side of the business, I was kind of amazed at how little planning went 100

CONTROVERSY CREATES CASH

into it. To me, whether you’re writing a sitcom or a dramatic series, there has to be an arc. It’s fundamental to any storytelling. There has to be a plan.

Storylines

How do you tell a story in the ring, thirteen weeks in advance, without giving away so much information that people can figure out what’s going to happen and ruin the surprise? Word of what happened at the Disney shows inevitably leaked, and was then spread by the dirtsheets, the Internet, or the 900 wrestling gossip lines that were so prevalent at the time. We wanted to preserve as much sus-pense as possible.

That was a difficult challenge. We experimented with different approaches. We’d even send someone out carrying a championship belt to do an interview, though we knew that guy was never going to have that belt or even be in the title picture.

Eventually, what we figured out was that we could film just the wrestling match without the storyline. Then we could cut the storyline in later on, adding interviews and color commentary from the studio. We’d also use the Saturday-night show, which was a weekly show, to advance the stories.

It was all very similar to the way edit market promos were cut, with interviews and commentators actually supplying the storyline.

We were able to tell a story in commentary without revealing it to the people in the arena.

We were modifying, learning, experimenting as we went. We made a lot of mistakes, but eventually we got there. It was far from an ideal solution, but it beat the hell out of what we had been doing.

Success

We had to deal with some problems with the taping, but overall it went much better than most people thought it would. Those who RUNNING THE SHOW

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said the idea would never work were grudgingly forced to admit,

“Wow, it
was
a great idea.”

Bill Shaw sent me a letter saying he was impressed and proud of me for standing up for what I believed in and sticking with it. Getting that kind of pat on the back from Bill meant a lot to me. I respected Bill a lot and wanted to deliver for him.

One thing I noticed: some of the people who’d fought the Disney strategy as hard as they could claimed afterward that they’d known all along it was a good idea. They said they voiced a negative opinion to get everyone else on board, as if they’d been playing devil’s advocate.

That was bull, of course.

I would have had a lot more respect for them if they’d just said,

“I’m glad it worked.” They were so two-faced and transparent that it was ridiculous.

Running Things

Vice President

Bob Dhue was the kind of guy who tended to support whoever talked to him last. So when there were issues under debate, he exacerbated the political problems by the way he managed. He was such a nice guy that anybody felt like they could talk to him. And they would, pushing their point of view constantly, whether they understood an issue or not. A lot of times the decisions made had to do with whoever talked to Bob Dhue last.

The more I saw of that, the more frustrated I became. I pretty much call things the way I see them, and I’m not very subtle. I started calling Bob on a lot of things. Our relationship became steadily more adversarial.

Even though I was not a direct report to Bob—I answered to Bill Shaw—he still had a lot more capital within the company. In defer-102

CONTROVERSY CREATES CASH

ence to his position on the food chain, I had to bite my tongue to a certain degree in management meetings. But when a conflict came up and we’d go before Bill Shaw alone, I’d be very candid. The more I pointed out what was going on, the more strained my relationship with Bob became.

The biggest example was with our live event operation, which was still a money-losing dog. But the creative side of the business was another mess.

Old-School Storytelling

Ole Anderson was the booker at the time. Ole, being first and foremost an old-school wrestler, was great at reading a crowd. In Bob Dhue’s case, he read Bob like a picture book. He manipulated him, and had no problems getting what he wanted.

Ole’s heyday had been back in the 1970s and ’80s. He was a regional tough guy very much like Watts. He liked hard-core, old-school wrestling. I, on the other hand, wanted to take us into the 1990s. Wrestling with Mickey Mouse put Ole and me on opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum.

Truth is, I liked Ole. He was funny. He had integrity, and he spoke his mind. I might not like what Ole had to say, but I didn’t have to spend much time reading between the lines, trying to figure it out. I respected that. But we were constantly bumping heads.

It was inevitable. As booker, Ole was in charge of the talent and the creative side of things, while I was in charge of everything that was happening on TV. There’s only so much you can do to change the product if all you can do is move the lights and cameras around and change graphics. We would constantly disagree about how storylines should play out.

Those disagreements went before Bob Dhue. And inevitably Ole would win them, because he (and Sharon Sidello) spent a lot more time politicking with Bob. I wasn’t going to “work” or manipulate anyone to achieve my goals.

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Push Comes to Shove

It’s been said that I wanted to push Bob Dhue out of the way so I could run WCW myself. But my goal was never to get Bob Dhue or take over. My goal was to make WCW better.

Increasingly I’d press the issues, and force our arguments to a head. We’d end up discussing them in front of Bill Shaw.

More and more, Bill sided with me. Ultimately those types of situations put so much strain on the company management—and Bob—that Bill decided in early 1994 that one of us had to go.

He kept me.

I took over as vice president of WCW. Bob Dhue was reassigned, and ended up leaving the company. Don Sandefur had his office packed as soon as he heard.

The truth is, I don’t even remember the moment. It wasn’t a seminal revelation, the heavens didn’t open up—it just kind of occurred. I can’t even put a date on it now.

I’d never envisioned a time when I would run the entire company. Whether I was executive producer or vice president or the dishwasher, I really didn’t give a damn. What was important to me was that we got the job done and reached a goal. Titles didn’t motivate me. Nor, for that matter, did power.

I
did
enjoy power for its ability to allow me to effect change without a lot of resistance. But power for the sake of power was never that attractive to me.

By the time I took over, I had spent a lot of time in WCW executive committee meetings. I was familiar with all of the department heads and the function of their departments. I felt like I understood their businesses well enough to oversee them.

That didn’t mean I understood them better than the people who worked in them. I knew enough that I could speak the language—and more importantly, I could see through the bullshit.

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The Creative Process

I didn’t have a good feel for the creative side of the wrestling business, but I did know enough to know what was wrong—the old-school approach to booking. We had to focus more on entertainment and less on hard-core “wrasslin’.” The show needed to be more of a spectacle.

I wanted to be involved in creative, but I never aspired to be “the guy.” I never wanted to be the head writer. I was quite content to find the right person, the guy who could manage the process and be successful. I wanted to focus on the other parts of the business.

Quite frankly, I was intimidated by the creative process. Wrestling is a much more complicated storytelling form than people give it credit for. I knew back then that I didn’t have a handle on it.

I knew what I liked and didn’t like, just as I could look at cars and decide that I really liked Ferraris and not Lamborghinis. But I couldn’t tell you how they were made. That’s how I felt about the creative process. I knew what I liked, and I knew what I didn’t like, but I wasn’t able to tell anyone how to get me what I liked.

I needed people to listen to my vision, and then tell me how to get there.

Ole Anderson

I tried working with Ole Anderson first.

I got frustrated with him because he was stubborn and ornery and hardheaded. As much as I liked him, I just got to the point where I couldn’t work with him anymore. So I sent him off to head the Power Plant, which was our training facility. I wasn’t exiling him. Ole was a great teacher and well suited to the job. But he didn’t see it that way.

Ole had saved his money and was really smart with it; he never really needed the paycheck when he was at WCW. But he wasn’t RUNNING THE SHOW

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anywhere near ready to retire, and he wanted to be involved in the business. And what he really liked to do, even as booker, was get down in the ring and roll around with the wrestlers, teaching them the craft.

When I listened to Ole talk about strategic activities and where the business should go, it was obvious he didn’t understand wrestling’s new direction. His ideas were dated and unsophisticated.

He had zero understanding of the business side of wrestling. He understood the world the way he used to know it.

But when he would talk about the mechanics of a match, what you should do or shouldn’t do in the ring, Ole glowed. Passion filled his voice. Ole’s “feel” and understanding of the basics of the physical side of storytelling were very valuable. We desperately needed talent with good basic skills, wrestlers who understood psychology as well as the athletic side of our business. Ole could teach them all of that.

I think he did well at the Power Plant. But unfortunately, Ole had a hard time letting go. I’m sure he saw the move as a demotion and blamed it all on me. The resentment festered.

Ole’s Undoing

One day, Ole was down at the Power Plant mouthing off about what a son of a bitch I was. We had a guy working for us by the name of Blackjack Mulligan. Blackjack was Barry Windham’s father and a friend of Dusty Rhodes. He’d been around the industry for a long time. I gave him a job as an agent during a stretch when he desperately needed a job. Honestly, I gave him the position not as a favor, but because most of the wrestlers really respected him, which is one of the most important qualities you need in an agent. Blackjack had everybody’s respect for all the right reasons. But at the time I hired him, he also really needed a job. He was grateful—and, unfortunately for Ole, loyal. God forbid anyone said anything bad about Eric Bischoff.

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Life at the Power Plant.

Ole made the mistake one day of badmouthing me while Blackjack was around.

Now, if I’d have heard the things he said, they wouldn’t have bothered me. I let that crap roll off my back. But Blackjack over-heard him, and knocked him out with one punch.

Ole was a tough guy. He had a head like a cinder block. But Blackjack could punch a hole through a refrigerator, and he just reached back and knocked Ole out cold.

That was pretty much the end of the road for Ole. The humilia-tion of being demoted from booker, and then being knocked out in front of everybody in the wrestling school—Ole had had enough embarrassment for a decade, and he moved out.

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Dusty Rhodes

Dusty Rhodes followed Ole as booker. It was a much better situation, but we still couldn’t get the right feel to our stories.

Dusty could be pretty progressive. But like most other wrestlers, he thought just one week or maybe one month at a time. Bookers generally weren’t used to building story arcs and understanding character development ahead of time. This had become important because we were now shooting thirteen weeks of shows at a time; if you didn’t think ahead, you were sunk.

So, I wondered, how do we fix this?

Okay, I thought, bring in people who have more of a traditional writing background, who understand episodic television, structure, story arcs—everything that works in TV.

I brought in two Hollywood writers I met down in Disney-MGM Studios and forced Dusty to work with them. I didn’t want them to drive the storytelling. I wanted them to take Dusty’s vision and help formulate a structure, or a “bible,” that would give us a plan to work from. Dusty would say,
Okay, this is where these guys
are going to end up, and here’s the personal issue between them.
The writers would go back and add detail, put in dialogue, and create a long-term structure.

Dusty is one of the most imaginative, creative people I’ve ever met. But he was used to going from week to week. He had a tremendous understanding of all the little nuances of wrestling storylines; I just couldn’t get him to wrap his head around what I really wanted and buy into it.