Controversy Creates Cash (26 page)

I guess because I thought of Brian as a friend, and the respect I felt for him, I wanted to support his family and let them know that—despite what the general audience might have thought—

there was no bad blood between WCW and Brian. So I flew out to the funeral. On the trip and afterward, I reflected on what a terrible waste it was. He’d been so vibrant, so full of energy. He’d beaten cancer—Brian had been born with throat cancer—and now at thirty-five he was gone.

Brian’s death provoked stories about drug abuse, despite the coroner’s findings. Accusations of the misuse of everything from prescriptions to steroids to other illegal substances haunt pro wrestling and the sports and entertainment industries to this day.

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There’s no denying it’s a problem. At WCW we had a drug test procedure in place. But as we’ve seen in sports from the Olympics to pro baseball, drug testing isn’t perfect. The technology then was a lot less advanced than it is now. There were multiple ways then—as there still are—for individuals to avoid testing positive.

Steroids are a hot topic right now, but in my experience, the real issue isn’t the performance-enhancing drugs; it’s the prescription drugs. I know when I was at WCW guys would get prescriptions from doctors and then abuse those prescriptions. That’s hard to regulate.

Off Help

When I came back from Brian’s funeral, I gave a short speech to the wrestlers, suggesting we would help anyone who had a problem get help. I tried to encourage people to look at their own drug use, especially of prescription drugs. I didn’t want anyone who needed help to be worried about losing their jobs if they tried to kick a habit. I made it clear we would give them whatever time they needed.

There were definitely people who had problems. They ignored me.

I want to be honest about this without beating up our business.

In the entertainment business in general, performers—actors, musicians, athletes—are probably more prone to illegal and prescription drug abuse than your average citizen, because of the pressures, the lifestyle, and the personalities that are drawn to our business. People in the entertainment business are living life to the fullest. They’re in the spotlight a lot of the time, even when they’re not performing.

That’s a different kind of pressure than most people understand.

People in the entertainment industry are prone to find ways to self-medicate that are not very healthy.

Pranks

Wrestlers are always pulling things, and sometimes you just have to laugh. Johnny Grunge once got into a bit of trouble for “borrowing” PRIME TIME

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one of the company’s production trucks. The word “stealing” may have been tossed around at the time, but it was just a prank. The truck, if I’m recalling this correctly, would have been David Crockett’s responsibility, and apparently Crockett was the target of the prank.

David was a great guy, a real loyal person, and I owe him a debt of gratitude—he went all out to support me, going all the way back to the Disney days. He went to war for me, and he was a talented, talented person.

That said, he was pretty uptight, and a guy like Johnny Grunge stealing his truck—well, it was pretty funny.

Dirtsheets

Up until three, four, five years ago, the dirtsheets and the Internet sites would get some real, hard, deep inside information. There were times when I would come out of a meeting, and literally three hours later details of that meeting were online. And the same thing has happened to Vince at WWE. Shortly after I arrived in WWE, I remember we had a production meeting. Two hours later, details of that production meeting were on the Internet. And it drove Vince
crazy.
To the point where he threatened to fire anyone he thought was even communicating with these guys. I knew how he felt.

The dirtsheets had a real negative influence at WCW. There were a couple of top wresters who at one point used to leak a lot of information to Dave Meltzer, who still distributes the
Wrestling Observer.
I get a kick out of Meltzer’s Web site. He leads people to believe by logging on to his site, you are going to get information on the headlines that he posts. All he really does is tease the reader with interesting headlines, while failing to deliver any real information. For that you have to buy the “news letter” that he brags “contains more than 35,000 words.” The problem is, those 35,000 words are grammatically incorrect, run-on sentences that read like a fifth-grader wrote them. And most of the “news” contained in his publi-198

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cation is second-third-and sometimes fourth-hand information that is so far off the mark it would be comical if it weren’t for the fact that so many people take it as fact.

Some of the people at WCW were smart enough to know that executives in Turner Broadcasting subscribed to the
Observer
so they could read it in the privacy of their offices and then appear as if they knew something about what was going on in the wrestling world. It was like someone reading the
National Enquirer
and thinking that they were current on world news.

Wade Keller was another editor the guys would feed. By building up a special relationship with these dirtsheet distributors (I have a hard time referring to them as writers), the wrestlers would make sure they were treated in a certain way in those publications. The executives would read the
Observer
or Keller’s dirtsheet, and they’d see Dave Meltzer or Keller extolling the virtues of the moles that fed them information.

There was a lot of that kind of quid pro quo going on. The information was always one-sided and riddled with personal agendas.

What’s interesting now is that because there’s only one wrestling organization, and because Vince is more adamant than I was about leaking information and talking to these dirtsheets, the talent is much more paranoid about leaking information. So now what you get when you read these dirtsheets or anything online is a much more outside-the-camp point of view. Nobody’s feeding these guys much anymore. The end result is, they’re kind of pabu-lum. They’re opinionated, but their opinions generally reflect the trends of the audience anyway, so it’s safe opinion.

It’s amazing how an industry that has grown as large as ours was influenced so adversely by what is nothing more than a group of nerds who probably couldn’t get or hold a job doing anything else.

It still amazes me that these goofs were able to influence people who would never even give them an interview for a legitimate job in the industry they wrote about.

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Chris Benoit with Justin Liger.

Innovations

Cruiserweights

When people ask me about things I did that really changed the pro wrestling business, one I like to point to is the cruiserweight division.

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WCW’s cruiserweight division came about not just because I wanted to keep
Nitro
different from other shows, but because I wanted to keep some of its segments different from each other. I wanted quick-paced, athletic wrestling to quicken the pulse in the middle of the show.

When you get guys six-four, six-eight, and they weigh 250 and 300 pounds, no matter how good they are, they’re only capable of doing certain things in the ring. The pace of that match is what it is.

There were very few guys in the heavyweight category able to have the kind of fast-paced, athletic match I saw a lot of in Japan.

I started looking at New Japan and brought some of their wrestlers over to wrestle with guys like Brian Pillman. I also started looking for other wrestlers capable of having that style of match.

That’s when I became aware of wrestlers like Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, and Dean Malenko. Eddie, Chris, and Dean all worked for New Japan Pro Wrestling in Japan. Masa Siato and Brad Rheingans recommended them highly.

Human Car Crash

I brought Dean, Eddie, and Chris in and told them, “Here’s how I see you: I want you to be my human car crash. I’m going to use you in the middle of the show, right before or after the transition into the second hour. I want your matches to be different from the rest of the matches we see on the show. You guys are capable of having dynamic, fast-paced matches.”

I don’t think anybody in the wrestling business had called that division the cruiserweight division before. It had been referred to as

“junior heavyweight.” I didn’t want to call anybody on my roster a junior anything. It worked okay for hamburgers, but not for wrestlers.

I looked at boxing, and used their name for the weight class.

I loved the cruiserweight style. That’s the kind of wrestling I like to watch—dynamic and fast-paced. A lot of the acrobatic stuff takes me out of the moment, but guys like Chris, Eddie certainly, Dean

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certainly—they were very fast-paced, yet credible performers. They were different than the heavyweights.

I wasn’t the only fan. The cruiserweight division had a lot to do with the continued success of
Nitro.
I brought in Mike Tenay so we could talk about it on the air and educate the audience. Mike was a writer who was just a walking encyclopedia of knowledge. He was a real student of professional wrestling. He knew all the history and really studied the game.

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Rey Mysterio.

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It worked. It was different; it was exciting and high-flying. No one had ever seen anything like it before on this level. Clearly it existed elsewhere around the world, and in a very limited way in bingo halls around Pennsylvania. But no one had ever showcased this style of wrestling before at that level and with the consistency that I did.

Mexican Wrestlers

The cruiserweights also gave us a chance to give
Nitro
an international feel. Besides wrestlers from Japan, we were able to attract a lot of guys down in Mexico whom Chris, Eddie, and Dean knew.

There were some problems, partly because of the language barrier, and partly because of cultural differences. And there were the inevitable politics. Konan positioned himself as the godfather of the Mexican wrestlers. Konan was probably the worst person I could have chosen as a liaison, because he had his own agenda, but he was a popular and well-respected wrestler in Mexico.

There were often disputes over contracts, but the issue wasn’t money—not directly, anyway. A lot of the Mexicans never really understood that, in many cases, their contracts didn’t allow them to perform in Mexico. Rey Mysterio and a few others felt that they could, and that was a problem. We didn’t want them risking injury. It’s bad enough that we have to run that risk in our own rings and shows. But a lot of these guys wanted to keep up their career in Mexico.

Mexican wrestlers also had different attitudes toward masks than we did. In the Mexican tradition, once a wrestler donned a mask, he did not ever give it up. There were exceptions—plenty of them, actually—but the mask had a symbolic meaning among Mexican audiences that it just didn’t have in the States.

Rey Mysterio’s Mask

The mask became a big issue for Rey Mysterio.

I wanted Rey to be a character that kids could really relate to.

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He had a lot of characteristics going for him. But he wore a mask, and the camera couldn’t see his facial expressions. The expressions tell the story.

After Rey had been with us for quite some time, I knew his character could grow. Rey is a good-looking guy, and I thought taking the mask off would take him to the next level, make him a real superstar. But Rey, having been brought up in Mexico and having a different feel about the heritage of his character, balked. Not having grown up in Mexico, I didn’t really understand it. I do now, but that said, I still think Rey was better off without the mask.