Controversy Creates Cash (34 page)

I didn’t want to disappoint Ted. And I was overconfident that I could make it work. I was willing to risk my career doing it.

I tried to find the funds by expanding WCW’s operations and growing our revenue. I went back to my staff and said,
“If we increase our house show business by twenty-five or thirty percent”
—I forget the actual number—
“what will that do to our revenue?”
The number that came back was big enough to almost cover the projected cost of producing the show. Adding another hour to
Nitro
—taking it from two to three hours—we’d get even closer. TBS

came up with a small amount of money, though they were still basically getting
Thunder
for free.

Rather than saying no, I’d figured out a way to pay for it.

Positioned for Failure

I wasn’t looking at it clearly, but WCW was being positioned for failure.

A division that didn’t live up to the expectations for EBITDA was in trouble. Knowing now that there were still people with an agenda to make WCW go away, I should not have taken on the responsibility for financing
Thunder.
It not only stretched us beyond our capacity but weakened our finances.

The new emphasis on EBITDA was not the only change going on above me. Ted Turner was slowly but surely being neutralized by THE REVOLUTION TAKES HOLD

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the Time Warner executives he’d sold his company to. He’d always been WCW’s strongest booster. With him out of the way, those who wanted to get rid of the company would have an easy time of it.

I didn’t realize any of that then. I thought Ted was still the captain of the ship. He said, This is what I want. Being the good sailor I was, I said to myself,
Okay, if no one else is willing to make this work,
I will.

It buried us.

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8

Too Much

Bret Hart & the

Montreal Screwjob

Bret Hart

It was during the preparations for what became
Thunder
that I got the green light to get Bret Hart. We needed another one or two very high-profile pieces of talent for the new show.

Bret began wrestling in 1976. By the 1990s, he was one of the biggest stars in the WWE. A native of Calgary, he had an immense following in Canada, where he had the status of a national hero.

Bret’s contract with WWE had come due in 1996, and he and I had had a conversation around that time, feeling each other out.

Contrary to what was reported at the time and has been repeated ever since, we never got into serious negotiations. We met in Los Angeles and hit it off personally. The chemistry was good. But I don’t think he was really serious about coming over, and I didn’t really need him. Bret ended up signing a large multiyear deal with Vince McMahon.

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CONTROVERSY CREATES CASH

Less than a year later, Bret made it clear that he was available. I can’t speak to what happened with Bret and Vince. Different reports have claimed that Vince gave Bret his blessing to talk with us because WWE had financial problems at the time. I really don’t know any of that. All I know is that Bret and I put together an agreement very quickly.

Montreal Screwjob

There was no secret that Bret was coming over to WCW. The fact that Bret was WWE Champion posed real problems for Vince. He wanted Bret to lose the title before coming over to us. Bret didn’t want to lose the title in Montreal. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know, but according to what’s been published, Bret and Vince worked out an agreement that would have let Bret hold on to the title during a match in Montreal; he would hand the title to Vince on a live
Raw
show the following day.

But if that was the agreement, Vince changed his mind. At the Montreal show, he had the referee quick-count Bret out, awarding the title to Shawn Michaels. The episode was filmed and aired on the documentary
Wrestling with Shadows,
and became known to most fans as the Montreal Screwjob.

It’s possible that Vince thought he couldn’t trust Bret—or more accurately, couldn’t trust me.

I had given Vince every reason in the world to believe that I would exploit the situation to my maximum ability and denigrate WWE in every way possible. I’m sure he thought I would have Bret trash the title in much the way I had Madusa trash the women’s championship on national television. But that wasn’t the case.

Had Vince known what Bret and I had really discussed—and more importantly, what the legal division at Turner Broadcasting told me I could do and couldn’t do—Montreal never would have happened. At the time we were involved in copyright and trademark litigation with WWE, and the legal department of Turner TOO MUCH

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Broadcasting didn’t want to add fuel to the fire. They made it clear that I had to work within certain parameters—and those parameters did NOT include anything close to trashing WWE titles.

I was cool with that, because at that point it didn’t really matter.

We had clearly positioned ourselves as number one, and I didn’t need to pull the kind of stuff I had back when Madusa came over.

But Vince didn’t know that, and I don’t think anyone could have convinced him.

In fact, while we were settling our contract terms, Bret came to me and said, “What’s going to happen if Vince wants me to lose the match in Montreal?” I told him it didn’t matter.

“The audience is sophisticated enough to understand what’s going on. Your win-loss record is really not that important. How you end your relationship with WWE is not important. Do whatever you feel you need to do. If you need to lose in order to shake hands and part company as friends, go ahead and do that.” Vince McMahon had nothing to fear, and ultimately the Montreal incident was unnecessary and unfortunate.

Or maybe not. Maybe it ultimately played itself out, and everyone made money off it. But I know firsthand that it had a pretty big impact on Bret.

Not the Same Bret

When Bret got to WCW, he was not the Bret Hart that we had watched in WWE. I think the incident with Vince McMahon took a tremendous toll on him. Or perhaps Bret never really felt at home in WCW. Either way, he never quite regained his passion for the business.

As much as I like Bret and respect him, there was a real lack of passion and commitment. I kind of understood it, though it was hard for me to relate to his sense of betrayal. For me, it was about the outcome of a wrestling match. As underhanded as it
may
have been—italicize
may,
because I’m still not sure it was all that it was 264

CONTROVERSY CREATES CASH

supposed to be—at the end of the day it was just a wrestling match.

None of it is real anyway. I have a hard time understanding why a wrestler takes something that is fiction to heart, though many do.

I was hoping that Bret would get used to being in WCW, and would kick it back into gear. But it didn’t happen.

Oh, Canada

Part of it was that Bret felt he let his fans down. There’s a different culture in Canada. They view their national celebrities as national heroes. That’s not true in the United States. We don’t think of them as uniquely American celebrities. In Canada, they’re
Canadian
celebrities. And if they migrate into the United States and meet with success, they become national heroes because they’ve succeeded in America. Canadians are so proud of other Canadians that it’s almost obnoxious.

I’ve tried to figure it out over the years. One reason, I think, is that Canada isn’t really an independent country.

Sure, technically they are, in the sense that there’s a border and they have their own laws. But otherwise they’re totally dependent on the United States. Their economy is completely dependent on ours. Their army and their navy are nonexistent when it comes to being able to actually defend their country; they rely on the United States to do most of the job. If you look at the demographics of Canada, a large percentage of the population lives within a hundred miles or so of the border. Why do you think that’s the case? So they can get the hell out of Canada as often as they can!

When you add all of that up, there’s a certain sense of inferiority.

So any time you have a Dan Aykroyd or a Celine Dion or a Bret Hart or a Wayne Gretzky, Canadians tend to hold that person up to a level that those of us in the United States just don’t understand.

Even though the first thing most of these people do is move to the United States.

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Bret was a national hero to Canadians. When I first heard him say that, I thought,
Man, that’s a little wacky. That’s taking the whole
self-promotion thing to a whole ’nother level.
But the fact is, it’s true.

So what happened to Bret in Montreal had a much bigger impact on him than it might have had for another wrestler.

Passion

After Bret came to WCW, a lot of people criticized us for not using him the “correct” way, as if there’s a “correct” way to use someone like Bret Hart, or any wrestler. There is no set formula that is absolutely tried and true and proven. It’s all subjective. The greatest part of it depends on the creative powers of the artist himself.

You can have the best-written screenplay, with the best director, the best sound track, and the best supporting cast, and if your lead actor really doesn’t feel the part, chances are that movie is never going to be what you want it to be.

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CONTROVERSY CREATES CASH

I think in some part, that was the problem with Bret. Regardless of how we used him, there was never the passion and the commitment to the role that could propel him.

Steve Austin is a perfect example of a guy who had been cast in certain roles that he didn’t really relate to, such as the Ringmaster.

I’m sure he gave as much as he could to those roles, but they weren’t Steve. When he became the rattlesnake, when he was allowed to be just Steve Austin, it was a character he understood. It clicked. For a lot of reasons.

When things hit big, there are always a lot of reasons why they work. But Steve’s passion was a major reason.

Eric Bischoff, Vince McMahon, Steven Spielberg, an independent film director that no one’s ever heard of—we can only do so much when creating a role for someone. It’s really up to the performer. He or she brings life to the role.

I’m not suggesting that we had the best ideas for Bret Hart. But regardless of our shortcomings, Bret came to WCW with baggage because of Montreal. He couldn’t shake it. It was all he talked about. Constantly.

A Screwjob of Our Own

Sting & Hogan at Starcade

We went into
Starcade,
the December 1997 Pay-Per-View, knowing that we had a hit on our hands. We’d been building the Sting character for a year, leading to the inevitable confrontation with Hogan.

The anticipation was intense. It was a classic babyface vs. heel confrontation with our own cutting-edge spin: an edgy babyface, Sting, taking on a good guy gone vicious, Hulk Hogan.

But for the first time since the very early matches, Hogan and I disagreed over the outcome.

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The way we’d built it up, Sting should have been the clean winner. But Hogan was underwhelmed with Sting, and balked.

I didn’t really see his point of view. I had a hard time reading between the lines with Hogan because he didn’t come flat out and tell me what his issues were. But I think Hogan was disappointed with Sting’s preparation. Sting was clearly out of shape. He looked like he hadn’t seen a gym or a tanning bed in six months. Up until that time, Sting could get away with that. He’d show up at the arenas and do his act wearing his black trench coat and his face paint; he didn’t actually wrestle.

This is me reading between the lines here, but I think Hogan figured, “Hey, wait a minute. We built this guy up for six months. He hasn’t even bothered to stay in halfway decent shape and looks like he’s been living in a cave.” In Hogan’s mind, that was a letdown.