7. Tony Schiavone Talks About What Led To The Demise Of WCW, If Anyone Can Compete With Vince McMahon In Pro-Wrestling

During a recent appearance on the WrestlingInc podcast, former WCW announcer Tony Schiavone discussed his thoughts on what led to the demise of WCW, Vince McMahon ruling the Pro-Wrestling business & more. Below are the highlights:

On what led to the demise of WCW:

“It was a combination; a lot of things killed WCW. I am honored to believe people feel that my comments on Mick Foley winning the WWF title killed it. Wow, thank you very much! I didn’t know I had that much power! Certainly that was part of it. But I really think that what ended up killing WCW, more than anything else was that it was run by Turner Broadcasting and Ted Turner didn’t really give a blip about Pro Wrestling compared to Vince McMahon. When you look at it, the buck stopped with Vince McMahon; it was his company, it still is, and he called the shots. Every effort that he had with his company went into Professional Wrestling, but that was not the case with Turner Broadcasting. I really feel that is what eventually killed it. That is what eventually killed the company, by them owning it. They wanted to die and it did. Now I go back and watch our last pay-per-view, which was WCW Greed. Some of the things weren’t that bad, but there were a lot of things that were salvageable during that time, but they just didn’t want it. If they would have ridden it out a little bit longer it would have prospered. There were plenty of things that killed it.

People say it was Vince Russo’s booking, but I also think that there was a time back then where we were too much like the WWF. We were seen as a bastardized version of it; we couldn’t do the WWE as well as they did, but back when we were hot and the era where people want to talk to me about, we were different than the WWE back then. As we went through time, we became more and more like them.”

On if anyone can compete with Vince McMahon:

“No, I don’t, only because Vince McMahon is in the New York market. He has always been in the New York market. Number two because he has so much money in the bank – you have to go and see his production facility and see his offices. I don’t know how many of you guys have been there to see what he has behind him, to see why he is so successful. There’s more than what you just see on television, there’s production value, there’s people that know what they are doing in Marketing, and has a great crossover in this country when you think about it.”

Even back then, we tried in vain for years and years, which finally happened with Eric Bischoff. We tried for years to be that one Wrestling company to be seemingly mainstream. We kind of became mainstream. Vince has always been like that, so I don’t see anybody competing with him on that level. Listen, I didn’t think we were able to do it and was surprised at the run we had in the 90’s, but I don’t think anybody can do it. No.”