On this day in Pro Wrestling history on May 6th 2001, World Championship Wrestling was set to air ‘WCW The Big Bang’ LIVE on PPV from Las Vegas, Nevada.
This event with the tagline “The Creation Of The New WCW” was supposed to be the first pay-per-view after Eric Bischoff would have taken over the promotion from AOL Time Warner which eventually ended up not happening.
After Paul Heyman’s Extreme Championship Wrestling closed its doors in January 2001, quite a few former ECW employees were contacted to join Bischoff’s new WCW.
Joey Styles & Don Callis (Cyrus the Virus) would have likely done commentary, while both Rob Van Dam & Steve Corino were rumored to debut as Wrestlers.
Also, Bill Goldberg was set to return to the company that night.
Here’s what Eric Bischoff said on his ’83 Weeks’ podcast, about his strategy regarding pay-per-views, if his purchase would’ve been successful:
“We may have actually reduced some of them. One of the thoughts I had at the time was that when TV is hot and you’re running strong and when ratings and attendance and merchandise are strong, when everything is running at peak performance levels in your different business units, it’s OK to add a pay-per-view. But when things are down, it’s better to regroup, reassess the use of your resources, focus on what’s really working and what has the most likely chance to work and divest yourself of some of the legacy pay-per-views that really weren’t doing all that well maybe because of the time of year.”
Eric then talked about if he would’ve kept Scott Steiner as the WCW World Heavyweight Champion in the new WCW:
“It worked for me. I liked Scott at the time, I liked what he could do in the ring and his in-ring abilities were nothing short of amazing. His larger-than-life persona was hard to compare anybody to. The challenges I had with Scott were his consistency and personality. He was volatile in and out of the ring. He was capable of doing things outside the ring that could’ve brought great harm to the company’s reputation. That part was dangerous as your World Champion. It was dangerous for anyone on television, but as your World Champion, even more so. I liked it creatively, but from a business perspective, it was not without risk.”
Here’s a poster of the canceled WCW Big Bang PPV:
World Championship Wrestling was eventually sold to Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation several weeks prior, in March 2001.
WATCH: WCW Diva Major Gunns (Tylene Buck) Removes Her Pants:
