Who Killed WCW Documentary “Isn’t A WWE Story”
A new documentary about the death of WCW is not going to be WWE’s version of how the Ted Turner-owned company ended.
World Championship Wrestling was owned by American billionaire Ted Turner. It was created in the early-1990s after the end of the National Wrestling Alliance with the idea of building WCW into a worldwide company.
From September 1995 until its final day in March 2001, WCW Monday Nitro (led mostly by President Eric Bischoff) went head-to-head with WWE Monday Night Raw. For 83 weeks, Nitro beat Raw in the mid-1990s until WWE turned the corner in the spring of 1998 thanks to the Steve Austin-Vince McMahon, the rise of D-Generation X, and other factors.
Since WCW’s death in March 2021, there have been many documentaries and books written about the demise of the company. It’s a topic that has been covered a lot over the last two decades because World Championship Wrestling meant so much to fans around the world.
It was revealed recently that WWE legend The Rock and his production company Seven Bucks Production have put together a four-part documentary series titled “Who Killed WCW?” The series will premiere on Tuesday, June 4th at 10 pm on VICE.
Brian Gewirtz is a former WWE writer who is now a Seven Bucks SVP working closely with The Rock and he spoke about the process of creating this documentary.
“This four-part series was sold and everything before Dwayne (Johnson) [The Rock] was appointed to the TKO Board. Even if he wasn’t, we had been working with VICE on Tales From The Territories. We partnered with Evan Husney and Jason Eisener from Dark Side of the Ring and had a great time. When the run was over, VICE basically said, ‘This was good, but we don’t know if we want to continue because it’s just not as buzzy. It’s fine, but we’d like something a little better.'”
“We pivoted and said, ‘What if we did the ultimate Tale from the Territory and did WCW?’ We went back and forth in terms of how we could do that. Should it be one giant doc, two-part doc, ultimately we settled on four one-hour episodes.”
“Everything is so knee-jerk on social media, and if you put out the trailer, a lot of people are excited, which is great, and a lot of people are like, ‘How many times can you tell this story?’ People are like, ‘Rock is an executive producer, so it’s going to be the usual WWE version.'”
Key WCW People Were Interviewed In New Documentary
As Gewirtz continued, he made it clear that this was not WWE’s version of how World Championship Wrestling. Gewirtz also spoke about how they talked to so many key people involved in WCW and even spoke to Ted Turner’s son.
“Let me dispel some things. VICE is not buying this show if it’s a retread of the WWE version of the WCW story. It’s hard to sell a show. We’re pitching shows all the time. They’re not buying it if it’s the same old, same old. That was our pitch. Yes, we have strong WWE ties, but this isn’t a WWE story.”
“Yes, Raw got great, and that made a dent, but Raw’s ascension isn’t even in the top ten of the reasons why WCW imploded, even if the WWE version of the show, whether it’s their intention or not, gives the impression that it is. We need to tell the actual story from the actual people who were there. We have to.”
“This is something that no version of the WCW story has ever done before. We interviewed top Turner executives and have them tell their story unfiltered. That’s really, at the heart of the matter, the relationship between Turner broadcasting and WCW. We got Brad Siegel and top WCW and Turner executives. Ted Turner’s son is interviewed.”
“We got the big names. Bret [Bret Hart], Kevin Nash, Goldberg, Booker T and Sharmell, Bischoff [Eric Bischoff], Russo [Vince Russo], DDP [Diamond Dallas Page], Konnan, David Arquette, Madusa, and we have The Rock speaking on it from a ‘this is what we were seeing on the WWE side,’ but we truly wanted to tell the ‘real story’ of WCW from the people that were there and not the WWE version.”
Check out a preview of the documentary below.
We’re partnering with @TheRock and @SevenBucksProd again on a new 4-part documentary series…
“WHO KILLED WCW?”
The meteoric rise and spectacular fall of the cultural phenomenon that was World Championship Wrestling.
June 4 at 10PM on @vicetv. pic.twitter.com/9t7zUWeq3U
— Dark Side of the Ring (@DarkSideOfRing) April 30, 2024