WWE.com has published a new article looking back at WCW’s “Big Bang” PPV of 2001, which was to serve as a relaunch attempt for the World Championship Wrestling brand.
At the time, Eric Bischoff, along with Fusient Media Ventures, had raised $67 million to purchase WCW from AOL Time Warner. Eric Bischoff revealed in the article that part of the plan was to shut down WCW for awhile and then relaunch to continue the Monday Nighy Wars against WWE.
“We were going to shut [WCW] down for a period of time, then relaunch,” Bischoff said. “We needed a clean piece of paper to draw on. We couldn’t reach into the trash, pick out the crumbled and trampled creative — that had been WCW for the last year-and-a-half — and try to make people feel good about that again. In order for the relaunch to feel like one, it had to go away. The thinking was, let’s get people talking about the new WCW and what it was going to look like and feel like.”
AOL Time Warner, however, pulled the plug on WCW’s TV clearance, and the entire deal fell apart.
The WWE.com article added that the voice of ECW (which was done at that point), Joey Styles, was in talks to come on board to be the voice of the newly launched WCW, and Styles even met with Bischoff in New York City.
“I would be the lead announcer and I would work in digital media,” Styles said. “I did not agree to do this with Eric until it was obvious that ECW was finished.”
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
