I started booking in wcw in june of 2000. Eric Bischoff had asked Russo if he wouldn’t mind me sitting in on the meetings. Russo didn’t mind. When i booked the committe consisted of Vince, Terry Taylor, Ed Ferrara, myself, and Jeremy Borash and Bill Banks would sit in also. Banks and Borash would mainly play on their computers, although Borash did contribute alot. We all got along great. The meetings were hysterical. I got to ride in the private jet sometimes with Bischoff, Hogan and others.
Vince later told me that after a month or so Bischoff had asked to take me off the committee, and Vince was like ,”screw that! i like the guy!” I wondered why Bischoff wanted me out of there for the longest time. I pretty much surmised that it was because i was pretty vocal of my opinion of Hogan.
Here was my problem with Hulk. Now i didn’t discount the fact that he was a huge draw and needed to be featured extensively on the show, but Hogan would always be talking about getting guys “on the team.” In the meetings i’d be asking what team this guy was referring to? I was still one of the boys, and i dressed in the locker room with them. Nash, Hall, Sting, Luger, Jarrett and everybody else would all dress together. Except for Hogan. He had his own room. What type of team is successful where one guy is placing himself above everybody else and is asking everyone to get on his team? Didn’t he realize that the rest of the crew thought he was an uncomparable egomaniac? All Hulk had to do was be a little more humble around the rest of the crew, instead of treating us like we all had leprosy. iIt doesn’t take a genius to figure out that when a team has a guy like that on it in such a prominenet position, then it was going to fail.
when we were in the meetings sometimes it would be difficult for me to take things seriously. Vince would sometimes go awol, and during that time i would just drive Terry Taylor up the wall. We would argue things and Terry would go,”Man you piss me off!” and i would be like,”no i don’t.” I was a colossal pain in the ass sometimes. Once, i got there early and wrote out on the board something like six months worth of television of a martian invasion angle, that would start with two antennas popping out of mike tenay’s head at the announcers table, and culminating at the january 1, 2001 ppv. “A Space Oddysey.” Russo and Ferrara thought it was hysterical, and TT would just get so aggravated. BTW, it wasn’t to be taken seriously.
We came up with some ridiculous ideas that never would’ve and should’ve made it to tv. Like a 30 second shot of an empty locker room that ended with “Coming Soon. The Invisible Man.” Wings Piedmont, the evil pilot. Terry Taylor’s personal favorite creation, Bill Ding, The Evil Architect, and my ingenious creation of The Evil Archaeologists, Artie Fact and Doug Hole. I really wish that crew could all get back together someday, because even though WCW was going out of business, which we knew it was, but i’ll get to that at another time, we had some great laughs. It was really fun, until Johnny Ace started sitting in.
Ace brought some pretty good organization to the way matches are laid out between the road agents and production, but when it came to booking, he just didn’t get it, at all. Ace thought that clean finishes were the solution to all of wcw’s problems. i mean we’d spend time trying to figure out stories for guys and are trying to develop characters for guys that weren’t over, and all Ace wanted to do was go over the 7 minute japanese clean finish for the match. We’d be like,”we’ll go over the finishes on show day. we’re trying to write stories.”
Now Ace did have an excellent mind for coming up with clean finishes, but he didn’t understand WCW and WWE psycholgy. When a guy beats a guy with his finish clean, the angle is over. Period. They’re done. Time to move on. Bring on the next guy. I’ll never forget when we were in there after Russo had gone permanent awol, and it’s the week after a two week angle between Mike Sanders and Kwiwi, and Kwiwi had just beaten Sanders clean the week before and now he wants to have them wrestle again. And he’s like,”we need a story, we need a story.” and everyone’s just completely silent for like a good three minutes. I finally say,”he beat him clean. what possible reason could they have to fight again? What matchmaker would book that if this was real?” Another two minutes of silence, and he finally decides to have them wrestle someone else(Bischoff had made him head of creative at this point.)
So after awhile Ace tells me he doesn’t need me sitting in on the metings anymore, and i’m thinking thank god. So the next week after or so, Ace comes up to me and jarrett at thunder and he’s like,”it’s an historic thunder boys!” we’re like,”How’s that, Johnny?” And he says, “it’s the first one without those damn girls!” Yep, you guessed right. on a show written for a male 18-34 yr. old audience, Ace decided to get rid of ALL the girls on the show. I’ll never forget the phone call the day the thunder ratings for that show came out. I called jeff and we’re both laughing when he answered the phone,”Yep, an historic thunder all right! Lowest rated one of all time!”
3 weeks later WCW was out of business.
