WCW 2001: The Shane McMahon Era

Mildred Burke Legacy Tournament confirmed for WCW Legacy as pioneer of women's wrestling to be inducted into WCW Hall of Fame

Alongside the Crockett Cup tag-team tournament at WCW Legacy we will also see the Final of the first ever Mildred Burke Legacy Tournament at the event too.

Mildred Burke was a true pioneer in this industry. She introduced Women's Wrestling to most states in the U.S, as well as internationally to Canada, Japan and Mexico. Despite the challenges she faced she pushed through to make Women's wrestling something that was viable across the world. 

Shane McMahon confirmed at Starrcade that 16 women will compete in the weeks leading up to the event and only 1 woman will go home with the Mildred Burke Legacy Trophy. To honour Mildred Burke's legacy in introducing women's wrestling to Japan and Mexico every year, in what is to be an annual tournament showcasing Women's wrestling in WCW, there will be a wildcard entrant from Japan and a wildcard entrant from Mexico taking part in the tournament. This should bring an international flair to the tournament and help to produce inter-promotional relationships. 

WCW already has a good working relationship with All Japan Women's Pro Wrestling, but it is now also thought to be exploring a potential relationship with AAA which would potentially see some of the top female stars in AAA take part in this new annual tournament in exchange for some of WCW's female talent taking part in AAA shows.

Steve Austin tops Wrestling Rich List in 2001

A leaked list of the Top 100 paid Wrestlers in the World for the year 2001 has appeared online shining a light as to who the biggest earners were for the past year. 

Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock are in a class of their own at the top, with both earning just shy of $3M in the year. The other members of the Top 5 were also WWF stars, with Kurt Angle, The Undertaker and Triple H all reportedly on the same guaranteed payment of just under $1.5M

Keji Muto of New Japan is the highest paid international star and incidentally earns only slightly less than those guys as he takes 6th spot. In 7th spot and the highest paid WCW star is actually the new contract signed by 'The Nature Boy' Ric Flair who is one of the first to really benefit from a potential bidding war between WWF and Shane McMahon's WCW as the WWF interest put up the price WCW needed to pay to land him. 

Scott Hall, who was WCW World Heavyweight Champion for a large part of 2001, is the 8th highest paid, earning just over $1.1M, whilst another New Japan star, Kazuyuki Fujita is in 9th spot and Diamond Dallas Page is joint 10th with WWF stars Chris Jericho and Kane reportedly on the same figure as DDP. 

It is easy to see why Shane McMahon didn't bring back Konnan to WCW. The former WCW United States Champion and 2-time WCW World Tag Team Champion was linked with a move back to WCW before he signed for New Japan and whilst at the time the rumour was that Konnan didn't really believe in the new WCW, when you look at how much New Japan are paying him, which is more than Booker T or Jeff Jarrett are earning in WCW or Chris Benoit is making in the WWF, it is no surprise that Konnan opted to go to NJPW.

Trish Stratus is the highest paid Woman of 2001 and finds herself in 27th spot. Chyna, who WWF did not want to break the bank for, is earning less than Trish in WCW but is not far down the table in 31 and the WCW World Women's Champion is making more than Buff Bagwell, Lance Storm, Curt Hennig, or WWF guys like Test, Rey Mysterio and Rhyno. Lita is the 3rd best paid woman in 43rd spot, Masanobu Fuchi of AJPW in 45th spot and Ivory of the WWF in 65th spot. It seems that most of the AJPW and AAA women's talent are paid per show without guaranteed downsides which means not many women from their companies make the list.

Shane McMahon must really believe in Mark Henry as the 'World's Strongest Man', who is yet to debut in WCW, was given a contract that puts him the 30th highest paid in the world, which like Chyna, makes him higher paid than solid upper-mid card WCW guys like Bagwell, Storm and Hennig. 

Many fans have expressed surprise at how little Rob Van Dam signed for WCW for. At 58th spot he is only on $169,520 per year, which is less than Road Warrior Animal, Dustin Rhodes or BG James (Road Warrior Dog) signed for, although without mainstream TV exposure it could be accepted that it is a fair deal and if and when he comes to renew his deal it is likely he would be offered a considerably higher amount.

The full Top 100 list, which actually includes 103 stars, can be found below:


 

 

WWF vs WCW - End of 2001 (8 months in)



Here Comes The Money?







So 8 months in and Shane McMahon made WCW a profit of $5.2M in 2001 which for end of days WCW I think is pretty decent overall. We've massively increased the wage costs in that time period due to signings of in-ring and backstage talent so I think increasing the amount of revenue made from ticket sales, PPV buys, TV money, merch etc is a positive really. I think in the short-term the main thing is just making WCW a profitable company again and we've achieved that. We've got new TV deals abroad into 2002 which is positive and I think we're on track to make similarly decent profit in 2002 even with wage increases as contracts come up for renewal.

WWF of course is a different beast though. They've made a profit of $68.3M this year, every single month they've managed to make more profit just in 1 month than WCW has all year. I don't know long term if it will continue in the same way as as their guys want contract renewals and several high-profile free agents become available in 2002 they will be spending more on wages if they manage to lure them in, but even so, it looks quite likely that they may well end up hitting $1B before WCW hits $100M. 

But it just shows the uphill battle that we have on our hands in real terms! 



TV Ratings




                         





In terms of TV viewers it's not been much of a contest so far. Raw/Smackdown have trended down a little bit since I started booking but I think that was more because when I started storyline ratings were 0 and it took a while to sort that out for them. I expect WWF to probably both get back to around 4.5/5M 

We've consistently been around 800K viewers for both Nitro and Panic. We have now got international TV deals which should boost our numbers a bit, but I think the main issue we have is until we can re-negotiate our deals with FX we're on late-night which probably isn't great for getting viewers at all. When we can negotiate a new TV deal in a better slot I'm hopeful our numbers will rise a bit.



PPV Buys








I'm still not really sure why Big Bang had 1.5M extra buyers but it was clearly an anomaly. I think generally with the PPV buys we've not been doing terribly, we seemed to lose a bit of momentum after August's Mayhem PPV, but we trended back up with Starrcade so I'm hopeful we can stay around at least the 550K-600K mark as this will help our finances moving forward. 

WWF of course generally doing much much better with the PPV buys. They're trending a little down but I expect that to rise a bit back to the 3M mark for the most part as there were a few teething issues with storylines/booking when I first took over.



Average Popularity



 

We've made steady improves in the U.S to the point that we hit Big status which is pretty good. I think it will probably take until the end of 2002 to get close to the WWF and even then not too many of our shows are hitting better than 77/78 rated so I think it will be harder to get on that level until a lot more of our roster have higher ratings and we deliver consistent shows. 

It is hard for me/WWF to hit the same crazy ratings the AI was getting though so WWF will probably flatline a bit in the mid 80s I think.






We're making steady gains in Canada. We've got the big Canada tour/PPV in March so that should hopefully improve things. To hit Large Status we have to get 71 through Canada or Mexico, Canada will happen before Mexico but I don't know if we can hit that by the end of 2002 as our TV deals in Canada aren't amazing. But we have made progress there at least.






I think there must be some kind of in-game mechanic that tanks your popularity if you haven't been on TV/PPV etc in a certain area for a while. I felt the big drop off was a bit unrealistic as the PPVs would've probably been picked up in this scenario even if WCW wasn't on TV, but it is what it is. We have PPV and TV deals now so we should slowly get back to a decent position.




We tanked even further in Japan, whilst WWF's new TV deal meant their popularity soared there. Not ideal, but we have a TV and PPV deal in Japan now so we should slowly be able to regain some of the popularity back. I did like the idea of a Halloween Havoc in Japan for 2002 especially with the Cruiserweight Classic, but it just wasn't going to be feasible, but I would love to be able to do that in 2003 if we gain some momentum in 2002.




A similar story in Mexico, although WWF also dropped off in some areas of Mexico where the TV deals aren't great. I'll need to look into that to boost WWF in those areas.





We've not dropped off too much in Europe as we weren't that high to begin with. WWF has though and I think again that's due to some fairly suspect looking TV/PPV deals based on region. I'll be looking into that as well as seems unrealistic WWF would drop off that hard. 




Oceania probably one of the few areas we're doing okay as we had a PPV deal in place for Australia and New Zealand. I think we can make some gains in the new year which would be good. Probably not quite at a point we'll see an Australia Live WCW show in the near future though.