Hulk Hogan gives his viewpoint on World Championship Wrestling (WCW) going out of business.
The downfall of the once great wrestling juggernaut has come back into the limelight due to the VICE documentary series entitled, ‘Who Killed WCW?’ Hogan, who played a huge part in the company’s rise, was not interviewed for the series. However, in a recent interview with Sports Illustrated he explains what really happend.
It’s not the flashiest story, but I can tell you what killed WCW. There was no way WCW was going to survive, not under those circumstances.
Hogan goes on to state that former WCW President Eric Bischoff was not to blame, and that the merger between Time Warner and American Online was what put the nail in the coffin. The Hall of Famer adds that the ‘higher-ups’ didn’t understand what wrestling was about, nor did they have any interest in learning.
So many people knock Eric, but there was an opposition he was dealing with from the higher-ups in the company. He just wasn’t going to win that battle. These were executives who had no idea what wrestling was all about, and they had no interest in learning. They wanted more traditional programming. They didn’t want rasslin’ in their high-brow portfolio. They weren’t interested, and nothing else mattered.
WCW was eventually sold to WWE and Vince McMahon in 2001. Its entire library is currently on the WWE Network on Peacock.