Kevin Nash believes WCW’s fate was sealed long before the company was officially sold to WWE, arguing that the promotion truly died when AOL Time Warner decided it no longer wanted to be in the wrestling business.
Speaking on Kliq This, Nash discussed the long-running debate over what ultimately led to WCW’s downfall, saying fans often focus too much on creative decisions while overlooking the corporate changes happening behind the scenes.
“There was a fire sale at AOL because they had the dot-com crash.
They can talk all they want about all this different stuff, but I was there with Eric when it happened.
Once AOL got involved, they wanted out of the wrestling business.
At that point, there really wasn’t anything anybody in WCW could do about it.”
Nash said the biggest blow wasn’t a storyline or a booking decision, but losing the television platform that made WCW a national wrestling promotion.
“You can have a wrestling company, but if you don’t have television, what do you have?
Television was everything.
Once they decided they didn’t want wrestling on their networks anymore, that was it.
That’s what people don’t understand.
They keep looking for one wrestler or one booker or one decision to blame, but that’s not how it happened.”
According to Nash, the popular narrative that one person “killed WCW” ignores the reality of how large corporations operate.
“The notion that you could ever, for any company—forget WCW—take any company that has trouble, any company that goes out of business… there’s never going to be one factor.
I guess it’s titillating to say, ‘Who killed WCW?’
But there was so much more going on than what people saw on television.
It wasn’t just wrestling. It was a corporate decision.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit Kliq This with a h/t to WrestlingHeadlines.com for the transcription.
