But, my only ECW-related question of the night will be: Is there actually an ECW TV Title, or is it just a tattoo that Rob Van Dam has around his waist?
I have been a fan of WCW since the days of Jim Crockett's NWA on the Superstation. The Horsemen, Dusty Rhodes, Midnight Express, the Garvins, Varsity Club, a human looking Scott Steiner, Barry Windham, and on and on. The NWA was putting out a gritty, hard-nosed wrestling product with relatively decent storylines. What's better, they'd even come up with angles and feuds for the lower-card guys, not only to keep the fans interested, but to groom the young guys for a possible future in the uppercard.
However, today's WCW has moved so far away from those days as to bear no resemblance to the glory days.
Culprit number one is the nWo angle - it's gone on too long and become too stagnant. Another nWo problem is that WCW doesn't want to make them too heelish or too facey, for that might hurt T-shirt sales. Thus, you end up with the nWo playing the crowd as faces a good portion of the time, but wrestling other faces. This weakens the face/heel dynamic that powers the crowd, makes your faces look ineffective for the most part (because the face can't get the big blowoff win that might make the nWo look bad, and also, if the face DID get the blowoff win, you have a divided crowd on the issue).
The second problem is the complete lack of angles outside the nWo. This is one area where the WWF excels - no matter how absurd their angles tend to be, there is a REASON for matches most of the time. You just don't see this type of forethought in WCW and, when you do, it tends to be half-assed. I think most of this stems from the rumored "book-on-the-fly" philosophy, which fights against having cohesive angles. How hard would it be to have an angle where Chavo Jr. goes through the LWO as a proxy for Eddy? Or have Lenny Lane as a rookie fighting up the ladder? Or have Psychosis go all rudo on Rey Mysterio? Or anything? Having something to fight over would help the crowd get into the show, rather than sititng on their hands until Goldberg comes out.
Finally, the Horsemen. I can't believe WCW dropped the ball on this one like they did. In the Horsemen, you had the opportunity to have faces of Austin-level dynamics. Ric Flair gets back to WCW, gets pissed, and has the Horsemen run roughshod over everything in their path. Anytime you hear the hoofs come over the speaker, you'd know that someone was going to get their ass kicked. But no, that would have involved the nWo losing some of their stature. So what happens? You squander the gift of an angle that fell right into your lap, and have ineffective Horsemen and the same nWo we've been seeing for over two years.
So, that's where I stand. I find it hard to believe that WCW is shoveling as much crap at us as they are, when with just a tiny bit of forethought and planning, they could be showcasing their incredible athletes and ruling the wrestling world.
