RADICAN'S TAKE RADICAN: Trapped inside the beast - Sullivan books WCW Apr 16, 2008 - 12:10:18 PM

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“Karma has a way of coming back and biting you in the ass.” – Kevin Sullivan on the “Oklahoma” character played by Ed Ferrara, which made fun of Jim Ross’s Bells Palsy.

KayfabeCommentaries.com’s latest release “Kevin Sullivan and the End of WCW” focus’s on Kevin Sullivan’s short tenure as head booker of WCW from January through March of 2000. Sullivan and host Sean Oliver go week by week through Sullivan’s tenure during this release and discuss exactly what it was like to be for Sullivan to be in a position of power in the company during a tumultuous time.

Oliver begins things by going through the origins of WCW all the way back to the days of the territories up through Ted Turner bringing the company to cable TV. It’s established early on that with Turner in charge, WCW would always have a place on his cable networks. Fast forward to 2000 and WCW is in trouble with declining ratings and an inability to compete with the WWF. Time Warner now calls the shots in the WCW and people with no experience in wrestling have the final say over much of the product.

This release started slowly, as parts of the first hour dragged with a lot of background information and the utilization of onscreen graphics to introduce the major players in WCW at the time Sullivan took the reigns from Vince Russo as head booker.

“Someone made them paranoid. It could have been me.” – Sullivan on several key talents asking for their release from WCW once he became head booker.

It’s clear right off the bat that Sullivan isn’t going to be 100% honest, as he gave no explanation as to why several key talents left the company once he took the reigns. Sullivan talks in detail about putting Chris Benoit over WCW Champion Sid on the first PPV he booked, but later he says he had an idea Benoit was going to demand a release and head to WWE, along with several other key talents, so he made sure to tell Sid to have his foot under the ropes when Benoit made him tap in order to ensure they had an angle to run with if Benoit left. Do you understand why Sullivan put Benoit over? Neither do I.

Things get crazier as Sullivan talks about needing to book long-term to save WCW. The problem is that nobody in their right mind is going to believe that Sullivan was going to get through a year without having any major angles going forward short-term.

Sullivan’s big idea is to get Sid and Goldberg built up for one year. His goal was to get Sid hot for Goldberg. During this time, Sullivan says the younger wrestlers will still complaining about the older wrestlers occupying the top spots. It’s shocking all that talent resigned and names like Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit had the best run of their careers in the WWE, isn’t it? Not to Sullivan, who says if you look at the top spots in wrestling right now, they’re all occupied by older wrestlers.

Sullivan gives a lot of insight into some of the things he had to deal with, such as wrestlers going into business for themselves when cutting promos and then having to be the one to face them when management sent them home for their transgressions. He also had to contend with standards and practices, which made it impossible for him to book angles on TV that were as edgy as some of the things WWE was presenting at that time. One things I found to be ludicrous was as Sullivan was talking about all of his difficulties, Oliver brought up a lot of forgettable angles that were booked during that time, which were absolutely terrible and Sullivan doesn’t bat an eyelash.

The on-screen graphics worked really well once Sullivan got going. They provided some solid transitions which lead right into Sullivan discussing what was going on at a specific time during his tenure as head booker. Sullivan was in an impossible situation and he does a good job of describing the pressure coming from all sides.

”At that time everyone knew we were fighting an uphill battle that we weren’t going to win.” –Sullivan on whether or not he knew WCW was going to survive.

Of course, Sullivan’s claims that he needed more time to book WCW before his tenure ended in March 0f 2000 give him an out, but it’s hard to believe he would have been able to depend on wrestlers like Hall, Nash, Sid, and Goldberg to carry the company at that time when several of those names weren’t dependable at that time. Sullivan also had to deal with Hogan’s creative control, which is a highlight on this release.

“It was the T-Rex. It didn’t evolve, it died.” – Sullivan on the end of WCW in hindsight.

Recommendation: This was another winner from KayfabeCommentaries.com, which did another great job of coming up with a unique concept and executed it well. I highly recommend this release for fans that were young adults during the Monday Night Wars, as Sullivan provides a lot of insight into what it was like to be inside the beast that was WCW during a tumultuous time. This release started out slow, but once Sullivan got going telling stories and going week by week through his tenure as head booker, I gained a lot of knowledge about WCW’s infrastructure. Strong recommendation.

Email Sean Radican.

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