This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel about the final WCW broadcast. You can view the video here: https://youtu.be/0TrGV0hxc30
March 26th 2001, just a few days away from Wrestlemania 17, maybe the grandest of them all. WCW airs it's final episode of Monday Nitro, a show that for the most part, felt like a story that was ending. For most fans this would be the end of World Championship Wrestling. As Paul Heyman once predicted, there would be no WCW One Night Stand pay per view. In fact, many fans didn't make the jump to WWE, they just moved on with their lives. There actually was one final WCW broadcast that would air on March 31st 2001. It would be WCW's final and authentic goodbye.
The programme known as Worldwide has its television roots in 1975's Wide World Wrestling, a show taped from North Carolina by WCW's precursor Jim Crocket Promotions. Later to avoid confusion in the listings with ABC's Wide world of sports, the programmes name would be changed to NWA World Wide Wrestling.
The next major shift would occur in 1983, when the show would begin taping in major arenas as opposed to the old and tired small studio format, an advance that many attribute to Vince McMahon and the WWF, but Crockett did it too. In order to produce the broadcasts Crockett would purchase a mobile TV truck worth a million dollars. Around this time Jim Crockett Promotions was on the rise, but after several years of lavish spending and a lax attitude to their accounts, this wouldn't last. By 1988, the promotion that had been transporting its top talent in private jets and limousines, that had bought other companies like the UWF (not that one), was not on the brink of bankruptcy and Crockett had to sell.
The buyer would be media mogul Ted Turner, paving the way for what would become World Championship Wrestling. By 1992 his booker at the time Bill Watts of the other UWF would change the name one final time to WCW Worldwide. By this time the show would consist of extra matches from television tapings, but this would change in 93 when a television announcer with big ideas named Eric Bischoff was promoted to executive producer over more likely candidates Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone. Eric was seen as breath of fresh air following the old school ways of Bill Watts, and he wouldn't waste time in forwarding his creative vision.
Eric would take Worldwide back to the studio format but with a modern 90's twist, with shows taking place from Disney's MGM Studios in Orlando Florida, This era was known best for the ring that would spin on a platform, as well as signs that would tell the fans who to cheer and boo, presumably because many of the audience came from the Disney parks and might not have been familiar with who the wrestlers were and who to root for.
WCW's relationship with Disney would end in late 1996, possibly as a reaction to the increasing intensity of the product after the NWO launched earlier that year. On one occasion the NWO caused such a stir that locals in Orlando heard a commotion and called the police. This would be the same night that the NWO would brawl with WCW wrestlers, and Kevin Nash would throw Rey Mysterio like a javalin into the side of a truck.
In early 97 Worldwide would move to Universal Studios Florida, which grew a rich history of wrestling from WCW, to TNA and nowadays All Elite Wrestling and even Ring of Honor. I've already gone into more detail about wrestling from Universal Studios in another video on this channel. In 98 the format changed again, to become more of a recap show for WCW's main shows with some exclusive matches added in. This would be the format I grew up watching as Worldwide would be the most easy WCW show to find in England during their final years.
The version of the final broadcast of Worldwide that still exists on YouTube might be a local one, as it begins with an advertisement for WCW to run the Stabler Arena in Bethlehem Pennsylvania on June 27th 2001. At first I thought that this was possibly based on the ill fated idea that WCW would continue to run as a WWE owned touring brand, but plans for that were quickly scrapped. Maybe it was in the cards for Eric Bischoff's planned revamp of WCW had Fusient Media Group managed to acquire the company as he hoped. One theory that has been passed through time was that Eric's plan was for WCW to lay dormant for a couple of months, and then to relaunch with the Big Bang event on May 6th 2001.
On television it looked like the groundwork for the Big Bang might have already started to be paved, with World champion Scott Steiner taking out many of WCW's heroes in early 2001. The rumour that existed for years is that all of the babyfaces that Steiner injured in storyline would go away for long enough for fans to miss them, and they would all return at once in the newly reborn World Championship Wrestling. Eric himself denied all of this on his 83 Weeks podcast, implying that his acquisition of WCW never reached the stages of this much planning. He has confirmed that the plan was for WCW to go off the air for a couple of months and return with the Big Bang event, but that we were never close to that being a reality.
Let's now look at the final edition of Worldwide. The shows intro video didn't feature glossy footage of WCW's top stars like you might expect, but a depressing green filtered time lapse of the Worldwide set being constructed in a studio. We then cut to Worldwide's hosts Scott Hudson and Mike Tenay, and thanks to their professionalism if you weren't clued in to what was going on you might have have no idea that this would be the end. Given how they spend much of the show recapping the Greed pay per view from March 18th, and they don't say much about the final Nitro, it's clear that no-one knew what was going to happen next yet. In a recent interview with Andrew Pope, Scott Hudson said that Worldwide would normally be taped on Wednesday afternoon so air on Saturday, and they taped two endings for the final broadcast. The first ending was recorded just in case the show would be back next week, and the second would be the one that aired. The final words said on a WCW broadcast.
"And this wraps up WCW WorldWide not just for this week but...forever and a day! WCW gone, WorldWide gone, we want to thank you for joining us each and every week here on WorldWide. What a great crew we had! It's been a lot of fun...taping these shows and you can see we have a really good time! For Mike Tenay, I'm Scott Hudson, we'll see you down the road...somewhere else! Thanks for watching WorldWide!"
In a move that is not typical in wrestling, we then saw end credits over a shot, possibly the intro one in reverse, showing the set being taken down. Scott Hudson would note that it was the editors choice to include the nicknames of all the crew members. This might have been done to hint to the viewers that the crew had worked together and become close over the years.
In his sign off Scott mentioned that we would see them somewhere else, and we would, with Mike Tenay becoming the voice of TNA wrestling, and an essential backstage presence until he retired in 2016. Scott Hudson was also around in the early years of TNA as a backstage interviewer and host, gaining notoriety for explaining TNA's overcomplicated King of the Mountain match with the words "It's really quite simple..."
WCW was now, finally gone. Worldwide it's last official broadcast, but the show had a life beyond at least for a little while. Given the nature of its UK broadcasts sometimes being delayed or heavily edited, the programme lasted well into April with its final broadcast being on April 20th. From there following the WWE acquisition, early 80's and 90's episodes would air in the UK on Sky Sports as "WWE classics". It was here that I remember as a kid seeing a blond haired and blue eyed Stunning Steve Austin defending the WCW television title, miles away from his modern Stone Cold Attitude.
There is a sort of irony that this episode of Worldwide was originally broadcast the day before Wrestlemania 17. That is the night that many fans consider the end of an era. But while they are usually referring to WWF Attitude, they could be talking about the wider world of wrestling. If you weren't a WWF fan, or just wanted to watch other wrestling 2001 was not a good year. ECW and WCW were now gone, and several attempts to launch promotions would fail. Fortunately though, the following years would see the rise of an entire scene of independent promotions creating fresh new stars, many of whom are in main events to this day.
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