[Cheering]
Are you ready?
[narrator] As the new millennium dawned...
Oh!
The once industry-dominating World Championship Wrestling...
Bischoff! Damn it all!
...was struggling to keep pace with their rival,
the World Wrestling Federation.
You are lookin' at the next WWF champion,
and that's the bottom line!
In many ways WCW's fortunes and future
hinged on one key event.
Bash at the Beach 2000.
Candidly, one of the biggest disasters of my entire career.
Bash at the Beach was one of WCW's biggest annual
pay per view events, and in the year 2000,
it was the stage for an epic clash between two of
wrestlings most controversial creative talents.
And I promise you will never see that piece of shit again.
I think Vince Russo is motivated by attention.
I don't know why.
I don't know if he didn't get enough
when he was a little kid.
Eric represented everything I despised
in the wrestling business.
And bro, I'll tell ya, you're never gonna out work me
because I'm better than you.
[Laughing] If he believes that,
he's got a problem with reality.
The incident at Bash of the Beach 2000 is one
in which every participant has their own version of
what actually took place that night.
And I said, "Hulk, you're not walking out of here
the WCW champion. That is not happening."
What's Jeff doing?
Now it was script's out the window, what's gonna happen?
And it's like, nobody wants to watch wrestling and see that.
It was one of the dumbest things I ever saw.
And Hogan, you big bald son of a bitch, kiss my ass!
That was never my plan.
Hogan was pretty sensitive about being called bald,
even though he doesn't have any hair.
Did I know that Hulk Hogan was gonna take legal action?
How could you not?
There will come a time, there will come a place,
when I will tell the entire story of what happened
at Bash at the Beach.
The legacy of Bash at the Beach,
the single biggest black eye in WCW history.
♪
I despise the wrestling business, bro,
I despise the people in it.
You cannot be a good person and
exist in the wrestling business.
You can't bro, because you enter a shark tank.
And unless you become a shark,
they will eat you alive.
My name is Vince Russo.
I was in the wrestling business since 1991.
So, I'm going on 32 years now.
[Cheering]
You can boo all you want, that doesn't change
the fact that I'm better than you!
What I'm looking for tonight is ratings, big ratings!
And we're gonna deliver, you son of a bitch!
Vince, we've gotta know, who is the WCW
World's Heavyweight Champion?
-Question? -Question.
-There is no question, Mike. -There is no question?
Who is here with the belt?
Um...
Harm.
Yeah, I'd say, long-term harm. Yeah, yeah.
In the 1990s, professional wrestling is bigger and
hotter than it has ever been before,
as industry leader Vince McMahon's World Wrestling
Federation faces a serious challenge to its popularity
by an aggressive challenger- billionaire Ted Turner's
World Championship Wrestling.
WWF would have been the dominant company
from '84 through, I would say, '96?
In '96 it flipped over and WCW was dominant.
My name is Dave Meltzer and I'm the editor of the
Wrestling Observer Newsletter, and
I've been covering pro wrestling since the early 1970s.
The flaw of Vince McMahon is the only thing
so certain thing works. That's it.
And there's a million things in wrestling that
when done well can work.
As both companies engage in a fierce ratings war pitting
their Monday night shows against each other,
the rise of WCW is led by it's ambitious
young president, Eric Bischoff.
I decided the only way I was gonna be successful
was to be different.
I listed all of the things that made WWE successful,
and I decided to do exactly the opposite of
what they were doing.
I'm Eric Bischoff.
Former president of WCW.
I'm the first one that created a weekly
live television format for professional wrestling.
I looked at the WWE and they were taped and I thought,
you know, wrestling needs to be live.
When it's live the audience has to watch it.
WCW before Nitro was just a really bad
cheap imitation of WWE.
It was just silly, silly, childish stuff.
-The Shock Master! -Alright!
-The Shock Master. -[Laughing]
They were ignoring men 18 to 39.
So, I thought, okay, there's my opportunity.
You know, I began wondering,
how can I transition into more reality based product?
Eric produced a different kind of a television show
than had ever been done before.
He was just ahead of the game and
Vince was behind the times.
Before launching Monday Nitro,
Bischoff aims to legitimize WCW
by head hunting major talent,
poaching Vince McMahon's biggest star
to be the new face of his company.
We're the number two wrestling company
in the world.
We're a fraction of the WWE's ratings.
And bringing in Hulk Hogan changed the perception of WCW.
It was a seismic shift.
I mean, I remember Eric telling me,
"Where Hogan goes, goes the money." That was his saying.
And all of a sudden my phone rings one day and
it's my buddy Diamond Dallas Page, and he said,
"Eric." You know, "Scott Hall wants to leave WWE."
He was Razor Ramon then.
So I do the deal with Scott Hall and about a week
after that I get a call from Kevin Nash.
Same thing. Bam!
The lightbulb went off in my head.
There's my storyline. There's my reality.
[Announcer] Here they come!
They've got baseball bats in their hands.
[Eric] The NWO, the New World Order.
-Oh, oh, oh! -What is he doing?
-Oh my God! -Is he the third man?
He's the third man!
What the hell is going on here?
We left WWE in the dust. In the dust.
We weren't just beating them,
we were beating them badly.
But the WWF isn't down for the count,
as fans eventually begin gravitating to a new
generation of superstars, and a radical new approach to
wrestling storylines introduced by a brash
young writer, named Vince Russo.
Writing a wrestling show is not rocket science,
and one of the things I said to Vince when I first
sat down with him, "Vince, that wrestling handbook
gets thrown out the window." And I said,
"Vince, from now on they think we're gonna go left,
we're gonna go right."
Now all of a sudden week to week to week,
they don't know what's going to happen.
The idea of crash TV is
I am writing that TV like the
viewer at home
is sitting there with the remote in his hand,
begging me to give him the opportunity to see
what was going on on the other channel.
[Yelling] Look out!
So it would be short match, backstage segment,
vignette, short match, fight in the locker room,
vignette, boom, boom, boom!
And you are not giving that viewer the opportunity to,
"Ah, let's see what's on Nitro." That's crash TV.
Russo's concept of crash TV plays a key part in turning
the tide, and soon the WWF is back on top,
beating WCW every Monday night.
Towards probably the middle of '98, certainly in '99,
that had reversed again. Now WWE was on top.
And that was a magical period.
I don't want to dismiss Vince Russo's,
you know, contributions...
but, they had Stone Cold Steve Austin
and The Rock at the same time.
And that's like, you know, the Yankees with
Babe Ruth and, uh, Lou Gehrig.
WCW, by the end of '99 they started losing money.
They were the Titanic heading to the iceberg.
[Horn blaring]
My budgets were becoming slashed.
-Oh! -Oh!
Eventually I got let go in '99,
because I was fighting that, I was struggling,
I was fighting it.
Turner executives relieved Bischoff of his
creative duties, while rumours emerge that Russo is
overworked and frustrated in his role at the WWF.
Well, WWF added a second show, Smack Down,
and did not give Vince Russo a raise.
So they went from doing one show a week
to two shows a week.
I went into Vince's office, I said, "Vince,
I want to be able to move my family closer to my
wife's family, so my wife isn't alone and
she has help raising the kids.
Because Vince, I'm never home."
And he turned around, bro, without missing a beat,
and said, "You make enough money.
You should be able to hire a nanny
to take care of your kids."
You don't tell a proud Italian man who loves
his family to hire a nanny to watch his kids.
Bro, at that moment, it was over.
And they had me up to WCW that weekend.
I was shocked when WCW brought him in.
It was a match made in heaven...
or hell, depending on who you talk to.
I know I'm going into this thing
with a target on my back.
This is the first time
I am going to be working with these veterans
that have been at WCW for a long time.
From day one, Hulk and Eric were like this.
I can actually remember locking eyes with Hulk
for the first time.
And what I read from Hulk immediately was mistrust.
Vince Russo was smart enough to know that
you couldn't build around Hulk Hogan anymore
if you wanted a future.
So, yes, I think he was trying to figure out a way to
remove him, because Hulk Hogan had so much power,
because he was Hulk Hogan.
And I've heard the critics ask the question,
"Well, is Hulk Hogan getting older?" Well yeah,
Hulk Hogan's getting older, and so is every other
damn wrestler in the back too.
-Day by day. -[Cheering]
So there was this narrative that Hulk Hogan couldn't
wrestle in the ring anymore, or he had no value,
he should retire, blah blah blah, blah, blah...
where in reality, the business side of the
wrestling business still thought
very highly of Hulk Hogan.
Taking the reins of WCW in October of 1999,
Russo begins reshaping and reimagining the
company's flagship show, Monday Nitro.
Vince Russo believed, you know,
the more extreme and shocking you make it
the more they will like it.
We are just gonna hump you
like the dogs that we are.
Sometimes that's right, but you also run into a thing
where once you've done it, it's...
you desensitize the audience.
And then there's nothing you can do.
[Cheering] Yeah!
I don't know, I didn't watch his shit.
I couldn't watch it.
[Vince] I was there for three months.
The ratings went up in those three months.
Well, he'll tell you they were improving.
But no, they weren't up.
Artificially it looked good, but every month,
if you'd do the month rating, the October, the November,
the December, every month it was down.
Slightly.
[Vince] Next thing I know, management tells me,
"We're going in a different direction."
Then I said, "Okay, fine, just, I'll go home.
Send me my money."
Now that both Bischoff and Russo have failed to turn
WCW's ratings around,
the network lands on a new idea-
both men working together.
Brad Siegel is the head of TNT and TBS.
"Vince, I want you to meet somebody for lunch."
I know immediately he's talking about Eric Bischoff.
And now my job is to oversee Vince Russo.
You know, between Vince and Eric,
I never felt that there was a power struggle.
My name is Jeff Jarrett.
Some call me JJ , some call me The Last Outlaw.
1, 2! New champion!
[Bell ringing]
I just think philosophically those two guys view creating
and producing wrestling content entirely different.
A philosophical difference as opposed to
a personality difference.
Is Lance Storm officially in WCW now?
Yes!
I negotiated my contract with both Vince Russo and Eric,
and I much more preferred dealing with Eric.
Russo was the creative end of it and
he was, um, different.
Vince Russo sat down with, alright well,
he's the guy that's going to be in charge of creative.
He's looking at me and he's like,
"Just off the top of my head, the first thing I think of is,
like, maybe making you Eric's illegitimate son."
And I look at Eric and Eric has the same look
on his face, what the hell?
Like isn't Eric like ten years older than me?
How is he my illegitimate dad?
[Eric] I did go into it with an open mind.
And, initially it was kind of fun,
but it became apparent to me that
Vince Russo is void of any
creative instincts or talents.
[Vince] You could not have put two of
the most opposite people together
and said, "Go."
♪
With WCW in trouble, the company's survival
hinges on reversing its downward spiral.
Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo devise a storyline
designed to play off the real life backstage drama,
and the tensions between Bischoff's veterans and
Russo's desire to push younger talent.
There's new sheriffs in town.
The idea of the program was The Millionaire's Club
versus the Young Blood,
where all these young guys that were held down,
now they're going to get an opportunity to shine.
Little bit of a civil war, creatively speaking.
Between young and old, because that's, like,
part of life, right?
Get that damn camera out of here!
Bischoff and Russo's storyline fails to
win over fans or improve the ratings.
Hmm... man.
That whole year of 2000 has kind of like blanked out of
my mind because it was so bad.
[Cheering] Oh! Good God!
It was destined for failure from the beginning.
Vince Russo, I was done with him creatively because
I knew he was a bullshitter.
Eric wanted to be in charge.
So I call Brad Siegal and I say,
"Bro, put Eric in charge of the show."
Brad Siegal said to me, "No, no, no, no, no, Vince,
we want you to write the show."
Okay, fine.
The next time I see Eric Bischoff...
Bash at the Beach.
In the week leading up to the pay per view event,
Russo prepares the show with a focus on
who will emerge the next World Champion.
That week I walked into our creative meeting and I threw
a question out there at the very beginning of the
meeting, and the question was,
"If you could put the WCW title on anyone in the
company right now, who would it be?"
And I went around the table.
"Booker T, Booker T, Booker T."
And unanimously everybody said Booker T.
I said, "Well, then that's what we're gonna do."
[Cheering]
I had had the belt at this time, uh, a couple of months.
And so my overarching creative was for
"The Chosen One" Jeff Jarrett
to face multiple legends and be victorious,
until it was time to switch the title to Booker T.
I'm gonna tell you like this here,
we gon' turn this mother out!
Now can you dig it?
A lot of significance, a lot of upside,
and I saw Vince Russo's vision and bought into it.
So, the main event of the evening was Jeff Jarrett
versus Booker T for the WCW title
with Booker T going over.
He's one of those guys where you knew he was really good.
Wrestling had not been kind to African American wrestlers.
Give somebody else a chance, at least it's something new.
To add more intrigue to the event,
Russo makes the decision to give Jeff Jarrett
one last win before losing the belt to Booker T.
A win over Hollywood Hulk Hogan.
When I wrote the very first version of the show,
it was Jarrett against Hogan,
and I wrote Hulk Hogan very strong.
However, he was not going to win the WCW title.
Why?
Because you just had an entire room
agree on Booker T.
Vince Russo had his idea, what he wanted to do
at Bash at the Beach.
Hulk Hogan and I were on a completely different page.
What Vince Russo wanted to do didn't freakin' matter.
Hulk Hogan had 100% creative control over his storyline
and how his character was presented on television.
Back in 1994, Bischoff had lured Hogan to WCW
by offering him one of the most generous contracts
in wrestling history.
I think the technical wording was
he had control of his finishes.
It was like, if he didn't want to lose,
he didn't have to lose.
It's easy to sit here and say, "Unprecedented",
but to that date, someone with no ownership,
but to have complete creative control,
that is a conflict of interest.
When a talent has creative control,
it sort of comes down to the simplicity.
Are they worried about their bottom line?
Or are they worried about the company's bottom line?
It's radically different.
So I wrote the first script where Hulk Hogan looks
very strong, but he does not win the WCW title.
Hulk Hogan poo poo'd that first script.
So now I re-write the script, and I really make
Hulk Hogan look like King Kong.
Not only does he wind up killing Jeff Jarrett,
he winds up killing Scott Steiner.
He literally winds up wiping everybody,
but he does not leave with the title.
Hulk says he's good with the second version.
So now I walk into Bash at the Beach that Sunday
thinking everything's fine, and Hulk is gonna do
what the second script says.
♪
Eric Bischoff comes up to me and says,
"You better go in the trailer and talk to Hulk Hogan
because he's not gonna do this." Who's in the trailer?
Me, Hulk Hogan, and Eric Bischoff.
So if you wanna break that down,
it is clearly two against one.
Did Vince Russo and I discuss it several times?
Yes, we did.
It was my job to oversee him.
It was my call, not Vince Russo's call.
He didn't get to vote.
He thought he did, but he didn't.
Eric informs me that they came up with a scenario,
and that scenario is Hulk winning the title.
He wants to win the WCW title.
Eric's idea is to blur the line between reality and
fiction, with a story angle where Hulk flexes
his creative control clause to win the belt.
As Jeff Jarrett throws the match in disgust,
Hulk, angry at Jarrett's refusal to fight,
is then scripted to storm out of the ring.
The idea was for Hulk to leave in a state of
frustration and anger as a result of the
finish of the match.
The important element of it was that once the WCW
realized that Hulk Hogan wasn't coming back and
he wasn't giving the belt back,
that would force WCW to then vacate that title,
and create a tournament for a new
World Heavyweight Champion.
And finally at Halloween Havoc,
which was our big October pay per view,
the two finalists in that tournament,
before it physically took place,
Hogan was gonna make a surprise appearance
and say, "Ah-ah-ah, I still have the belt,
and if you want this you've gotta beat me."
Boom. There's your story.
[Vince] I was pissed.
Bro, you're pulling this bullshit the day of a show.
I re-wrote the show twice.
This show is starting in an hour.
It got to the point where I said, "Look,
we're gonna get on the phone with Brad Siegel and
we're gonna lay it out, and we'll let Brad choose."
And Brad said, "Go with Eric's idea." That's it.
Now you've got the president of the network
who's the tie breaker.
It was over and done.
[Vince] Eric wanted to be in charge.
He wanted things to go back to the way they were.
Bro, I'm not an idiot.
So, Hulk lays out this elaborate story,
and I know the story ends with him winning the title.
While he's laying out the story, this ear is listening,
this side of my brain is
figuring out another story.
Because he's, I'm not,
he's not walking out with the title.
[Jeff] Pay per view show time starts at 8 o'clock.
7, 7:30, somewhere in that window.
Vince comes to me and says, "Bro"- In his great
New Yorker accent- "This is what we're doin'."
"Jeff, Hulk doesn't want to do the job for you.
'F' Hulk. Lay down for him.
Let him leave with his freaking belt.'
We wanted everybody to believe it.
Jeff was not in on it.
We wanted everybody in the back to believe this,
that was the goal.
Vince was pretty clear, "Go to the ring,
we'll get the bell to start the match.
Just make it very clear you're taking a dive.
You're laying down for him." And I was dumbfounded.
And I said, "Vince, this story is not well thought out.
It doesn't make any logical sense and-
for a babyface to capture gold this way."
There's a real bad taste that if a champion
is gonna be a champion,
don't you really wanna beat somebody?
And this was the opposite of that.
And there's a million other options, I felt,
that the audience would say, "This is the best you guys
could come up with?" I told Vince this.
Everybody loses in this scenario, everybody loses.
♪
As Bash at the Beach 2000 begins,
a storyline is in place for current WCW champion
Jeff Jarrett to take a dive for Hulk Hogan.
Everyone is ready to put the plan in motion,
until Jarrett begins having second thoughts.
When it came down to match time,
I had a real overwhelming sense of,
"Do I really wanna do this?
Do I really wanna be a part of this mess?
Do I really wanna walk the aisle and
be a part of this finish?"
Those thoughts went through my mind.
Because my father, my grandmother,
my outlook on the industry, that you really only have
one boss and that's the fans.
[Cheering]
Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to the year 2000
WCW Bash at the Beach,
and the main event of the evening...
When they hit my music, I stayed in the back.
Where's Jarrett? I mean,
his music has been playing for well over a minute,
there's no sign of him. What's going on here?
This is not like The Chosen One
to stand us up on a pay per view.
So my music played quite a while,
I think it looped two or three times.
And I stayed over in the little tunnel and
really just thought through it.
I could take matters into my own hands and say,
"I'm not doing the dive." I could, you know,
jump in and make him punch me around,
and make him give me a big boot.
What are my real options?
What is gonna protect my family and my career best?
So much at stake here.
I can't say that I was legitimately angry.
I can say, thoroughly disgusted.
And when I finally said, "Let's get this over with,"
that was where my head was at.
-Here he is. -[Cheering]
By the time I headed down the aisle way,
everything in my mind was, "Hogan,
you want your creative control so bad, take it."
You know somethin', Jeff Jarrett?
You are The Chosen One,
because I have chosen you to
power bomb your ass through this mat,
so come on down and get your ass kicked, Jarrett.
Looking across the ring, and looking at Hulk,
and knowing that he orchestrated all of this...
I never, ever looked at him the same way.
[Cheering]
What's Jeff doing? What's Jeff doing?
[Fans cheering & shouting]
Russo's talking to him, what's he saying?
Russo I think told Jarrett to lay down, what is going on?
Look it, Russo is holding the belt up like,
"Do you want the belt?" Pin the man, Jarrett's down!
I don't, and Hogan is as shocked as we are.
What in the world? Jeff Jarrett!
There's confusion.
Like, they really don't know what's going on.
The essence of professional wrestling through the
generations has been the ability to blur the lines
between what's not fiction and what's fiction.
But the old promoter adage,
"You confuse them, you lose them."
We confused 'em, and we lost 'em.
This can't be Jeff Jarrett,
a man that grew up in this sport!
Is there- what is going on?
He just threw the world title to Hogan.
What the hell? Now Russo.
I'll be honest with ya.
All I wanna make sure is this plan carries out the
exact same way I laid it out in the trailer.
Jeff laid down, Hulk Hogan,
you're going home with your belt.
This is all part of the story.
Is this your deal, Russo?
[Commentary] Wow...
That's why this company is in the damn shape it's in
because of bullshit like this.
[Cheering]
Referee counted 1,2,3.
And I rolled out to the ring and went straight to the back.
[Cheering]
My God, this is real life. 1,2,3.
[Bell Tolling]
Ladies and gentlemen, that is not something
they go over with us at the production meeting.
No, there are swerves and there are swerves.
We've all been swerved.
And we went forward exactly the way Hulk
wanted to go forward.
The audience believed that Hulk Hogan was pissed,
and he took the belt and he left the building.
It went according to plan.
We jump in the limo,
we leave the arena with the belt,
we go to the airport.
We're on the plane,
we're high five-ing, cracking a beer, laughing.
Everything went the way we wanted it to go.
As Bischoff and Hogan leave the arena
the show continues,
but what happens next will be debated by wrestling fans and
insiders for decades to come, as Vince Russo
takes matters into his own hands.
Well, here's Mr. Russo now.
What the hell is next?
30 minutes later the plane lands,
and all of a sudden Hogan's phone is blowing up.
♪
And so is mine.
Russo went out and
cut this scathing promo and buried Hulk.
This was like their big, great swerve,
that somehow turned real when Russo does the promo
later and things end up getting worse.
There's only one way for me to do this and
that's for me to tell it like it is.
You know, bro, again,
these are the things people hate me for.
♪
As agreed upon before the show even started,
after Jeff Jarrett takes a dive,
Hulk leaves the building with the belt,
enraging and confusing the WCW audience.
Now, to the surprise of everyone,
Vince Russo makes his way out to the ring.
Well, here's Mr. Russo now.
-What the hell is next? -Now what?
I don't know.
Maybe Russo can explain to the world what we have seen.
My entire life, every promo I've ever cut...
There's only one way for me to do this and
that's for me to tell it like it is.
I don't know what I'm going to say.
I am in the moment.
That's real, and that's what people believe.
Here's where the story is.
Here's where my character is.
Go.
Let me tell you people what happened out here
in this ring tonight.
All day long I'm playing politics with Hulk Hogan,
because Hulk Hogan, tonight,
wants to play his creative control card.
And to Hulk Hogan that meant that tonight
in the middle of this ring, when he knew it was bullshit,
he beats Jeff Jarrett.
Because of Russo's crazy booking style
we're all like, "Is this the plan?
Are they working us?
If this was the plan, it's stupid,
and if it's not the plan, it's even stupider."
We're all just sitting there going,
"What the hell is going on?"
And let me tell you who doesn't give a shit about
this company, that goddamn politician Hulk Hogan.
Hogan got his belt and he went the hell home,
and I promise everybody or else I'll go in the goddamn
grave, you will never see that piece of shit again.
Adding to the confusion of the moment,
Russo shocks the crowd by announcing a new main event.
Hulk Hogan now has the WCW belt.
That belt don't mean shit!
Jeff Jarrett is still the official WCW champion and
he will defend that title tonight in this ring
against Booker T,
who for 14 years has been busting his ass
in WCW and can't get a goddamn break,
because of the Hulk Hogan.
There were real emotions
being fuelled during that promo
because I had it up to here with the wrestling shit.
I really did, bro.
I was over and I was done with it.
[Cheering]
And Hogan, you big bald son of a bitch,
kiss my ass.
[Cheering]
♪
That was... that was not on the formats,
that was not in the production meeting,
that was nowhere to be found anywhere until this.
We do have Booker T now against Jeff Jarrett
for the WCW title.
That was just booked, that's added to tonight.
My plan for the main event, Booker T beats Jeff Jarrett
and becomes the WCW World Heavyweight Champion.
Booker doesn't see Jarrett.
[Shouting & cheering]
So, Hogan, congratulations enjoy the title,
that's the fake title.
The real title is gonna be represented
in the match with Jarrett.
Booker goes over.
We've got a new champion! Oh my God!
Booker T is the world champion!
Booker T is the champ!
Oh my God, bro, I knew Hulk was going to be pissed.
Everybody is believing this 1000%,
and all I'm reading is,
"Vince Russo finally put Hulk Hogan in his place.
Vince Russo finally told Hulk Hogan
what should have been said to him years ago."
I'm reading this and I'm saying,
"He is going to have
a severe problem with it."
[Eric] When Hulk gets really, really angry...
he gets very quiet.
Like, when he stops talking,
that's when you need to start worrying.
And he got real quiet after that, like, real quiet.
Russo claims he pitched this entire storyline to Hulk and
Eric in the trailer, and that they agreed.
Every single thing on that show was
what was discussed in that trailer.
Everything.
From Jarrett laying down, to them leaving,
to me cutting the promo,
to Booker T winning the title at the end.
It was exactly the way I laid it out to
Hogan in the trailer.
That was never my plan.
I guarantee you it wasn't Hulk Hogan's plan.
And, by the way, Hulk Hogan had creative control,
and we certainly didn't know that Booker T was gonna
walk out as the world champion.
Because Hulk Hogan had that world title and was going to
bring it back in October at Halloween Havoc.
That was the plan.
Oh my God, that was part of the plan!
This is a key point.
The reason you have to leave the building is because
if I go out there and cut a scathing promo on you,
and you're still in the building,
you're gonna have to come kill me.
Russo may believe it,
but that's where the pathological part of
being a pathological liar comes in.
None of that was discussed in advance.
None of that was approved by me.
None of it was approved by Hulk Hogan.
It was just the most unprofessional thing that
I'd ever seen in 30 years of television.
The next morning an incensed Hogan calls in to a
local Tampa radio show to rage at Russo.
His anger isn't for show, it's for real.
Ha!
Did I know that Hulk Hogan was gonna take legal action?
How could you not? How could you not?
♪
Infuriated by the events at Bash of the Beach,
Hulk Hogan takes legal action against Vince Russo and WCW.
Because Hulk Hogan tonight wants to play
his creative control card.
Hogan files lawsuits for defamation and
breach of contract, asserting that
Russo's off-script tirade was a part of
the match outcome,
and violated his creative control clause.
I believe Hogan felt double crossed,
and whether Russo actually double crossed him,
or he just got carried away and said shit
he shouldn't have, I have no idea.
But it's like, okay, you don't file lawsuits
if this is just part of a storyline.
It gets to a judge and the judge basically says,
"Let me get this straight. This is a wrestling show.
Vince Russo is in a wrestling ring."
"He is cutting a promo on a wrestling character,
where is the defamation of character?"
Like, Hulk, you're really suing him for this?
Shut up.
I would not have been a good witness for that.
[Sighing] Strange times.
[Laughing]
I am cutting my promo on Hulk Hogan,
not Terry Bollea. This is a story.
Vince Russo is a character, Hulk Hogan is a character.
If Vince Russo takes the position that because he was
performing it as a character that took creative liberties
with another professional, that that somehow makes it
legal and okay, is a reflection of the man's ignorance.
He's got more than a problem with facts and truth,
he's got a problem with reality.
And the first judge threw it out.
They appealed it, and it went to a second judge.
First of all, I don't think that it went to
multiple courts to begin with.
It's not like they took it to the Supreme Court
for crying out loud.
The sworn depositions reveal a key piece of information-
That two days prior to Bash at the Beach,
a fax was sent to the WCW head office.
I found out after the WCW office is closed,
Hulk Hogan's attorney
faxes a letter to the WCW office
saying, "Hulk Hogan is not approving that script."
I have no idea of this.
Here's why that doesn't hold up.
It was never a discussion or a debate
between Hulk and me and Russo,
as to whether or not we were going to do
something other than what Hulk and I had laid out.
It wasn't up for debate, therefore why would...
why would there be this after hours fax excuse?
I mean, I'm trying to decide between two dishonest people,
discussing something from twenty years ago,
to do with a fax.
Yeah, I don't remember a fax, but, you know,
I never heard the fax story. I'll just say that.
♪
The fax exposes Hulk Hogan's real intentions
to maximize the full strength of his creative control,
and refuse any storyline Russo proposed.
Russo triumphs in the courtroom,
as an appeals court affirms that fictional characters
cannot be defamed.
However, it's Hogan who emerges victorious
in his battle against WCW.
Hulk made the decision the night of Bash at the Beach
that, "I probably will not get renewed,
so how can I get another paycheque from
AOL Time Warner?" And that's through litigation.
Well, Hulk Hogan was a key to building the company,
and he obviously had the biggest name,
but nothing is forever, and he'd been there too long and
he became the face of failure.
So, at that point he was getting paid so much,
but he couldn't draw ratings to a great degree anymore,
and people weren't going to go and pay to see Hulk Hogan
matches that they'd seen for all those years.
There was really nothing left to do with him.
[Eric] And then you have scumbags like Dave Meltzer,
who is nothing more than a useful idiot.
Even though he calls himself a journalist,
Dave Meltzer to this day hates Hulk Hogan.
What Hulk Hogan was trying to achieve that night
remains clouded in uncertainty.
You know, I've asked myself that through the years.
What was Hogan's vision?
What was the upside? What was the ultimate plan?
Was it to create so much controversy,
or to get eyeballs on the product?
Was it to be his version of a Montreal Screw Job,
or his version of a...
of a publicity stunt? I don't know.
We certainly know the results of it,
but I have no idea what his vision was.
And Turner settled. I mean-
[Laughing] This is, this is fun.
Because I sat with Hulk and his attorney Henry Holmes
they day that they settled that.
They took me out to dinner and told me what happened.
They never gave me the amount,
that was confidential, but I know it was
well, well into seven figures.
Some folks play chess while others are playing checkers.
The night at Bash at the Beach,
Hulk decided to start playing chess,
and he had the patience, and he cashed out.
♪
What's Jeff doing?
Russo I think told Jarrett to lay down, what's going on?
The facts of what actually went down at
Bash at the Beach 2000 will forever be murky.
But what was clear to fans that night
was that the chaos and confusion only
underscored the disorder and disintegration
at the heart of the company.
It was the reality the night this happened,
and it's the reality as I sit here today saying this.
In a business that gave him everything,
and that's what he gave back.
It's about the most self-centred, egotistical,
power playing move, that only benefitted Hulk.
And that's the reality.
But I mean as far as a storyline based on
what they were doing at the time,
it was something that would get people talking,
and could've built to something.
So I did like Booker T being champion,
I thought that was cool. You know,
it's not same old same old Hulk Hogan champion, right?
So, I guess I did like that.
I do remember that. You know thinking, "Ah."
You know, "At least it's something new."
[Cheering]
And let me tell you who doesn't give a shit about
this company, that goddamn politician Hulk Hogan.
It was destined for failure from the beginning.
At the end of it all,
I don't think that Bash on the Beach
was the nail in the coffin for WCW.
You see what is says right here?
This is my ass, if you will.
You know what I mean? It was like
the gig was already up.
It was just kind of a floundering company.
WCW was a star that became a supernova,
and then burned itself out.
In its dying days, WCW is snapped up by its longtime
arch-rival Vince McMahon and the WWF,
despite having an attractive offer on the table from
a venture capital firm,
spearheaded by Eric Bischoff.
The deal for us to purchase WCW was for $67 million,
we buy all the assets, and we get placement
on Monday nights and Thursday nights.
That was our deal.
And I get a phone call.
They said, "Eric, it's done."
I thought he meant the deal was done.
Like, "Pew!" We own a wrestling company.
I'm about ready to jump up and start dancing.
I said, "You mean it's done?"
He goes, "No, Eric, you don't get it.
It's over, there's no deal.
Turner took it off the table."
It took a minute for that to sink in.
It was a fire sale at the end.
Time Warner wanted to get rid of wrestling.
I think it was like $2.5 million for the actual WCW,
and I think it was $1.7 million more for, um,
the tape library.
It was definitely the equivalent of, um,
you know, buying Manhattan for $25.
That's right.
I own WCW.
[Eric] I have zero regrets, man.
I have zero regrets.
You know, regret to me is a negative thing,
it's like baggage.
I try not to carry any baggage with me at all.
[Jeff] I've said this about Vince Russo.
Vince is a guy who's very passionate, like a lot of us,
and does what he thinks
the viewer wants...
to watch.
And he's had successes and he's had failures,
like all of us.
Do you know how little this shit matters?
It is a form of entertainment.
At the end of the day
I don't hate any of these people, bro.
This was a job.
People ask me all the time today,
"Vince, what is your advice
to get into the wrestling business"?
And I tell them, "Don't."