World Championship Wrestling: Survival

[Joey]

What if? That simple question can inspire a debate like none other and creativity never seen before. The question here is simple, what if WCW survived? What if the WWF didn't buy them out in March of 2001? The butterfly effect of this will most certainly change the course of wrestling history forever. Can WCW rise up to challenge WWF once again? Anything can happen in the wrestling world.

[Joey]

Based: Atlanta, Georgia

Founded: 1988
__________________________________

Company Type: Private
Ownership: Mark Cuban
President: Eric Bischoff
Head Booker: Joseph Kearn
Creative Team Members: Paul Heyman, Dusty Rhodes
_________________________________

Subsidiary Divisions

None as of yet

[Joey]

WCW Champions

WCW World Heavyweight

Goldberg
Reign: 2nd
Won: September 23, 2001
Previous Champion: Booker T (4)

WCW United States

Mark Jindrak
Reign: 1st
Won: June 24, 2001
Previous Champion: Booker T (1)

WCW World Tag Team

The Pitbulls (Jamie Noble & Kid Kash)
Reign: 1st
Won: June 24, 2001
Previous Champions: The Natural Born Thrillers (Chuck Palumbo & Sean O'Haire) (1)

WCW Cruiserweight

AJ Styles
Reign: 1st
Won: September 23, 2001
Previous Champion: Shane Helms (1)

[Joey]

Roster

Wrestlers

Main Event

Booker T
Goldberg
Jeff Jarrett
Scott Steiner
Sting

Mid-Card
Big Vito
Chuck Palumbo
Curt Hennig
Joe Seanoa
Johnny the Bull
Lance Storm
Mark Jindrak
Sean O'Haire
Shane Douglas

Cruiserweights
AJ Styles

Billy Kidman

Brian Kendrick

Bryan Danielson

Chavo Guerrero, Jr.

Elix Skipper

Jushin "Thunder" Liger

Juventud

Shane Helms

Jamie Noble

Jimmy Yang

Kid Kash

Masato Tanaka

Norman Smiley

Rey Mysterio, Jr.

Shannon Moore

Yoshihiro Tajiri

Other On-Air Talent

Kevin Kelly - Lead Announcer

Roddy Piper - Color Commentator

David Penzer - Ring Announcer

Ric Flair - Director of Authority

[Joey]

WCW Tag Teams and Stables

Tag Teams

Natural Born Thrillers - Chuck Palumbo & Sean O'Haire
Filthy Animals - Billy Kidman & Rey Mysterio, Jr.
The Mamalukes - Big Vito & Johnny the Bull
The Pitbulls - Kid Kash & Jamie Noble
The Dark Empire - Masato Tanaka & Yoshihiro Tajiri

[Joey]

Free Space

[Joey]

Free Space

[Joey]

You may now post

[Deleted]

Awesome Joey! I have always wanted to do this, but just aren't accustomed to everything WCW to do it myself...... Looking forward to the booker, Joey!

[Joey]

Chapter 1: Keeping Our Head Above Water (March - April 2001)

March 26, 2001 was slated to be the final episode of Monday Night Nitro and the final show for the company called WCW. This, however, was not the case. The morning after that "final" Nitro, news would break around the world that billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks had purchased WCW right out from under Vince McMahon's nose for 7.5 million dollars which was a relatively small sum for Cuban who, just the year prior, paid 285 million to purchase the Mavericks franchise.

Over the next week, Cuban would name Eric Bischoff as President of the company due to his wrestling mind and Cuban elected to take a more backseat role and let Bischoff deal with the wrestling side of things. Bischoff decided that his first move as President was to remove Vince Russo from his position as Head Booker and get rid of him completely from the company before revealing the new Head Booker as a relatively unknown entity named Joseph Kearn who had been known for writing for several low-budget movies in the late 90s. He also shockingly named ECW's Paul Heyman and Dusty Rhodes to the creative team. This was the first of many moves Bischoff made in the first days after being named President.

One big issue that would plague the company in the early weeks following the Cuban purchase would be talent. Many would jump ship to the WWF as most were unsure of their future within the company. The relatively large list of talent leaving would be as follows: Air Paris, Animal, Bam Bam Bigelow, Crowbar, Ernest Miller, Ron Harris, Don Harris, Jim Duggan, Kevin Nash, Brian Adams, Brian Clark, Lex Luger, Meng, Rick Steiner, Sid Vicious and The Demon. These people would straight up leave the company but there were some who's contracts were very much in doubt were Sting and Scott Steiner. Nobody knew if they were going to come back or not, there was hope that they would but nobody was sure.

When it came to the TV side of things, Mark Cuban took a more active role in trying to negotiate a television deal which seemed harder than it looked for a company that had just been demolished in the ratings war with the WWF. It seemed as though a TV deal would not be reached until they somehow landed a 1 hour slot on Wednesday nights at 11pm, not really the ideal spot but it would have to do. Eric Bischoff decided to keep the name Nitro.

Another big obstacle that the company would need to overcome was the arena front as both Bischoff and Cuban decided that it was not wise to go on the road again for sometime and they eventually settled on a deal to broadcast Wednesday Night Nitro live from the Reunion Arena in Dallas, Texas.

The first episode of the new Nitro would premiere on April 18, 2001 and it was not a very pretty affair to say the least. Most fans who would tune in and be shocked by how far the production quality had dropped. Most would assume that WCW would have a full on reset with vacating titles but that was not the case as the creative team tried to keep some semblance of storylines from a month ago alive but nothing was really too spectacular that first show back and Eric Bischoff could only pray that things would get better as the first Nitro only scored a 0.8 rating, which was...well not good.

[Joey]

Chapter 2: Creative's Got Nothing For Ya (May 2001)

The initial run on Fox Sports for Wednesday Night Nitro was less than spectacular and after scoring 0.8 the first night, it proceeded to score 0.6 and 0.4 the next two weeks which, in the eyes of the Fox Sports brass was not good enough and WCW was given an ultimatum, get over a 1.0 or be kicked off the network. Owner Mark Cuban took it upon himself to request a month grace period from airing in order to get WCW affairs in order which was granted meaning that the creative team had time to work on some intriguing storylines for Nitro's redebut on Fox Sports.

Head Booker Joseph Kearn took it upon himself to delegate tasks for the other members of the creative team and placed Dusty Rhodes in charge of revamping the tag team division (regular and cruiserweight) while placing Paul Heyman in charge of both the mid-card and Cruiserweight divisions and giving himself the task of sorting out the main event. 

Before this could happen, however, Kearn met with President Eric Bischoff and requested some leeway in axing some members of the roster if they don't fit into the mold of the new WCW and Bischoff obliged. It was around this time where it was confirmed that Sting and Scott Steiner were confirmed to be remaining on the WCW roster after resigning their contracts. Kearn, Heyman and Rhodes were very pleased with this development.

Meanwhile, within the tag team division, Rhodes decided that he was going to ax Alex Wright and Disco Inferno from the roster effectively ending The Boogie Knights and bringing the total number of tag teams to 4, not a very good number in the grand scheme of the company. He decided to ax the Cruiserweight Tag Team Championship altogether as there was not nearly enough tag teams on the roster to sustain it. One tag team that was formed by Rhodes was Kid Kash and Jamie Noble and they would go under the name of The Pitbulls. Shane Helms would be promptly removed from the 3-Count stable and it would then consist of Evan Karagias and Shannon Moore without the name. The tag team division was looking well with 6 teams of talented competitors and a tag team turmoil was scheduled for June's Great American Bash event featuring all six teams for the tag team titles.

Meanwhile, in the mid-card division, Heyman would immediately fire Dustin Rhodes (who would take up a road agent role), Hugh Morris, Kaz Hayashi, Kanyon, Mike Sanders, Shawn Stasiak and Terry Funk. He would then work on bringing the Cruiserweight title back to prominence by booking a Cruiserweight Open Invitational at the Great American Bash for the championship. This open invitatonal will feature cruiserweights on the roster and from all around the globe. Heyman was very displeased with Booker T holding the United States and World Heavyweight titles and wanted to take the title off of him but didn't want to make him look weak and instead pitched an idea to Kearn who immediately loved it and it was announced on WCW.com that Booker T had been stripped of the title due to "controversy" regarding his title victory and booked former ECW star Mike Awesome against upstart Mark Jindrak for the title at the Great American Bash, some fans were confused as to why these two got the nod but Heyman promised the story would be told when Nitro returned to air.

Joseph Kearn decided to take on the biggest project of them all by revamping the main event scene and started with letting Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair go, mainly as a cost cutting measure and seeing them as being unable to draw a huge audience anymore, although Flair would be brought back by Bischoff as the on-screen Director of Authority and Hogan became a road agent, much to Kearn's dismay. However, Kearn soldiered on and wrote a coherent story that booked Booker T defending his title against both Scott Steiner and Sting at the Great American Bash. Along with, Kearn was adamant on elevating Curt Hennig to the main event scene and started that during this process too.

[---------]

Nice.

[SP]

Real nice, I like the way you've progress and am interested in The Great American Bash. Booker T defending against Sting and Steiner would be one hell of a match, but hopefully Booker can hold onto that title as long as possible.

[Yannic]

This looks pretty solid so far mate, hopefully you got some proper plans for Hennig!

[Joey]

Chapter 5: The Great American Bash (June 2001)

WCW's Wednesday Night Nitro returned to Fox Sports the first week of June and scored a 1.2 rating which was phenomenal compared to their previous effort. The redebut episode featured Sting facing Scott Steiner in the main event and Ric Flair debuting as the Director of Authority. In the weeks leading up to the June 24th Great American Bash pay-per-view, a tournament was run to name a new United States Champion which ended with Mike Awesome and Mark Jindrak making the final 2 but with only 4 matches confirmed for the show, Eric Bischoff and Mark Cuban were warned by industry experts that the buyrate would be extremely low.

The pay-per-view kicked off with the Cruiserweight Invitational with champion Shane Helms defending against AJ Styles, Elix Skipper, Jimmy Yang, Norman Smiley, Jushin "Thunder" Liger, Juventud, Pscicosis and Super Crazy. The match featured numerous huge spots and culminated with Helms pinning Juventud following a Shining Wizard. 

Goldberg would make his return to WCW to a huge pop and issued an open challenge to anyone on the roster and it was accepted by Lance Storm and he was quickly destroyed and pinned after a Jackhammer.

The next bout would be the the tag team turmoil match featuring all the teams on the roster. The WCW World Tag Team Champion Natural Born Thrillers began the match against Kid Romeo & Elix Skipper and the latter team was eliminated when Palumbo and O'Haire hit a Double Superkick on Romeo for the pinfall. The next entrants into the match was The Mamalukes and they put up a big fight until Palumbo hit a powerbomb on Johnny the Bull to pin him and eliminate them from the bout. The next team was Evan Karagias & Shannon Moore and they were really no match for the Thrillers and were put down with a Double Superkick to Karagias in a matter of moments. The Filthy Animals were the second to last entrants into the bout and they were eliminated after Mysterio hit the West Coast Pop on O'Haire for the pinfall. The final team into the bout was The Pitbulls and they managed to defeat the Filthy Animals after Kash hit Kidman with the Money Maker to crown The Pitbulls as the NEW WCW World Tag Team Champions.

The co-main event of the evening was to crown a new WCW United States Champion and featured Mike Awesome taking on Mark Jindrak. The match wasn't too well put together and actually saw Jindrak drop Awesome on his head and seemingly break his neck. Jindrak pinned him shortly after but it looked as though this was not the finish to the match but Jindrak became the NEW WCW Untied States Champion. Following the match, Jindrak was assaulted by Curt Hennig.

The main event of the evening saw Booker T defending his WCW World Heavyweight Championship against Sting and Scott Steiner. Steiner dominated a majority of this match but Sting whacked him with the bat and Booker T took advantage to hit the Scissors Kick on Sting and claim the pinfall to retain the championship. 

The pay-per-view had an abysmal 102,245 buyrate.