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PWINSIDER Q&A: THE DAY WCW STARTED TO DIE, BECOMING A WWE REFEREE, GREAT KHALI AND MORE

I know I’m beating the proverbial dead horse here, but after watching Smackdown this past Friday night, I don’t think I’ve seen a much worse wrestler in my almost 20+ years of watching wrestling than Khali.  He completely no sells moves that should hurt even him a little bit, like when Batista speared him into the steel post, and then they have him keep Batista in that vice grip hold longer than they should have, cause there’s a good chance Batista could have gotten hurt.  With Unforgiven on the Horizon, I hope WWE wakes up and has him drop the title.  I know it’s not gonna happen, but I can dream can’t I?  Anyway, my first question is, why doesn’t WWE go through more of an effort to try and make this guy a better wrestler?

As you know, WWE had Khali drop the belt at Unforgiven to Batista, although he could always regain it down the line.  As far as making him a better wrestler, trust me when I say they tried, but some people just don't have the ability to pick up the inner workings of the business, but when you have the look WWE wants, it'll be overlooked.  In the case of Khali, they overlooked every glaring negative!

My buddy jokingly asked how he could apply to become a referee for the WWE, and that got me thinking.  How would one become a referee for the WWE?

The same way you become a WWE wrestler.  You get trained, you work the independent scene, network and make contacts and try to vie for a tryout.  If you are lucky, you get signed to a developmental deal for relatively no money and pray to be called up.  A lot of the referees also hold positions in the WWE ring crew.

When they started the Sting crow gimmick, did WCW know it would be Sting vs. Hogan a year-plus later or did they just respond to the flow of the stories and the fans?

The Crow Sting deal (which was a Scott Hall idea) was always planned to climax with Hulk Hogan vs. Sting, and since Starrcade was the company's flagship event, it was always intended to take place there.  Obviously along the way, they did lots of teases and turns, but the storyline went as planned, at least until the finish, where the entire thing went to hell.

Since they spent so much time with the build, how/why did they blow the payoff so badly during the end of the Starrcade match and subsequent weeks and months? I wanted to see a clear (Goldberg type) win that set Sting on his path. I mean by February no one cared and the bloom was off of Sting with nowhere to go. I am one who feels that Sting was screwed over during each of his title reigns.

If the blame is to fall on one person's shoulders, that would be Eric Bischoff.  Bischoff had a reputation for kowtowing to Hulk Hogan's demands since he had given Hogan creative control contractually.  According to Bischoff in his book, Hogan felt that Sting wasn't dedicated enough to the business and that it would be a mistake to switch the belt.  Then, as if by magic, Nick Patrick's "fast count on Sting", which was designed specifically to play off of the Montreal screwjob so Bret Hart could save the day, was incredibly slow, so now Sting looked like a moron who got pinned clean and Bret Hart looked like a jerk who screwed over the heel - Hogan.  Since Bischoff was in charge of the entire company and didn't dole out any punishment to anyone responsible for the screwy end of the biggest show in the history of the entire company, he set WCW on a downward spiral that led to such wonderful ideas as killing the Goldberg streak, the one finger Kevin Nash-Hulk Hogan finish before 40,000 paying fans and other terrible things.  While others had a hand in killing WCW, to me, it all goes back to that Starrcade finish.  That was the night the fire that burned Rome to the ground was lit.

I recently watched Fully Loaded 1999 with the "End Of A Era First Blood Match" between "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and The Undertaker.  With Austin victorious, Vince McMahon had to leave television forever, yet he was back in just a few weeks.  Was it always intended for McMahon to make such a quick return?

No, it was just a storyline climax.  I think McMahon actually returned in September 1999.

 

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