In the spring of 1992, WCW thought it had found the answer to its business woes. Company boss Jim Herd, a man of whom it would be charitable to say did not have a natural aptitude for the wrestling industry, had been forced out after a string of blunders including letting world champion Ric Flair leave the company over a pay dispute without dropping the belt.
Herd’s replacement, fellow Turner Broadcasting executive Kip Allen Frey, made a great first impression despite his lack of experience in the wrestling world. Most famously he began offering bonus payments to the participants he felt made the most effort to have the best match on major pay-per-view and television broadcasts.
Unfortunately his generosity proved his undoing, with management unimpressed by his decisions to hand out lucrative contracts to the likes of Brian Pillman and Paul Heyman who, despite being a manager, picked up a deal worth more than $200,000 a year with all expenses paid.
While the raw financial figures were misleading (WCW wasn’t credited with programming fees as it was owned by the TV network), the company was still bleeding money. The plan now was to bring in somebody who knew the wrestling business and could get costs under control. Enter the Cowboy.
Bill Watts had a lengthy career highlighted by a feud with former partner Bruno Sammartino in New York before working as a booker in Leroy McGuirk’s Tri-State territory covering Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. He took over the company in 1979, renaming it Mid South Wrestling and enjoying several years of success including several shows at the New Orleans Superdome. The best remembered feud pitted the young Fabulous Freebirds against Junk Yard Dog, who became a star through a combination of a Goldberg-like streak of quick wins and his appeal among the area’s African-American combination.
The promotion later suffered when a collapse in the oil industry hit the local economy hard, though this may have only hastened an inevitable decline. The expansion of national cable television was putting paid to most regional territories and although Watts attempted a national expansion after rebranding as the Universal Wrestling Federation, he was in an unenviable third place in a two-horse race between Vince McMahon and Jim Crockett.
In 1987, Watts sold what was left of his territory to Crockett and departed the wrestling business. Crockett only lasted a year or so longer before selling out to Ted Turner — the man whose promotion Watts now headed.
Watts quickly made a splash in his new workplace: quite literally if you believe stories that he urinated off his office balcony, in a rubbish bin at a Turner executive party, or both. He certainly struggled to adjust to the corporate management structure of both WCW and its parent company and eventually he and booker Dusty Rhodes had to be ordered to wear professional office clothing to work rather than showing up in jeans or sweat pants.
Initial impressions among wrestlers weren’t great as Watts began his cost-cutting campaign by removing benefits such as catering at television tapings and coffee at house shows, though the real problems of cost controls among grapplers would come later that year.
Instead the big talking point was Watts imposing a series of rules on wrestler behavior, starting with the so-called “ten commandments” detailed in a memo to wrestlers and paraphrased below:
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- Do not use the ringside barriers or ring post during matches. (Referees to call an instant disqualification, regardless of the booked finish.)
- Minimise action outside the ring.
- No low blows. Wrestlers hit by a low blow should not sell it, while those responsible will be fined.
- Show up at the building at least one hour before the show starts.
- If you are injured, show up at house shows to appear before the crowd unless you genuinely cannot travel.
- No using the microphone, swearing or making lewd gestures during matches.
- Heels and babyfaces must not socialise in public.
- Nobody other than wrestlers is allowed in the dressing room.
- Wrestlers get a maximum of two complimentary tickets to shows.
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In reality, few of the items on the original memo caused too many problems, other than the rule on babyface and heel travel later being tightened up to the point that Watts would not allow them to take the same flights, meaning that one batch of wrestlers had to take a less convenient departure time.
Other new policies introduced in the following weeks were more problematic however. Watts insisted that wrestlers stay in the building until every show was complete; one wrestler who complained that this meant missing the last evening flight and spending an extra night away from home was reportedly dismissed with a comment that wrestling wasn’t conducive to a happy family life.
Ringside mats were taken away wherever athletic commission rules allowed it, with Watts claiming it would make the wrestlers appear tougher while cutting down on minor injuries such as turned ankles from wrestlers who slipped on the mats; those with hip and back problems didn’t share his preference for bare concrete.
But the biggest change was Watts’s decision to make moves from the top rope illegal, an idea previously used in several territories including the AWA. The logic was sound: heels could pull off such moves behind the referee’s back to get heat and add a sense of danger. The problem was that such high-flying moves were by now an established babyface trademark, with the most prominent example being a classic series of Brian Pillman vs Jushin Liger bouts a few months earlier.
To his detractors this was clear evidence that Watts was out of touch, an inevitable result of his having not followed the business for five years at a time when the industry was undergoing rapid changes. Watts himself later justified that detachment by saying “When you’ve done what I’ve done, if you sat and watched it, you would only get yourself frustrated because you’d be thinking how you would do it. And there’s no sense in frustrating yourself.”
The problem wasn’t just that Watts hadn’t followed changes in the in-ring styles or the development of new talent (he brought back the long-past-their-prime Junk Yard Dog and Dick Slater among other former Mid-South workers), but that he’d lost touch with the structure of the business itself. While WCW was now a national company running regular pay-per-views and TV specials, Watts had the attitude that the Atlanta Omni was the key to rebuilding the business. At times this even meant using the national TBS programming to build up Omni house shows rather than promoting the major TV events for which fans outside of Georgia might give their attention or money.
On-screen, the new era began with the unveiling of a no-nonsense, more sports like product with Watts attacking the “macabre cartoon” of WWE and mocking angles such as Papa Shango using voodoo to force the Ultimate Warrior to vomit. Ole Anderson was brought in as a special “troubleshooting” official, a move that would aped later in the year by WWE using Sgt Slaughter.
Watts’s first pay-per-view event was undoubtedly the finest of his run. Beach Blast included a Falls Count Anywhere bout that was something of a breakthrough performance by Cactus Jack against Sting, a compelling 30 minute Iron Man match with Ricky Steamboat against Rick Rude, and a 30 minute draw between the Steiners and former Mid South grapplers Steve Williams and Terry Gordy. A bikini contest between Missy Hyatt and Madusa brought a less traditional air of excitement to proceedings.
Williams and Gordy were beneficiaries of Watts’ initial booking strategy of re-establishing clean finishes and strong heels. They eliminated the Steiners in the second round of a tournament for the revived NWA tag titles, then beat them for the WCW belts at an Omni house show. That event also featured a light-heavyweight title change (Brad Armstrong over Scotty Flamingo, later known as Raven) in an attempt to boost future business at the venue.
The Doc ‘n’ Gordy bandwagon rolled on at the Great American Bash pay-per-view when they knocked off two more teams to win the NWA tournament and become double titleholders. The heel success continued on that show with Big Van Vader cleanly pinning Sting for the title, a major surprise to fans who weren’t privy to inside information at the time.
The Bash was the most distinctive and divisive of the major shows under Watts’ command, with most fans either loving or hating it. Viewed two decades later it stands out in contrast to both the WWE product of the time and today. While not quite in the “shoot style” of Japan’s UWF-i, the majority of matches on the show were largely based around lengthy mat wrestling with almost every bout going 15-20 minutes. It’s fair to say it took the “pure wrestling” model to extremes, but the sight of Nikita Koloff looking as if he was genuinely fighting to escape Gordy and Williams’ clutches was certainly compelling, if not everyone’s idea of entertainment.
Undoubtedly the most memorable moment of the Watts era came a few weeks later in a masterful piece of storytelling at a television taping. Sting was scheduled to get a title rematch but was sneak attacked by the debuting Jake Roberts who had been smuggled into the building. Watts then announced that the names of several top contenders would be drawn from a bag with the winner getting the shot.
Ron Simmons, who had been subtly built up over the previous months but was by no means an established number one contender, had his name pulled out. He proceeded to capture the title to a rapturous reception, including from an unforgettably tearful young African American fan who was quite literally jumping for joy.
Sadly Simmons’s title reign never lived up to its beginning. Watts later confirmed he had been attempting to explicitly appeal to black fans, copying a Mid South tactic that had had mixed success. But he seemed reluctant to make Simmons a true headline attraction and the new champ languished in the upper midcard feuding with lesser stars such as the Barbarian. Meanwhile claims that there was no racial element to the Simmons push looked shaky as first opponent Tony Atlas referred to Simmons as “boy” (reminiscent of 70s and 80s feuds where heels made similar remarks to black babyfaces) and then Simmons and Too Cold Scorpio took on Atlas, Barbarian and Cactus Jack in a handicap match somewhat unfortunately billed as “Ghetto Rules”.
To be fair, a Simmons-Barbarian pay-per-view match at Hallowe’en Havoc did attract a much improved buyrate after what had then been record lows at Beach Blast and the Bash, though much of the credit belonged to the true main event of Sting vs Jake Roberts. The pair met in a Spin The Wheel, Make The Deal match where the stipulation was chosen on the night in the same way as WWE’s Raw Roulette gimmick. Unfortunately neither bout delivered, while Rude and Masahiro Chono inexplicably followed an NWA title classic in Tokyo with a 22 minute stinker.
The apparent lack of effort from many concerned (and the resulting decline in match quality) may have reflected a major decline in morale caused not only by TV ratings and house show attendance continuing to slump, but Watts attempting to completely overhaul the terms under which wrestlers worked. Brian Pillman was first to feel the effects as Watts pressured him to give up his highly-paid guaranteed deal in return for a major push; Pillman chose to stick with the cash and said he was happy to be the most highly paid opening match loser in the business.
But Watts was insistent that paying wrestlers regardless of how often they worked or how much they drew was killing the business. He later asked “How can you challenge anybody mentally to do anything when they get paid the same no matter what they do? If you’re getting paid guaranteed no matter what you do or whether you’re sick or you’re hurt or whatever, there’s no edge.”
In line with this philosophy, Watts announced that as wrestler contracts expired he would seek to sign them to new deals where they were paid a fixed fee by the match, with a chunk of the pay considered as a bonus; wrestlers would only received this money four months later and forfeited if they quit in the meantime. Even more controversially, he ruled that not only would injured wrestlers lose their paydays, but Watts pulled the plug funding for a workers compensation insurance policy, a standard employee benefit that paid out a proportion of salary for those injured while at work.
While this was no different to the set-up of the wrestling territories era, it was hard to reconcile with the idea of wrestlers being contracted employees of Ted Turner’s empire. Wrestlers were particularly unimpressed with the idea of being asked to work a more physical style and then facing a choice between working while injured or going without cash. Ironically, while Watts implementation of his philosophy was somewhat extreme, his warnings of wrestlers milking guaranteed contracts and making the most of suspicious injuries certainly looked credible during the Monday Night Wars era as some members of WCW’s mammoth roster made the most of their cushy deals while the company fell off a cliff.
Watts’s tactics were little more effective however. While some grapplers simply moaned and accepted their lot, the Steiner brothers quit the company: all the more unfortunate given that Scott had just been given the TV title. Meanwhile the WCW recruitment policy now appeared to be based around who was willing to work cheap rather than whether they would help attract paying fans.
What little goodwill Watts may have had among the crew was further undermined by the debut and push of his son Erik. While a promoter’s son being pushed ahead of his abilities was nothing new in wrestling, and while Watts himself claims he put the restraints on Erik being even more strongly featured, wrestlers and hardcore fans alike were irritated to see him put over veterans like Bobby Eaton and Arn Anderson
Towards the end of the year Watts acknowledged it was time to drop the ban on top rope moves, first reinstating them for light-heavyweight matches, then allowing them in all bouts. He did still outlaw top rope kneedrops to a downed opponent so that heels had one move they could use to get heat, a tactic that would have been a far more successful way of achieving his original aim. The ban was supposedly overturned as a result of a vote on a premium rate 900 number phone, a moneymaking exercise similar to today’s reality TV contests.
Starrcade came and went with a couple of excellent bouts (Sting vs Vader and Ricky Steamboat & Shane Douglas vs Barry Windham and Brian Pillman), but matches such as Chono vs the Great Muta worked in New Japan style were arguably not best suited to a mainstream American audience.
It proved to be Watts’s last pay-per-view event. At the start of February 1993 WCW decided to take management of PPVs and television programming out of his hands, leaving him effectively in a purely creative position. Watts then learned that he and Rhodes would have to work with a large booking committee.
According to Watts, this was enough for him to tell senior management he wanted out and he quit of his own volition. The timing may be open to debate, but Watts departed right as several media sources began investigating a controversy about a newsletter interview he had given before taking the post in which he expressed support for Lester Maddox. A Georgia restaurant owner in the 1960s, Maddox had fought against civil rights legislation banning him from refusing to serve black customers and was later elected state governor.
It’s fair to point out that Watts did not speak out in favor of the discrimination itself, rather adopting an extreme libertarian view backing Maddox’s right to run his business how he liked, leaving it to the market to decide whether his stance was acceptable. However, given that Watts also made homophobic comments in the same interview, it’s clear that the resulting publicity would have made his departure was inevitable.
Principles taken to extreme is indeed the story of Bill Watts’ reign. From a business perspective he succeeded in cutting company losses (from $1.6 million a year to $400,000 a year by one account), but did so through cost cutting rather than boosting revenue. In every area of business from house shows to TV ratings to PPV buys, his performance was down on the comparable previous period. Even taking into account the fact that the WWF’s own problems helped put the entire business into a slump, there was little positive news at the box office during the Watts era.
The product itself, however, is still fondly remembered by many long-term fans, perhaps through rose-tinted nostalgia, but perhaps also thanks to two decades of often illogical storylines and a growing emphasis on lengthy scripted promos and backstage skits. Trying to simply take the business of the 1980s territories and throw it into 1992 with no regard for how the industry had changed proved a failure, but taking the best of what Watts tried to do — emphasizing strong heels who could win without screwjob finishes; portraying wrestlers as athletes competing for win bonuses and titles; using a more basic approach so that angles and incidents have more impact — and applying it to a modern setting might still pay dividends 20 years later.
