WWE – The Rise and Fall of WCW – DVD Review

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Wrestling has been a longtime staple in my weekly viewing that’s been commonplace since i was five years old. The early days had me watching WWE’s Primetime on Monday nights hosted by Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan. My exposure to NWA/WCW was catching the occasional Thursday night showing of a Clash of the Champions special. As time went on, the two companies went head to head on Monday nights as RAW would battle it out against Nitro to see who would win the ratings’ war. WCW actually held its own for such a long time that it appeared as if they would succeed and prosper over Vince McMahon’s WWE. That would be the “rise,” but it was only a matter of time before things started to go downhill and we would see the “fall.”

This DVD set takes fans from the very beginning of the wrestling promotion all the way back to Jim Crockett and trying to get the organization known worldwide instead of just in certain parts of the nation. As time went on and the promotion gained ground, Ted Turner came into the picture with his superstation called TBS. TBS started airing wrestling from Georgia and eventually it took off as NWA/WCW joined forces with Turner and both companies grew bigger. “Nature Boy” Ric Flair was the big name affiliated with the wrestling organization as the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, and it was only a matter of time before ol’ Naitch kept bringing in more and more fans. Rise & Fall touches more on how the groundbreaking kept going paving the way for Vince McMahon’s WWE to hopefully get some competition in the wrestling world.

A lot of money was put into WCW and it continued to grow as huge names would jump back and forth from WWE to TurnerLand and then from WCW over to McMahon Country. It always seemed as Vince just couldn’t be beat especially with Monday Night Raw coming into the picture, but that didn’t mean WCW was going to crawl up in a ball and die. Looking to take advantage of such big names as Sting, Lex Luger, Ric Flair, and many others; the brass at WCW wanted to do more then just show up on the occasional special or in a time slot relegated to Saturday evenings. On September 4, 1995, Monday Nitro was born and it was a big deal right from the start. Some bombshells to drop in the first few months of Nitro were:

~ The appearance of Lex Luger after he had just wrestled for WWE the night before.
~ WWE Women’s Champion Alundra Blayze showing up and tossing the title belt into a trash can.
~ Nitro ran live shows as opposed to Raw‘s taped episodes.
~ Announcer Eric Bischoff took it upon himself to start revealing the results of Raw so that fans wouldn’t even tune into the show and stay watching Nitro. (Little did he know the ratings boost he would give Raw on January 4, 1999 when he announced that Mick Foley would be winning the championship from The Rock)

WCW was pulling every trick in the book to try and get ahead. It may not have been the most ethical thing in the world, but it certainly worked. Still, they needed a huge gimmick to get things going and make sure that the WWE would lose even more viewers and it came in the form of three specific letters…the n-W-o! With superstars seemingly jumping ship and “invading” WCW with no notice whatsoever, the nWo was taking over and bringing about a new side of wrestling that none of us had ever seen. Every week we sat there wondering who would defect from WCW and adorn the colors of the black and white. Every week we’d tune in to see if Sting would finally come down from the rafters and finally choose a side. Then this newcomer named Goldberg showed up on the scene and had an amazing win streak en route to battling the nWo virtually by himself. WCW was onto something big and knew exactly what the fans wanted to see so it was only obvious that they would get higher ratings. And higher ratings is exactly what they got as they won the Monday night war for eighty-four straight weeks. Vinnie-Mac was in trouble and he needed to develop a brand new attitude.

After so much success though, WCW began to get a little greedy. Older stars that no longer had anything but name recognition kept being brought in to draw more attention but all they drew was a fat paycheck. Former head writer for WWE, Vince Russo, made his way over to WCW and began bringing the company down a long and dark road of despair. Storylines that were extremely over the top, elevating stars that were horrible in the ring, and getting rid of the big names that actually mattered were only a few of the problems WCW was now facing. Let’s not even mention David Arquette becoming champion. Things were fading fast and if not for someone stepping in to help out then WCW and its superstars surely would have fallen completely off the face of the Earth. That someone…was Vince McMahon who had purchased his main competition and finally won the battle.

Matches

Disc Two


~ NWA World Championship Wrestling June 15, 1985: $1,000 Challenge Match – Ric Flair Vs. Magnum T.A.
~ The Main Event April 3, 1988: Sting, Lex Luger, & Barry Windham Vs. Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, & Tully Blanchard
~ The Great American Bash July 10, 1988: United States Championship Match – Dusty Rhodes Vs. Barry Windham
~ Chi-Town Rumble February 20, 1989: NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match – Ric Flair Vs. Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat
~ Wrestle War February 25, 1990: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express Vs. The Midnight Express
~ The Great American Bash July 7, 1990: NWA United States Tag Team Championship Match – The Midnight Express Vs. The Southern Boys
~ SuperBrawl May 19, 1991: WCW World Tag Team Championship Match – The Steiner Brothers Vs. Sting & Lex Luger
~ The Great American Bash July 12, 1992: WCW World Heavyweight Championship Match – Sting Vs. Big Van Vader
~ Spring Stampede April 17, 1994: WCW International World Heavyweight Championship Match – Rick Rude Vs. Sting
~ Bash At The Beach July 17, 1994: WCW World Heavyweight Championship Match – Ric Flair Vs. Hulk Hogan

Disc Three


~ Nitro April 29, 1996: WCW World Heavyweight Championship Match – Ric Flair Vs. The Giant
~ Clash Of The Champions XXXIII August 15, 1996: WCW Cruiserweight Championship Match – Rey Mysterio Jr. Vs. Dean Malenko
~ Fall Brawl September 15, 1996: War Games Match – Team WCW Vs. Team nWo
~ Souled Out January 25, 1997: Ladder Match for the United States Championship – Syxx Vs. Eddie Guerrero
~ Uncensored March 16, 1997: No Disqualification Match for the United States Championship – Eddie Guerrero Vs. Dean Malenko
~ SuperBrawl VIII February 22, 1998: Mask Match – Chris Jericho Vs. Juventud Guerrera
~ SuperBrawl VIII February 22, 1998: WCW Unified World Tag Team Championship Match – The Steiner Brothers Vs. The Outsiders
~ Bash At The Beach July 12, 1998: Diamond Dallas Page & Karl Malone Vs. Hollywood Hulk Hogan & Dennis Rodman
~ Halloween Havoc October 25, 1998: WCW World Heavyweight Championship Match – Goldberg Vs. Diamond Dallas Page
~ Nitro August 7, 2000: WCW World Heavyweight Championship Match – Booker T Vs. Lance Storm

The program is shown in 1.33:1 Full Screen format and it looks great. Some of the matches appear a bit older of course but that is to be expected. The more recent matches look wonderful and the documentary portion on the DVD looks fantastic.

The program is heard in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and there are no problems to be found at all with anything.

Lost In Cleveland – This dives deeper into the skits that saw Cactus Jack (Mick Foley) wandering aimlessly. Dusty Rhodes talks a bit about them as most of them are shown, but they are not worth really watching at all. (2:10)

Bill Watts Defends Himself – I could have honestly stood to watch a lot more of this. Bill Watts defends his stance from when he was in charge of WCW and says he never was actually fired and was not racist whatsoever. It’s such a shame this is so short because I’d love to hear more of what he had to say. (1:21)

Spam Man – Wow, someone had actually thrown about the idea of a wrestling character called Spam Man? Yeesh! (0:47)

The Origin of Goldberg – Goldberg talks about everything that went into the creation of his character including the original thought of his ring name being “The Hybrid,” the streak, his tattoos, and the start of his catch phrase “Who’s Next?” Not a bad little interview, but far too short to really get into it. (3:30)

Bischoff Gives Away Raw Results – A small taste of when Bischoff would give away the results to the taped episodes of Raw. (1:20)

Looking back at this kind of stuff makes me long for the days when WCW was actually on the air still. Yeah it may not have all made sense or was it good at all times, but it still had a lot of entertainment value in the eighties and then especially in the first couple years of the nWo. The documentary portion of this DVD set is much better than that on The Rise and Fall of ECW because it touches on much more and better points making it a lot more in depth and just a more enjoyable experience overall. I’ll include the matches in the way of special features because what’s actually labeled as extras isn’t much of anything at all. Don’t really worry about the scores here or them being skewed by what information belongs where because this is really a set that any wrestling fan should pick up anyway. A host of great matches along with an exceptional look back at the land of WCW is all you need to remember the days of yesteryear when the Monday Night Wars took over the airwaves.


WWE Home Video presents The Rise snd Fall of WCW. Featuring: Hulk Hogan, Sting, Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Rick Rude, Mick Foley, Paul Wight, and many more. Running time: 540 minutes on 3 discs. Rating: PG. Released on DVD: August 25, 2009. Available at Amazon.com