WWE Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett, who is also All Elite Wrestling’s Director of Business Development, took to an episode of his “My World with Jeff Jarrett” podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including who he believes is responsible in killing WCW.
Jarrett said, “At the end of the day, who killed WCW? Look, you can talk about == and God rest his soul, thoughts and prayers with the Jamie Kellner family, he just passed away over the weekend. I think you can point fingers, and I think Vince Russo said something to the effect of, “How can you claim a writer?’ and all this. But to me, at the end of the day, there’s one man that killed WCW, and that’s Vince McMahon by design. Now, it took him a while, and it took Nitro and rattling the cage, and 83 weeks of maybe getting his ass whipped. But the single vision of — and like I’ve said many times, the difference between the two organizations that I found out maybe night one in WCW — is that when you have one guy where the buck stops versus a corporate set of circumstances, it is a no-brainer.”
“But Vince killed his competition by design. Down to when you kind of think of, ‘Okay, we’re going to take them off the air. And okay, then there’s going to be some stickiness and red tape and Fusient Media and Bischoff, and what are we going to do about this?’ Vince letting them know, ‘Yeah, and I’m actually going to give you a couple of million bucks for your library.’ It was like the final nail. But to me, Vince killed it by design. And it was — I can’t say, his single focus. But it was right up there as one of the top priorities that I believe drove him day in and day out once Nitro was launched, maybe not when. But real quick, when the ratings came out [and] Nitro beat Raw, my gut tells me Vince said, ‘I’ll kill this thing, and I’m going to do anything in my power to do it.’ That’s the DNA of Vince. So I think that’s what killed WCW.”
On his first guaranteed deal in WCW:
“’We’re [WWE] going to guarantee you ten shows per year, and we’re going to guarantee you 150 bucks for each of those. I promise you, Jeff. Ten shows, 150 bucks [per] shows. But in 96, WCW was my first guarantee, ‘Whether you work a day or not.’”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
