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476 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 14, 2014
WCW’s flag ship show, Monday Nitro, had a weekly broadcast length of three hours. Despite only needing maybe two or three dozen performers for any given week, the company would often purchase plane tickets for almost 160 performers to be flown in on a weekly basis.
A yearly pay-per-view performed at a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. Attendance was free so the cost of flying in performers, transporting sets and equipment and satellite broadcasting fees all led to a guaranteed yearly loss.
$25,000 paid to legendary R&B artist James Brown to appear in a one-off unadvertised segment that ultimately did nothing for the program nor led into anything for the future.
$100,000 spent on the first (and last) Junkyard Battle Royal in which nine guys fought in.. well, a junkyard over the WCW Hardcore Championship.
$200,000 per appearance for hip hop star Master P to just show up (not wrestle). Five appearances were booked totalling $1 million. On top of that, one of his posse members – an impossibly large man with no wrestling experience named “Swoll” – pulled in $400,000 a year.
$500,000 for Kiss to play a song on a random episode of Nitro.
Huge guaranteed contracts for legendary performers such as Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall that did more to hurt the company than help it. In years prior, contracts offered by WWE (WCW’s competition) were structured with performance based incentives. Therefore, if a performer succeeded in producing memorable in-ring work, moved merchandise or basically became immensely popular, they could see a bump in their pay. With this removed, guys had no real reason to put on a good show, which led to a poor product.