Vince McMahon came out with guns blazing on all fronts in his no-holds-barred war with his opposition, which he claims isn't WCW but the entire Turner empire.
Among his maneuvers over the past seven days were:
Filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission claiming TBS has been engaged in a systematic plan to destroy the WWF so it can achieve a monopoly over the wrestling industry
Taking out quarter-page ads on both Wednesday and Thursday in the New York Times financial sections
Having Jerry McDevitt send a letter to Eric Bischoff demanding an apology for Bischoff's televised insinuations and other similar insinuations on the WCW hotline that Titan Sports may have been responsible for the power failure in Lakeland during the 2/5 Nitro show
Writing a letter to Ted Turner complaining about WCW re-instituting blading and promising bloodbaths on the SuperBrawl PPV show.
On the surface it appears to some that McMahons actions are coming off as desperation. He has admitted, or at least said several times this past week that he considers his company as fighting for its life and that he isn't so much worried about what's happening now as much as six months from now. Some in WWF are surprised by this turn of events citing the overall recent surge of interest in pro wrestling with the return of 80s stars bringing older fans back, the strong buy rate of Royal Rumble, which will almost surely surpass that of any WCW PPV event this year, an expected even stronger buy rate for Wrestlemania, a great house a few weeks back in Madison Square Garden and other strong houses, strong advances for upcoming house shows, a profitable tour of India and strong advances for the next Germany tour. The belief by many is for the first time in a long time, the guys on top are over to where they can consistently draw, people care about the feuds, and when Vader comes in, they'll have their strongest main event heel when it comes to drawing in several years and one of the deepest line-ups of top babyfaces in recent memory. In addition, running one show per night with all the stars on one line-up gives them the most depth on the house show cards they've had in a long time.
McMahon claims the problem isn't a wrestling promotional war, but that the Turner empire is using its power to destroy the WWF. Despite what look to many to be ironic similarities, he claims the situation today is entirely different from a decade ago when the shoe was on the other foot as McMahon trampled numerous regional promotions, virtually all of which ended up going out of business.
The main difference between the two according to McMahon is that, unlike WCW today, he claims he never wanted to put his competitors out of business, only to expand his own company nationally, and that he expanded using his own money and he had to run a profitable enterprise to survive, whereas WCW has been able to survive and fight a war with little regard to turning a true profit. He claims the regional offices put themselves out of business in the late 80s because they also tried to expand and they were the second and third and fourth ones who tried so by this point Titan was a national success, rather than concentrating on competing within their regional territory where they had established roots. The first point is subject for debate--ex-WWFers now in WCW claim McMahon talked freely about putting competitors out and WCW officials talk about wanting to beat McMahon clear-cut, but claim not to want to run him out of business. There is validity to the second point. The third point is, at least in the vast majority of cases, dubious. Pro wrestling would hardly be unique in business to where a better financially backed conglomerate lost money in the beginning in order to expand their market share and eventually use their financial might to win a business rivalry in the end. As it compares to wrestling wars in previous history and foreign countries, WCW's tactics fall well shy of burning down arenas, paying off local officials to not allow competitors into the arena, kidnapping rival officials at gunpoint and threatening them, setting up rival top babyfaces with underage hookers to get them arrested and all the other wonderful deeds in the rich history of previous generation or international wrestling promotion wars.
McMahon filed a complaint on 2/8 with the pre-merger notification office of the FTC's Bureau of Competition. The exact details of the complaint were not available as of press time as the FTC claimed to not have a copy of it, but McMahon was vociferous in getting the word out about his complaints.
He claimed it wasn't any single action that was so bad on the surface to warrant the complaint, but it was the combination of all the different actions. Among them is WCW putting Nitro up against Raw, starting the show a few minutes early and ending it a few minutes late which he called unprecedented in television; alleged contract tampering with his performers; gaining syndicated time slots, in some cases that WWF would have gotten, using the leverage of CNN Headline News to put together the deals or by spending more money to buy the time; attempting to drive his television advertising rates down by charging less for ad time than WWF even though having more shows with a larger total audience; the name-calling on television and the consistent fabrication of stories about the WWF on the WCW 900 line.
In the WWF's period of expansion, it also bought out existing established television time slots from regional promoters. It also raided the best drawing talent of regional offices with the lure of them being able to earn a better income and went back into the region with those headliners. In the case of the AWA in particular, McMahon systematically picked off a large percentage of the key headline talent, both in the ring and behind the scenes, one by one.
McMahon practically drove Jim Crockett out of business by putting the first Survivor Series on PPV on the date Crockett had already booked for his first Starrcade PPV show in 1987, and coming off McMahon's PPV success, virtually every cable company in the country went with McMahon and Crockett ran a PPV that he expected to be a major cash windfall that ended up costing him money. He followed it up by creating the Royal Rumble as a free television special on the USA Network in 1988 to counteract Crockett's second PPV show, the Bunkhouse Stampede. Crockett didn't follow suit until later in 1988, creating the first Clash of Champions as a head-to-head free special opposite that year's Wrestlemania, but by that time he was already financially strapped having two straight PPVs not pay off. Despite rumors of such, WCW has no plans at all now of running free television specials opposite McMahon's PPV events.
When it comes to television ad rates, WCW officials have claimed that their ads for the entire network for a 30 second spot are $19,000 while WWF's are $15,000, claiming that it is WWF that is actually undercutting them. McMahon listed figures of $25,000 for WWF and $18,000 for WCW, and since McMahon's shows deliver a small audience and yet he's charging more, he's made the claim that they are undercutting him. According to a third party buyer, the figure McMahon has claimed would be accurate. For the most recent weekend ratings are out, which would be the week ending on 1/28, all WCW for a week on 177 stations and the various cable networks would reach a total of 6.78 million homes (7.1 rating); while WWF on 161 stations and USA would hit 4.77 million homes (5.0 rating).
The funny thing is, if it weren't for McMahons public response and if you just looked at the stats, WWF is actually still ahead today in most facets even though the general perception is that WCW is winning the war based almost entirely on television rating comparisons. WCW has more television and more viewership, particularly stronger ratings on cable. WWF is way ahead when it comes to house shows, which WCW doesn't even do, and merchandise. They were dueling evenly by the end of the year on PPV, however the Rumble buy rate, and expected Wrestlemania buy rate, will be figures WCW probably won't approach this year. WCW has more name talent and possibly better overall talent. If not in its own stable, with its international promotional ties with New Japan and probably one with AAA not far behind, it has access to a much wider group of talented wrestlers. However, the game itself appears to be so serious that it's no longer high on McMahon's priorities to have a public perception of being No. 1.
McMahon claimed the Billionaire Ted skits are part of his own plan to call as much attention as possible to both his wrestling audience and the stockholders of both Turner Broadcasting and Time-Warner about the actions of WCW. He said the skits had to be presented in the manner they are because if he simply aired his grievances in a straight fashion, it would cause viewers to switch stations. The idea of the skits is to both entertain and inform his wrestling fans to the idea that Turner is trying to put the WWF out of business and what he's doing to do so. When asked how the most recent skit, where Ted Turner's parody actor was portrayed in a manner not giving or parodying anything regarding WCW's product or business practices, he claimed that because Turner himself is such a power in the media, he's protected by the media because nobody wants to raise the ire of such a powerful person and he wanted to make the public aware of what kind of a person Turner really is that he would make statements like that about his late father. He claims that the huge money losses of the wrestling company can't be found anywhere on TBS financial statements and claimed the purported profit from last year was due to laying off major costs such as much of Hogan's salary and Nitro production costs on others' books and claims they are using TBS stockholders money in the war against him.
At least initially, his actions have paid off in small results. Bischoff was forced by TBS lawyers to apologize on the air during Nitro on 2/12 for insinuating WWF caused the power failure, claiming his remark wasn't meant seriously and some people take things too seriously trying to say they're just out there trying to have fun. He's also been put under a gag order against making any comments either on television or in the media to respond to anything McMahon has said until after the Time-Warner merger goes through. Word we get is that Bischoff is very frustrated by both turns of events as he had planned a full-barrel attack beginning on the 2/12 television show. The only TBS comment about everything going on came from TBS p.r. official Michael Oglesby in the Wall Street Journal who said Titan's FTC complaint was without merit.
The ad in the Times was a very watered down version of the ad which McMahon showed originally on Raw, and then read on the weekend syndicated shows. The ad was headlined, "Attention: TBS Stockholders" with a drawing of Turner and underneath copy that read "Does Ted Turner have a personal vendetta against the World Wrestling Federation?" A bottom headline read, "Time-Warner Beware."
McMahon also wrote a letter, sent fed-ex, to Turner, on 2/8 which read: "Dear Ted: Since there has been no response to my repeated request and you and your pro-wrasslin' company stop the practice of self mutilation, I can only assume based upon the last two weeks of Nitro that the practice of self mutilation (slicing oneself with a razor blade) is not only condoned but encouraged. As you know, Hulk Hogan has been bleeding all over the place the past two weeks. There have been numerous references on your wrasslin programming that this weekend's double cage match will be so violent that one opponent will be "bleeding to the point of no recognition." This encouraged practice of self mutilation is disgusting, violent, potentially infectious and completely contradictory in everyway to your testimony before Congress in June of 1993 and contrary to your 1995 participation of "Voices against Violence." Notwithstanding numerous unprecedented predatory practices against the World Wrestling Federation, if you continue to promote self mutilation, I hope your stockholders hold you accountable for this unethically, guttural, potentially unhealthy practice."
Although the letter would have arrived at CNN Center before the PPV, WCW officials were not aware of the existence of the letter as of the Nitro show so it had no bearing on either continuing or toning down the use of blood on the PPV show.
The letter naturally brings up the question about Bret Hart at the December PPV show. McMahon has claimed it was hardway juice. Hart himself has also claimed the same as have virtually everyone in Titan. However many are skeptical. The prevailing locker room belief, based on the incredible timing coincidence of the blood in relation to the match and the fact on tape in slow-mo it sure looked like a blade job, is that Hart bladed, made the cut "L" shaped rather than a straight line, and got stitches to basically cover up from everyone that it was a blade job and that McMahon would have been the one he'd cover up from because there is no way McMahon would have approved of it had he known about it. If that was or wasn't the case, McMahon promoted the hell out of having blood on Raw when the match was aired a few weeks later, leading to Raw drawing its strongest rating (3.0) since the Monday Night Wars began, and none of the blood was edited out.
McMahon is portraying this as if Turner has a vendetta against him, because several times over the years there were either strong suggestions or outright conversations by Turner or his minions to McMahon wanting to either buy into or buy the company in total, all of which were rebuffed. McMahon also rebuffed various TBS officials over the years when they proposed the idea of doing a joint PPV show. At one point, Bill Shaw offered McMahon complete control of all the finishes if they were to do a joint show, so McMahon could have booked a clean sweep of WWF victories on a card of interpromotional dream matches, but McMahon turned down the offer because he wanted to keep his company separate in the public's eye.
The Wall Street Journal ran a piece on 2/12 about the wrestling war, although it basically a background piece that broke no new ground.
McMahon admitted during the week that as recently as the past two weeks he's had discussions with the USA Network about moving Raw to a new time slot, with him mentioning Mondays at 10 p.m. in specific. He said he's wanted to move the show almost from the onset of the Monday Night Wars, but USA still hasn't agreed to it. WCW officials believe McMahon would be cutting his own throat moving the show back an hour, because it would knock out whatever remains of the kids audience and overall viewership would decrease at that hour. In addition, WCW would likely respond by expanding Nitro to two hours. McMahon feels if that happens, they'll have to water down their product and give away so much that he'd have a better chance coming out the winner. WCW officials say the added hour would allow them to expand with more quality matches that would have time to go 15:00 rather than 5:00 rush jobs as most of their Nitro matches are.
McMahon complained of contract tampering, bringing up in specific, Diesel, The Bushwhackers and Jean Pierre Lafitte. He claims Diesel was offered a three-year deal by an intermediary (from all sources this has basically been confirmed that Hogan wants to bring him in as a heel and work a program with him) but not an official representative of WCW. McMahon told others, and Diesel has also claimed to those in the dressing room that they are offering him $750,000 per, and most expect him to take it when his Titan contract expires in April. At his age, with a family, if that figure is accurate, he'd be a fool not to. Other sources claim the real figure being offered is closer to $450,000. The Bushwhackers were definitely offered $120,000 per year apiece a few months back, but although rarely used, are still under contract to WWF (which I don't believe WCW actually knew). When they went to McMahon to get out of their contract, he refused to let them out, citing that he's in a wrestling war. Lafitte, whose Titan contract doesn't even expire until 7/7, on the surface appears to be tampering since it is well known and has been reported everywhere that he's going to WCW after his deal expires, so obviously he was talked with about a deal while under contract to Titan, although there are technical ways around it such as Lafitte doing his dealing through Jacques Rougeau, who didn't work with WCW but made a package deal for the two of them. It is believed WCW has also made overtures about bringing in Razor Ramon, who was originally a strong WWF team player in the locker room, but his mood has changed with a shrinking paycheck during the fall along with being unhappy about many aspects of how he's been used, including the feud with Goldust, not to mention family issues which are a prime issue since the WCW road schedule is so much easier. McMahon claimed that the money being offered as the word has gone through his dressing room, along with the easier work schedule, has hurt morale.
McMahon also said that Lex Luger was under contract to Titan Sports when he abruptly showed up on the Nitro debut show on 9/4, something Titan has always maintained. He called the jump a cheap shot by Luger because Luger had told him that he had been contacted and had no interest in going, and claimed the situation would be addressed. At this point it hasn't been addressed, at least legally, and nowhere in the numerous legal letters McDevitt has written to WCW has Titan made legal threats regarding Luger. Luger had denied from the start being under contract with Titan when he made his WCW deal.
Because McMahon isn't going to offer guaranteed contracts, he admitted he's in a position where he's going to constantly have to create new stars whereas WCW will be in a position of waiting for Titan, or other companies, to create stars and trying to pick them off.
