So as for me talking to you, WCW or World Champs, your wrestling has been dead for 25 years. You can tell that people still care about it, though, because it is 2026. Fans still want to talk about it. The interesting part is the history will always be written by the winners, and of course, W.W. We bought WCW in 2001, so ever since then, they've been telling you their specific story. It would be exactly the same if the roles are reversed too, so let's not get too mad about this.

However, with the power of hindsight and the fact we do have our own eyes, we can actually go through every single year of WCW's history and jump into the secrets. That sadly means we won't be talking about Robocop, the Black Scorpion, or the Shockmaster, although we may try and tie them in. And of course, there's always a story about Eric Bischoff stealing the NWO idea from Japan. That one still goes off in the comments, so if you want to do it today, please do. Let's not pretend that at one point of time it wasn't the biggest pro wrestling promotion in the world, though, because it was. My name is Simon Miller, and on behalf of What Culture Wrestling, this is one mind-blowing

secret from every year of WCW history, number 14, 1988, and an early marketing device.

So before WCW was WCW, it was basically Jim Crockett Promot, and if you've never seen that

company, put it this way, it was sold on grit, soul, and authenticity.

I mean, it's where Dusty Rhodes cut his famous 1985 Hard times promo, which has gone down in the annals of history, as he took aim at one nature boy, Rick Flair. One of the reasons Dusty was so popular in JCP2 is because he was like the working class avatar for the fans, whereas Flair was the exact opposite. He was a wheeler-dealer jet flying son of a gun. Screw him.

Rhodes also benefited from the fact that he didn't look like an athlete because he tied that into his promos too. I mean, one day, he said, my belly's just a little big, my honey's just a little big, but brother, I'm bad and they know I'm bad. And damn it was right. The reason it works so damn well, though, is because Rick Flair came at this from the opposite side of the tracks.

He was the rich guy who could absolutely whoop your ass too.

So when you put them in the ring together... The reason it works so damn well though is because Rick Flair came at this from the opposite side of the tracks. He was the rich guy who could absolutely whoop your ass too.

So when you put them in the ring together, it was so obvious who was the good guy and who was the bad guy. You could just sit back and have a good time or go totally crazy live and go look at some of those audiences. They went nuts. It was definitely important for the time as well, because when you did jump over to the World Rastling Federation,

obviously they were completely different. Their top guy was Hulk Hogan and he was a dude that walked around a post and shouted crazy things into a microphone, but because he delivered it with such a plumb, well, you kind of wanted to run through walls for him. If you were a Jim Crockett or soon-to-be WCW fan, though, you thought WWF was hokey, and if you were a WWF fan, you thought Jim Crockett or WCW was just a little bit boring. Where's the pizzazz? It's why when Hogan made the jump to WCW in 1994, everybody went crazy, because that betrayed the DNA of what WCW was meant to be, and it portrayed what Jim Crockett promotionsotions was meant to be. Also, they were competition.

It's kind of funny, too, because in the mid-90s, that audience had grown to love Rick Flair because he was so good. So when Hogan did decide to join, well, all of a sudden, Hulk was the bad guy, because again, he came from that place, we do not like that place. The real interesting part though as the years did go by is that WWF was seen as cartoon land whereas JCP or WCW is where the real

wrestling happened. interesting part though as the years did go by is that WWF was seen as cartoon land whereas

JCP or WCW is where the real wrestling happened now we kind of got off track here but it all

does come down to how wrestling companies market themselves and journalist David Bixen Spang kind

of delved into this a few years ago because in 1988 when WCW was first on the scene and again still

had this authentic wrestling atmosphere

attached to it, it kind of all got exposed at the National Association of Television Programme

Executives Convention. Try to say that ten times fast. But because it was all changed and because

we were trying to draw interest from TV stations, a photo of one Lex Luger, who you can see on

the screen right now, was published in trade ads boasting JCP's impressive audience of young women. So while it was way more tasteful than the WW for go on to do, it was essentially Jim Crockett promotions saying, well, we know the women like this guy, so maybe you should put us on your television shows because they'll tune in. What does that sound like? Exactly. Number 30, 1989, and these strange things that wcw always seemed to do so

if you do read brett hart's autobiography back in nineteen eighty nine you will see that he was not

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