Had they managed to survive two more years until Austin retirement

The brand name was poisoned. Austin was injured for most of 2000 and WCW still couldn't even make headway.

>>2549985
WWE still had The Rock.

RVD was going to sign with them, and if they changed bookers it's possible they could've rebounded. Maybe not to the 1996-1998 levels, but they were committing to creating new stars near the end. You just can't compete with WWF/E without national TV.

>>2549979
No. It was too creatively stagnant, with too many wrestlers having creative control and not wanting to job. The morale was shit, the locker room was divided and in shambles, and there were too many hands in it.
Even without the Time Warner merger which actually killed it, they would have needed to get rid of Hogan, Hall, and Nash, have one person take over and really run the place instead of all the bullshit, and restructure everything in the company from the ground up to get some legitimate infrastructure and communication lines going.
WCW was always a fucking mess. It thrived during the Monday Night Wars because of a few creative decisions that aligned the interests of those in charge of their own destinies (NWO), the emergence of Crow Sting, and because Goldberg was a phenomenon. These things allowed it to succeed, and then limp on for a while even when the office and locker rooms were in chaos.

>>2549993
Did you not get it? Even with Austin gone WCW still couldn't gain any ground. You think anything would've changed with the #2 guy also gone?

>>2549979
Hard to say. WCW worked themselves into a shoot with bad contracts in terms of both pay and creative control.

It was probably still salvageable but they would have had to drop the huge contracts and go back to Georgia Championship mode.

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24KB, 396x414px

You need to understand that WCW did not end because they couldn't draw anymore or didn't have money or that they got beat by WWF. WCW was running at a loss through the 90s until Bischoff started turning things around. They had basically infinite money because of BIG MONEY TED. As long as he wanted WCW around then WCW would be around.

WCW ended because of a corporate merger which meant Ted lost control. The new corporate heads didn't want to keep WCW and that was that.

>>2550492
If they were making '98 money instead of losing 60 million dollars, TW would have kept it.

Well if Vince Russo stayed with WCW and Kevin Dunn decided to quit WWF then they might of had a chance.

>>2550501
No they just didn't want to own a wrestling property. They didn't like it and it wasn't part of their branding project.

When Ted bought WCW (Crockett Promotions) from Jim Crockett it was basically TNA right now. It was a money blackhole and that's why Jim had to sell it. Ted liked wrestling, bought it, put it on his network and kept it going to for years even though it wasn't making him money.

>>2550514
>it was basically TNA right now

Not even close.

>>2550501
Debatable but AOL wanted to get rid of wrestling from the network, they looked down on it

If it was making money they'd probably try and just get more from Vince for it