The Rise & Fall of WCW (2009)
Brandon Sears
RUNNING TIME: 7 Hours 51 Minutes
"I felt that they (WCW) had the better in ring product in the 1980's." - Jim Ross
Yes, good ol' JR may have worked for WCW back in the day but since 1993 he has been strictly known as a "WWE guy" which is why that quote came as a complete surprise when uttered on the new WWE produced "Rise and Fall of WCW" DVD collection. That being said, JR is correct. It is this reviewer's opinion that yes, WCW had a vastly superior in ring product in the 1980's and the majority of the 1990's because of such unrivaled talent as Sting, Ric Flair (and his fellow Horsemen), Magnum TA, Dusty Rhodes, Ricky Steamboat and many others. Granted, WWE had workhorses like Bret Hart, Curt Hennig, Randy Savage, Roddy Piper and Shawn Michaels but no company told a better story more often than the folks over in WCW. WCW put the correct guys at the top of the card during the 80's and early 90's, it was not until the late 90's that World Championship Wrestling took an awful turn and spiraled out of control taking a devastating nosedive into obscurity. This DVD more or less covers those dizzying highs and depressing lows over the course of an hour and 45 minutes.
During the initial stages of production, WWE had a hard time securing the participation of individuals that had an integral part in the making and breaking of WCW. Obviously, a few people had reservations about WWE's potential "revisionist" history and their supposed skewing of the truth. For example, both Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff refused to partake but are still included due to archived footage from Hogan's initial WWE produced DVD from 2002 and some Bischoff clips from 2003's "Monday Night War" documentary. You would think that the lack of some high ranking WCW officials would detract from the quality of the collection but it doesn't.
The documentary portion of the set gives the casual and hardcore wrestling fan a decent history behind the company's shaky beginning, its rise to the top of the mountain and its fall from grace. Nothing too shocking or revealing other than Vince McMahon's short term partnership in the 1980's, I honestly had no idea this happened. I won't go into a lot of detail other than to say that Vince had regularly appeared on WCW television in the early 80's before Turner purchased Jim Crockett Promotions, it was pretty compelling stuff. However, I might be the only person who did not know of this. It's not often that I can turn on a WWE DVD and not know something as huge as this. Kudos. I can also say this; I forgot just how great Goldberg was on his rise to the top. We'll probably never be treated to a Goldberg disc as this is most likely, the best we'll get. On the other hand, I can think of more than a few people who deserve one before him (i.e. Chris Jericho).
In terms of missing coverage, WWE skimmed over a few big events in WCW's history such as Starrcade 1997. Granted, you can get your complete comprehensive Starrcade coverage on the recently released "Best of" collection but still, this was a major event with the hugely anticipated meeting of Hogan and Sting after a 12 month plus build up. They failed to mention anything involving the signing of Bret Hart, perhaps only a blurb about the cruiserweight division as well as anything other than negativity towards the nWo.
The set boasts two complete discs full of some of WCW's greatest matches. Granted, we have a few huge match-ups missing but that can be expected due to WWE's recent policy of trying to avoid putting the same matches on every collection. I'm not going to list every match on this set as you can pretty much find that anywhere on the interwebs, therefore, I will list a few of the better ones. On Disc 2, we're treated to classics such as Magnum TA/Ric Flair from 1985, Flair defending the World Championship against Ricky Steamboat from Wrestle War 89 and Sting taking on Vader from 1990. On Disc 3, a bad match is hard to find with such action as Rey Mysterio/Dean Malenko from Clash of the Champions XXXIII, War Games from Fall Brawl '96 featuring Team nWo competing against Team WCW, a match pitting Chris Jericho's Cruiserweight Championship against Juventud Guerrera's mask and Goldberg defending the WCW Championship against Diamond Dallas Page.
As I said earlier, you are missing a lot of quality matches here with this set but if you already have superstar sets belonging to Flair, Hogan, Savage or either the nWo or Starrcade collections, then you have got some good companion sets.
While the Rise and Fall of WCW is an important DVD set and something that every wrestling fan of the "boom era" of the mid to late 90's should own, it is not your complete history. I did enjoy the set from start to finish due to nostalgia reasons but there are some key moments missing and that ultimately hurts the program. With an hour and 45 minute run time, the average fan should be pleased but the hardcore fan is left wanting just a little more.
Brandon Sears is an insurance salesman by day and a superhero by night (not really). He has been writing for Modern Distraction since 2004. He lives in Sydney Mines with his wife, Ashley and his dog Toby.