There are often as many glaring mistakes or bad days as good when it comes to history, so on this day in wrestling history, April 25, 2000, we return to what many have called the unofficial death of WCW. What signaled this historic event? David Arquette winning the WCW World Heavyweight Championship.
Some backstory is needed
The champion at the time was DDP (Diamond Dallas Page) as he’d beaten Jeff Jarrett the day before for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. In the storyline, Jarrett took David Arquette (yes, the actor) captive and demanded a tag team match between Jarrett and Eric Bischoff and DDP and Arquette. The WCW world title would be on the line for whoever got the pinfall.
Eventually, Bischoff was pinned by Arquette and what was arguably the worst wrestling decision in history was completed.
Oddly enough, this began as a joke when Tony Schiavone mentioned to WCW’s top booker, Vince Russo, that it’d be a good idea for Arquette to win the title. Russo being Russo, thought it was a decent idea, but he wasn’t sold on it according to David Arquette.
(Special thanks to stillrealtous.com for the transcript.)
On the Steve Austin show, Arquette broached the topic and explained, “I actually recently talked to Vince Russo on his podcast, and then, he explained it to me. He said that part of the reason he thought it would be alright because when I first got there, I was running around. I did something with, Jarrett, Jeff Jarrett, and I had his guitar and I went around all the wrestlers and had them sign it. I was just a fan. And he was like, and that was part of the reason I was different. I wasn’t just an actor. I was truly a fan of wrestling, so that’s kind of the idea behind it.”
To be fair, everyone aside from Russo thought it was a bad idea (guess who was right?), but Arquette eventually decided to go along with it to “get a little taste of the business.”
So, a super fan saw an opportunity to join the same wrestlers he loved watching in the ring for a match. No matter how bad the decision was, we can’t blame him. Honestly, we’d all jump at the chance to share the ring with one of our favorites and hold a championship bet. I doubt there’s a single fan that would turn that down.
Disaster time
WCW’s movie, Ready to Rumble, was released around that time and it wasn’t doing too well, so the idea of a title change injecting some energy into it was a viable idea. The participants weren’t the right ones, as the reaction among fans and critics was toxic at best.
The boost they were looking for never materialized and the ticket sales for the upcoming pay-per-view, Slamboree, practically screeched to a halt.
To make matters worse, since the Monday Night Wars were still raging, Nitro lost an estimated 600 thousand viewers from the previous week, and WCW would fold eleven months later.
The good side
It’s hard to see the silver lining in this for WCW fans, but David Arguette held the championship for twelve days and donated his entire earnings fromit to the families of Darren Drozdoz (who was paralyzed in an in-ring accident in 1999), Owen Hart (who died in 1999 after falling to the ring while being lowered), and Brian Pillman (died from a heart attack at 35 years of age in 1997).
Some ideas work out while others don’t. It makes them both memorable when it comes to this day in wrestling history.
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