On a recent edition of his “Something to Wrestle” podcast, Bruce Prichard addressed the shortcomings of the WCW Invasion angle in 2001.
Prichard mentioned that the angle did not succeed because WWE did not have contractual agreements with the top stars of WCW at the time.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On wanting to go back and not do the WCW invasion angle: “I wouldn’t have done [the WCW invasion]. The Kevin Nashs, the Hulk Hogans, Scott Hall, Sting, Ric Flair, all those guys — they weren’t coming. So, from our vantage point, we were not interested in the talent. We were interested in … the IP and … the TV slot on TNT.”
On why the angle didn’t work: “We took other physical things such as their rings but the talent was a completely separate deal. If you want them, here’s the contracts, you can negotiate to buy these contracts and continue to honor them but some of them were so outrageous that we weren’t gonna touch that. We didn’t want the headaches that came along with it at the time that were rumored to be. The perception of war and an invasion which we did, making hasty decisions inside of a week. The decision to buy WCW went back and forth and back and forth within a week. But we didn’t know what we really had at that point, we were blind. We decided to cherry pick some young talent and went from there. But without the WCW stalwarts I don’t think an invasion would have worked and obviously it didn’t with what we had.”
