Originally Posted by seibu:
“In my opinion (and it is only my opinion), creative decisions on their own don't make or break wrestling companies. What killed WCW was the AOL Time Warner merger. WWE have made tons of questionable creative decisions but the business side has always been sound, so they're still here. BTW I don't buy the claim that at one point WWE were just a few months from closure. I think that's entertaining hyperbole and retrospective hype for the Monday night war era.”
Yeah, Vince was never going to close up. He would have cut back on the roster, cut back on dates and retreated to his home territories but he wouldn't have folded the company.
On creative decisions, when a company is hot then they can get away with more things. When they are in a bad position, every little bad decision is amplified. For WCW, viewership declined as a host of bad creative decisions mounted up as the WWF product was hitting top gear. However, you're right in that they could have survived as long as they got TV in 2001. But if they had have been at their ratings peak when the merger happened, it would have been a lot harder to drop them and a lot easier for Bischoff to find a new home for them.