Why Cowboy Bill Watts' Time As WCW Booker Is Divisive
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When Cowboy Bill Watts joined WCW in 1992, fans and wrestlers got excited. This was the man who took Mid-South Wrestling and turned it into arguably the best territory in the NWA in the 1980s. He eventually took the company national as the Universal Wrestling Federation until the oil crash in Oklahoma ended up putting him out of business. However, WCW didn't need Watts to come in and run the company financially. The company wanted him to do what he did in Mid-South and create professional wrestling storylines that kept fans involved and tuning in week after week to see what would happen next.
What resulted was not what fans, the wrestlers, or WCW envisioned. By the time his role as Executive Vice President of WCW ended less than a year later, his time in WCW was divisive and considered by many in the business as a colossal failure. There were many reasons why Watts couldn't replicate his Mid-South success in WCW, and while it was an interview that finally did him in, his rules and visions of the future ended up driving WCW further behind the surging WWE at the time. After Watts left, it took WCW a few years to get back on its feet again and that was only when Eric Bischoff re-imagined the wheel.
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Bill Watts Came Into WCW With Great Fanfare
In 1992, WCW hired Bill Watts as its new Executive Vice President. He came in and attempted to turn the company into something more resembling what he built in Mid-South Wrestling in the 1980s. When Watts ran Mid-South Wrestling, he ran a tight ship. His wrestlers had to keep kayfabe at all costs, and if they slipped up, he punished even his biggest stars harshly. While he developed some of the best storylines in the 1980s, from the rise of Junkyard Dog to the star-making turns of Ted DiBiase, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, and Jake "The Snake" Roberts, he often lost his stars to bigger companies. While Watts blamed the big pocket books of Vince McMahon, there was likely more to it than that.
However, when Watts signed with WCW, all anyone would talk about was his success in Mid-South when it came to his storytelling. Jim Ross, who got his start with Watts in Mid-South, was in WCW when Watts signed on with the new company. "I was a little leery to be honest with you," Ross said on his Grilling JR podcast. "I knew that if he got settled in, and got in his own lane, and created his own way, he could do great things. I just wasn't sure what his communication skills were going to be this long removed from action." That ended up being the problem because Watts' time away from the ring meant that he had lost touch with what fans wanted to see in professional wrestling in 1992.
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Bill Watts Alienated His Own Wrestlers In WCW
There were wrestlers in WCW that knew Bill Watts, and it seemed they would be in for a big push. However, that isn't what happened. Bill Watts started off his tenure by calling in Jake "The Snake" Roberts, ripping up his new contract, and demanding he work under a new deal that paid tremendously less. This was after Jake made his name as one of WWE's top stars. He refused to re-sign Scott Steiner, and then he expected another fellow Mid-South alumni in Rick Steiner to take his side. He didn't and both Steiner Brothers left for WWE. Watts made some rule changes that angered wrestlers and alienated fans. These changes included banning off-the-top-rope moves, which hurt the new up-and-coming cruiserweight division. He got rid of mats around the ring, making things more dangerous, but then banned fighting outside the ring. He also demanded that babyfaces and heels not spend time together, basically forcing friends to stop hanging out to save kayfabe.
It was a lot in 1992 and many wrestlers rebelled. It also didn't help that Watts brought in his son Erik Watts and pushed him into major angles, pushing him ahead of established talent. Fans hated Erik Watts instantly, knowing that it was all nepotism for a wrestler who had done nothing to gain their fandom. Jim Ross said that the rules against coming off the top rope or fighting outside the ring wasn't meant to be anything other than storytelling devices - meaning it was against the rules to get caught doing it. However, the biggest problems came with the rules against wrestlers when they are not working. Ross went on to explain that this was nothing new and Watts didn't create this. It was also something that he agreed with because wrestlers should keep the fans engrossed and the kayfabe intact.
The end for Bill Watts didn't come because of his new rules, or because of how he treated his wrestlers. It also wasn't because he pushed his son over more deserving wrestlers in the company. Bill Watts' time in WCW ended because of an interview he conducted where he said some things that embarrassed Turner Entertainment, who owned WCW. Watts did an interview with the Pro Wrestling Torch in 1991 where he said that a business should be allowed to discriminate against minorities if the owner wants to. He also made disparaging comments against minorities. Reporter Mark Madden sent the interview to Hank Aaron, the baseball legend who played for the Atlanta Braves. He took the interview to the President of TBS and Bill Watts was forced out of WCW the next day. Watts had a chance to do something special in WCW, but he just pushed away his wrestlers and left the company humiliated, marking a very disturbing year for WCW.
