Digging Back Into WCW Files – Still an Active Company? What Almost Happened, and Why the “Invasion” Angle Sucked Something I learned about WCW in the end was the contract situation, it seems somewhat confusing, however if it’s broken down, it makes sense. Lots of people (myself included) didn’t really like the “Invasion” angle in 2001 due to the fact there were many big names missing, Sting, Goldberg, Steiner and so forth, many people were mad right away when Vince decided not to pick up these big names, however, this had nothing to do with McMahon himself. Many of these top wrestlers had contracts with Time Warner itself, NOT with WCW, in the case of Goldberg, he had a guaranteed contract with Time Warner, so basically if WCW went belly up, he would still get paid, his contracted ended December 31st at 11:59pm 2002, so McMahon couldn’t have Goldberg even if he wanted to, UNLESS he was willing to pick up his contract which wouldn’t be a smart business move because he’d have to buy out the rest of Goldberg’s contract, then offer him a new one, and likely on top of that offer him a “bonus” for signing with WWE right away. Why WCW was sold is a different tale than most of you may know, the new AOL merged with Time Warner, Jamie Kellner was handed control over the Turner Broadcasting division, and deemed WCW wrestling to be out of line with its image. As a result, WCW programming was canceled on both TBS and TNT, leaving Vince McMahons company, which at the time had an exclusive deal with Viacom, free to acquire the trademarks, video libraries and a few contracts. WCW is still active today, however, not owned by WWE…so to speak. WWE owns WCW Inc, which like I said above, means the libraries and liabilities, the part of WCW NOT owned by WWE and is still active is known as Universal Wrestling Corporation, which was the name of WCW soon after Turner purchased it from NWA. (UWC didn’t last long, the name quickly changed to WCW) So UWC is still active today, but lies dormant, does nothing, makes no money, has nothing other than the name basically. As of April 2014 UWC is still registered as an active Georgia-domiciled subsidiary of Time Warner. Domiciled meaning: In law, domicile is the status or attribution of being a permanent resident in a particular jurisdiction. A person can remain domiciled in a jurisdiction even after they have left it, if they have maintained sufficient links with that jurisdiction or have not displayed an intention to leave permanently (i.e., if that person has moved to a different state, but has not yet formed an intention to remain there indefinitely). A corporation’s place of domicile is equivalent to its place of incorporation. Recently, Hertz Corp. v. Friend concluded that “principal place of business refers to the place where corporations high level officers direct, control and coordinate the corporations activities.” This is the test for corporate domicile when claiming diversity jurisdiction. During the sale, WCW was in litigation, with various lawsuits pending, and AOL Time Warner still had to pay various performers their guaranteed deals, as many had contracts directly with the parent company, and not with WCW. Since Vince McMahon only acquired select assets, the company that was once WCW became known as Universal Wrestling Corporation once again; its only purpose now, however, was to deal with old contracts and lawsuits. Eric Bischoff actually made a bid for WCW, he was joined with another unnamed financial backer, the two of them were going to own WCW together, though AOL Time Warner was dropping WCW, all assets would belong to the backer and Bischoff, however only a mere couple of weeks before the sale was to go through, the backer literally backed out of the deal leaving Bischoff by himself, not having the funds to acquire WCW. This then also raised into question Jeff Jarrett, though nothing was known then, we know that Jarrett founded TNA Wrestling along with its parent NWA in 2002, people have asked me why Jarrett didn’t purchase WCW. TNA was founded on the money of Jeff Jarrett, his father Jerry and Toby Keith, they could have purchased WCW alongside of Bischoff, but didn’t. It’s pretty much known now that Jarrett didn’t get along with Bischoff, and people say that Jarrett wanted to align himself with NWA, this now begs the next question. Why couldn’t the Jarrett’s and Keith purchase WCW themselves then align themselves with NWA? This could have been done, but why a bid was never made is unknown. One source I read today tells me that this exact thing was actually planned but WWE offered more money than the Jarrett’s & Keith, I don’t know if it’s true, but it is noteworthy. So this then leads me to the original story in 2012 that Turner went public on owning a wrestling company again, one of the stipulations was when WCW was purchased by WWE Turner couldn’t be a part, or a backer of any other wrestling company for at least 10 years. Many people speculated TNA right off the hop, however myself and a few other big reporters shot this down. Turner did want to get back into wrestling, but didn’t want to purchase a company that existed, he wanted to start one from the ground up, the funny thing is he’d have to have people who know that business, he’d be the money man. In November 2013 the news came up again about Turner wanting to get back into wrestling, however, nothing more was said, basically a re-hash of the original story. Now again in 2014 people wonder if Turner will be the financial backer of Global Force Wrestling.
Posted on: Wed, 28 May 2014 01:58:04 +0000
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