Insight into the production of ‘Who Killed WCW?’
Episode one of the four-part docuseries, ‘Who Killed WCW?’ premiered on VICE on June 4th. To promote it, Brian Gewirtz, who was involved in the show’s creation, joined Peter Rosenberg on his Cheap Heat podcast.
One of the former Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. executives that was contacted for the docuseries was former CEO and Chairman, Jamie Kellner. Gewirtz thinks Keller’s point of view is why would anyone want to talk about the topic at hand.
Well, that’s kind of the — that was the weaving in and out and tricky situation we found ourselves in because we’d love to interview everybody (for ‘Who Killed WCW?’) if possible. I think Evan (Husney) and Jason (Eisener) started shooting in December. It was like a really quick turnaround for a four-part, four-hour docuseries and there’s a limited budget, etcetera, etcetera… There wasn’t anyone that asked to be on that we turned down but we mainly reached out to people. We wanted to interview Jamie Kellner, the Turner executive who ultimately canceled WCW on Turner and I think his P.O.V. is pretty much the same as it was in the early 2000s, late 90s, which is why does anyone want to talk about this? He was not a wrestling fan.
Gewirtz did share that Hulk Hogan is not a part of the docuseries as an interviewee. They tried to make it work but could not get things squared away.
He speculated that maybe it had something to do with VICE doing a ‘Nine Lives of Hulk Hogan’ series that did not paint Hogan in the best light and it was a follow-up to The Nine Lives of Vince McMahon series that the channel rolled out.
Hulk Hogan, we did reach out to Hulk and first of all, he is not appearing in the documentary to talk. He couldn’t do it. We tried. We both tried, on both sides, it didn’t work out. A lot of people have a lot of opinions on him and talk about him and some positive, some negative and his P.O.V. is definitely represented on the show and obviously, him and Eric (Bischoff) were very close and Eric can to speak to a lot of Hogan’s P.O.V. at the time, both in terms of signing him, in terms of the heel turn, in terms of, kind of, the botched finish with Sting in their big match, the match with Goldberg, the finger poke of doom, Bash at the Beach. All of that stuff is pretty well-covered and yeah, he’s not physically talking on the show but he’s definitely represented.
Honestly, I don’t know (why Hogan could not do the documentary). Myself, Rock, we’ve always had a great relationship with Hogan. I’d say we still do. This is just my pure speculation and I have no idea if this is the case or not, but I know VICE had done a ‘Nine Lives of Hulk Hogan’ docuseries similar to their Nine Lives of Vince McMahon, and I’ve not talked to Eric about this, I’ve not talked to Hogan about this but you know, if I’m Hogan and I see that and I didn’t authorize that and it doesn’t put me in the most flattering light, no rush to do VICE any solids but that’s just my speculation. I don’t know. Could be the case or not.
Episode one of ‘Who Killed WCW?’ was reviewed by John Pollock, Wai Ting and Brian Mann here on POST Wrestling.
There’s an interview here on the site with executive producer Evan Husney.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Cheap Heat with Peter Rosenberg with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
