The Ultimate Grudge Match:
Ted
Turner vs. WWF
Monday, July 5, 1999By LARRY McSHANE
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
In the bizarre world of professional wrestling, where the plot twists are increasingly twisted and no outrage is too outrageous, this grudge match is the real deal.
In this corner: World Championship Wrestling and Ted Turner -- the billionaire philanthropist, America's Cup winner, Mr. Jane Fonda. His opponents: the World Wrestling Federation and Vince McMahon -- the third-generation promoter, P.T. Barnum acolyte, Mr. Take-No-Prisoners.
The mismatched gladiators are locked in a winner-take-all, no-holds-barred, steel-cage match for wrestling's real prize: a reported $1 billion in annual revenues, dominance of the pay-per-view market, control of cable television.
"There is an animosity. That's real," says longtime wrestling aficionado Bert Sugar, who pauses a few seconds before finishing his thought. "You know, that might be the only thing that's real."
Real, and real ugly. Nobody pulls any punches in this unscripted match, a change from wrestling's usual choreographed challenges.
Here's McMahon on Turner: "I don't like Ted, and he doesn't like me. So we start from there. . . . His vitriol is not to be believed."
Here's WCW president Eric Bischoff on McMahon: "Vince likes to put himself in some type of competition with Ted Turner. It makes him look better."
There was no competition until 1988, when Turner first entered the ring. The Atlanta businessman called McMahon to deliver the news.
McMahon says he offered a quick response: "Ted, I want nothing to do with you," and hung up on him.
A feud was born.
McMahon has recently drawn tremendous attention (and ratings) with his envelope-pushing story lines: a wrestling pimp with a stable of hookers; a beer-swilling, bird-flipping champion; fistfights with his son Shane.
His WWF, McMahon says unapologetically, gives the people what they want: a hybrid soap opera, talk show, rock concert, cartoon that he labels "sports entertainment." Turner provides, McMahon says disdainfully, an antiquated product: "rasslin'."
Not true, replies Bischoff. His group takes wrestling's high road, eschewing McMahon's preoccupation with sex and vulgarity for more traditional scenarios (although a recent WCW episode included wrestler Ric Flair checking into a mental institution).
An exasperated Bischoff also accuses McMahon of swiping a recent WCW narrative that pitted the league's bosses against its wrestlers: "It is absolutely a direct rip-off. Anybody that doesn't see that is either blind or on Vince's payroll."
Each Monday night, people can see for themselves. An estimated 10 million viewers tune in for the leagues' signature shows, the WCW's "Monday Nitro" and the WWF's "RAW Is WAR."
"Nitro" was top dog for 83 weeks between late 1996 and early 1998, capturing the higher Nielsen numbers as McMahon languished. It wasn't until April 1998 that the reinvented WWF, with its new, nastier plots, drop-kicked Bischoff & Co. back to No. 2.
"The only thing they could do to compete was adopt the Howard Stern, Jerry Springer approach," Bischoff sniffs. "It's very effective, but not very creative. It has everything to do with desperation."
Desperation apparently sells. On May 10, the WWF garnered the highest rating for a regularly scheduled entertainment show in cable history, with more than 6.1 million homes tuned in.
But Bischoff isn't conceding, and the struggle continues. This match could be a marathon.
Today, the WWF airs in nine languages and 120 countries, and Turner's stations beam his WCW worldwide.
Things were simpler when McMahon entered the business in the mid-1960s. Pro wrestling was a kinder, gentler place: The good guys (baby-faces) battled the bad guys (heels).
The baby-faces won. Always.
Wrestling had what's now called a "niche" audience: folks who watched UHF channels and visited dimly lighted gyms for live shows. Its promoters divided the country into regions, each running his own fiefdom.
Cooperation, not competition, was the catchword. McMahon smashed that concept to bits.
He followed his grandfather, Jess, and dad, Vince, into the northeast's Capital Wrestling. He became a TV announcer for his dad's operation; when Vince Sr. retired in 1982, Vince Jr. bought the business.
Young Vince, with a mean streak more apropos of his ring creations, invaded his competitors' territories to create a national organization. He aggravated plenty of people and drew plenty of death threats.
"His was a scorched-earth policy," says Sugar, co-author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Professional Wrestling."
"I don't think Attila the Hun did any less damage."
McMahon put more than a dozen regional operations out of business as he revamped the old World Wide Wrestling Federation into the WWF. His Wrestlemania III drew a record 93,173 people to the Pontiac Silverdome in 1987. McMahon invited outsiders into the ring: pop star Cyndi Lauper, Liberace and baseball manager Billy Martin each participated in WWF events.
Wrestling insiders attacked McMahon's calculated crossover bid, which included the xenophobic hyping of bad guys from Iran and the Soviet Union, a swishy wrestler in pink tights, and a steroid-pumped superhero named Hulk Hogan.
One vintage operation survived McMahon: Jim Crockett's Georgia-based National Wrestling Alliance. Before Crockett could surrender, he acquired an unlikely tag-team partner: Ted Turner.
The media mogul needed TV programming, so he bought some. The NWA, rechristened World Championship Wrestling, became a Turner property and joined his TV schedule.
Sound the bell! Both sides were ready to rumble.
Turner fired the first shots, swiping WWF superstar Hogan (and several other McMahon wrestlers). Hulk became Hollywood, Hollywood became a bad guy, and the WCW mounted the first real challenge against McMahon.
The WCW turned its heels into its heroes, rebels who paused briefly before assaulting any and all authority figures. Turner was soon ripped as a hypocrite: the philanthropist packaging antisocial violence for television. McMahon had his own problems: a 1994 trial (and acquittal) on steroid charges, allegations (but no charges) of sexual abuse within the WWF. McMahon notes that Hogan, a Turner employee, was one of the key government witnesses in the steroid trial.
The WCW took advantage and began consistently whipping its competition. But then the script changed.
McMahon came up off the mat and mounted his own comeback starting 18 months ago. The WWF story lines and its characters changed -- mutated, actually.
There were liberal doses of sex, Satanism, violence and vulgarity. The WCW, now chasing the leader, positioned itself as the baby-face to McMahon's heel.
The WCW fines wrestlers who mouth obscenities on television. The WWF encourages it.
The WCW's No. 1 star is an ex-NFL player named Bill Goldberg, who bills himself only as "Goldberg." He's perhaps the last of the great baby-faces. The WWF's top attraction -- beer-swilling, gun-toting, head-banging "Stone Cold" Steve Austin -- is as well known for extending his middle finger as for pinning opponents.
To his critics, McMahon offers the same gesture.
In a New York Daily News guest column, he dismissed detractors as "out of touch moral crusaders who don't have a clue and egghead professors with flimsy studies."
The last shot was aimed at Indiana University communications professor Walter Gantz, who monitored 100 hours of WWF programming and saw:
1,658 times that wrestlers grabbed or pointed to their crotch.
434 uses of an obscene phrase.
157 instances of flipping the bird.
128 incidents of simulated sexual activity.
47 incidents of simulated satanic activity.
42 incidents of simulated drug use.
Not mentioned by Gantz: the corresponding ratings surge.
Leverage in the McMahon-Turner bout won't come from a leg lock or a pile driver. The word here is "demographics."
The WCW boasts an audience that is 51 percent men above the age of 18. One in every four viewers has an annual income of $50,000 or more. Its pay-per-view events reach an average of 300,000 homes. Bischoff brags that its number of licensed products has gone from 25 to 250; that includes a new cologne.
The WWF offers its own avalanche of statistics.
In 1998, its shows posted bigger Nielsen numbers than Jerry Springer among males aged 12-34. Its ratings have made USA the nation's No. 1 cable network. Its pay-per-view numbers in 1998: 4.6 million buys, $142 million in sales. It has more than 150 licensees, everything from neckties to greeting cards to action figures.
