In this weekly column, I will comment on the past week's goings-on in WOW, and whatever else it occurs to me to discuss :-) I also hope that a big part of the column will be printing and responding to your e-mails. So please send them in (the address is thatthing35@yahoo.com)!
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6/3/01: Peeking Through the Wreckage
First off, an interesting thing I came across... I found a WOW investment brochure [joke deleted] online. It revealed that Steven Bearce, WOW's "vice president of creative affairs", was GLOW's head writer. So my question is, do we blame David McLane for hiring someone whose writing was 15 years out of date 15 years ago? Or do we blame Mr. Bearce for not having had any new ideas in the last decade and a half? Personally, I'll take a little of both.
Moving right along... this week's big news is that the WOW web site has been taken completely offline. The natural reaction is to think that this signals the demise of the company. But I don't think that can be the case, because you can still buy the stock, and no press release has been issued to indicate the end.
I see two possibilities here. One is that WOW simply decided that a website was no longer a luxury they could afford. It does cost money to run a website. That's one thing when you're using the site to hype a product, but of course WOW has little to hype right now. I doubt the website brings in much money directly. It did have some ads, but traffic on the website had steadily declined since the show went into re-runs, and the Internet ad industry is collapsing anyway. So perhaps a business decision was made, by a company that has to cut corners wherever it can, that the website was costing WOW more than it was helping it. Needless to say, if this is the reason the site is down, it strongly suggests that the company doesn't have much time left. There can't be too many more corners left to cut.
The second possibility is that WOW has merged with, or been bought out by, some other company. WOW did make a reference to this possibility in their most recent press release. This would explain why a wowe.com website is no longer needed. It would also explain why WOW webmaster Mike Sweetser has said that a non-disclosure agreement prevents him from discussing the website situation. If they just decided not to have a website anymore, Sweetser would probably be allowed to discuss that (although not necessarily). But a pending business deal would undoubtedly be covered by the non-disclosure agreement.
Who could they have merged with or been bought out by? I have a strong hunch that it's Gorgeous Ladies of Outrageous Wrestling (GLOOW). Here is the circumstantial evidence I have to support this theory. GLOOW is reporting on their website that WOW wrestlers may appear on their show. Considering that GLOOW is based in Philadelphia -- almost 3,000 miles away from WOW's Los Angeles base -- this seems a bit tough to explain otherwise. They are also reporting that "G.L.O.O.W. Officials will be making a very BIG announcement sometime in the next few days! THIS IS GOING TO AFFECT THE entire WRESTLING WORLD!!" Meanwhile, as I mentioned, WOW has made noises about buying into another company. And I also have heard (second-hand) that a business deal has been considered for WOW that would involve more of a T&A element. GLOOW, if you don't know, is all about T&A (and violence). Putting it all together, I think there is a good chance that we will hear in the next couple of weeks that WOW and GLOOW have merged. Again, it's all circumstantial evidence, and I really have no direct proof of it, so take this theory with many grains of salt. It's just that it explains everything I just described quite neatly, and unlike almost everyone else in the world, GLOOW could actually benefit from bringing WOW under its wing.
Anyways, I think we're going to be hearing quite soon that WOW as we know it has ceased to exist, either because it merges with someone else, or because it folds altogether. I'm honestly not sure which is gonna happen -- I give a 50/50 chance of either -- but I'm pretty sure it's gonna be one or the other. On that basis, I'm probably going to wrap up the WOW Fantasy column. I will do the scheduled "Summer Swelter" pay-per-view event next week. The week after that, I will explain how I wanted to proceed from there; I had it planned out through another pay-per-view in late August. That'll probably be all, unless something happens in the next two weeks to make me think that it would be meaningful to continue to do it.
Oh, by the way, some people have been waiting for WOW Shopzone orders since January. Good job, WOW folks! I warned you guys earlier not to buy from Shopzone, but then I kind of went back on it, and I apologize for that.
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