In 2001, WCW officially went out of business after being bought by WWF/WWE and the McMahon family, but why did they have to end up closing their doors? There are a number of theories as to why World Championship Wrestling went out of business and some think that it was essentially the “Monday Night Wars” that did them in. Well, Chris Jericho recently found a relic from his days in WCW, and he thinks he knows the true answer.
The demise of WCW
There is no real big surprise that things started to truly go down hill for WCW near the end of the ’90s. They began losing a number of their best talents to WWF/WWE, and the product just started getting worse with each weekly television show.
Wrestling Inc. noticed an Instagram post from Chris Jericho that showed him holding up one of his paychecks from WCW. Jericho first appeared in WWE in 1999 with one of the most memorable debuts in the history of wrestling as he had a face-off with The Rock, and fans loved every second of it.
The check that Jericho showed a picture of on Instagram was issued in 2000, and it was likely one of his last from WCW. You can probably tell why he left the company.
A paycheck for fifteen cents is more than enough reason to no longer want to work somewhere, and it wasn’t just Jericho. There gave been many reports over the years of superstars saying that WCW owed them money, wouldn’t pay them or stiffed them by trying to pay them less than they were owed.
The return (again) of Raw’ s Jericho
Chris Jericho was moved to SmackDown Live back in April during the whole Superstar Shake-Up, but after losing the United States Title to Kevin Owens, he took a hiatus. Jericho’s time away from WWE was due to a summer concert tour that was planned with his band Fozzy, but he is coming back soon.
According to PW Mania , Chris Jericho is set to take part in a few international shows coming up this week. One of them is on June 28 in Singapore, and the others are June 30 and July 1 in Tokyo. The strange thing about this return as those are Monday Night Raw brand shows, and he is now officially a member of Team Blue.
It will be interesting to see how WWE explains this or if they even bother to do it at all. No matter what brand he is on, there is little doubt that he’s getting more money now than he was in his time spent with WCW.
Of course, there was the issue last year where Marcus “Buff” Bagwell filed a lawsuit against WWE saying they weren’t paying him royalties. Buff, another former WCW star, said that there was material on the WWE Network which featured him and he wasn’t getting paid for it, according to PW Insider .
Obviously, Chris Jericho made the right decision to jump ship back in 1999 and head over to WWF/WWE from WCW. He not only kept his popularity but it only continued to grow and has been doing so for the last 18 years. Receiving a 15-cent paycheck from his former company was more than enough of a reason for him to leave, but it just goes to show people that WCW’s going out of business in 2001 had a lot to do with financial reasons.
[Featured Image by WWE]
