WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross spoke about Bill Watts quitting WWE in 1995 after a very short stint in. Here are the highlights:
What issues Watts had with Vince McMahon: “I don’t remember him ever telling me, Conrad, that he and Vince had this big fight. He was upset that Vince was not as hard on the talent as Bill thought he should be, and our structure was a little lax, that we weren’t pushing the talent to get better, and we weren’t giving other talents an opportunity to ‘get over.’ And some of the things Bill said were absolutely on the money, but he just had a, his communication skills sometimes brought out the old Cowboy, and in that generation, with the way these guys were brought in, they weren’t territory guys a lot of them, then all of a sudden Cowboy’s teachings, and his philosophies, were not taken well. He was too heavy-handed in the eyes of a lot of people.”
What the final straw was that led to Watts quitting: “I don’t know for sure, I think he probably, knowing Bill, it was the fact that he was looking at the house show grosses, he was looking at the television shows, he had attendance and live events, he didn’t see the magic that we needed, and so therefore, when that happens, if you had it in a territory days, you got a new booker, new bookers are brought in to mix things up, to change things up, because what we were currently doing isn’t working, what we were currently doing at that time was not working, it was not selling tickets, we were not getting great television ratings. So Cowboy looked at all the measurables and decided that it was time for changes to be made and new talent should be given opportunities to fill those top slots and freshen up the presentation of our product. But the talents had issues with that, they always do, and the ones that were close to the old man, would go to the old man and say he’s behind the times, he’s too old school, he’s too abrasive, in other words, they’re covering their ass. And to their defense, sometimes Bill wasn’t, often times, he was not a good communicator in that regard, because it wasn’t the old Mid-South, it wasn’t his company. It wasn’t he was the final, final voice. He was never the final voice. He was never in charge of creative. But he was given the false pretense, or hope, that he was, but he wasn’t. And then when he found out that he wasn’t, and when Cowboy wanted to change some titles, or move some guys around, and it got vetoed, he knew that the jig was up.”
