On a recent episode of the “What Happened When” podcast, Tony Schiavone and Conrad Thompson watched the very first episode of WCW Thunder.
During the podcast, Schiavone shared an interesting tidbit about WCW Thunder with the audience. Schiavone revealed that Thunder was a TBS idea, not the company management. However, since WCW was owned by Turner Television, the management and talent had no choice or voice in the matter.
“Eric [Bischoff] says ‘Thunder’ was a bad call,” said Schiavone. “‘Thunder’ was TBS’ call. Nobody wanted ‘Thunder,’ and there again is the rub and there again is the reason I know I’m right on this. Why WCW would’ve never worked. You cannot have a television company, that knows nothing about running a wrestling company calling the shots. That’s why WCW went down because it was owned by a television company.”
Schiavone also chimed in on WWE’s potential sale following the return of Vince McMahon. Schiavone noted that a sale to potential bidders such as Disney might not work out, and that it was best for the wrestling company and the network itself to remain separate entities.
“I don’t work for the WWE, so I don’t know [if a sale to a television company would work]. You can’t just be another cog in the wheel so to speak like we were, can’t be another WCW/Atlanta Braves/[Atlanta] Thrashers/CNN/TBS/TNT like we were. You’ve got to be your own entity,” said Schiavone.
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