WCW Week 2: Here be pirates!

When you last left us we'd just taken over WCW, stole Nash's beer fridge and started a stable of wrestling...pirates. This week we focus on where the money drain is coming from, celebrate international cuisine, create a far cheaper killer heel and hopefully turn at least a buck by the end of it..

Monday June 6 1998: Whatever Sophie got up to on the weekend it was obviously enjoyable as she finally gave me some semi-good news after a week of me yelling at her when I couldn't find my car keys (conveniently forgetting I now travel to bars via limo..). According to her latest email we're doing quite well okayish:

Here is my weekly report on our battle with WWF. We have superior star power on our roster, which is hurting their image. They have better workers than us, and so fans are turning to them. The fans see us as being the more professional promotion, thanks to our higher production values.

In a brilliant move to get the fans to realize that we have the better workers, I have changed the titles of a few of our roster. Davey Boy Smith will now be known as 'Ditch Digging Davey', Dusty Rhodes will now be referred to as 'Dusty Rhode Worker', Glacier has become 'Weed Wacker' and Wayne Bloom has become a bonafide job seeker again (more savings!).

Speaking of money, someone neglected to tell me we were running without sponsorship which would be a fast track to financial ruin with Ric Flairs bar tab alone so I remembered the address details of some randoms I drank with a couple of months ago and it just so happened to be the marketing managers for Sports Illustrated and Nintendo! A few slick deals involving David Flair mowing their lawns every second Sunday and suddenly I had money coming in. More than was going out? Probably not (this is WCW after all) but it's a start!
I also hired another writer with the name Charisma because I found it hilarious. Sophie will probably still ask for more though..(To pay for her I have removed one of Hogans tanning beds. Eleven should be more than enough for any man!)

While on the way to a marketing meeting I ran into Greg 'The Hammer' Valentine. I made a quick joke about where the rest of the tool kit was but he looked at me blankly. Remind me to job him out at the next opportunity for not finding me utterly hilarious.

Doesn't really get me.

Tuesday June 7 1998: NITRO TIME!

Time to really sharpen my booking pencil again!

Firstly for the show I went to book an angle to introduce my new super group Yargh Matey to the world, but the writers went on strike claiming there wasn't enough of them around to actually script a proper angle. Seriously? How hard could this be? Having found this out at the last minute, I had to throw to a quick fallback to keep the crowd fired up after the quite expensive pyrotechnics. So I sent out..Alex Wright!
Unfortunately on the way out he forgot who he was feuding with and spent the entire five and a half minute spot trash talking Ernest Miller. Great interview, completely wrong opponent..

Going great kid!

Next up Vilano IV would completely steam roll Greg Valentine. A lesson needed to be taught here and my new Goldberg crushing enforcer would do the job quite nicely.

Now it was tag time and in a special match, we were having a NITRO RICK OFF! Winners of this match get a case of Riccadonna champagne and Sunday off. Rick Fuller and Rick Martel would take on Rick Rude and Rick Steiner. In the interest of cost cutting, I have them go to a no contest Double disqualification so I didn't have to buy anyone any drinks. Steiner and rude protested this idea but I raised the hand and told them to speak to it. Being the boss is fun!

Since we hadn't had a submission match since I got there, I figured it was high time to unleash two brilliant ring tacticians against each other and asked for Dean Malenko and Eddie Guerro to do what they do best. What could possibly go wrong? However in a communication breakdown between two drunk road agents, instead I got a submission match with Jim 'The Anvil' Neidhart and Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Duggan would go over and I would suspend daily beer privileges til after 10am.

Next the Flock (without Raven) would come out and blast Raven for not being there when they needed him most. Brilliant. No one will suspect a thing when I finally get more writers and finally reveal...Yargh Matey! (Whenever that will be..)

Up next: Goooooooooooooooldberg would taste defeat against Finlay. First Bill complained about losing. Then having Finley win cleanly. Then about something else (I forget because I was too busy drowning him out.) I was tempted to use another Vilano run in to really hammer the point home to stop being so anti social but I'm sure he'll get it soon enough. Remind me to send Finlay some Guiness to say thanks.

After the success these two had last time, I rematched Bret Hart against Booker T. Then to really make things interesting, I had Raven (with new eye patch! These things are going to sell like bottled water!) run in and brawl with them both but maximize the mystery. Smell that? It's booking awesomesauce!

Finally to keep those rabid Hulkamaniacs happy, I booked Hollywood Hulk Hogan in a match against the newly named Ditch Digging Davey. However in another genius move by the road agents, Davey was actually outside the arena learning how to dig a ditch to really get into character. Sadly Hogan won by count out because by the time Davey finally made it to the ring, most of the fans had gone home...credit to Hogan though, he managed to play air guitar for a good three hours before realising what had happened..

THE ROAD AGENT NOTES

Vilano IV is really getting over. (Yes!)
Greg Valentine has a weak gimmick. (Maybe it's time I put him in a certain pirate stable perhaps?)
Bill Goldberg no sold everything in his match making it look dog turd bad (Wow, what a bloody surprise there..)
Booker T vs Bret Hart got a 90% rating!

THE MAIL AFTER THE MATCH

Greg Valentine doesn't want to work with Vilano IV anymore and would prefer if I put him up against Horace.
Rick Fuller complained about Rick Steiner being too stiff. (Actually that's a fair complaint..)
The road agents reckon Fit Finlay and Goldberg work well together. Now I'm really going to cut back on their beer..
Hollywood Hogan complained about having to carry Ditch Digging Davey even though the match never started..
Savage wants to be booked and wants to go against Rick Steiner.
We lost the ratings to Monday night Raw. (Gah!..)


Wednesday June 8 1998:

I officially changed the Gimmicks of Raven, Sonny Ono, Greg Valentine and Konnan to: Pirate. The next time they appear on screen, it's pirate time! To make sure I wasn't faced with another mutiny from the writers (look, a pirate joke!) I hired another one - some bloke called Nick.
Amazingly the email was empty so I amused myself by checking out how things were tracking in the WCW gym. There I found Mark Starr doing bicep curls in the squat rack and rewarded his efforts by officially renaming him Brosef Bruce.

By this time I realized I hadn't even worked out who was holding the title belts (and it was doubtful half the road agents actually knew either) so I got Sophie on the case and discovered Sting and the Steiners had some of them and Booker T actually had the TV title which would make things even more interesting next time he went against Bret. Must remember to make some title matches soon..

In a meeting with the head medic he informed me that he needs at least three more medics on his team for things to run properly - seriously, how did anything get managed to get done before I arrived? (Or did they fire everyone who wasn't on the wrestler list before I got here?) So I bit the bullet and hired him one more medic and then released Hardwork Walker and Michael Hardstreet, arguing that you don't need a lot of medics when you have even less injury prone wrestlers to look after. Boss logic for the win!

Hardwork = outtawork

According to the accountants, we've made a grand total of -$2368520 since I got here. Business as usual for WCW it seems..

Thursday June 9, 1998: THUNDER TIME!

During beer and pretzel breakfast time with the boys, Raven asked if he could book Thunder. Figuring he only had to book 8 segments I agreed but only if I could pick the lineup that he had to work with.
So tonight's thunder will be titled WCW THUNDER: INTERNATIONAL FOOD COURT and will consist of the following international workers:

Alex Wright (Germany), Ditch Digging Davey (UK), Fit Finlay (IRE), Louie Spiccoli (Er...Italy?), Rey Mystereo Jnr (Mexico), Yuji Nagata (Japan), Meng (Tonga Island), Randy Savage (The Savage Lands), The Barbarian (North of the wall) and The Giant (Mordor).

For the night I have also replaced all the announcers desks with bain maries, all the popcorn with prawn crackers and lead announcer Mene Gene will now speak with a Spanish accent.

Gene, you know I don't speak Spanish!

Lets see how he goes!

(He scored 56/100. Maybe I should have stayed with beer and hotdogs for this mostly American crowd.)

In other news I finally sat down with the promotions team to find out how things were tracking with merchandise. They excitedly told me that we had a ripper $2279999 merchandise turnover. However this being WCW they also reluctantly told me that it cost $2100000 in merchandising costs. Which means we're making roughly $179000 a month in t-shirt sales or roughly the same amount it costs to have Hogan hang around for another month..
Hopefully the popularity of Yargh Matey would fix things...


Friday June 10, 1998:

No mail today - wifi in the locker room must be down. To amuse myself after the breakfast bourbon session I took a tour of the facilities incognito (I stole La Parkas mask while he was having a shower). Sneaking into a writers meeting I overheard that Robbie Rage's gimmick wasn't working - having no idea we even had a guy with such a terrible name employed on the roster, I then snuck into creative and made a few suggestions.

Now I must admit that I got a bit carried away when I turned Robbie into Hollywood Wogan, a guy who moved, acted, attempted to talk like and thought he was actually Hollywood Hogan but actually looked like Robbie normally does. My theory was that when Hogan's contract ran out in three months Yogan could take over. Not only would nobody notice, I'd be paying Robbie less than a tenth of Hogan's usual fee for the priviliage! Genius!

Meet Hollywood Wogan! Merchandise machine!

Saturday June 11 1998: 

While going through the files I noticed that Brian Adams was making a staggering $90,000 a month. And he wasn't even singing! To get rid of him I'll have to either wait 20 months until his contract ends or pay him close to a million dollars to go and earn 90k a month somewhere else.
Gee thanks Eric, you haven't made this easy!

Since I've gone also two weeks without a single title change, I figured the fans would be clamoring for some kind of belt action...so I created my own! A $2 special I had the props department spray paint gold, named the Punch Kick Fight Bite championship and to be contested at every house show, pay per view and company hotdog night from this moment forward. While seeing me admire it in my office, Sophie suggested Chavo would be a worthy first recipient...not a bad suggestion.

According to our latest poll, the number 5 heel on our roster is Eric Bischoff. Considering the headaches he's caused me without even being here, I can fully believe that..

SATURDAY NIGHT HOUSE SHOW aka SHORTER THAN THE LINE FOR BEER

I've opened with a real hum dinger of a match to introduce the Punch Kick Fight Bite! Title to the world - with Chavo vs Eddie Guerero vs Dean Malenko. Finally a match that I didn't throw darts at the roster to work out who was participating. Chavo wins naturally, kicking off this new ($2) illustrious title!

Next, a mysterious video plays on the screen-o-tron. Wait...is that Raven...surrounded by Pirates? Damn straight son! It's time to start sewing the seeds of this mighty stable!

Doink makes his debut by beating the paste out of Brian Adams in a hardcore match. If I'm going to spend 90k a month on the guy, I might as well use a clown to get my moneys worth.

Welcome to WCW!

Bret Hart is interviewed next and he really lays the boots (metaphorically speaking) into Booker T. He then commands Booker to face him in the ring so he can lay the boots into him physically. I'm giving the win to Book this time around to really ignite this feud some more, instructing the boys to brawl all the way to the back after the match.

 ROAD AGENT NOTES

The Punch Kick Fight Bite title has gained in image. (Brilliant! Great work Sophie!)
Brian Adams lost overness from this match. Doink The Clown gained overness from this match. (As expected!)
Bret Hart lost overness from this match. Booker T gained overness from this match. (Hmm, Bret might have to win the next one...and maybe the Television title from Book..)
Overall rating: 81/100 Awesome!


Sunday June 12 1998: (Happy birthday Guy!)

Got mail from Ric Flair - it didn't contain a single WHOOOOO and I was sorely disappointed. He wants a fight against Nash or something. I'll think about it. Woo.

Apparently I made $241440 from ticket sales. Now only $1,075,920 to go this month to turn a profit!

For some reason Ditch Digging Davey is our number 6 most popular wrestler when it comes to merchandise sales. I really have no idea why..

Dig you a ditch guv? By me t-shirt!

Up next, is it pay per view time yet?