Kevin Sullivan covered the NWO Souled Out 1997 pay-per-view. This was an attempt by WCW to create a separate brand with the NWO crew of wrestlers and a different look.
Here are some highlights:
Sullivan gave his thoughts on NWO Souled out and why it came to be: “This was an experiment and rightfully so for them to try it because there was talk of splitting the company into having a NWO hour and a WCW hour. I think they tried. They were thinking out of the box. They boxed themselves in the corner, I thought, because they (NWO) had invaded. Now to get your own PPV, if you have any sense at all, you know they were working with the company. It was presented by Turner. I think it was a ballsy move. I think that because they tried that, maybe they did themselves a favor by not jumping into something without sticking their toe in because I think they thought the buy rate was going to be a lot bigger. After this, they decided they better go back to what they were doing that worked…Things were running good. I’m glad they tried it…They saw it didn’t work. It didn’t do that much harm. I’m going to say they did ok money wise on the buyrate even though it was only 175,000 buys. I think they walked away being a lot smarter knowing it didn’t work. Sometimes you learn from your mistakes rather than your successes…I think Eric (Bischoff) came up with the name and I think Eric came up with the idea. Everybody thought it was a good idea at the time because if we had split that into two different hours, it might have worked or it might have been the death of it. They took the chance putting it out there and they were smart enough to say, oh, oh, we are not going to do this again, whereas a lot of people say, well, we will try it again and change it up a little. They were smart enough to see that it didn’t work.”
Kevin Sullivan talked about the angle where Eric Bischoff fired Randy Anderson: “We had to do something with Randy and actually it was Randy who suggested his wife and kids coming. It worked perfectly. It was great TV. Eric played the vicious boss terrifically.”
Sullivan gave his opinion on Sean Waltman: “Sean doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. He’s in the Hall of Fame twice. Once as the NWO and once as D-Generation X. Is there anybody else in two separate groups that were that powerful, ever? No. He was a special guy and is a special guy. He could work with anybody…DX wasn’t going anywhere. Sean pulled them up out of the muck and brought them to the top. Without Sean, we would never even be talking about DX.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Taskmaster Talks with Kevin Sullivan with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
