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For most of his career as a wrestling promoter, Vince McMahon was happily operating inside his own bubble. Mentions of other wrestling promotions were strictly forbidden, and no matter what was going on outside, WWE employees were not allowed to reference corporations not associated with WWE. But when it came to Ted Turner and WCW, McMahon went all out.
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Turner and McMahon did not get along well. The real-life animosity started in 1984, when Vince McMahon popped up on WTBS and announced that he had taken over Georgia Championship Wrestling. Turner was not too happy with this and a couple of years later the media mogul set up WCW as a competitor ,and so began the Monday Night Wars.
Vince McMahon Broke His Own Rules And Started Mentioning WCW
The tide shifted in the mid-1990s when Vince McMahon ended up on his heels. For the first time, he was up against a guy who had a bigger checkbook than he did as Turner lured away his biggest stars. Hulk Hogan was gone. Randy Savage was gone.
One by one, the more popular stars left for WCW, and in 1996, with the impending departure of Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, McMahon had enough. They were already at war with WCW, and Eric Bischoff had a habit of spoiling pretaped RAW shows, so Vince McMahon launched a series of skits featuring people from WCW.
We got the Huckster, Nacho Man, Scheme Gean, and of course, Billionaire Ted, a “parody” of Ted Turner. Billionaire Ted worked inside his “war room” and was often surrounded by the aforementioned wrestlers and a bunch of other folks playing television producers. Vince Russo was one of them. Talk about foreshadowing.
The Skits Got More Personal Against WCW And Ted Turner
The first skits merely poked fun at the aging roster of WCW, mocking them for being over-the-hill and incapable of performing basic wrestling moves. McMahon turned it up a notch on the second installment and brought up questions about steroid use in WCW.
As soon as the second skirt, it stopped being a parody and instead became an outlet for Vince McMahon to vent the aggression he had bottled up. It was a method of catharsis for Vince, and in the following skits, it became more personal and petty. Huckster and Nacho Man were flexing for the giggles, but Billionaire Ted was the targeted with several personal jabs, with WWE labeling him as a “hillbilly” and questioning his production practices.
WWE started portraying Billionaire Ted as a power hungry and greedy owner who would do everything it took to put WWE out of business, including jeopardizing the assets of his shareholders at TBS. The skit implied that Turner was using money from his other venture to fund the multi-million dollar contracts of Hogan and Savage.
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This was a serious shot against Ted Turner in real life, and it was no longer done for humor and entertainment. The skits were personal in nature. Vince McMahon actually published a column in The New York Times alleging that Turner was using money from his shareholders to run WCW.
The USA Network Ordered Vince McMahon To Stop Producing The Skits
The USA Network, home of WWE programming, took notice of what was going on, and President Jay Koplovitz requested that Vince McMahon send them the scripts of the “skits” before airing them on live television, as she felt it was becoming more malicious and petty. Ultimately, Koplovitz ordered that WWE stop producing the skits and the company obliged. The very last skit featured a wrestling match between Huckster and the Nacho Man. The disgusting segment ended with both wrestlers dying from heart attacks.
Former WCW President Eric Bischoff was asked about the skits on his podcast, 83 weeks, and he basically rolled his eyes, mentioning that WWE accusing someone else of steroid use was hypocrisy, given that McMahon had to face a trial in 1992.
In his own book, Bischoff wrote that the skits reeked of desperation as WWE was getting run over in the ratings game. Lastly, the recipient of all this, the real Ted Turner, actually found the skits hilarious, and according to Bischoff, he laughed his ass off.
There were definitely a few chuckles in the first skit, but it quickly devolved into McMahon’s rant hour against Ted Turner, disguised as a parody. USA Network basically laid down the ultimatum, telling McMahon to either quit the skits or quit working with them, so the WWE boss was forced to drop it.
