Teddy Long shares unheard story about the death of WCW (Exclusive)

Teddy Long was a WCW referee and on-screen personality before joining WWE in 1998. The wrestling legend recently gave an interesting insight into why WCW went downhill in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

In 2001, then-WWE Chairman Vince McMahon bought WCW after feuding with the company for several years. VICE TV recently aired a four-part docuseries, Who Killed WCW, exploring the promotion's rise and fall.

Long appeared on Sportskeeda's The Wrestling Time Machine alongside legendary reporter Bill Apter and host Mac Davis. The WWE Hall of Famer said WCW's questionable financial decisions proved costly. He also told a story about fellow referee Randy "Pee Wee" Anderson using WCW's money to buy golf clubs:

"Pee Wee Anderson went in there [golf store] and pulled out an American Express TBS credit card and bought a set of golf clubs for $1,000 or $1,200 or $1,300," Teddy Long stated. "So I'm saying this now, how does a referee get to have a TBS American Express card and can take it and go into a golf store and spend a thousand dollars on it and buy his own self some golf clubs without any problem?" [8:37 – 9:07]

Watch the video above to hear Bill Apter, Mac Davis, and Teddy Long's thoughts on the possible outcome of Damian Priest vs. Gunther at SummerSlam.

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Mac Davis' alternative view to Teddy Long

Former World Heavyweight Champion Scott Steiner recently told Bill Apter that WCW's parent company AOL Time Warner was responsible for the promotion's demise. Those in charge at the time were not interested in wrestling, prompting them to sell WCW to Vince McMahon.

Mac Davis also thinks WCW's former head decision-maker Eric Bischoff allowed too many wrestlers to have creative control. Hulk Hogan, for example, famously had permission to approve or deny any storyline developments involving his character.

"I stand by the fact that the boys killed it, that they got into the ear of Eric Bischoff and other people started influencing where the product was going," Davis said. "When you've got creative control, you can say yay or nay to anything. It controls the program to a point where you can't be that creative if you're actually in the creation process because one person, it doesn't work for him." [5:27 – 5:48]

On a separate Wrestling Time Machine episode, Teddy Long gave his take on a recent controversy involving Hulk Hogan.

What do you think killed WCW? Hit the discuss button and let us know.

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