Nitro: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's WCW

I had read many books on the supposed inside activities of WCW and the plethora of reasons that allegedly lead to the demise of the company but it was always written by folks with some kind of bias towards the key players of WCW such as Eric Bischoff, Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, and others.I had never heard of Guy Evans prior to this book and when Eric Bischoff, who despite admitting he doesn't always come off favorably in this book, urged listeners of 83 Weeks to go get this book despite how bad he may look at times, I was immediately intrigued. Most people won't admit something is good if they get dragged around during it.I don't regret a single moment of reading this book and you won't regret a moment of it either. The level of work and detail that is put into this book by Guy Evans is unmatched for my personal experience of reading books on the history of professional wrestling.

Originally I thought I was buying a wrestling history book, but its also a history of 90s entertainment and sports politics. Brought me back to living in the 90s

I was just out of high-school ready to spread my wings and fly and WCW was winning the Monday Night Wars.When I got back home I watched Vince McMahon and Shane McMahon arguing over who now owned WCW.What I wanted to was what happened at WCW to get to this point.For years I heard rumors or scraps of truth never getting the entire details.This book answered them all for me.If you are a die hard wrestling fan and have followed wrestling for most of, or all of your life I strongly recommend this book

As someone who was there live for the Monday Night Wars, I've read plenty of material on what went wrong in WCW. The Death of WCW by Alvarez & Reynolds is still the best of these IMO - even if it was over the top and a little mean spirited occasionally, it was damn entertaining while being informative.This book focuses less on the in ring happenings and more on what was going on behind the scenes and inside TBS as a whole. It's more of a business book with some wrestling thrown in rather then a wrestling book with some behind the scenes stuff. As you'd expect with any WCW book, there's plenty of material about Bischoff, Hogan, Sullivan and the other usual suspects, but most of this is looking through internal memos and emails, accounting information, interviews with advertising executives, production assistants, ring crew, and a whole host of others. There's some interesting tidbits here and there, but for most of it I was struggling to stay focused.I'm glad I got to read this book, and it was interesting seeing some famous events from a different perspective, but would I read it again? Honestly no. At almost 600 pages this takes a dedicated effort to get through and it reads more like a textbook sometimes. Whereas I can read The Death of WCW multiple times and still be entertained, that's not the case with this one. If I'd known exactly how much detail would be focused on the business side, rather then the wrestling side, I'd probably have avoided this.

This book is a great resource for anyone interested in the business side of wrestling. From TV ratings, PPV buys, and financial figures, it's all the "inside baseball" you could ask for in terms for how a company was run, without being employed by it. This is a great book for the wrestling historian.However, how all this information is layed out and presented to the reader is a little more than underwhelming and not always given in the most straightforward way.This is underscored by the fact that the author on occasion likes to dabble in and out of a loose story driven narrative, complete with giving people in his book a novelisation as "characters" at certain points. This would be okay if it was written in that format throughout, but the book switches constantly between a historical account of how the company evolved, a narrative of the people involved, and the retrospectives of the many personalities and players on both the corporate side and wrestling side of things. All these parts are great by themselves, but the author doesn't do a good job merging all of them together.The parts that are interesting will really suck you in and you will want you to read more. Though it can be a slog to get through parts where there are long quotes, or multiple topics covered in one chapter that don't entirely relate to each other.Overall, it's a good book to keep on hand, but not one to read in an afternoon.

Great stuff, made the corporate POVs easy to read and comprehend and was done in a truly artistic way. Great for people who thought they knew the full story based on other books and docs. I learned a lot. Loved it.

For anyone who grew up loving WCW back in the day and has now moved on to enjoying thinking back about those days with podcasts like 83 Weeks and WHW Mondays, then you need to read this book. There is no better account of what happened to Turner's rasslin' company. Once I started, I couldn't put it down. The research and detail is what sets it apart from other books which rely on rumour and innuendo. Do yourself a favour and read NITRO!

The rise and fall of World Championship Wrestling (WCW) has been covered extensively since the company folded - in other books, feature stories, documentaries and podcasts. It's received so much retrospective coverage that it's understandable if one were to believe that there isn't anything new to unearth on the subject.Which is why "Nitro" is such a refreshing read. The well-researched, exhaustive account of the company's history - which for some time was soundly beating long-time industry leader the WWF in the Monday night ratings battle - is a must read for any wrestling fan.The author has spoken to a wide, impressive variety of sources, including both key players within WCW itself, and also executives and employees from their parent company at Turner Broadcasting as well. This means that in some ways, the book maintains two simultaneous narrative threads - the inner workings of WCW itself, and the political and boardroom machinations that were taking place outside of the promotion's control. Obviously, these two story threads often become inextricably linked, ultimately leading to WCW's demise and eventual purchase by Vince McMahon for a staggeringly low sum of money.Hardened wrestling fans will know many of the details here, but there will be stories contained within which even some of the most dedicated won't have known about. For instance, the role of musician turned wrestling personality Lenita Erickson, and her attempts to become a major player in WCW.Detailed and informative - all in all, highly recommended.

There must have been some pain staking work down to put this together because the author gathered more information than those that were part of it at the time. A very informative read and worth your time

Having watched WCW from a far throughout my early teens, I rode the wave of WCW's rise and rapid fall. Guy's book is not only a brilliant source of nostalgia for the WCW fan some two and a half decades on, but a riveting read when you get into the weeds of where it all went wrong and was seemingly doomed to fail. Absolutely enthralling and completely engrossing, a must read for any fan of rasslin'.

An amazingly well written and we'll researched book.Highly recommend reading.