Jim Herd

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Jim Herd was the Executive Vice-President of World Championship Wrestling from 1988 to 1992, following Turner Broadcasting's acquisition of the NWA-affiliated Jim Crockett Promotions in 1988. Before that, Herd had been a station manager for the St. Louis TV station KPLR-TV, which broadcast the then-popular wrestling show Wrestling at the Chase. Later on, he served in an executive position for Pizza Hut of St. Louis. Herd resigned from WCW in early 1992.

[edit] Criticism

Many wrestling personalities, fans, and workers have openly criticized Herd for his lack of knowledge of the wrestling business. Ric Flair in particular stated that Herd "knew nothing about wrestling, other than the fact that the station he ran had a hot show."^[1] During his run in WCW, Herd tried to compete with Vince McMahon and the World Wrestling Federation by introducing the same kind of "cartoon" gimmicks that were a part of McMahon's WWF at the time, alienating the diehard NWA audience. For example, he once tried to come up with a tag team called The Hunchbacks (with the gimmick in which that they can't be pinned because their humps would prevent their shoulders from touching the mats), and after that idea was rejected by the booking committee, he came up with the bell-wearing Ding Dongs. After that, he came up with Big Josh, a lumberjack with dancing bears. Stan Hansen left the organization after the idea was pitched to him to become a part of the comedic cowboy stable called The Desperados. Jim Cornette and Stan Lane also left the organization, breaking up the Midnight Express, leaving Bobby Eaton on his own, after Herd would blame his many failures on Cornette and others. Even the Road Warriors - as Animal has stated on WWE Home Video's Road Warriors DVD - had a fallout with Herd as well, and resigned from WCW in the summer of 1990.

[edit] Ric Flair

Herd regularly clashed with the then-NWA World Champion and booking committee member Ric Flair. According to Flair, Herd wanted him to drop his entire "Nature Boy" persona, shave his head and adopt a Rome gladiator gimmick by the name of Spartacus in order to "change with the times", which didn't sit too well with Flair and the committee (Committee member Kevin Sullivan was quoted as saying, "After we change Flair's gimmick, why don't we go to Yankee Stadium and change Babe Ruth's uniform number?"^[2]). Herd believed Flair's time was over as a main event player and the big money was with Sting and Lex Luger. This backstage feud hit its breaking point when, during contract renegotiations, Flair refused to take a pay cut and be moved away from the main event position (despite the fact that he was by far the company's biggest draw). As a result, on June 15, 1991, weeks before the Great American Bash PPV and one day after the Clash of the Champions, where Flair successfully defended the title against Bobby Eaton in a two-out-of-three falls match, Herd fired Flair from WCW and stripped him of the WCW Title. There was one problem with that; Flair was still WCW and NWA world champion and his title belt represented both factions. Flair took the NWA world title belt with him to the WWF because Herd refused to give Flair back the $25,000 deposit that the NWA required of every wrestler upon winning the world title to keep him from appearing on a rival promotion (like the WWF); the deposit would be paid back upon losing, plus interest. Without Flair, the Great American Bash became what many fans consider one of the worst wrestling PPVs ever, as the Baltimore audience loudly chanted, "We want Flair!" throughout the entire show. Many fans there and on PPV also saw the title match between the top two contenders for the title, Lex Luger and Barry Windham, as a sham because Flair still had the actual title belt (they had to resort to taping 'World Champion' on one of Dusty Rhodes's old belts, due to their new WCW World title belt not being ready in time, and giving that to Luger after winning the match) and was never beaten for it, thus the 'real world champion' angle the WWF created upon Flair's arrival had more legitimacy than the Great American Bash did. The NWA suffered tremendously and to this very day never fully recovered after that, losing most of its fanbase as many of them tuned in to WWF TV to see how Flair would do against the likes of Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan. The ordeal caused a lawsuit between the NWA and Flair, which ended in Flair being paid back the deposit plus interest, the NWA getting the belt back, and Herd being fired.

[edit] References

Preceded by Jim Crockett, Jr.

President of the National Wrestling Alliance 1991–1992

Succeeded by Seiji Sakaguchi