World Wrestling All-Stars (WWA)

[8.0] "I am giving WWA an 8 out of 10 because I think they have been unfairly judged in years looking back. Having watched all their Pay Per Views for the first time this year, I find that the product was quite good, and the shows and matches were good, but they were marred by people signing with the WWF, and TNA beginning and signing people to exclusive contracts. Andrew McManus did a great thing by bringing big stars to countries that weren't getting live touring enough from the WWF, like Australia, Scotland, Switzerland, etc. It was very, very cherished memories for a lot of people that got to see those shows, and I find a lot of Youtube reviewers to be unfair in their judgments on the shows, and websites like WrestleCrap!"

[3.0] "World Wrestling All-Stars was a promotion that tried to fill the gap that WCW and ECW had left in the wrestling business after their demise. It was created by Andrew McManus, a globally well regarded live music promoter that had worked with big bands such as Kiss, Fletwood Mack or ZZ Top, just to mention some of them. His idea was to do some wrestling tours on some underworked but profitable territories, such as Australia, New Zeland or the UK. And for this tours he booked lots of ex-WCW or ex-ECW talent that weren't signed to the WWF, such as Sting, Rick Steiner, Normal Smiley... And even had some big names such as Bret Hart and Sid as commissioners. So he used his music business contacts and Jeff Jarrett and Jeremy Borash's knowledge of the wrestling industry to build these company and this all-star tours. Probably the tours at first where fully packed for the star power, but in the end it was a disaster. They aired 5 PPV's and all of them felt like 2000's WCW tv programs, with the good and the bad that implies. The cruiserweight division was the best thing of those shows, with some great WCW talent as Jerry Lynn, Juventud Guerrera or even Eddie Guerrero, but that also featured some young wrestlers that not soon after will become strong names in ROH or TNA, such as Low Ki, AJ Styles or Chris Sabin. Those matches were really interesting and in a way here we can see the birth of the X Division, as it had for example the first ever Jerry Lynn vs AJ Styles match. Other cool matches were the one involving Eddie Guerrero, a cruiserweight elimination match or the final unification title match that Sabin won. Also, Devon Storm had some decent hardcore matches with Sabu or Konnan and Joe E. Legend has good match with Mike Sanders. The rest of the card was the bad part of the late WCW, in the sense that they booked poor Little People matches that weren't interesting, overbooked main events without sense, short matches that weren't good, or strange tournament and stipulations. I mean, they even had Lex Luger main event and win the world title, in a moment when Luger couldn't wrestle more. In the end, this model of company didn't work at all, some of those tours weren't profitable and the PPV's weren't good to build interest on the company, due to focusing on comedy and overbooked main events. They also had problems as they advertaised wrestlers such as Kevin Nash, Scott Hall or Macho Man, but then they never showed up. Another problem I see with WWA it's that it was just an all-star tour, there wasn't any storylines or feuds to make the people invested in the promotion, just badly produced shows. In the end, that's the reason that some wrestlers as Jeff Jarrett left the company and moved to other things (TNA in his case). So WWA was just another promotion that tried to field WCW's gap, but failed because they couldn't deliver an interesting or even good product. But all that said, probably TNA wouldn't have born the way it did if it wasn't for the WWA, as it was Jarrett's first experience as "office" and it helpt him, his father and Bob Ryder to develop the NWA-TNA a monthly PPV idea. So maybe WWA was bad, but it had some importance in wrestling history."

[0.0] "A disaster. An utter, utter disaster. A promotion with some of the worst production values ever, poor match quality and underwhelming booking. It's basically WCW 2000, the promotion."

[1.0] "So so so bad. They had a decent roster for some of their shows, but they just had some really awful booking and production that made watching the matches and shows a chore. Some people like Nathan Jones and Jeff Jarrett and Scott Steiner wrestling bad matches with even worse finishes or creative that made everything feel so unimportant and meaningless. Just a horrible experience."

[2.0] "The other notable promotion start up flop alongside XWF that occurred after the deaths of WCW and ECW, and before the birth of TNA. Both of these companies had very similar styles to them, that being promotions that took a lot from 2000-2001 era of WCW in terms of talent and style. While XWF was more laxed in some departments of this, especially in terms of booking and stories, WWA practically continued it, despite it being proven that Russo isn't sometimes (fuck, almost always) never the kind of writer you wanna base your work off of. WWA certainly had more notable talent between the two, at least in terms of name value, and also several decent matches if you look hard enough. The reason why this promotion was most notable is mostly because this promotion essentially led to the birth of TNA. This promotion certainly had a better chance of living due to its business strategy, but I really doubt it."

[2.0] "A bad rip-off of a bad time in WCW history. Why would you want to ape one of the least critically and financially successful periods of any wrestling company ever?"

[4.0] "It seemed to me, like this promotion tried too much to be like WCW 2000. Weird finishes and overbooked matches were the norm in the WWA. Also, Vince Russo was supposed to be in charge of creative, coincidentally. Former WCW mainstays, like Sting, Scott Steiner and Jeff Jarrett were a few of the World Champions of the promotion. Yeah, this is EXACTLY like WCW c. 1999-2000."

[3.0] "In the wake of the near-simultaneous closures of WCW and ECW in 2001, there was a void left where a number of companies vied to rise as viable alternatives to the WWF/E monopoly. For every TNA and ROH that rose to prominence, there were other promotions that would be left by the wayside, and that was the case with WWA. Though an Australian company, WWA's roster primarily consisted of free agents from WCW and ECW that hadn't signed with the WWF, as well as ex-WWF guys, and its presentation came off mainly as trying to pick up where WCW left off. It provided some good matches and its undercard had a number of future stars represented who would soon help put TNA and ROH on the map (including AJ Styles and Low Ki). Ultimately it didn't do enough to establish itself as an alternative product to either the WWF machine or to its predecessor promotions, suffered from an inconsistent touring schedule and failed after only five televised pay-per-view events, but it served as an interesting transitional point between the pre-2001 wrestling scene and the one we know today."