Bischoff was a decent idea guy but he wasn't someone who should have been leading a company. He was basically a wrestling announcer who they randomly made into the boss. To his credit he did some good things - bringing in Hogan (though his ultimate handling of Hogan wasn't good by any stretch) was important, upgrading WCW's production values to at least be in WWF's ballpark, moving to Monday night, taking and expanding upon the NWO idea, and especially actively seeking out talent. Now from what I've heard Bischoff's policy seemed to be, with Turner money flowing in, that he would just hire whatever names were out there, but that's better what Vince's attitude toward talent was and perhaps Bischoff deserves credit for getting Turner to spend money. Bischoff's problem was inability to go beyond the most basic idea. Signing Bret Hart is great - what are you going to do with him. Signing Benoit/Malenko/Guerrero/Austin/Foley was great - but what are you going to do with them? Very poor follow through, not unlike current WWE. WCW is also my favourite example of the phrase "the inmates are running the asylum".
It really is interesting to look back on the huge edge in talent that WCW had back in the early to mid 90s. It makes sense given that the NWA generally had better wrestlers than the Northern territories did and Vince was always too enamored with his own product (PRODUCTION VALUES!) to recognize that the competition had better talent. In the early to mid 90s WCW had first access to Flair, Sting, Luger, Rhodes, Sid, Vader, Foley, Austin, HHH, Nash, Hall, Ron Simmons, the Steiners, Booker T, Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard, Dustin Runnels, Guerrero, Mysterio, Jericho, Malenko, Benoit, DDP and even Jim Ross and Paul Heyman. Those are just guys off the top of my head who were in WCW before they were in WWF. WCW also brought in Savage and Hogan while having a talent sharing arrangement with NJPW. That WCW had such a massive edge in talent and still went out of business shortly after the end of the decade is almost impressive. Not all of those guys would have become such huge stars in WCW Austin for instance) but a lot of them were stars while in WCW and with only adequate booking and presentation would have been big. Unfortunately for them the inept booking of the early 90s gave way to the toxic booking of the mid to late 90s and almost all of those guys were squandered.
I agree that Bischoff was no dummy with certain things, but he took far more credit than he deserved. And for many in the "know" it was said numerous times that due to WCW always having a good relationship with New Japan Wrestling, he pretty much got the idea for the N.W.O with what they were doing overseas in a similar angle. It just took a few things to fall in place like Hall and Nash becoming free agents, but I will definitely credit him with Hogan, that was a gutsy call but it was apparent a change was needed as the red and yellow was fading in popularity.
What NWA/WCW/Mid South, etc had during those years was unreal..if you want to go even further back and wonder what WCW would be if Magnum TA didn't have to end his career after his Porsche crashed (dude was massive, like Goldberg massive in those days) and if Nikita Koloff's wife didn't get very ill and he pretty much hung up his boots...both massive talents that were gone from wrestling by 1992...I could only imagine both of them in a NWO war! Absolute shame they lost those 2 home grown stars...seemed they would always be destined for failure or bad things happening along the way...also, don't forget about the Road Warriors who were NWA/WCW well prior to WWF..still my all-time favorites and man they got misused in their later years until they got pushed again with Sunny in the WWF...
But you are right, Vinnie Mac loved his "gimmicks" and he had a weird fascination with over weight guys as if the bigger they were the more he pushed them...people got tired of seeing that and he was a little late to the game with bringing in those fresh new guys. WCW had it all, all the names you listed above and they still somehow lost..hahaha...unbelievable. I remember the matches many of those young stars would have on Nitro, you simply weren't seeing anything close to that on Raw..that is what tore the house down, that is what fans enjoyed as well, but Bischoff never really saw it that way and kept them down like it was weight classes in boxing.
Also, add to the guys WCW had first: RVD, Rhyno, and Edge...imagine if they saw what WWF/ECW saw in those guys, those 3 alone could have been game changers for the company, but of course gave them a few matches, had them job to probably the Barbarian or Paul Orndorf at that time, and the rest is history.
Also, I never mentioned how close Shawn Michaels was to jumping ship as well...it was close, he wanted out because his buddies were in the WCW now, but McMahon held tight, told him no he won't release him and they went a different way putting over most of their youth gobbling up anyone with a good look they could at that time and formed D-X....if Michaels would have quit or left, it was game over for them as they were on the brink of collapse at that point.
Just so sad to see all that go away. Millions of fans vanished over night, they never came to WWF and rightfully so. Once WCW closed it was pretty much over for me, I felt that I didn't want to watch my guys on another program jobbing to the Godfather, Val Venis, or even dare I say it- Triple H..hahaha...
If anyone can explain to me what they hell they were thinking with Bret Hart, I would love to know. I have read so many different views and all of them were clueless with what they planned for him. I never in my life have seen such a bigger miss on an opportunity period...McMahon must have known there were idiots over there as I heard him tell Hart multiple times "WCW will have no clue what to do with you" which was odd since they had guys like him in Jericho, Benoit, Eddie G, etc...seemed like a match made in heaven which was completely and utterly botched. Now I turn on Raw or Smackdown, and outside of the few TNA guys I rooted for like Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, and Bobby Roode, no f***ing clue what they are doing there as it is pretty horrible to watch now.