Why WCW Fans Should Fly On United Airlines
While flying to Phoenix a few months ago, I was watching the United Airlines newsreel. Lo and behold, they had a feature on the WCW Power Plant. For those of you who may not know, the WCW Power Plant is the WCW's wrestling school which was advertised quite a lot a few months ago. Lately, the advertisements have been infrequent, which would imply they've gotten the enrollment they need.
Anyway, like a lot of you other marks out there, I knew nothing about the Power Plant except for its overall mission. I found the five minute segment interesting.

• It started off with, "Pro wrestling...who watches this stuff? Well, apparently 20 million of you".
• "Pistol" Pez Whatley was interviewed and they said he is the lead instructor. I hadn't seen him for a couple of years and he still looks good.
• There is a three-day tryout. If you pass the tryout, you are invited to sign up for the school.
• The school is six months at a cost of $3000. Given the length of time and the cost, I figure it must be less than ten hours a week.
• According to the newsreel, you have the potential for $60,000/year in contracts if you successfully complete the training.
• The school has an 85% drop out rate.
  • They showed a couple of people really winded and getting bawled out by the instructor. One looked ready to puke.
  • They said at the end that all the students interviewed as part of the segment wound up dropping out.
  • Ron Studd (Ron Reis/The Yeti) was interviewed and he definitely isn't a dropout since he is actively wrestling and he was trained by "Big" John Studd. He must be an instructor, but they didn't really make that clear.
• The really odd part was that one student featured had brought his own manager. Uh, sorry dude, wrestling managers are relatives, wives, or friends of the megastars, not some hanger-on riding the coattails of some jobber.

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