Russo informed Goldberg that if he ever lost another match, he would be released from his WCW contract. However, this was an opportunity for Goldberg to heal from previous injuries and Russo was gone from the promotion entirely by late 2000, leaving former All Japan Pro Wrestling star Johnny Ace to replace him. During this time, a short-lived crossover feud began involving stars of WCW and Battle Dome. At the Sin pay-per-view on January 14, 2001, Goldberg and his trainer DeWayne Bruce lost a tag team match to Totally Buffed (Buff Bagwell and The Total Package). This was Goldberg's final appearance for WCW before the company was purchased by the WWF. The final WCW event to be held outside the southern United States was the January 29 edition of WCW Monday Nitro from Baltimore, Maryland and its associated taping of WCW Thunder (which took place the same night). Following this, all future WCW events were held in the Southern United States. In addition, most female personalities were released from the promotion by the beginning of February 2001 in an attempt to cut costs. Attempted Bischoff/Fusient purchase (2001) Time Warner bought out Turner Broadcasting System in 1996. WCW was losing between $12 million–$17 million a year at this point (and $60 million in 2000 alone). When America Online (AOL) merged with Time Warner in 2001, Ted Turner was effectively forced out. AOL Time Warner looked to sell the promotion and a sale nearly occurred in early 2001 to Bischoff and a group of private investors, calling themselves Fusient Media Ventures, with news reports and even Bischoff declaring a deal was in place. However, Fusient backed out when Turner networks head Jamie Kellner formally cancelled all WCW programming from its television networks. As Fusient's offer depended on being able to continue to air WCW programming on the Turner networks, the deal fell through. According to Bischoff in his book, WCW had also received offers from Fox and NBC. Kellner believed that wrestling did not fit the demographics of either TBS or TNT and would not be favorable enough to get the "right" advertisers to buy airtime, even though Thunder was the highest-rated show on TBS at the time. In the book NITRO: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's WCW by Guy Evans, it is said that a key condition in WCW's purchase deal with Fusient was that Fusient wanted