He had complete creative control. It's a huge reason why he was hardly used a lot of times. He put the kibosh on a lot of things. He's just bad.
Bret was the hottest guy in wrestling coming off of Montreal and the best WCW could come up with was have him compete in random matches for the US and TV titles. And be a heel, when he had every wrestling fan in the world on his side. Imagine if WWF got Sting by some crazy happening in 1997. I have a hard time believing he would have been doing nothing for months and then having random IC and Euro title matches.