During the period between September 4, 1995, to March 26, 2001 the World Wrestling Federation's Monday Night RAW went head-to-head with World Championship Wrestling's Monday Nitro in a battle for Nielsen Ratings each week. - Monday Night RAW (The beginning)
Monday Night RAW was launched on USA Network in January 11, 1993. WWF decided that it should use its cable time as a showcase for original matches and storylines that would serve as the major build-up to the quarterly pay-per-view broadcasts. The original RAW broke new ground in televised professional wrestling. Traditionally, wrestling shows were taped on sound stages with small audiences or at large arena shows. RAW however, was was a show shot to a live audience, with angles as they happened. RAW originated from the The Grand Ballroom at Manhattan Center Studios, a small New York City theater and aired live each week. The combination of an intimate venue and live action proved highly successful. However, the weekly live schedule proved to be a financial drain on the WWF, and taped shows began airing. Sometimes up to a month's worth of shows were taped at a time.
- WCW (The Bischoff era begins)
In the same year, Eric Bischoff was promoted to WCW's Executive Vice President and in the summer of 1993, Ric Flair return to WCW after his WWF tenure. Flair would then defeat Vader for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship at Starrcade.
In 1994, Bischoff declared open war on Vince McMahon's WWF in the media and aggressively recruited high-profile former WWF wrestlers such as Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. Using Turner's monetary resources, Bischoff placed his faith in the established stars with proven track records. Because of their high profiles, Hogan and Savage were able to demand and get several concessions not usually allowed to wrestlers at the time, such as multi-year, multi-million dollar guaranteed contracts and significant creative control over their storylines. This would later become a problem during subsequent years of competition with the WWF, as other wrestlers were able to make similar demands, and contract values soared out of control.
WCW's first major pay-per-view event since Hogan's hiring was Bash at the Beach, which former WWF mainstay cleanly defeat Ric Flair for the WCW Championship. The two had worked for WWF at the same time from 1991 to 1992, and a feud was teased between them. When WCW delivered the match, the PPV drew a high buy rate by WCW standards due to mainstream intrigue and hype. However the glory would not last long as the Hogan/Flair feud was only a one-off match and the hoped for long term effects on pay-per-view buyrates and ratings did not materialize.
- The Monday Night War Begins
WCW Monday Nitro premiered on September 4, 1995 from the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota as an hour weekly show. Bischoff was instrumental in the launching of the show. Ted Turner (WCW owner as as well as the sole head and owner of both TBS and TNT) asked Bischoff how WCW could compete with McMahon's WWF. Bischoff, not expecting Turner to comply, said that the only way would be a primetime slot on a weekday night, possibly up against WWF's flagship show, Monday Night RAW. Surprisingly for Bischoff, Turner granted him one live hour on TNT every Monday night, which specifically overlapped with RAW. This format quickly expanded to 2 live hours in May 1996 and later 3 in 1998.
In late August 1995, Lex Luger debuts on WCW Nitro despite appearing on WWF pay-per-view Summerslam the night before (Luger was working on a handshake deal with WWF after his most recent contract expired). No one except Sting & Bischoff knew that Luger would be on Nitro that night so the shock value was through the roof. Luger's recruitment was significant for several reasons. Because Nitro was live at the time, premiering major stars on the show would signal to the fans the amount of excitement the broadcasts would contain. Also, Luger had just come off a successful run in the WWF and was one of the company's top stars at one point.
RAW and Nitro shared wins in the Monday Night Wars early on, and the rivalry quickly heated up. WCW aired segments entitled "WCW: Where the Big Boys Play!" showing current WWF wrestlers who had formerly wrestled in WCW losing matches. Eric Bischoff also began giving away the results of some of the matches on Monday Night RAW during Nitro (as some of them had been taped weeks before).
On the December 18, 1995 edition of Nitro, Debra Miceli (known as Alundra Blayze in the WWF) threw her WWF Women's Championship into a trash can live on the air after defecting to WCW. Miceli (who was then still the reigning WWF Women's Champion) had been informed that the WWF was not going to renew her contract which expired on December 13, 1995 and she was being released. Miceli quickly signed with WCW. This incident is widely perceived as a catalyst for the "Montreal Screwjob" in 1997.
WWF shoots back at WCW with a series of weekly sketches featuring parodies of several WCW figures "Billionaire Ted" (Ted Turner), "The Nacho Man" (Randy Savage), "The Hukster" (Hulk Hogan), and "Scheme Gene" (Gene Okerlund). While some skits were mostly parodies, others, particularly those focusing on Ted Turner were quite hostile. The series culminated with a match between the Hukster and the Nacho Man on the "Free For All" show before WrestleMania XII.
- New World Order (nWo): The devastating blow
On May 27, 1996, Scott Hall, who had wrestled in the WWF as Razor Ramon, interrupted a match and delivered a statement that if "WCW wanted a War, they are going to get one" and challenged the best WCW wrestlers to stand up and defend the company against the onslaught of Scott and his companions, beginning the nWo (New World Order) storyline. The following week, Hall promised a "BIG surprise" the following week on Nitro. It turned out to be former WWF champion Kevin Nash (who had wrestled as Diesel in the WWF). Hall and Nash were referred to in the following weeks as "The Outsiders."
Both men took to showing up unexpectedly during Nitro broadcasts, usually jumping wrestlers backstage, distracting wrestlers by standing in the entranceways of arenas, or walking around in the audience. Within a couple of weeks, they announced the forthcoming appearance of a mysterious 3rd member. At Bash at the Beach, Hall and Nash were scheduled to team with their mystery partner against Lex Luger, Randy Savage and Sting. However "The Outsiders" came to the ring without the 3rd man, which they claimed was in the building but they did not need him yet.
Midway through the match, Luger was accidentally knocked out cold by Sting and was taken away on a stretcher, turning the match into The Outsiders vs. Sting and Savage and teasing the possibility of Luger, a former WWF wrestler like Hall and Nash, as the mystery partner. Hall and Nash took control of the match when Hulk Hogan came to the ring. After standing off with The Outsiders for a moment, he suddenly attacked Savage, showing himself to be the Outsider's mysterious 3rd man. Giving an interview with Gene Okerlund directly after the match, Hogan claimed the reason for the turn was that he was tired of fans that had turned on him. Hogan labeled the new faction a "new world order of wrestling", beginning a feud between wrestlers loyal to WCW and the nWo.
The fans in attendance were so outraged at Hogan's betrayal that they pelted the ring with debris, such as paper cups and plastic bottles. One fan even jumped over the security railing and tried to attack Hogan in the ring, but was quickly subdued by The Outsiders and was taken away by arena security.
The WCW versus nWo storyline drew enormous popularity among wrestling fans and from then on, WCW Nitro would defeat WWF RAW for 84 consecutive weeks. During this time, WCW would, though infrequently, "give away" the endings to pre-taped matches on RAW during its live Nitro broadcasts, adding fuel to the fiery feud between the two companies.
Shortly after, the WWF filed a lawsuit, alleging that the nWo storyline implied that Hall and Nash were invaders sent by Vince McMahon to destroy WCW; prompting Bischoff to ask Hall and Nash point blank on camera at a WCW show "Are you employed by the WWF?" to which both emphatically replied "No." Another reason for the lawsuit was WWF claimed Scott Hall acted in a manner too similar to the character Razor Ramon which was owned by WWF, despite the fact that the Razor Ramon character shared numerous similarities to Hall's previous WCW character, The Diamond Studd. The lawsuit would drag out for several years before being settled out of court.
- WWF struggles
The June 10, 1996 episode of RAW would be the last victory for WWF in the battle for ratings in nearly 2 years.
On the November 4, 1996 episode of RAW, the WWF aired the infamous "Pillman's got a gun" angle with the feuding Steve Austin and Brian Pillman, where Pillman was heard screaming "That son of a b**ch has got this coming! Let him go! I'm going to kill that son of a b**ch! Get out of the f**king way!" The comment was not censored and was clearly noticeable. The following week, the WWF had to apologize for the incident in order to remain on the USA Network. Pillman also had to apologize for the comment, saying that it was not usual for him to say that.
On February 3, 1997, Monday Night RAW changed to a 2 hour format, as "the Attitude Era" was starting to take shape. In an attempt to break the momentum of what had turned into ratings domination by WCW's competing Monday Nitro, Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) was brought in as Jerry Lawler "challenged" ECW on February 17. In an episode where RAW returned to the Manhattan Center, the "challenge" was answered on the following week's show with several ECW stars participating in WWF's RAW. ECW owner Paul Heyman did a call-in interview on RAW the week after that, followed by an in-ring confrontation between Lawler and the ECW wrestlers, including Heyman, on March 10, 1997; the first edition of the newly renamed RAW is WAR (an in-reference to the war that now existed between the WWF and WCW).
Throughout 1997, there were more and more controversial elements on RAW and WWF programming such as Bret Hart shoving Vince McMahon to the mat and engaging in a profanity-laden tirade and the Nation of Domination and D-Generation X (DX) "racial graffiti" storyline designed to "implicate Bret Hart's 'The Hart Foundation'." In spite of those controversial elements, WCW's winning streak continued.
In addition, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin would suffer a serious neck injury at SummerSlam 1997 that would keep him from participating in matches for 3 months, a major blow to the WWF considering that Austin had become the promotion's top star following WrestleMania 13.
- Montreal Screwjob
At the 1997 Survivor Series pay-per-view, Bret Hart, the then-WWF champion who had signed a contract with WCW, was double crossed by McMahon during Hart's WWF Championship defense against Shawn Michaels. The plan was executed when the match referee, Earl Hebner, under orders from McMahon, called for the bell to ring and ended the match as Michaels held Hart in the sharpshooter submission hold, even though Hart had not submitted. Michaels was declared the victor by submission and the new WWF Champion, even as Hart and the audience was outraged.
The screwjob would ultimately turn the tide of the Monday Night Wars. Bret Hart left for WCW after the incident, and it seemed that WCW was in position to push the WWF into perpetual ratings ruin. WCW had the big stars people wanted to see: Hollywood Hogan, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Bret Hart, Ric Flair, Sting, Randy Savage, Lex Luger, etc. In addition, WCW had credible midcard stars like Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, and Raven, along with an exciting cruiserweight division featuring high-flying competitors from Mexico (luchadores) and Japan, as well as the United States and Canada. The popular opinion at the time was that the Montreal Screwjob was too much of a blow for the WWF's image to overcome, since the screwing over of a popular wrestler like Hart would anger many fans and give WCW a great amount of hype to work with.
In fact, after the Montreal Screwjob, several WWF employees threatened to leave the WWF. Bret's brother Owen (claiming a knee injury) left out of loyalty to his brother only to return a month later when he was unable to get out of his contract.
Rick Rude, then acting as manager for D-Generation X and working on a pay-per-appearance basis, left a week later after appearing on Nitro the same night as a pre-taped RAW. On November 17, 1997, a clean-shaven Rude appeared live on Nitro and criticized the WWF (in response to the Montreal Screwjob), calling the company the "Titanic" (a sinking ship), even mentioning Shawn Michaels by name at one point. An hour later on RAW (which aired on a six-day tape delay), Rude appeared unshaven.
Brian Adams (known as Crush in WWF) left two weeks after Survivor Series, citing the screwjob as his reason. In reality, he felt he would fare better in WCW than in the apparently failing WWF.
Mick Foley walked out of the WWF, but returned after realizing he would have been in breach of contract; he stated in his autobiography that it was Jim Ross who persuaded him to continue to stay. Barry Windham also no-showed WWF programming initially as a way of demonstrating how angry he was, though he returned to the WWF a week later, believing he had made his point.
- WCW Starrcade 1997
Meanwhile, WCW's Starrcade 1997 pay-per-view at Washington, D.C. drew WCW's highest buyrate to that date, largely because of Eric Bischoff building up the main-event of Hulk Hogan vs. Sting. However the main event ended in controversy as Hogan was heavily criticized for not doing a clean finish to the match. Bret Hart, in his WCW pay-per-view debut, claimed that referee Nick Patrick made a fast three count, in order to prevent Sting from being screwed (scripted), Hart then restarted the match with himself as referee. Sting won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, but the title was stripped from him and declared vacant until SuperBrawl VIII, where Sting recaptured the WCW Championship.
Many fans were confused and disappointed with this finish partly because of the seemingly anticlimatic finish and partly were confused of how Bret Hart would have the power in WCW to be able to reverse a decision and restart a match.
- WWF fights back: The Attitude Era
Despite losing to Nitro week after week, RAW, however, would regain ratings dominance by booking Steve Austin as the WWF Champion. By the spring of 1998, the war would begin to turn in the WWF's favor. The WWF then went into what is now referred to as The Attitude Era.
This era was spear-headed by Vince McMahon and then head writer Vince Russo, who drastically changed the way wrestling TV was written and constructed. Vince McMahon also took advantage of wrestling fans' widespread hatred for him after the Montreal Screwjob by recasting himself as Mr. McMahon, an evil-owner caricature who would routinely "screw" faces (good guys) in order to ensure the dominance of his hand-picked heel (bad guys) champions.
The night after WrestleMania XIV, Vince MaMahon began an epic feud with Stone Cold Steve Austin, who was fired by Bischoff back in 1995 stating that Austin was 'not being marketable enough'. The feud was enormously successful due to fans' universal love of Austin and universal hatred of Vince, and it would be a major factor in the WWF finally snapping WCW's ratings winning streak with its new Attitude branding. The night after WrestleMania XIV, where Austin won his 1st WWF Championship, RAW dominated Nitro for the 1st hour but could not maintain victory in the 2nd hour. On April 6, however, WCW Nitro would win the 1st hour but the WWF would also dominate the ratings for the 2nd hour as well.
Finally, on April 13, 1998, RAW beat Nitro for the first time since June 10, 1996, and the evening was headlined by a teased Austin versus McMahon match; the match, however, did not take place as Mick Foley came down to the ring, in his Dude Love persona, and attacked Austin.
Meanwhile, apart from Steve Austin, several popular characters emerged on Monday Night RAW that would establish consistently high viewing from fans: Mick Foley, at the time a WCW reject, was being cheered for playing the heel Mankind, and The Rock, after flopping his previous gimmick as Rocky Maivia, was making a new name for himself as a catchphrase-spewing member of the Nation of Domination, and Shawn Michaels, Triple H, and Chyna had also formed the rebellious, rule breaking wrestling faction D-Generation X.
- D-Generation X (WCW "invasion")
After WrestlemMnia XIV, however, Shawn Michaels would take a 4 year hiatus from wrestling, due to severe back injuries. Triple H became the sole leader of DX and formed his new "DX Army" after recruiting The New Age Outlaws and Sean Waltman (X-Pac), who had just returned to the WWF after wrestling for 2 years in WCW as nWo member Syxx.
One famous angle that the DX Army partcipated in during the Monday Night War was the "invasion" of WCW Nitro on April 27, 1998. On this evening, WCW Nitro was being filmed at the Norfolk Scope in Norfolk, Virginia, while WWF RAW was being filmed nearby at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Virginia, and DX , earlier in the day before the shows began, went from the Hampton Coliseum to the Norfolk Scope and stood outside the arena and challenged Eric Bischoff to come out and face them; DX then persuaded some people to say that DX rules and then made attempts to enter the arena and invade the Nitro broadcast as well, but where denied entry and they eventually made their way back to Hampton.
- WCW attempted come back
Hoping to counter the McMahon/Austin feud, WCW divided the nWo into the Hollywood Hogan-led heel nWo Hollywood faction and the Kevin Nash-led face nWo Wolfpac faction. However, many felt that it was a poor rehash of the original WCW versus nWo storyline. At the same time, it cannot be denied that during mid-1998, the Wolfpac was extremely popular with the crowd.
Nevertheless, WCW launched a brand new Thursday night show on TBS called WCW Thunder in January 1998. Bischoff stated later that he was against the creation of the show because he felt it would bloat the product and take the emphasis away from concentrating on Nitro; the creation of the show was Ted Turner's idea.
WCW's next big attempt to regain ratings supremacy was by marketing ex-NFL player Bill Goldberg as an invincible monster with a record-breaking winning streak of 173 consecutive wins. Goldberg was incredibly popular from the outset, with chants of his name heralding his approach to the ring. However, business still continued to plummet for WCW, despite the immense popularity of Goldberg that continued to maintain and grow.
WWF then began mocking Goldberg by creating a gimmick in WWF by the name of "Gillberg" (a jobber by the name of Duane Gill). Gillberg's entrance included stage hands holding up sparklers (parodying Goldberg's pyrotechnics) and spraying the entranceway with fire extinguishers. His entrance was also accompanied by the fake sound of a crowd chanting "Gillberg." This was likely put in as a reference to the controversy over Goldberg's WCW entrance, whereby there was always a "Goldberg" chant. This chant was often thought to be piped in, though some fans at shows said it was real. Gill also had a dotted line "tattoo" on his right arm (parodying Goldberg's tribal tattoo). In addition, Gill would use the catchphrase "Who's First?", a reference to not only Goldberg's "Who's Next?"
On July 6, 1998, airing out of the Georgia Dome in Atlanta (Goldberg's hometown), Georgia, Nitro defeated RAW in the ratings when Goldberg pinned Hulk Hogan cleanly to win the WCW World Heavyweight Title. The match drew a 6.91 rating for the quarter-hour, the highest rating recorded in the ratings war up to that time. However, it was widely speculated that the match would have made millions of dollars had it taken place on pay-per-view instead of Nitro. After this episode, RAW immediately took back the lead.
On September 14, WCW won the ratings war once again when Ric Flair returned to WCW and reformed the legendary 4 Horsemen. WCW won for the last time on October 26 when the world title match between Diamond Dallas Page and Goldberg from the previous night's Halloween Havoc pay-per-view was aired for free on Nitro due to some PPV viewers losing the feed when the actual PPV was aired.
During this time, it was believe that Kevin Nash (who was still a active WCW wrestler) was in charge of booking WCW shows. After winning the World War 3 battle royal in November 1998, he ended Goldberg's winning streak and won the WCW title at Starrcade 1998 the following month. However in his defense, Kevin Nash claims that he did not take up the booking position until February 1999, 2 months after his victory over Goldberg. Nash's booking was heavily criticized by fellow wrestlers and fans, including the late Eddie Guerrero who believe that the booking decisions set the stage for the beginning of 1999 and what is widely viewed as the beginning of WCW's long-term decline, from which it would never recover.
- The fingerpoke of doom
As 1999 began, both shows were consistently getting 5.0 or higher Nielsen ratings and over 10 million people tuned in to watch RAW and Nitro every week. But by November 1998, the momentum would be in the WWF's favor for the remainder of the war.
On January 4, 1999, Nitro broadcasted live once again from the Georgia Dome. In the second of 3 hours (the show had expanded to 2 hours in 1996 and 3 in 1998), Eric Bischoff, who had learned of the results of the taped RAW that was set to air that night, ordered announcer Tony Schiavone to make this statement: "Fans, if you're even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, do not. We understand that Mick Foley, who wrestled here at one time as Cactus Jack, is gonna win their World title. Ha! That's gonna put some butts in the seats!"
Almost immediately after Schiavone made those comments, an alleged 600,000 people switched channels from Nitro to RAW to see Mankind win the WWF Championship, many of whom wished to see a guaranteed title change and/or a title victory by Foley. After Mankind won the title, many fans then switched back to Nitro (which still had 5 minutes of air time left), suggesting that WCW had a show that the fans wanted to see and might have emerged the victor that night had they not given away the RAW main event results. The final ratings for the night were 5.7 for RAW and 5.0 for Nitro. During the year following the incident, many WWF fans brought signs to the shows saying "Mick Foley put my ass in this seat."
This Nitro's main event was originally scheduled to be Goldberg facing Kevin Nash for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship and was going to be their anticipated rematch. However, Goldberg was arrested (scripted) mid-show and accused of "aggravated stalking" by Miss Elizabeth but he was soon released. Meanwhile, Hollywood Hogan returned to WCW after a "retirement" and challenged Nash to a match, which Nash accepted. This led to the infamous "Fingerpoke of Doom" which saw Hulk Hogan merely poking Nash in the chest with his finger, causing Nash to lie down for Hogan to win the belt. It led to another heel turn for Hogan and the reformation of the entire nWo.
The credibility of the company, which did not present the match that had been advertised, was damaged severely (a Goldberg vs. Kevin Nash rematch from Starrcade 1998), as well as what was perceived to be an underhanded way of selling out the arena for that night's telecast. Kevin Nash however defends the incident by claiming that any Nash/Hogan matches would have been terrible. Despite the fingerpoke of doom incident, WCW would continue this bait and switch tactic of booking. This "match" may very well have started the permanent ratings slide that was to follow for WCW, as Nitro only got a 5.0 rating twice afterwards; its 5.8 rating on February 8, 1999 was the last time it would get such a number.
- WCW's downfall
Wrestlers from WCW began to defect to WWF. Paul "The Big Show" Wight who used to wrestle as The Giant in WCW, signed a 10-year contract with the WWF on February 9, 1999 and made his WWF debut on at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre pay-per-view. Chris Jericho, who was once a top midcarder in WCW also switch "jumps ship" to WWF and made his debut by interrupting The Rock's speech in August, 1999.
RAW was dominating Nitro to the point that in September 1999, Bischoff was removed from power. He states that he intended to resign on the day and when word leaked, the WCW board decided to remove him before he could resign. Meanwhile, RAW's rating continued to rise; a 25-minute long 'This Is Your Life' themed skit between The Rock and Mankind drew an amazing 8.4 quarter-hour rating on September 27.
On October 5, 1999, Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara, the head writers of WWF television programs, defected to WCW. However, Russo and Ferrara failed to capture the magic of their WWF days when they turned Nitro into more of a RAW clone, and they became known on-screen as unseen management known as "The Powers That Be." Ferrara even became a parody of Jim Ross, named Oklahoma.
In December 1999, when Bret Hart suffered a serious career-ending concussion during a match with Goldberg at Starrcade. The promotion was becoming more desperate and WCW was entering severe financial crisis, both of which would only get worse in the months to come. Nitro's ratings failed to increase, and in January 2000, both Russo and Ferrara were suspended from the company after they considered putting the world title on Tank Abbott.
Kevin Sullivan was then promoted to head booker of WCW and caused an uproar among WCW's wrestlers. In spite of winning the WCW title at Souled Out 2000, Chris Benoit quit WCW in protest, along with Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn and Dean Malenko. All four of them entered the WWF as The Radicalz, premiering on RAW's January 31 episode—just 15 days after Benoit's title win.
Nitro was cut back to 2 hours in January 2000 in an effort to bolster the aggregate ratings score but the elimination of the 3rd hour didn't mean higher ratings for Nitro, which by April averaged around a mere 2.5 (while RAW drew double, or sometimes triple that amount).
- Eric Bischoff returns
On April 10, 2000, Bischoff (now a creative consultant) and Russo, returned to WCW with equal power to work as a team and attempted to reboot WCW. Bischoff was allowed back with booking powers, but no longer had control of the company finances like he did in his previous reign. Soon the story line of "The Millionaires Club" versus "The New Blood" developed.
"The Millionaires Club" which consist of WCW's veteran stars such as Hogan, Flair and DDP, were accused of preventing the younger talent from ascending to the main event circle and feuded with "The New Blood", consisting of WCW's younger stars such as Billy Kidman, Shane Douglas and Buff Bagwell. In theory, the younger stars would finally get an even playing field to break out as big stars in wrestling. However, a lot of the newer stars were seen as being relatively green or lacking the charisma and the ability to truly get over.
The new storyline sparked initial interest, but ultimately failed to turn around the ratings, as fans begin to see the storyline as a cheap ripoff of the WCW versus nWo storyline in 1996 and 1997. Hence, WCW continued its downward spiral. WCW became more desperate, even going as far as putting the WCW title belt on David Arquette (Hollywood actor) during his brief stay in the company. Vince Russo even booked himself to win the title in September 2000.
By now, Ted Turner was no longer running the company as WCW was purchased by AOL (American Online Inc.), an American global Internet services and media company operated by Time Warner. That year WCW lost $62 million, due to the guaranteed contracts of their older performers, plummeting advertising revenues, dropping house show attendance, controversial booking decisions (like David Arquette and Russo winning the WCW title), expensive stunts to boost the dismal ratings and poor pay-per-view buyrates.
In July, Eric Bischoff left again, shortly after Russo had Jeff Jarrett lie down for Hulk Hogan in a WCW Championship match at Bash at the Beach 2000. Russo publicly fired Hogan later in the show. Vince Russo then vanished due to a concussion suffered in September 2000 and shows were left to be written by Ed Ferrara and some WCW wrestlers. Rumors that WCW would be put up for sale or downright out of business began to circulate towards the end of 2000.
- The end of Monday Night War
In January 2001, Fusient Media Ventures, led by Eric Bischoff, announced they had bought WCW. However the deal was contingent on the Turner networks keeping Nitro on Monday and WCW Thunder on TBS on Wednesday. When there a change in management in Turner Broadcasting, all WCW programming from the network. With no national television outlet to air WCW shows, Fusient dropped their offer to purchase the promotion.
As a stipulation in an earlier lawsuit the WWF filed against WCW, WWF had first dibs on WCW because of outstanding debts, and as a creditor ; basically set their price for around $7 million to acquire certain assets, including the trademarks, logos, and video library.
Finally on March 23, 2001, Vince McMahon purchased WCW. 25 wrestler contracts were included in the sale; however, most of the main-event level stars were contracted directly to parent company AOL Time Warner instead of WCW, and thus AOL Time Warner was forced to continue to pay many of the wrestlers for years.
- WCW Nitro's final broadcast
McMahon did allow a final Nitro show to air from Panama City Beach on March 26, 2001. It featured him and the WWF stars on RAW from Cleveland airing in segments during the show. The final WCW World Heavyweight Championship match for the show saw Booker T unify the WCW World Heavyweight Championship and WCW United States Heavyweight Championship by defeating "Big Poppa Pump" Scott Steiner.
The main event saw Sting defeat Ric Flair with the Scorpion Deathlock as a culmination of their trademark feud, then both men embraced one another at the match's conclusion. This was a direct parallel to the very first Nitro, where Sting v. Flair was also the main event. The end was a RAW/Nitro simulcast in which Shane McMahon said that he (and not Vince) had bought WCW (scripted). That set up the WCW/ECW Invasion storyline in WWF.
The last Nitro drew a 3.0 rating. The final ratings tally for the Monday Night War with 253 head-to-head showdowns was: 158 wins for RAW, 110 wins for Nitro, and 3 ties.
- Aftermath
WWE business steadily declined in North America after the end of the wars, with a noticeable drop in buyrates and ratings. To compensate for the decrease in domestic revenue, WWE expanded their business overseas. Additionally, due to the glut of wrestlers on the roster after the merger, the company created two "brands" (RAW and Smackdown) a year later, with separate rosters, titles and television shows, and instituted the concepts of General Managers and talent drafts to emulate the rivalry that had ended with WCW.
WCW's closure left a gap in the market which several companies attempted to fill. In 2001, X Wrestling Federation (XWF) and World Wrestling All-Stars (WWA) opened, but both folded by 2004. Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) and Ring of Honor (ROH) both emerged in early 2002 and have enjoyed moderate success since that time.
The Monday Night Wars led to millions of people becoming new wrestling fans. The late 1990s are commonly referred to as professional wrestling's last boom period. Wrestling stars like The Rock, Stone Cold, Goldberg and Sting became household names, and some attempted to parlay their newfound fame into other mediums and found success in them: most notable examples were Mick Foley, who became a New York Times best selling author with his autobiography, and Dwayne Johnson (The Rock), who branched out to become a successful actor in films.
Links:
1) Madusa (Alundra Blayze) threw WWF Women's title into trash can (18th December 1995)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6UWUolS6Z0 (Thanks to TheAllegedLegend)
2) WWF sketch to mock WCW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm3h48da9LU&feature=related (Thanks to WWEhitmanDK)
3) Rick Rude criticized WWF on the screwjob on WCW Nitro (17th November 1997)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69oHwJKdHck&feature=related (Thanks to profx26)
4) Mankind wins WWF championship (4th January 1999)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zAsbXXJSWo (Thanks to ConanEdogawa4869)
5) Ring Entrance of WWF version of Goldberg... Or should i say Gillberg? ( 17th October 1999)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OknYjUQc0ww (Thanks to bono316)
6) Last WCW Nitro (26th March 2001)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRo0iiZI-g4&feature=related (Thanks to bazarkind)
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