WCW

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World Championship Wrestling From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Wcw) Jump to: navigation, search

   For the Nintendo Entertainment System video game, see WCW Wrestling. For the Australian promotion, see WCW Australia.

World Championship Wrestling Details Acronym WCW Established 1986 Style American Wrestling Location Atlanta, Georgia Founder(s) Ted Turner Owner(s) Turner Broadcasting System (TBS)/Turner (1988-96) Time Warner (1996-2001) Vince McMahon (2001-present) Parent Turner Broadcasting System (TBS)/Turner (1988-96) Time Warner (1996-2001) World Wrestling Entertainment (2001-Present) Formerly NWA Eastern States Championship Wrestling NWA Mid Atlantic Championship Wrestling Georgia Championship Wrestling Jim Crockett Promotions NWA World Championship Wrestling Universal Wrestling Corporation Merged with World Wrestling Entertainment

World Championship Wrestling or WCW, was a professional wrestling promotion based in Atlanta, Georgia that existed from 1986 to 2001. In March 2001, the company's assets, including trademarks, some wrestler contracts, and extensive video library were purchased by the World Wrestling Federation, who continued to use the name as part of a storyline until November 2001, when the promotion officially ceased. The intellectual properties of WCW, including the tape library and assorted trademarks, are now organized as WCW, Inc., a subsidiary of WWE. Contents [hide]

   * 1 History
         o 1.1 In the beginning: The NWA years
         o 1.2 WCW Under Ted Turner: The Early Years
         o 1.3 The Bischoff era begins
         o 1.4 Monday Night Wars
         o 1.5 Starrcade 1997
         o 1.6 Vince McMahon strikes back
         o 1.7 The Death of WCW
   * 2 Final champions
   * 3 WCW titles
   * 4 WCW special tournaments
   * 5 Books/DVD
   * 6 See also
   * 7 External links

[edit]

History [edit]

In the beginning: The NWA years

Although World Championship Wrestling was a brand name used by promoter Jim Barnett for his Australian promotion, the first promotion in the United States to use the World Championship Wrestling brand name (though it was never referred to as "WCW") on a wide scale was Georgia Championship Wrestling (although Vincent James McMahon's Capitol Wrestling Corpotation did in fact use the name in some house show promotion).

This promotion, owned primarily by Jack Brisco and Gerald Brisco and booked by Ole Anderson, was the first NWA territory to gain cable TV access. In 1983, Georgia Championship Wrestling changed the name of its television show (and thus its public face) to World Championship Wrestling since it was already starting to run shows in "neutral" territories such as Ohio and Michigan. Although many in the business felt that Anderson was mismanaging the company, Georgia Championship Wrestling had managed to compete against the other major territory trying to go national (Vince McMahon's WWF).

   Main article: Black Saturday (1984)

In May 1984, the Brisco brothers sold their shares in Georgia Championship Wrestling, including their timeslot on the TBS cable TV network to Vince McMahon. The WWF show did not fare well in ratings. World Championship Wrestling's core audience was not interested in the WWF's cartoony approach, preferring a more athletic style. Despite originally promising to produce original programming for the TBS timeslot in Atlanta, McMahon chose instead to provide only a clip show for TBS, featuring highlights from other WWF programming. In May 1985, McMahon sold the TBS timeslot to Jim Crockett Promotions, owned by Jim Crockett, Jr., under pressure from Ted Turner, who resurrected the World Championship Wrestling name (Turner Broadcasting had copyrighted it and prevented McMahon from using it).

By 1986, Jim Crockett, Jr. controlled key portions of the NWA under the name Jim Crockett Promotions, including the traditional NWA territories in The Carolinas, Georgia, and St. Louis. Crockett merged his various NWA territories into one group, and promoted it under the name NWA World Championship Wrestling. A feud between Crockett and Vince McMahon's WWF sprang up, and both companies attempted to outmaneuver the other to acquire key TV slots.

In the same year, WCW also purchased Heart of America Sports Attractions Inc (HASA), which owned the rights to promote wrestling shows through several central states (Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa). HASA was known to fans as NWA Central States, and ran a TV show called All Star Wrestling.

In 1987, WCW would purchase Championship Wrestling from Florida, and Universal Wrestling Federation (which covered Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana), which was not an NWA member. Florida & Mid-South (and its wrestlers) were absorbed into WCW.

Crockett had almost accomplished his goal of creating a national promotion. Between his purchasing several NWA territories, World Class Championship Wrestling in Texas leaving the NWA in 1986 (and later merging with Jerry Jarrett's Championship Wrestling Alliance in Memphis to create the United States Wrestling Association) brand, and the once highly viable Portland territory going bankrupt (it closed in 1992), he was the last bastion of the NWA, and the last member with national TV exposure. Since it was all they now saw, many people began to believe that World Championship Wrestling was the NWA. Although WCW and the NWA were still two separate entities, with Crockett as NWA President, they were very much on the same page. The NWA was effectively an on-paper organization funded by Crockett, and allowed Crockett to use the NWA brand name for promoting.

With the large amount of capital needed to take a wrestling federation on a national tour, Crockett's territorial acquisitions had seriously drained WCW's coffers. He was in a similar situation to that of the WWF in the early 1980s: a large debt load, and the success or failure of a federation hinging on the success or failure of a series of PPVs. Crockett marketed StarrCade '87 as the NWA's answer to WrestleMania. However, the WWF promoted Survivor Series on the same day, and threatened to withhold WrestleMania IV from any PPV company that refused to show it. Later, in January 1988, WCW promoted the Bunkhouse Stampede PPV, and McMahon counter-programmed with the first Royal Rumble on USA. Both WCW PPVs achieved low buyrates.

In 1985, Crockett had signed Dusty Rhodes and made him booker for WCW. Rhodes had a reputation for creativity and authored many of the memorable feuds and storylines of this period and gimmick matches like WarGames. By 1988, after three years of trying to compete with Vince McMahon, and a long, drawn-out political struggle with champion Ric Flair, Rhodes was burned out. He was unable to draw fan interest in his storylines, and the Dusty finish had reduced the house show market. By the end of 1988, Rhodes was booking cards seemingly at random, and planning at one point to have mid-card wrestler Rick Steiner defeat Ric Flair in a five-minute match at StarrCade for the NWA World Championship. At the end of 1988, Rhodes was fired by the promotion after an angle he booked where Road Warrior Animal pulled a spike out of his shoulderpad and jammed it in Rhodes's eye busting it wide open. [edit]

WCW Under Ted Turner: The Early Years

To preserve the inexpensive network programming provided by professional wrestling, Jim Crockett Promotions was purchased outright by Turner on November 21, 1988. Originally incorporated by TBS as the Universal Wrestling Corporation, Turner promised the fans that WCW would be the athlete-oriented style of NWA.

1989 proved to be a turnaround year for WCW, with Ric Flair on top for most of the year both as World Champion and also as head booker. Flair had helped bring in Ricky Steamboat and Terry Funk, and his PPV matches with both were successful, financially and critically. Young stars such as Sid Vicious, Sting, Scott Steiner, The Road Warriors, Brian Pillman, The Great Muta and Lex Luger were given big storylines and championship opportunities.

Despite this influx of talent, WCW soon began working to gradually incorporate much of the glamor and showy gimmicks for which the WWF was better known. Virtually none of these stunts, such as the live cross-promotional appearance of RoboCop at a PPV event in 1990, the Chamber of Horrors gimmick and the notorious Black Scorpion storyline, succeeded. Behind the scenes, WCW was also becoming more autonomous and slowly started separating itself from the historic NWA name. In January 1991, WCW officially split from the NWA and began to recognize its own WCW World Heavyweight Championship and WCW World Tag Team Championship.

   For more details on this topic, see Jim Herd.

Both the WCW and the NWA recognized Ric Flair (who was by now no longer the head booker) as their World Heavyweight Champion throughout most of the first half of 1991, but WCW, particularly recently-installed company president Jim Herd, turned against Flair for various reasons and fired him just prior to the July 1991 Great American Bash PPV after failed contract negotiations. In the process, they officially stripped him of the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. However, according to Flair's autobiography, they refused to return the $25,000 deposit he had put down on the (physical) belt, so he kept it and took it with him when he was hired by the WWF at the request of Vince McMahon. Flair then incorporated the belt into his gimmick, dubbing himself "The Real World's Champion".

WCW later renegotiated the use of the NWA name as a co-promotional gimmick with New Japan Pro Wrestling, and sued the WWF to stop showing Flair with the old NWA World title belt on its programs, claiming a trademark on the physical design of the belt. The belt was returned to WCW by Flair when Jim Herd was let go and he received his deposit back plus interest, and it was brought back as the revived NWA World Heavyweight Championship.

During the period that WCW operated with its own World Champion while also recognizing the NWA's world title, Flair quit the WWF and returned to WCW, regaining the title from Barry Windham in July 1993. Immediately, the other, now smaller, member organizations of the NWA began demanding that Flair defend the title under their rules in their territories, as mandated by old NWA agreements. The title was later scheduled to be dropped by Flair to Rick Rude, a title change which was exposed by the Disney Tapings, the months-in-advance taping of WCW's syndicated television shows at Disney-owned studios in Orlando, Florida. The NWA board of directors, working separately from WCW, objected to Rude, with WCW finally leaving the NWA for good again in September 1993.

   See also: WCW_Disney_tapings#Logistical_Errors

However, WCW still legally owned and used the actual belt which represented the NWA World Heavyweight Championship (Rick Rude even defended it as The Big Gold Belt) but they could no longer use the NWA name. The title thus became known as the WCW International World Heavyweight Title (meaning the World heavyweight championship as sanctioned by "WCW International," a fictional organization made up of promoters from around the world, essentially their in-house version of the real NWA).

WCW realized that the title belt, because of its rich in-ring history and visual impact, was highly sought after and respected in Japan and as such created this fictional subsidiary dubbed WCW International to inject some credibility back into the belt. WCW claimed that "WCWI" still recognized the belt as a legitimate World Championship. For a short while, there were essentially two World titles up for competition in the organization.

Sting eventually won the WCW International Championship and lost the belt to then-WCW World Champion Ric Flair in a unification match in May 1994 when the experiment was jettisoned. To make things more confusing, the WCW title belt, as introduced in 1991, was dropped and the old NWA Championship belt was revived and officially replaced it as the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. It was used as such until WCW's closure in 2001. The belt (in a slightly altered design) is still seen today in WWE as the World Heavyweight Championship on their SmackDown! brand (previously on RAW). However, WWE considers it a separate title and WWE.com officially lists the title history of the World Heavyweight Championship as beginning with Triple H being awarded the belt by Eric Bischoff on RAW on September 2, 2002. [edit]

The Bischoff era begins WCW logo from 1988-1999. Enlarge WCW logo from 1988-1999.

The creative product of the company sank very noticeably in 1992 and 1993 under the presidency of Jim Herd and, subsequently, Bill Watts. There were signs of gradual recovery in late 1993 when former commentator and American Wrestling Association (AWA) booker Eric Bischoff was appointed as Executive Vice President of WCW. Bischoff, originally brought in as a secondary commentator behind Jim Ross after the AWA became defunct, was desperate to give WCW a new direction and impressed Turner's top brass with his confrontational tactics and business-savvy.

Bischoff's first year was considered unsuccessful. Dusty Rhodes and Ole Anderson were in full creative control at this point, with what were considered to be cartoonish storylines, as well as seemingly pointless feuds with little or no buildup. During a segment of "A Flair For the Gold" on a live Clash of the Champions to build up the Fall Brawl PPV, WCW decided to introduce a "mystery partner" for the babyfaces, a masked man known as The Shockmaster. The Shockmaster (previously known as Typhoon in the WWF) was supposed to crash through a fake wall and intimidate the heels. Instead, he tripped through the wall and fell on live television, rendering himself as a joke character (despite winning some matches.)

WCW in 1993 decided to base the promotion around Ric Flair. This was seen as more or less a necessity, as prospective top babyface Sid Vicious tried to injure wrestler Arn Anderson with a pair of scissors four weeks before StarrCade while on tour in England and was fired. Flair won the title at StarrCade and was once again made booker.

Bischoff would declare open war on McMahon's WWF in the media and aggressively recruited high-profile former WWF superstars such as Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage in 1994. 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, multimillion dollar guaranteed contracts and significant creative control. 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. Hogan, in particular, was able to gain considerable influence through a friendship with Bischoff. Another thing Bischoff may have failed to consider was the fact that many WCW fans watched it as an alternative to the product of the WWF in the early 90s, and many NWA fans saw the hiring of former WWF talent as an attempt to copy its success, as opposed to being an alternative product with an emphasis on in-ring action.

WCW's first major event since Hogan's hiring, Bash at the Beach, saw the former WWF mainstay defeat Ric Flair for the WCW Championship. The two had worked for the WWF at the same time from 1991 to 1992, and a feud was teased between them, but the big-money match originally planned for WrestleMania VIII was changed to Flair/Savage and Hogan/Sid. When WCW delivered the match, the PPV drew a high buy rate by WCW standards due to mainstream intrigue and hype.

This was not lost on Turner management, however, and Bischoff's bold, expensive steps didn't quite meet their expectations when they came to check up on things in mid-1995. Thus, Bischoff called Turner and requested a private meeting, which he was granted. [edit]

Monday Night Wars

   Main article: Monday Night Wars

Bischoff would be instrumental in launching the weekly show WCW Monday Nitro in September 1995. Turner asked Bischoff how WCW could conceivably 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 the WWF's flagship show, Monday Night RAW. Surprisingly for Bischoff, Turner granted him a live hour on TNT every Monday night, which specifically overlapped with Raw. This format quickly expanded to two live hours in May 1996, and then later three. Bischoff himself was initially the host, alongside Bobby Heenan and ex-NFL star Steve "Mongo" McMichael.

McMahon later admitted to being bitter about Turner's decision to air Nitro live on Monday nights, saying that Turner and Bischoff's only reason for doing this could be to hurt and damage the WWF. Turner and McMahon certainly had something of a personal history: in the early 1980s, when McMahon began buying up local organizations in order to create a nationwide wrestling system, one of the promotions he took over was Georgia Championship Wrestling; thus he was in the position of providing a Saturday night show for Turner's TBS station. When viewers tuned to TBS on July 14, 1984 (a date known as Black Saturday by some in the wrestling community) and saw WWF programming instead of the GCW wrestlers they were used to seeing, many called the station and demanded the NWA's return; two weeks later, GCW returned, albeit on Saturday mornings. Turner quickly grew tired of the personality-driven glitz of McMahon's product and was upset at the fact that McMahon had gone back on his earlier promise not to dump second-rate stars and matches onto TBS. Turner therefore axed McMahon's show and turned to Jim Crockett for the Saturday night pro wrestling slot. It is rumored that on the very same day that Turner later acquired Crockett's territories, he called McMahon to say "Vince, I'm in the rasslin' business!" McMahon claims he congratulated him and then told him "That's great Ted. I'm in the entertainment business."

In 1995, Turner (as sole head and owner of both TBS and TNT), could air Nitro whenever he wanted. The WWF on the other hand was constrained by having to deal with the USA Network, whose executives were pleased about the viewers RAW brought to their network, but were also weary of the stigma associated with being the wrestling channel. WCW Monday Nitro made its debut in September 1995 live from the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, and featured the surprise appearance of Lex Luger, who had been working on a handshake deal with WWF after his most recent contract expired, on a week when RAW was pre-empted by the US Open.

In the first head-to-head ratings the following week, Nitro managed to convincingly defeat RAW, seeing WCW beat the WWF for the first time ever. For most of Nitro's first year, the ratings battle between the two promotions were close. In the end, Nitro ended up beating RAW in the ratings for 84 straight weeks between 1996 and 1998.

RAW and the WWF in general was consided to be at a creative nadir from 1995 to 1997, thus helping WCW's meteoric rise. The WWF tried in vain to fight back in early 1996 with the "Billionaire Ted" sketches, which occasionally starred an unbilled Vince Russo and parodied Turner, Hogan ("The Huckster"), Gene Okerlund ("Scheme Gene") and Savage ("Nacho Man") in particular. Only when stars such as ex-WCW wrestler "Stone Cold" Steve Austin began to emerge, and when McMahon selected Russo, a New York DJ and WWF magazine writer, as his head booker, did the WWF begin to pick up steam.

Siphoning off the WWF's talent and airing Nitro on Monday night was not the end of WCW's tactics to defeat the competition (a stunt McMahon himself pulled when he steamrolled over territories to monopolize the WWF, although McMahon would be the one crying "foul" this time). In the early days, as RAW was only live once every three weeks at that point, and as hours of upcoming shows would be taped in one arena on one night, announcers on Nitro could (and would) often give away the results of that week's RAW to keep viewers tuned to Nitro. Much later, with the WWF firmly back on top, this tactic memorably backfired on January 4, 1999, when WCW announcer Tony Schiavone was instructed by Bischoff over his headset to announce that Mick Foley (wrestling as Mankind in the WWF), would win the WWF Championship that night on the USA Network. Schiavone then sarcastically remarked, "that would put a lot of butts in the seats." Nielsen ratings for that night showed that almost immediately after Schiavone's comment, around 300,000 to 600,000 viewers switched from Nitro to RAW in a matter of seconds. This startling ratings switch was seen as a true testament to Foley's dedication to wrestling and the WWF's ever-growing popularity. [edit]

Starrcade 1997

   Main article: Starrcade 1997
   See also:NWO

In 1997, WCW entered its peak, largely due to the NWO storyline. During that time, the NWO Feuded with Sting, this feud served to buildup the Starrcade Pay Per View and after Halloween Havoc when Roddy Piper defeated Hogan via Sting, the WCW World Championship match was held on Starrcade. When WCW delivered the Sting VS Hogan match for the WCW World Championship, the PPV drew WCW's biggest buyrate and Bischoff was largely praised in the months leading up to this pay-per-view because of his refusal to "hotshot" (give away a big money PPV match before proper build up, causing a lesser buy rate) Sting vs. Hogan for the WCW world title. However, some wrestling fans consider this show to be the beginning of the end for WCW, even though WCW was dominating the WWF in television ratings at the time. Hogan was heavily criticized for not doing a clean finish which confused and irritated fans who had waited over a year to see Sting take down the nWo.

The finish actually involved a recently-introduced Bret Hart (Who had refed the Bischoff VS Larry Zbyszko match for control of Monday Nitro in the previous match) coming down to the ring after Hogan "won" the match through a supposedly fast count by referee Nick Patrick, ostensibly to "make things right" and protect Sting from being "screwed," a la the Montreal Screwjob.

Unfortunately, the "fast" three-count which Hogan used to win was quite obviously a normal-speed count, requiring the announcers to act as though it was fast, since that was the finish they had been told - though everyone viewing the show had just seen a clean pinfall.

Rather than the triumphant victory that one would expect the most popular wrestler in the company to gain over the hated man he had been chasing for over a year, as Sting had Hogan, the finish was confused and chaotic, with the live audience visibly displeased at the entire spectacle. Hart "restarted" the match, and Sting quickly won the title, but given the circumstances, excitement was rather muted.

It is rumored that Hogan paid Patrick a sum in cash backstage before the show in exchange for failing to execute the planned finish, with the intent of protecting Hogan's image. The entire debacle resulted in the title being held up for another Hogan-Sting pay-per-view match, which many WCW fans took as a slap in the face and a hapless attempt to draw additional money to see the result WCW had failed to deliver the first time around. After this, WCW would enter a creative stall from which the company would never escape, this gave Vince McMahon and the WWF one last shot from which Vince was quick to exploit. [edit]

Vince McMahon strikes back

   See also:Monday Night Wars: The Tide Turns

When Hart left the WWF after the Montreal Screwjob at the 1997 Survivor Series it looked as WCW was going to push the WWF right off the map. WCW had seemingly the big stars people wanted to see like Hogan, Nash, Hall, Hart, Flair, Etc. as the popular opinion was that this was a deathblow for the WWF and a major score for WCW. The combination of a company screwing over a popular wrestler and angering many fans should have dealt a massive blow to the WWF and given WCW a great amount of hype to work from. However, after WrestleMania XIV in March 1998, the WWF regained the lead in the Monday Night Wars with its new WWF Attitude brand, led in particular by rising stars "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H and Mankind. The classic feud between McMahon (who was re-imagined and re-branded as the evil company chairman character Mr. McMahon) and Austin (who, ironically, had been released by Bischoff in the summer of 1995 for not being marketable) caught the imaginations of fans. The April 13, 1998 episode of RAW, headlined by a match between Austin and McMahon, marked the first time that WCW had lost the head-to-head Monday night ratings battle in the 84 weeks since 1996. WWF didn't stop there. Their ratings increased dramatically in the next two years, more than ever before. WCW attempted to counter this by dividing the nWo into the Hogan-led heel nWo Hollywood faction and the Nash-led face nWo Wolfpac faction, but many felt that it was a poor rehash of the original WCW vs. nWo storyline. Undeterred, WCW also launched a new Thursday TV show, the aforementioned WCW Thunder, around this time.

WCW's next big attempt at ratings supremacy was marketing ex-NFL newcomer Bill Goldberg as an invincible monster with a record-breaking winning streak. Goldberg was indeed incredibly popular from the outset, with chants of 'Gold-berg, Gold-berg' heralding his approach to the ring, but business still quickly fell off for WCW, especially as the list of stars ready to be destroyed by Goldberg grew shorter. One of WCW's last big genuine wins in the Monday night ratings war was on July 6, 1998, when WCW gave the long-awaited World Title match in Atlanta between Hogan and Goldberg (which Goldberg won), away for free on Nitro. By doing this, they indeed 'spiked' and inflated their TV ratings for a week, but lost millions of possible PPV dollars in the process, as Hogan vs. Goldberg was a clear PPV main event. On September 14, 1998, WCW won the ratings war once again with a memorable moment that featured Ric Flair's return to WCW and the reformation of the legendary Four Horsemen. On October 25, 1998, WCW's Halloween Havoc PPV ended up running longer than the time allowed due to the last-minute addition of a Tag Team Title match. As a result, several thousand people lost the PPV feed at 11pm which was during the World Title match between Diamond Dallas Page and Goldberg. The following night, WCW decided to correct the problem by airing the entire match for free on Nitro and thus winning the ratings war for the final time.

WCW slowly slid into a period of extravagant overspending and what was viewed almost universally as creative decline with the reason why it happened and who let it happen still a matter of debate. One possible reason was the overuse of celebrities (such as Dennis Rodman and Jay Leno) to wrestle PPV matches. Another was that the WCW's credibility was badly damaged by embarrassing product placement, like Rick Steiner trading barbs with Chucky the killer doll (which was roundly booed by the in-house audience on the live Nitro broadcast) in the hopes of generating interest in the 1998 film Bride of Chucky. Another reason vould be the stale, pointless, and at times self-serving storylines concocted by inexperienced bookers such as Kevin Nash, and that the top-level stars had no motivation to excel in the ring due to their long-term guaranteed-money contracts, and only gave their utmost when it suited them to do so. What is known is that WCW programming slowly started to go downhill in quality with people turning off their TVs or switching to WWF programming, and in reaction the company began to panic and tried to solve its problems by throwing money at a variety of personalities, a practice it could ill-afford to engage in. Many talents were reportedly signed simply to keep them from appearing on WWF television. At one point, WCW held over 260 individual performers under guaranteed contracts, and often paid many of them to simply stay at home and collect a paycheck.

As mentioned above, people were growing suspicious of Nash's questionable storylines, which were dominated by his on-screen persona. After booking himself to win the World War 3 battle royal in November 1998, he went on to end Goldberg's winning streak and win the World Title on the StarrCade PPV just one month later. Then came the infamous "fingerpoke of doom" match with Hulk Hogan in January 1999. The particular Nitro in which this match aired was being advertised as a StarrCade rematch between Nash and Goldberg. As a result, the arena was a complete sellout, with over 40,000 people watching live and millions more around the world hoping for the rematch. Instead, a storyline that put Goldberg in a bad light called for him to be replaced by Hollywood Hogan. The World Heavyweight Championship changed hands when Hogan knocked Nash to the mat by prodding him in the chest with one finger and then pinning him, further damaging the credibility and perceived value of the title. Also damaged was the credibility of the company itself, which did not present the match that had been advertised, as well as what was perceived to be an underhanded way of selling out the arena for that night's telecast. It was also this same episode of Nitro that Tony Schiavone mockingly announced the Mick Foley WWF Title win, which shifted the ratings for the night in the World Wrestling Federation's favor.

   For more details on this topic, see Fingerpoke_of_Doom#The_Impact.

Also in 1998, The Ultimate Warrior, a former WWF star, was recruited by Eric Bischoff to feud with Hogan (Warrior's WrestleMania VI opponent). Their October 1998 encounter at Halloween Havoc was mostly seen as sub-par, and Warrior vanished soon after. The Ultimate Warrior also insisted on a number of elaborate and costly apparatuses such as a trapdoor in the ring, which badly injured The British Bulldog when he landed on it.

   For more details on this topic, see Warrior_(wrestler)#World_Championship_Wrestling.

In addition, no matter who was in charge, WCW did not like promoting its younger stars to the company's top slots. Despite having many talented younger wrestlers such as Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Billy Kidman, Chavo Guerrero, Jr., Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, Raven, Rey Mysterio, Jr., and Booker T on its roster, they were kept away from the main event scene. What was seen as WCW's poor talent decisions combined with the massive popularity of the new, hip and edgy WWF Attitude Era, likely began WCW's rapid demise.

Bischoff was eventually removed from power by the Turner higher-ups on September 10, 1999, the last straws perhaps being what was felt as a bizarre and mystifying push for the 1970s rock group KISS through WCW shows, a storyline involving rapper Master P and The No Limit Soldiers that saw Master P last only two weeks (the "No Limit Soldiers" stable flopped so badly that the West Texas Rednecks heel stable that they were feuding with was cheered by the WCW's traditional southern fanbase); an announced million-dollar contest that was later cancelled; a planned Nitro animated series that was scrapped, as well; and Bischoff's long-standing desire to put on a huge, outdoor rock 'n' wrestling concert featuring KISS on December 31, 1999.

   See also: Eric_Bischoff#Downfall

[edit]

The Death of WCW

   See also: Vince_Russo#WCW

Bischoff was unexpectedly replaced by former WWF head writer Vince Russo and his colleague Ed Ferrera. Russo and Ferrera had been the head writers for the WWF at the beginning of the Attitude Era, subordinate only to Vince McMahon himself. WCW offered them lucrative contracts to jump ship in October 1999 in an effort to revitalize their own flagging product and weaken the product of the WWF. Russo and Ferrera tried to push the younger WCW talents straight away, and phase out aging stars such as Hogan and Flair. However, Russo was thought by many to be incapable of recreating the intriguing and cutting-edge TV he had produced while working for McMahon.

Russo and Ferrera struggled to gain approval for their near-the-knuckle ideas from the WCW management, such as "Piñata on a Pole" matches between Mexican wrestlers. In late 1999, Russo and Ferrera revived the nWo storyline, this time with Jeff Jarrett and Bret Hart at the helm. They next targeted WWF announcer Jim Ross with a parody character called "Oklahoma", who was played onscreen by Ferrera (Ross had been suffering from Bell's palsy, and the character lampooned his resultant facial defects). Bad luck struck in December 1999 when Hart suffered a genuine (and ultimately career-ending) concussion at the hands of Goldberg, who severely damaged his own hand less than a week later while punching through a limousine window in Salisbury, Maryland as part of a storyline that was written by Russo. Russo himself became an onscreen character during this period, though one whose face was never shown on camera, in a manner similar to Doctor Claw from Inspector Gadget and the George Steinbrenner character from Seinfeld. Only his hand and the back of his chair were ever actually seen, as he called wrestlers into his office to receive their marching orders for the night.

   See also: Bret_Hart#World_Championship_Wrestling

Both Russo and Ferrera were suspended just three months later amid rumors that they wanted to make former UFC fighter Tank Abbott the WCW Champion (Abbott, despite his legitimate fighting background, had little wrestling experience and had failed to connect with WCW audiences). Kevin Sullivan, who had been an on/off booker over the course of several years, was placed in charge in the interim. The new writing team attempted to appease the demoralized wrestlers and fans by making Chris Benoit the WCW Champion at the Souled Out PPV in January 2000. However, because of the real-life personal issues between himself and Sullivan, let alone that prior to the PPV he and a few other wrestlers demanded their releases from the company (due to their lack of being pushed to stardom as well as their similar hatred for Sullivan), Benoit handed the belt back right after winning it and the next day left WCW. He signed with the WWF along with his similarly frustrated friends Perry Saturn, Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko. The four quickly became popular in the WWF as "The Radicalz".

On February 11, 2000, black wrestlers Bobby Walker and Harrison Norris and Japanese manager Sonny Onoo launched racial discrimination lawsuits against WCW, claiming that, as a result of their ethnicities, they had not been pushed, had not been paid as well as other wrestlers and personalities, and had been given offensive gimmicks. Some speculated that the charges of racism brought against WCW (and the resultant bad publicity for the company, which had been dogged by accusations of racism for years), were partially responsible for black wrestler Booker T winning the WCW Championship later that year and his brother Stevie Ray being made a color commentator, with Ray himself acknowledging that it might have been a factor.

In April 2000, with ratings hitting new lows, both Russo and Bischoff were reinstated by WCW. They formed an on-screen union that stood up for the younger talent in the company (which they dubbed the New Blood) in their battle against the Millionaires Club, which consisted of the older, higher-paid, and more visible stars such as Hogan, Sting, and Diamond Dallas Page. Though initially well-received, the storyline quickly degenerated into yet another nWo rehash, with the heel nWo recast as the New Blood and the face WCW embodied in the Millionaire's Club. As well, the unorthodox and often controversial storylines continued. These included making actor David Arquette the WCW Champion in order to promote a WCW-themed movie, Ready to Rumble; Russo himself winning the WCW Championship in September 2000 (Russo, like Arquette, was not a trained wrestler); a botched June heel turn for Goldberg that greatly diminished his drawing power; and a shoot speech by Russo at Bash at the Beach 2000 aimed at Hulk Hogan which led to Hogan resigning and filing a defamation of character lawsuit against the company (which was eventually dismissed in 2002). Bischoff vanished once more in July 2000, and Russo was gone from WCW completely by late 2000, leaving Terry Taylor holding the reins.

   For more details on this topic, see Hulk_Hogan#The_end_of_Hogan_in_WCW.

Meanwhile, when Time Warner bought out Turner's cable empire in 1996, it also purchased WCW. Even though Turner was a big fan and faithful to the professional wrestling shows on his stations (a professional wrestling program had helped get Turner's very first TV station, WTBS, off the ground, and WCW was, in fact, the modern incarnation of the promotion that Turner had run on WTBS back in those days) regardless of whether it was losing him money, Time Warner did not share his loyalty, especially when accounts showed that WCW was losing between $12-$17 million a year because of its decline. However, Turner was still the single largest Time Warner shareholder, and WCW was supported at his behest. When AOL merged with Time Warner in 2000, Turner was effectively forced out of his own empire. The new AOL Time Warner finally had the power to auction off WCW, which they saw as an unnecessary drain on resources.

In late 2000, Bischoff and a group of private investors, calling themselves Fusient Media Ventures, inquired about buying WCW but backed out when Turner networks head (and The WB founder) Jamie Kellner formally cancelled all WCW programming from its TV networks. With no network to air its programming, WCW was of little value to Fusient, whose offer was dependent on the Turner networks continuing to air WCW programming.

On March 23, 2001, virtually all of WCW's trademarks and archived footage was sold to Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. for $7 million (although the book The Death of WCW claimed it was less than $3 million).

A gloating McMahon opened the last-ever episode of WCW Monday Nitro simulcast with RAW on March 26, 2001 with a self-praising speech. US Champion Booker T cleanly defeated the world champion, Scott Steiner, to become WCW's final World Heavyweight Champion, as well as its final US Heavyweight Champion. Sting vs. Ric Flair (won by Sting) was the highlight nostalgia match of the final broadcast, ending affectionately with a respectful embrace. The WCW logo used in the WWF during the 2001 Invasion storyline. Enlarge The WCW logo used in the WWF during the 2001 Invasion storyline.

When Vince came on RAW after the Sting/Flair match to declare victory over WCW, Vince's son Shane McMahon appeared at the Nitro event, declaring that he had bought WCW. However, this was kayfabe and part of a WWF storyline that would have Shane leading the WCW Invasion of the WWF (a highly anticipated storyline which many considered a squandered opportunity), which lasted from March to November 2001 and marked the end of WCW. Despite aborted attempts to run WCW-branded events (including a proposed Saturday night timeslot that later evolved into WWF Velocity and WWF Excess), the WWF only ran a handful of matches on RAW and SmackDown! under the WCW banner.

When the WWF bought WCW in March 2001, several top WCW wrestlers, including Goldberg, Scott Steiner, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and Sting had high-priced contracts with AOL Time Warner that WWF was unwilling to pick up. Rather than trying to get a buyout of their contracts and taking a pay cut to go to WWF, they chose to sit home and got paid for the remainders of their WCW contracts. This is most often cited as being the main reason the planned WCW Invasion of WWF storyline failed. The WCW was not seen as a powerhouse organization invading WWF when most of their top stars did not appear. However, all of the above wrestlers except Sting signed contracts with the WWE after the Invasion subsided.

It has also been noticed often in WCW that they somewhat misuse the great roster they use to have. At times they tried to recreate the magic of those encounters which were already successful in WWF and Hogan-Warrior and Hogan-Savage was no exception. More there was hardly any face vs. face matches there in WCW except of Goldberg-DDP which was reasonably successful. It was also observed that the roster WCW used to have they could have created some great encounters which have never seen before even in WWF/WWE like Hogan-Bret, Warrior-Bret, Flair-Warrior, Luger-Savage etc. and adding insult to injury the bad timings, short length and poor homework on the part of bookers of various feuds caused a lot of damage to WCW. Savage-Bret rivalry which started when Bret become nWo member was indeed a great idea but it was short lived. Hogan-Nash encounter could have drawn million of dollars had it been on a pay per view but due to the poor booking, timing and execution of the match the result is what we use to remember as ’Fingerpoke of Doom’. All and all the talent of WCW was utilized poorly as majority of superstar and talented athletes had nothing to do but move in the shadow of either Hogan or Nash as a part of nWo while others used to get their opportunity once in a blue moon in the mid card.

The WCW World Heavyweight Championship (which was renamed the World Championship) would continue to be used in WWF until it was merged with the WWF Championship into the WWF Undisputed Championship when Chris Jericho defeated The Rock and Steve Austin for the respective titles on December 9, 2001 on the PPV, Vengeance.

Although new professional wrestling alternatives such as Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and Ring of Honor have seen rising popularity in recent years, none have achieved the mainstream popularity or financial support that WCW enjoyed and thus are not yet considered competitive with WWE. [edit]

Final champions

This is a list of the champions as they were at the end of the last WCW Monday Nitro on March 26, 2001 (though all these titles, with the exception of the Cruiserweight Tag Team Championship, continued to be active in WWF until November of that year). Championship Final champion(s) WCW World Heavyweight Champion Booker T WCW United States Champion Booker T WCW World Tag Team Champions Chuck Palumbo and Sean O'Haire WCW Cruiserweight Champion Shane Helms WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team Champions Billy Kidman and Rey Mysterio

Here's a list of the final WCW Champions under the WWF banner. Championship Final champion(s) WCW World Heavyweight Champion1 Chris Jericho WCW United States Champion2 Edge WCW World Tag Team Champions3 The Dudley Boyz

Footnotes

   * 1Renamed the World Championship after Survivor Series 2001; unified with the WWF Championship at Vengeance 2001. The belt design was later reintroduced as the WWE sanctioned World Heavyweight Championship as a RAW exclusive title in September 2002 (now exclusive to SmackDown!).
   * 2Unified with the WWE Intercontinental Championship at Survivor Series 2001; reactivated as a WWE sanctioned title on SmackDown! in 2003 by then-General Manager Stephanie McMahon.
   * 3Unified with the WWE World Tag Team Championship at Survivor Series 2001.
   * 4Title adopted by the WWF after Survivor Series 2001; renamed the WWF / WWE Cruiserweight Championship.

[edit]

WCW titles

   * WCW World Heavyweight Championship
   * WCW United States Heavyweight Championship
   * WCW Cruiserweight Championship
   * WCW World Tag Team Championship
   * WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team Championship
   * WCW World Television Championship
   * WCW Hardcore Championship
   * WCW United States Tag Team Championship
   * WCW World Six-Man Tag Team Championship
   * WCW International World Heavyweight Championship
   * WCW Light Heavyweight Championship
   * WCW Women's Championship
   * WCW Women's Cruiserweight Championship

[edit]

WCW special tournaments

   * WCW Jesse "The Body" Ventura Strongest Arm Tournament (1992-1993)
   * WCW King of Cable Tournament (1992)
   * WCW/NWA Gauntlet Series (1990)
   * WCW Battle Bowl

[edit]

Books/DVD

   * The Death of WCW by R.D. Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez, 2004, ISBN 1-55022-661-4.
   * The Monday Night War: WWE Raw vs. WCW Monday Nitro World Wrestling Entertainment, 2004, ASIN B0001CCXCA.

[edit]

WCW

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