WCW Early History WCW Under Eric Bischoff Monday Night Wars

It was purchased by Turner in 1988 from then NWA President Jim Crockett , which were several different NWA territories, after Vince McMahon refused to sell Turner the WWF. Turner then named it NWA World Championship Wrestling. See Jim Crockett Promotions for the pre-Turner history of WCW.

WCW became a separate group in 1991, when the NWA would not recognize the creation of a WCW World Heavyweight Title. However, the federation was, by most measures, running a clear #2 to Vince McMahon's WWF (now WWE).

2 WCW Under Eric Bischoff

WCW's fortunes began to change after former commentator and AWA booker Eric Bischoff took over. Bischoff began recruiting high-profile WWF stars like Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage, around 19941994 is a common year starting on Saturday, and was designated the International year of the Family''. Events January events January 1 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) goes into effect January 6 Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed on the right leg by an. Bischoff put his faith in the recruits, seeing Hogan defeat 14 time WCW World Champion Ric FlairThe "Nature Boy" Ric Flair (born February 25, 1949 in Memphis, Tennessee) has been one of the leading personalities in professional wrestling since the 1970s. His birth name, depending on the particular documents examined, was Fred Phillips Fred Demaree o at Bash at the Beach '94 , which drew a very high pay-per-view buyrate by WCW standards.

While this was a bold step for Eric Bischoff, it did not meet the expectations of Turner executives after a year. Ratings and financial performance were still poor when the new acquisitions weren't performing, and as WCW was dependent on their star power, Hogan and friends enjoyed lighter work schedules. The WWF was still perceived by most, to be the #1 federation in North America.

3 Monday Night Wars

The other bold step by Bischoff was the launch of the weekly show WCW Monday NitroMonday Nitro was the weekly Monday night television program, put on by the now defunct Atlanta-based World Championship Wrestling (WCW), from 1995 until 2001. It ran head to head with the WWF (now WWE) show " Monday Night Raw. The creation was a brainchil. The newly launched Nitro, WCW's flagship show, competed head to head with the WWF flagship show Monday Night Raw, which then screened on the USA NetworkThe USA Network is a popular cable TV network based in the United States with about 87 million household subscribers as of 2003. The network shows a variety of original and second-run programming, from syndicated TV series to edited movies. USA also shows. Nitro, which aired on Turner's TNTTNT is a three-letter abbreviation for Trinitrotoluene, a chemical explosive. TNT is a three-letter abbreviation for Turner Network Television, a cable television network. TNT-9 is a television station in Launceston, Australia. TNT Air Cargo is an interna cable network, made its debut from the Mall of AmericaThe Mall of America (also MOA or MoA is a shopping mall located in the Twin Cities suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. The mall became the largest shopping mall in the United States when it opened in 1992. However, the mall is not and has never been the lar, and featured the shock appearance of then WWF wrestler Lex LugerLawrence Pfohl (Lex Luger (born June 2, 1958 in Buffalo, New York) is an American professional wrestler. Pfohl was a student at Pennsylvania State University. A metal plate was inserted into Pfohl's forearm after a serious motorcycle accident he suffered on a week where Raw was off the air. In the head-to-head ratings the following week, Nitro managed to defeat Raw.

WCW also began recruiting stars from ECW to set up a cruiserwieght division. Additionally, WCW announcers were known to give away the results to the WWF's pre-taped Raw shows (at the time, Raw tended to tape three or even four weeks of shows at once, with only one or two live broadcasts per month).

However, for most of the following year, the ratings battle between the 2 federations would be close.

4 WCW vs. NWO

This changed in 1996, when WCW became the hottest promotion in North America. It did this with the groundbreaking WCW vs. nWo Feud. This feud kicked off with WWF wrestler Scott Hall walking into the ring, unexpectedly, during the middle of a match, where Hall 'declared war' on the whole federation. At the end of a Nitro episode a few weeks later, he was joined by another former WWF wrestler in Kevin Nash, who set out a challenge to any three wrestlers on the WCW roster, against Hall, Nash, and their mystery partner.

At a WCW Pay Per View special named Bash At The Beach '96 , the wrestling world saw Hulk Hogan shockingly 'defect' from WCW to the nWo faction. Hogan, as a bad guy, leading the (fictional) nWo (or New World Order of Wrestling) faction in their attempt to "take over" WCW and run the WWF out of business was a compelling, original storyline. Off the back of this, WCW Nitro managed a string of wins against WWF Raw that lasted from mid '96 to early 1998, that included a popular feud between nWo leader Hulk Hogan, and 'on camera' WCW leader Sting.

In late 1997, Bischoff even went as far as attempting to rebrand Nitro as nWo Nitro one week before Starrcade .

This feud was credited to WCW president Eric Bischoff.

5 Post-nWo

However, after WrestleMania in 1998, the WWF regained the lead in the Monday Night (ratings) Wars with its new WWF Attitude brand, and the classic feud between Vince McMahon and Stone Cold Steve Austin (who ironically had been let go by Bischoff in 1995). April 1998, would mark the first time that WCW had lost the ratings battle in the 84 head-to-head weeks since 1996. WCW attempted to counter this by breaking the nWo into the Hogan led, heel nWo Hollywood faction and crowd favourite nWo Wolfpac faction, but many felt that it was a poor rehash of the original WCW vs nWo feud.

WCW's other attempt at ratings supremacy was marketing newcommer Bill Goldberg as an invincible monster. But business quickly fell off for WCW, while the WWF was on the rise. It won the ratings war for the last time in late 1998.

The WCW slowly slid into a period of decline, blamed both on the fact that Kevin Nash was writing the scripts, the tremendous popularity of Attitude era WWF, and the seeming inability for the federation to promote any wrestlers under 40 years old. Even the Ultimate Warrior was brought in to renew his legendary feud with Hogan. While WCW would occasionally manage to win one or two week in a row, the WWF was largely dominant.

"Wheel Chair Wrestling" became a common catch-cry amongst wrestling fans when describing why they stopped watching WCW. Despite having talented younger wrestlers like Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Billy Kidman, Chavo Guerrero, Jr., Eddie Guerrero, Scott Steiner, Perry Saturn, Raven, and Booker T on its roster, it seemingly never promoted them beyond the midcard, and if it did, scripted those wrestlers to lose to its older, main event stars. Many of those stars ended up defecting to the WWF.

Bischoff was eventually removed from power in 1999.

6 WCW After Bischoff

While Eric Bischoff would return for a brief stint in 2000, his replacement (former WWF head writer Vince Russo) wrote what were thought to be poor scripts that killed any hope for WCW under Turner.

In late 2000, Bischoff and a group of investors, called Fusient Media Ventures, tried to buy WCW, but no deal could be put into place. WCW was then sold to the WWF, which soon became World Wrestling Entertainment. Despite rumours of a WCW resurrection at the hands of McMahon, the ill-fated Invasion angle (a rehash of the WCW vs nWo feud several years earlier) signaled the end of WCW.

7 See Also

Professional wrestling

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1 Early History