The Monday Night Wars

WWE are shortly to release a DVD which they claim will tell the story of the legendary Monday Night Wars. A period from September 1995 until roughly 1999 (when WCW ceased to be competitive, eventually going out of business in early 2001) when the WWF’s Raw is War and WCW’s Monday Nitro competed head to head, live, every Monday night. It was a conflict that changed the entire business, a conflict which became extremely bitter and which encouraged both sides to their greatest periods of creative and business success.

It started in 1995 when Eric Bischoff, backed by the successes he’d achieved with the signings of Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage, approaching Turner Broadcasting with the idea of a weekly live prime time TV show. They liked the plan. He said he wanted to go head to head with the WWF’s successful Monday Night Raw broadcast. They thought he was mad. But somehow he convinced them that it would work and Monday Nitro (which if you say it right does sound remarkably like Monday Night Raw) debuted in September. As a point of no importance it debuted the same night as Xena : Warrior Princess. The first show saw the unexpected arrival on WCW TV of WWF star Lex Luger. Vince McMahon believed Luger was under contract, Luger thought otherwise and turned up on Nitro. The dirty tricks had started before the first head to head had even taken place.

The first head to head was the following week and Nitro won. Only marginally but they won. The next few months were neck and neck. One week Raw would win, the next week Nitro would win. Aside from the Luger situation there wasn’t much talent movement. There was however Eric Bischoff’s decision to tell Nitro viewers the results of the usually pre-taped Raw matches. There was no doubt about it – Nitro was fresher than Raw. The old format of television was to present squash matches (star vs. no hoper in quick matches) and interviews. Anything worth seeing had to be paid for either with live show tickets or on PPV. Bischoff changed all that and packed each hour with quality matches. Then he packed two hours a week with top notch matches. This was becoming dangerously close to a revolution.

So you had a Monday Night Raw which was taped two weeks out of three and emanated from a small arena in New York verses a two hour live PPV calibre TV event on the other channel. WCW started pulling ahead. Powered by the hot as heck Ric Flair vs. Randy Savage feud, Nitro was the place to be on Monday night. Raw was summed up in Vince McMahon’s powder blue polyester suits with the big yellow WWF logo on them verses Eric Bischoff’s leather jackets. Then came the biggest month perhaps in wrestling’s modern history. It started in the middle of June 1996 when Scott Hall left the WWF and showed up on WCW TV. Looking and sounding the same, Hall’s vague threats were designed to make the viewing millions think this was WWF vs. WCW in the ring. When Kevin Nash joined him a few weeks later the seeds were sewn for the angle which would turn the company into the biggest in the world for the next two years. Over in the WWF, also in June 1996, Steve Austin won the King of the Ring and delivered a speech which included the legendary “Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass” line and was the birth of Stone Cold Steve Austin. A character who would ultimately enable the WWF to out-cool the nWo obsessed WCW and regain top spot.

Looking back it was quite sad to see the WWF’s attacks on WCW during the two year losing spell. We had Jim Cornette ranting each week about how childish Hall and Nash were, we had numerous gangs (none of whom caught on in the slightest), we had Austin and Pillman’s gun drama, Goldust’s bizarre sex slave gimmick, the Billionaire Ted sketches and more. Lacking star powder to an embarrassing degree, their TV shows were filled with the likes of Crush, the Truth Commission and Savio Vega.

Then the WWF had a stroke of luck. Three acts caught fire more or less at the same time in 1997. Circumstances meant that only one of them would last much into 1998 but they were just what the company needed during the insanely difficult year. For a company that had been number one for its entire existence (before they went national they were the undisputed kings of their north eastern base and once they expanded they were top of the mountain in the whole USA) number two wasn’t something they could cope with. Stone Cold Steve Austin’s feud with the heel Hart Foundation (and the associated USA vs. Canada war) made the summer of 1997 a joy to watch. It had a real intensity about it which was heightened when they crossed the border for shows and the audience turned the heels into faces and the faces into heels. Meanwhile Shawn Michaels had pulled his weight and got his friend Hunter Hearst Helmsley (and Chyna) the spot as his right hand man. Shawn was a main eventer, HHH was not. So by associating with HBK, HHH was suddenly all over TV. They took the name Degeneration X, were given a radical ring entrance, a kick ass tune and the freedom to be as uncouth and as wild as they wanted.

WCW meanwhile had fallen foul of rampant ego and politicking. Wrestling lore would have it that a heel force like the nWo would be kept strong until a babyface hero (or heroes) would come along and defeat them. That man was to be Sting. Kept out of the ring for a massive fifteen months to build for his return against Hulk Hogan, Sting was the most popular man in Wrestling during 1996. His occasional appearances on Nitro saw him battling the nWo after dropping from the ceiling like the Crow-influenced super hero he was. But Hogan didn’t want to lose to Sting and the big moment was ruined. Fifteen months of build up came to nothing. Equally, the rise of Goldberg from nowhere to world champion was marked for demolition the moment Hogan and Nash came together and plotted his demise. Those at the top of WCW weren’t going to let anyone threaten their dominance no matter what the unwashed masses in the audience, watching on TV or paying $35 a month to watch the PPVs may have thought.

So we see that WCW changed little between 1996 and 1998 and the WWF changed greatly. WWF Attitude had arrived and, aside from a logo which later lead to a court case and the changing of the company’s name, it brought the company nothing but good news. The second incarnation of DX were over with the masses (though with hindsight they were used by Triple H to elevate himself at their expense), the evil Mr McMahon was the evil top drawing heel that was every bit as convincing in his character as Hollywood Hogan since, deep down, they were playing themselves. And most important of all was Stone Cold Steve Austin. He sold more T-shirts than Nike, drank more beer than Tony Adams and gave more people the finger than a whole conference of proctologists. The aging nWo elite were suddenly old men with bad knees only pretending to be cool. Austin was the real deal (though ironically with worse knees and a bad neck to boot). WCW would roll the nWo dice many more times – forming and reforming almost on a weekly basis but each with less impact than the last. Goldberg and Sting were spent forces, Bret Hart could’ve been the saviour but those in power were jealous of his huge salary and conspired to keep him in the midcard where he couldn’t do any damage.

The WWE version of history is likely to be rather different. By choosing to tell the story in a mere 85 minutes, it will likely be a grossly simplified version. WCW stole Vince’s talent and ideas, briefly ran neck and neck with WWE until WWE crushed them. There will be little or nothing about how it was Eric Bischoff who revolutionised the business first and how Vince stole most of his ideas from ECW. There will be little about how Vince made far less money with the talent that WCW “stole” from him (in the 90s that is, excluding Hogan’s glory days in the 1980s). There will be nothing about how competition spurred Vince to his greatest creative triumphs and how the lack of competition has led to the current slump. In short, it will be the story of Vince McMahon beating Ted Turner despite Turner’s attempts to put Vince out of business. History is written by the winners and always has been. Its just that this new history includes Goldberg vs. Hogan as an extra and that, people, is the only reason to buy this disc.

5th January 2004