So now we find ourselves with Eric Bischoff in charge of Raw as Vince’s puppet and Paul E in charge of Smackdown as Vince’s puppet. To the victor go the spoils. When the next version of wrestling history is written, this is as it will always have been. WWE’s three brands – WWE Raw, WCW and ECW were in competition, trading talent and working angles between the three before coming together for a series of mega PPVs and a corporate rebranding which led to the current WWE Raw vs WWE Smackdown wrestling war part II…

In 1988 Vince McMahon purchased the Southern rasslin company NWA and created WCW – a minor league training ground for grooming talent. Early graduates from this WWE academy included two time WWE champion Ric Flair and former tag team champion Scott Steiner. WWE didn’t mind the promotion being a money loser as it wasn’t intended to make money – it was purely a place where green rookies like Vader, Arn Anderson and Barry Windham could learn their craft and become valuable WWE superstars. WCW even ran a few pay per view events during the period to showcase the future WWE superstars and give them valuable live experience. This gave Mr McMahon an invaluable opportunity to gauge whether the talents were ready for the big time – WWE has a proud record of never putting on a bad pay per view and it’s thanks to the performers getting the kinks out on WCW shows that WWE has this excellent record.

One particular piece of talent caught Mr McMahon’s eye while working out in a gymnasium in Texas. Steve Austin was a once in a lifetime performer who Vince knew would one day headline Wrestlemania. One day. He’d been trained by a non-WWE sanctioned trainer and had learned a lot of bad wrestling technique. He was signed to a WWE developmental contract and sent down to WCW to learn the correct way to perform in front of live WWE crowds. Even as early as 1991 Mr McMahon had an idea which would revolutionise the sports entertainment business yet again – WWE Attitude.

Ric Flair was finally considered good enough for the main WWE roster in the autumn of 1991 and made an immediate impact, winning the WWE title in January 1992 and holding it until losing the belt to Bret Hart in December 1992. Flair – who was a protégé of current WWE legend Triple H – spent his time working mainly with lower level talents and left the company in January 1993 after losing a loser-leave-town match to Hall of Famer Mr Perfect. Vince McMahon felt that Flair needed a bit more seasoning and sent him back to WCW where he could train under then WCW trainer Triple H. Triple H was responsible for coaching the next talent to get the call up to WWE – Vader. Unfortunately, though excellently trained, Vader had poor discipline and was not up to WWE physical standards. He put on competent performances against another of HHH’s proteges – Shawn Michaels – but soon found that the competitive WWE schedule isn’t compatible with junk food diets and he left the company to work in Japan.

In 1994 Vince McMahon finally pulled the trigger on the first stage of his WWE Attitude concept when he formed ECW. Ever the shrewd businessman, Mr McMahon knew that the American public wasn’t ready for a wrestling revolution and that they would have to slowly introduce it using the power of the internet. In 1994 the Internet was a small network for computer geeks but thanks to Vince McMahon’s commitment to it, it soon became a major part of the wrestling business and – therefore – part of American society itself. ECW took a crew of wrestlers who had failed in the WWE but who were willing to be guinea pigs for Vince McMahon’s WWE Attitude experiment. These well paid journeymen sacrificed their bodies to perfect Vince’s vision and most now look back on that period as a happy time – proud of the work they did to make the WWE what it is today. We salute these pioneers.

ECW was built around Stone Cold Steve Austin (Vince happened to be reading a book about serial killers and saw the name) – a beer drinking, Singapore cane wielding bad ass who took no prisoners and who fought brutal battles with the likes of Terry Funk (a star in the 1970s and the inspiration for former WWE performer Mick Foley), the 7’ monster Mikey Whipreck and former WWE announcer Johnny Polo. After two years of honing his skills until he was the finished article, Stone Cold Steve Austin was brought into WWE and made an immediate impact delivering the Stone Cold Stunner to Vince McMahon on his first night. Mr McMahon – who had been persuaded by colleagues to make himself an on air talent – had just ended a successful programme with Bret Hart and was looking for a new opponent. The rest is history.

Mr McMahon has always thrived on competition and, in 1996, he made another of his world-renowned master strokes. He sent WWE superstars Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and Hulk Hogan to WCW and dubbed them the New World Order. Now that Vince had ECW as his training ground, he decided to split his main brand into WWE Raw and WCW/NWO – the storyline of two competing national promotions under different ownership (though far fetched) caught America’s imagination. WWE superstars from both brands featured on the cover of TV Guide and on shows such as the Jay Leno show.

Mr McMahon deliberately allowed the two brands to be equally powerful, as he knew this was the secret to longevity in the storyline. He moved talent between the two “companies” and almost had a license to print money. He also found a new superstar in The Rock. Former WWE superstar Rocky Johnson had introduced Vince to his son Dwayne when the latter was only five years old. Mr McMahon famously told the locker room “One day that boy will headline Wrestlemania” and he was proved right.

The wrestling war storyline reached its climax in 2001 when Mr McMahon decided to bring the two warring factions together for a series of Superbowl calibre pay per view extravaganzas. The WCW/NWO vs WWE feud culminated in a WWE victory at Survivor Series when Mr McMahon pinned Hulk Hogan to win the event for Team WWE. Mr McMahon’s next masterstroke was to merge the two rosters together and then split them into two new promotions once again. Two entirely fresh rosters with hundreds of new and marketable matches was thinking on a scale that only a visionary like Mr McMahon is capable of.

Which brings us to today – the Raw vs Smackdown feud is every bit as good as the WWE Raw vs WCW/NWO storyline was as shown in ever growing pay per view and live attendance figures. We can only imagine the next masterstroke that is waiting in Mr McMahon’s head for the right time to come to life. The next revolution in the sports entertainment business is just around the corner and history tells us it will be a slobberknocker.

22nd October