The Death Of World Championship Wrestling

Today marks a very important day in the history of professional wrestling. Today, March 26th, marks the 5 year anniversary of the death of WCW. That's right, 5 years ago today WCW broadcasted the final edition of Monday Nitro. I can recall it just like it was yesterday. Nitro started off with Vince McMahon addressing the WCW audience via video and said "The future of WCW is in my hands.". While many insist that Vince dropped the ball when it came to the whole WCW invasion, that's a story for another day. I will instead list some of the more memorable WCW moments (good and bad) during the monday night wars. At least in my opinion.

Lex Luger appearing on the debut edition of Nitro. Everybody had assumed that he was under WWF contract, but he wasn't.

Hall & Nash go to WCW. I was a big fan of Hall and Nash and WWF's AOL sub-site had announced weeks earlier that both wrestlers had signed with WCW.

The rising of young stars. WCW basically raided ECW and showcased some of the young stars that would go on to be main eventers; Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Rey Mysterio, Eddie Guererro, Perry Saturn. Scratch that last one.

Vince Russo & Ed Fererra jumping ship and joining WCW. Russo and Fererra were the main writers behind a lot of WWF's success during the 'Attitude' era. Russo is credited as developing The Rock's character. Once they got to WCW, Russo's major flaw was exposed. That flaw being that while with WWF, all storyline ideas had to be run past Vince who would then give the thumbs up or down. However, in WCW Russo was given complete creative control and nobody was there to screen his ideas and as a result a bunch of crappy ideas became reality. Ideas such as putting titles on Judy Bagwell (Buff's mother) and David Arquette.

Millionaires Club v. New Blood. This angle was a complete disaster. A returning Eric Bischoff would lead a group of veteren wrestlers (Millionaires Club) versus a Vince Russo led group of young wrestlers (New Blood) looking to make a name for themselves. While the Hogan/Kidman feud was entertaining at times, the whole angle pretty much bombed.

Bash at the Beach 2000. This was one of my favorite moments in WCW and it's not just because I don't like Hulk Hogan. The scheduled match was to be Jeff Jarrett defending the WCW title against Hulk Hogan. Hogan was scheduled to lose, but as the story goes, cited a clause in his contract and demanded that the match be changed and instead have Jarrett lose the belt to him. Russo, who obviously didn't appreciate Hogan's actions, decided that Jarrett would instead 'lay down' for Hogan and let him pin him. That way Hogan would regain the title like he wanted. Russo later came out of the back and publicly 'fired' Hogan, declared the title vacant, and announced that Jarrett and Booker T would compete later to determine the World Champion. This was all presented to be a 'shoot'. Whether it was or not has been debated for almost the last 6 years, but Russo has publicly stated that the whole incident was scripted. Russo even laid out the whole setup for the 'angle'. There are a lot of people who are claiming that the whole incident was in fact really a 'shoot' despite Russo's claims.

The final Nitro Broadcast. This was truly a monumental moment in the history of professional wrestling. The WWF, who just a few years earlier was on the verge of going broke, had purchased WCW and was now the only major national promotion in the country (and still are to this day). Throughout the broadcast a series of vignettes showing Vince McMahon talking about what he might do with WCW were shown. There are only 2 matches from the show that I remember. Booker T (who WWF had already decided to retain) defeated Scott Steiner to win the WCW World Title and Sting faced a depressed and broken-spirited Ric Flair (These two also faced each other in Nitro's first ever match in 1995). The end of the broadcast saw RAW simulcast on both Spike TV and TNT where Vince would speak to the WCW audience live (via satellite). In the speech Vince talked about various topics such as whether he would just leave WCW on the shelf, polled the crowd as to which WCW stars they thought he should bring in to the WWF, and how he had requested that WCW owner Ted Turner sign ownership of WCW over to him live on PPV at Wrestlemania that coming Sunday. As Vince was about to wrap up his speech Shane McMahon's (Vince was feuding with him at the time) music began playing and while Vince was expecting Shane to come down the aisle, Shane was in fact at Nitro in Panama City Beach, Florida and was entering the WCW ring. Shane then announced that the sale of WCW was already signed, but instead of the contract reading Vince McMahon it read Shane McMahon. Shane had bought WCW out from under Vince. The rest is history.

There are numerous other memorable events during WCW's run, but these are just a few. Agree? Disagree? Want to share some of your more memorable moments?

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