7 Positive Things About WWE's 'Invasion' Angle
"Jimmy Crack corn and I don’t care...I got Olympic gold.”
The Invasion: two words which instantly leave wrestling fans feeling sorry for themselves.
Often described as the biggest missed booking opportunity in wrestling history, WWE turned a Monday Night Wars fantasy into a desperately mismanaged reality in the summer of 2001.
Vince McMahon’s takeover of WCW created a red-hot angle which WWE failed to cash in on. The big money sat and watched from home as WWE failed, or chose not to, acquire the top calibre WCW superstars that had nearly put the company out of business years prior.
Fans were denied dream matches such as Hulk Hogan Vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin, Sting Vs. The Undertaker and The Rock Vs. Ric Flair, and instead got a McMahon-family feud disguised as an Invasion of WWE from an alliance which poorly imitated the real WCW and ECW.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but time does the Invasion no favours because it gives fantasy bookers more opportunity to think up more exciting ways it could have been executed. If we could just take a minute to appreciate what actually happened, we might realise that it wasn’t all bad...
7. JR-Heyman Commentary Pairing
WWE fans were truly spoilt by the commentary pairings either side of the millennium.
The announce desk for the duration of this angle boasted the greatest play-by-play man in the history of the business, Jim Ross, with a promoter of unrivalled verbiage and wrestling intellect, Paul Heyman.
They needed every ounce of their talent to make this phoney Invasion appear high stakes to the fans who were wondering why Mike Awesome and not Goldberg was leading the WCW charge.
Although the two have a great respect for each other behind the curtain, their on-screen rivalry felt genuine even before Heyman’s recreation of ECW as part of The Alliance.
The passion, the knowledge, the animosity; JR and Heyman worked beautifully together acting as the voices of their respective entities.