The Day WCW Nitro Died
It's 20 years since WWE purchased WCW, but Nitro had long died before Vince McMahon put it down.
21 years.
Over two decades have passed since WCW's doors closed in March 2001 just months removed from a catastrophic calendar year and mere days before WWE's most celebrated WrestleMania ever. The body wasn't cold, the funeral was nonexistent and the wake ended up being the best night out anybody ever had.
It's been a minute. And yet, because modern wrestling feeds and feasts on anniversaries, retrospectives and the like, WCW endures as something of a perpetually reanimated corpse. Monday Nitro especially. Why is this?
In short, it's capitalism. It's always capitalism.
A billion dollar deal with NBC for WWE's archives recently spoke to the success of the Network as a seven-year project, and the likes of the New World Order and Eric Bischoff going into the WWE Hall Of Fame keeps the Monday Night Wars conversations simmering between many that weren't even alive to have the original ones.
But - to paraphrase the Big Boss Man reading a eulogy of a different kind - the old b*stard is dead, and it ain't coming back. And sadly, Monday Nitro passed long before Shane McMahon pretended he wasn't putting a bullet in it in Panama City.
We're 21 years on from that night. But that night was nearly two on from the show's real demise.
CONT'D...