10 Biggest WWF vs WCW Firing Shots During Monday Night Wars

4. Mick Foley's Title Win

When Mick Foley finally won a world title in 1999, fans of both promotions seemed to celebrate. Foley is one of the few people in wrestling who is a genuinely nice guy and deserved his moment in the sun. However, Eric Bischoff decided to try to ruin that moment and ended up paying the price as a result. In January 1999, WCW was airing Nitro live from the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. Bischoff had become concerned that he was losing the audience and decided to give away Raw's taped main event. He ordered announcer Tony Schiavone to give away the match result and run down Mick Foley, Schiavone stated:

"Fans, if you're even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, do not. We understand that Mick Foley, who wrestled here at one time as Cactus Jack, is gonna win their World title. Ha! That's gonna put some butts in the seats, heh!"

As illustrated by the ratings, after Schiavone made that comment approximately 600,000 people switched to USA to watch Foley defeat the Rock for the WWF title. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8nbJikFTv8 Amazingly enough, after the title change, many viewers switched back to Nitro, showing that they would have kept watching WCW's show if Bischoff hadn't ordered Schiavone to make those comments. Raw ended up earning a 5.7 rating that night against WCW's 5.0.