10 Incidents That Led WCW To Destruction

7. "That'll Put A Lot of Butts In The Seats"

Mick Foley was never the man most would imagine could ascend to the top of a wrestling promotion. With a rotund figure and disfigured ear, Foley never came across as the superman that many promotions like to have as their champion. Regardless he had gotten over with the WWF faithful thanks to his propensity for taking enormous risks and a promo ability that surpassed practically anyone else in the business. On the January 4th episode of Monday Night Raw, Foley was finally set to realise his dream and become the WWF champion. WCW knew this because at the time Raw was a pre-taped show and Eric Bischoff had managed to get his hands on the results of the show before the live Monday Nitro went to air on the same day. Bischoff had previous form in revealing aspects of the competition's programming during episodes of Nitro and on this occasion he saw a golden opportunity. During Mick Foley's match for the championship he ordered Tony Schaivone to reveal the result, urging fans not to turn over to the competition because Foley was about to win the title. He delivered the immortal line "That'll put a lot of butts in the seats" as part of the reveal, which was intended to spoil the result so that the viewer would remain with WCW's programming, while simultaneously denigrating the abilities of Mick Foley. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGOvL4TQACM Unfortunately for the company the exact opposite happened. Hundreds of thousands immediately switched over to the WWF and witnessed one of the greatest moments in Raw history, leading to WCW losing the rating battle that week. For weeks afterwards WWF fans sported signs declaring that Mick Foley had put their butt in their seat. Despite this, perhaps even more damaging was the main event that Nitro delivered that very evening.