10 Times WWE Ripped Off WCW And Nobody Noticed

Eric Bischoff has gone on record (via his '83 Weeks' podcast) to say that pro wrestling's current formula owes loads to WCW. Indeed, WWE and AEW still borrow a ton of ideas from the extinct giant - one need only look at the three hour slog that is Raw or the old-school feel of Dynamite on TNT to see that.

Not every influence is obvious though, especially in WWE.

Vince McMahon's juggernaut was ripping WCW off long before the company became a hollow shell of itself that he could plunder and monetise for his own gain. Bischoff's Nitro changed the Monday night game in the mid-to-late-90s. It's well-known that Raw followed suit by ditching a by-weekly pre-taped format and going live, but did you know that McMahon's product once went one step further and tried to be more Nitro than Nitro?

That's here, and so are all the other ways WWE has subtly mimicked WCW. Not a lot of people watching noticed these tricks at the time though, and that only makes them more compelling to look back on years/decades later...

Generally, WCW did a poor job of presenting themselves as a global wrestling company. The WWF dominated most international markets outside of North America, and that meant WCW rarely ventured outside the country for worldwide tours in Europe or elsewhere.

That didn't mean they couldn't pretend to be all-encompassing.

WCW changed the name of its World Title in 1993 (after withdrawing from the NWA) to the "International World Heavyweight Championship". Years later, the WWF promoted a brand new belt called the European Title - they crowned Davey Boy Smith the first champ in Germany, and claimed all future titleholders would represent the continent.

Much like WCW's "International" boast, this was a lie. Over time, the Euro belt became little more than another undercard prop, but it's nonetheless true that the idea to give a championship worldwide representation began in Atlanta rather than Stamford.