7. WWF vs WCW - The Invasion
When the WWF bought out their biggest competitor in 2001, wrestling fans worldwide speculated as to what might happen. Initially, WCW was to be its own brand, but after a horrible first main event between Buff Bagwell and Booker T on an awkwardly re-branded WCW Raw, that idea was nixed. Instead the story became that WCW wrestlers were invading the WWF. Stars like Lance Storm and Booker T started attacking WWF stars, and were eventually joined by invaders from the recently defunct ECW. The storyline should have been a no-brainer and easily had the potential to be the biggest money maker of all time. Unfortunately, everything that could possibly have went wrong, went wrong and then went wrong again. Firstly, the WWF made the decision that instead of buying out the contracts of top WCW talent, they would ignore the top talent and build a roster of under card wrestlers instead. This meant that instead of seeing dream matches featuring the likes of Goldberg, Hogan, Steiner, Mysterio, Hall or Nash against WWF stars, fans were forced to settle for stars that WCW didnt push as far. While they brought over talented midcarders like Kidman and Lance Storm, they didnt have the same star power as the WWF stars they were facing. This forced the WWF to turn their OWN stars, so that the WCW/ECW Alliance eventually featured mostly WWF stars in charge, with a few backups hanging around of secondary importance. As well as this, two major injuries nixed what could have been some interesting feuds. Both Triple H and Chris Benoit got injured before the Invasion storyline and missed the whole thing, Eddie Guerrero was sent home suffering from abuse problems and WWE didn't bother asking Eric Bischoff to be involved. The one major reason that the Invasion angle didnt work was that of egos. Most notably the ego of WWF chairman Vince McMahon. In most of the major matches that took place, the WWF team was entirely dominant over the Alliance. The only way the Alliance were going to be effective was if they were portrayed as a threat to the WWF. Unfortunately, that happened rarely during the storyline and a lot of WCW/ECW talent was portrayed as completely inferior, including most notably DDP and Kanyon being completely decimated by Kane and the Undertaker. And of course, the entire Invasion storyline was given an unnecessary McMahon family feud to go with it. Shane McMahon was in control of WCW, while Stephanie was in control of ECW, both out to destroy their fathers Team WWF. This resulted in the McMahon family getting almost as much, if not more screen time than the deadly invaders that were supposedly capable of destroying the WWF. In November 2001, less than 5 months after the initial Invasion Pay Per View, the Invasion ended when Team WWF won a Winner Take All Survivor Series match proving once and for all that nobody beats Vince McMahon. Ever.