10 Times WWE Was Literally As Stupid As WCW

8. Making The Competition Look Good...

Ultimate Gunther THUMB
AEW/WWE

...and making themselves look like d*ckheads in the process.

In the one f*cking million Monday Night Wars retrospectives WWE produced for the sole aim of measuring their own cacks, they absolutely loved tearing into Tony Schiavone's Eric Bischoff-fed line "That'll put the butts in the seats."

It was a phenomenally stupid thing to say on the night of January 4, 1990. There's no exact antonym of prescience - ignorance and uninformed get the gist across, just about, but "butts in seats" is far more accurate. It was the night on which WCW died, in effect, or at least fell into an unrecoverable coma. They never again won a single battle on Monday nights.

At the 2019 Hall of Fame, playing the coolest guy in the room as he was wont to do, Triple H, high on the acclaim generated by TakeOver: New York, buried AEW as a "pissant company". Triple H was justified in his hubris for once, but that's because he wasn't eating 25 methodical minutes of the card.

Fast-forward just over two years, and Triple H isn't even in charge of his own pissant company because AEW battered it, comprehensively, and Vince resented his son-in-law for the sideways humiliation.

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Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!