10 Wrestling Debuts That Changed Everything

4. WCW On Raw

It's hard to imagine now given how they've buried the organisation in heavy propaganda pieces since, but the WWF were all in on WCW at one point. Vince McMahon was reportedly so high on the idea of owning his own competition and running it as a kayfabe opponent that he was willing to change flagship show Raw to a strict WCW product.

That all changed as soon as Buff Bagwell vs. Booker T concluded on the 2 July 2001 edition.

The match received a horrible reaction from fans in Tacoma, Washington, and that's when Vince threw up his hands on the WCW project as a standalone entity. If WCW was going to survive, the party line came, then it'd need serious help from the vastly more over WWF stars. Turner's old boys wouldn't cut it solo.

Plans to turn Raw into a WCW weekly were changed without a second thought, and the WWF killed WCW as a brand four months later at Survivor Series. After that, they went with the softer approach and booked a split between Raw and SmackDown instead.

Everything disappeared in a Buff of smoke (sorry).