If you were to pinpoint any day that changed the course of wrestling history the most, the definitive answer would be the day that Vince McMahon bought WCW. It was perhaps the first day ever that professional wrestling had only one leading company. It also allowed Vince McMahon to book a feud that every single wrestling fan dreamed of: WWF vs WCW. Except not really. When McMahon bought WCW, he acquired the contracts of every wrestler signed to WCW. Unfortunately for Vince, the top level, main event, A-calibre talent at WCW weren't technically signed to the company, they were signed to Time Warner. And Time Warner had no interest in letting those guys out of their incredibly-high paying contracts. So McMahon was faced with a situation where he had no choice but to book an invasion angle with no Goldberg, no Sting, no nWo, and nobody that Time Warner considered valuable enough to sign to a contract. As such, the WCW guys who did now work for WWF were resented and looked down upon; thought of as secondary talent. The invasion angle had to be re-balanced with WWF guys switching sides and the whole story is generally considered a flop. Unfortunately, this meant that several genuinely talented wrestlers who hadn't quite made the jump to the WCW main event (which was pretty impenetrable at the time) got unfairly judged as not good enough. Aside from a select handful, the careers of these guys was destroyed by something as "backstage" as which corporation owned their contracts.
Michael Palmer is a contributor at whatculture.com and thelineofbestfit.com, and he probably likes WWE slightly more than most people would call "healthy".
