Breaking Down The Myth: The NWO Saved The Wrestling Business

2. The Limp Invasion Angle

nWo Kevin Nash Hollywood Hogan Scott Hall
WWE.com

Can you blame talent for being offered huge guaranteed contracts? Absolutely not. It's those same guaranteed contracts, though, that led to the whole Invasion angle of 2001 falling completely flat.

Sitting on massive Time-Warner deals, 'Hollywood' Hogan, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Sting, Goldberg, and Scott Steiner were just some of the top WCW talent who were off the table for the Invasion. In their defence, they were perfectly entitled to sit at home and be paid by Time-Warner rather than taking a major pay cut to get back on the road with WWF.

From the WWF standpoint, if they really wanted to, they could've bought out those Time-Warner deals. It's just that Vince McMahon and his inner circle weren't prepared to pay the money necessary to do that. It's to the credit of Booker T, DDP, and Buff Bagwell (yes, really!) that they chose to take a lesser deal with WWF and grab that opportunity (sorry Buff!) instead of sitting on their couch and collecting a monster paycheck.

The nWo isn't responsible for the ludicrous contracts that WCW was offering to so many talents during the peak of the Monday Night Wars, but you could argue that Hogan, Nash, and Hall helped to drive up the money being spent by Ted Turner's company on talents who may or may not have deserved it - with these deals being so ludicrous that it made it completely non-viable for WWF to pick up these stars and deliver the WWF vs. WCW storyline people had spent years dreaming of.

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Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.