The Day WCW Nitro Died

The closing moments of the last ever Monday Nitro saw it halved on screen with a live edition of Raw simulcasting across TNT and USA Network.

This was one of the few audacious flexes Vince McMahon actually deserved, though who knows what any of us did in a past life to suffer Shane McMahon on the other half of the divide. You know all this, though. WWE love bringing it up, even though there was once a time they wouldn't even mine their own history with such fondness.

Imagine tuning into an edition of Superstars or Wrestling Challenge to watch Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage in March 1991 and listening the commentators or wrestlers themselves talk about Ivan Koloff and Pedro Morales battling over the WWWF Championship. The comparative timeframe is identical. The difference is how little wrestling used to lean so heavily on its past. And the prism of nostalgia can be powerful, regardless of what actually took place.

It's so prevalent that some of the Wrestling Twittertariat have become confused into thinking that this classes as "#storytelling", which itself has been chewed up and sarcastically spat back out by opposing voices. It's not storytelling, because - and this almost shouldn't need saying but evidently does - a story isn't being told. An image may be revisited, a moment rebadged or a memory relived. But it's not a story. Not unless it builds on the old, creating something new.

This was something Vince Russo clearly felt when he took the creative reins of the struggling Atlanta outfit in 1999. Time for new. New wrestlers, new stories, and a new WCW. This was good.

His version of WCW Nitro...was not.

CONT'D...