There have been some great battles in the history of professional wrestling: Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat, The Rock vs. Steve Austin and John Cena vs. CM Punk. But perhaps none have been so long lasting and personal as the battle between the WWF and WCW. The two waged war for wrestling supremacy for decades, with McMahon's company almost always coming out on top. But due to their head-to-head showdown on Monday nights, the entire business rose to new heights. For WCW to become a major player in the first place, Eric Bischoff quickly raided quite a few of the WWF's top stars with Ted Turner's checkbook backing him. Things became very personal. While momentum switched between both companies, of course, in the end the WWF won. In the ultimate act of humiliation, they purchased their biggest rival for relative scraps. With WCW under McMahon's ownership, he had exactly one night to run both companies on two networks before Nitro was cancelled by TNT. While WCW's last match was the emotional Sting vs. Ric Flair, the WWF had a fairly forgettable (as crazy as it sounds) Steve Austin and The Rock taking on The Brothers of Destruction. In fact, Raw only had about 15 minutes of total wrestling that entire show. But it wasn't the in-ring action that made the night so memorable, it was the absolute surreal nature of watching the end of an era. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WbZaT8qSw4 On that night, Jeff Jarrett was publicly fired, William Regal claimed WCW was an awful place to work and McMahon polled the audience on who (if anyone) he should hire to join his company. It turned out it was all a ruse, he wanted nothing to do with WCW. But Before he could kill the company for good, Shane McMahon appeared on the Titantron which was simulcast on both the TNT and USA networks. There we found out that Shane had gone behind his dad's back and bought WCW himself. It was an incredible moment, and it left fans hopeful for a dream inter-promotional feud between the two organizations. Of course that didn't exactly happen, but for one night it seemed like a new era had dawned for both companies.
As Rust Cohle from True Detective said "Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you're good at."
Sadly, I can't solve a murder like Rust...or change a tire, or even tie a tie. But I do know all the lyrics to Hulk Hogan's "Real American" theme song and can easily name every Natural Born Thriller from the dying days of WCW. I was once ranked 21st in the United States in Tetris...on the Playstation 3 version...for about a week.
Follow along @AndrewSoucek and check out my podcast at wrestlingwithfriends.com
