WWE: 10 Most Influential Promos In WWE History

5. Shane McMahon on Nitro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WbZaT8qSw4 Full disclosure, I was in elementary school in the late 90€™s South, the time at which the Monday Night Wars were in full effect and when wrestling was the hot topic of many kids€™ conversations. There were kids sent home from my school for donning N.W.O. shirts (It wasn€™t a very progressive school). There were kids sent to the principal€™s office for telling people you were about to €œlay the smack down on their candy ass.€ The point is, everyone had a side; WCW or WWE. When it came out that the WWE had finally won and was buying the WCW, it took everyone my age by shock. We had followed the conflict as kids without a perception of what would happen after somebody won. Now that the WWE was in control, what would become of its defunct rival? The answer came on March 26, 2001. Raw opened with Vince McMahon€™s gleeful announcement that, at last, WCW was his. It would be his son, though, that stole the show at the end of the broadcast when he walked into the middle of the WCW ring and established himself, not his father, as the owner of the new property. The fans of both brands were in total disbelief. That night, anything was up for grabs. That night, wrestling reached a point where anything was possible in the imaginations of its fans. As a kid, I truly believed that we could have any dream match that my pre-pubescent brain could devise. For one brief and glorious moment, wrestling became a construct of infinite possibility, and it could have only been through a shocking moment such as this.
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Jack Manley is an aspiring writer, filmmaker, and artist from Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. He currently resides in New York City.