WWE's Purchase Of WCW | Moments That Changed Wrestling Forever
1. The After
Internally, those within WWE - from Vince McMahon all the way down - were so psychopathically attached to the "war" narrative that the work became a shoot for the bulk of the 2001 Invasion.
The administration of incorporating a new slate of wrestlers was as messy for the locker room as it was for the fanbase. During the early days of the "invasion", the company ran a storyline where the likes of the APA and Billy Gunn gathered undercard Fed forces together to take down and take out the WCW interlopers, but reality didn't have to be stretched too far for most of that panicked midcard. Regardless of the specific qualities (or lack thereof) of the talents in question, 20-30 new wrestlers were suddenly vying for spots that the existing crew didn't want to lose. Not least when the narrative had been that they weren't good enough to keep their own ship afloat just months earlier.
Head Of Talent Relations Jim Ross was left trying to keep the plates spinning, but some of the problems were of his own - or at least the corporate culture's - doing. He prided himself on paying fairly, scouting well and trying to ensure the cream rose to the top, and had a resumé of the Attitude Era's Mount Rushmore as evidence of his success. But the motivational strategy came at a cost when a carefully-selected crew suddenly looked a little more bloated. The hierarchy started to creak then crack under the pressure of the new faces, not least when unexpected pressure increased to get on with the invasion storyline.
Somewhat justifiably high on their own supply, those within WWE felt confident they could get a television deal for a rebadged World Championship Wrestling, but there were no takers for the damaged goods. The infamous WCW-branded main event of the July 2nd 2001 edition of Monday Night Raw couldn't have gone worse in its attempt to formalise the new world. Booker T and Buff Bagwell's match was greeted with unfiltered disdain by an audience that had been told for a decade+ that this was inferior slop compared to the "Recognised Symbol of Excellence", and the doomed start foreshadowed the continued botching of a scenario many of wrestling's dwindling key demographic had spent their lives fantasy booking.
The lack of actual stars for the angles didn't have to be the be-all/end-all, but with everything else trending in the wrong direction, it stood out as a key part of the failure. WCW's top bracket were all seeing out massive contracts and had no interest in leaving masses of free money on the table to take lesser-than deals with WWE, particularly when Diamond Dallas Page's abysmal run as a mark stalker looking to be "made famous" by getting ruthlessly battered by The Undertaker served as evidence of how it might go. They were wise to wait - just six months on from Lance Storm running in to drill Perry Saturn with a superkick while being announced as a WCW wrestler, the company was dead all over again following a Survivor Series payoff when McMahon grew "tired of this Invasion crap", per the promo that set the finale up.
Just three months later, amidst yet more locker room uncertainty (and in fact a straw poll amongst the backstage power players that went ignored), Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall arrived for a once-thought-unfathomable New World Order reboot in WWE. It was the first of several post-WCW earthquakes felt on Raw and SmackDown once the dust had actually been left to settle. Eric Bischoff's arrival as Raw General Manager was the biggest "never say never" of the lot, but former WCW Champions Scott Steiner and Bill Goldberg were two more major acquisitions that came and went during a host of other personnel changes in a post-Attitude Era slump.
The results were mostly awful, inadvertently justifying the worries of those in 2001 that felt any attempt to get the best out of the bona fide stars was a fool's errand. Triple H's multi-year "reign of terror" on Raw only drew when the elevation of Dave Batista became the certain destination, meanwhile SmackDown tried with some success to market itself as a land of opportunity for the next generation rather than ones that had since passed. History is written by the winners, but increasingly, The Chairman went on to make every same mistake the losers had. He didn't run the company into the ground commercially, but he ran it so close creatively over the subsequent decade that a space existed for All Elite Wrestling to occupy by 2019. It exists to this day on TBS and TNT, meaning that the absence of wrestling on the channels during the 2000s and 2010s were merely a break in play, rather than a full stop.
The fate of WCW - and all it represented - really was in Vince McMahon's hands. He just somehow managed to let it slip through his fingers.