Monday Night War
The Monday Night War or the Monday Night Wars, was an era of mainstream televised American professional wrestling, from September 4, 1995, to March 26, 2001, in which the World Wrestling Federation's Monday Night Raw and World Championship Wrestling's Monday Nitro were broadcast opposite each other in a battle for Nielsen ratings each week. It largely overlapped with the Attitude Era, a period in which the WWF used the term "WWF Attitude" to describe its programming from November 9, 1997, to May 6, 2002.
The rating war was part of a larger overall struggle between the WWF and WCW, originating in personal animosity between respective owners Vince McMahon and Ted Turner. The rivalry steadily escalated throughout the 1990s to include the use of cutthroat tactics and the defections of employees between the two promotions. Throughout the war, the WWF and WCW would both adopt different concepts and narrative techniques. Meanwhile, both companies would establish both formal and informal partnerships with Extreme Championship Wrestling, with ECW performers either appearing on WWF and WCW shows while still under contract, or outright leaving ECW to work for one of the other two companies.
While WCW was the dominant promotion for much of the mid-1990s, a variety of factors coalesced to turn the tide in the WWF's favor at the end of the decade, including a radical rebranding of their formerly family-friendly product into highly sexualized and violent shows geared towards older teens and adults. WCW ultimately ran into financial difficulties as a result of the amount of money they had promised wrestlers during a hiring binge in the early and middle part of the decade, which had been aimed at acquiring large portions of the WWF's talent roster. Behind the scenes, executives who had longed to see WCW removed from the Turner organization were eventually able to see that desire come to fruition after Turner Broadcasting's merger with Time Warner and their merger with America Online. With Turner no longer in control, corporate executives of the combined AOL Time Warner sold WCW's assets. Despite efforts to salvage the company, it was ultimately sold to McMahon, ending the Monday Night War.
In retrospect, wrestling commentators have come to see the Monday Night War as a golden age of professional wrestling, along with the 1940s–1950s and 1980s booms, with the competition between the WWF and WCW bringing out their best quality product both in terms of creativity and the performances of their wrestlers.
Overview
The Monday Night War largely sprang from a rivalry between WWF owner Vince McMahon and WCW owner Ted Turner, dating back to an incident in the 1980s known as Black Saturday, when McMahon acquired a monopoly on all nationally televised wrestling broadcasts by purchasing a stake in Georgia Championship Wrestling, whose flagship show aired on WTBS, Turner's own superstation based in Atlanta, Georgia. Turner, displeased with McMahon's handling of programming on his network, pressured McMahon into selling his time slot to Jim Crockett Promotions, another wrestling promotion. As wrestling began to grow in popularity in the early 1990s, McMahon's World Wrestling Federation and Turner's World Championship Wrestling – and, as a result, their programming – became a venue through which the business feud could continue, with each company working to drive the other out of business.WCW dominated the ratings through much of the mid-1990s, as Turner's financial resources allowed the company to purchase the services of numerous high-profile WWF performers, including Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. The company also drew casual fans' attention by filming events at popular tourist venues such as Disney's Hollywood Studios, and reached out to Mexican and Japanese wrestling fans through its cruiserweight division, which featured wrestlers from a diverse array of ethnic and racial backgrounds competing in matches featuring styles of wrestling popular in Latin America and Asia. Under the auspices of Eric Bischoff, WCW introduced a new, complex metastory involving the defection of multiple wrestlers to a rival organization called the New World Order. McMahon's controversial treatment of Bret Hart in an incident known as the Montreal Screwjob immediately precipitated Hart's departure from the WWF to WCW, alienating a large segment of the WWF's fanbase at the same time WCW came to employ virtually all of the established wrestling stars then in competition.
Throughout the late 1990s, the WWF began to rise in popularity after it rebranded itself as a more adult-themed, sexualized and violent product, a period in the company's history now referred to as the Attitude Era. The shift in programming helped lead the company to achieve mainstream success similar to the 1980s professional wrestling boom. Concurrently, many WWF performers became crossover successes: during this period The Rock would become very popular and then would embark on a successful acting career, while Mick Foley published a New York Times-bestselling autobiography; Stone Cold Steve Austin quickly became the company's most popular star and its flagship performer, and would be featured in mainstream media all over the U.S., from Nash Bridges to Dilbert. The heightened profiles of WWF wrestlers helped to draw the attention of both new and casual wrestling fans to the company's programming.
In the late 1990s, WCW's ratings began to suffer as fans grew tired of the nWo storyline, which many viewers perceived as having been allowed to go on for too long. Fans also responded negatively to several gimmicks intended to reinvigorate interest in the promotion, including the introduction of actor David Arquette as WCW World Heavyweight Champion. The company was able to briefly reinvigorate itself after the introduction of Bill Goldberg, who was presented as an unbeatable force who won matches within a matter of minutes or even seconds. Goldberg quickly rose to stardom within the organization and became a crossover star similar to the WWF's performers, with appearances in commercials and music videos. However, a controversial backstage decision to end his winning streak, followed quickly by an anticlimactic match involving Kevin Nash and Hollywood Hogan – now known as the Fingerpoke of Doom – effectively killed WCW's credibility in the eyes of many fans, and the company was never able to recreate the initial level of popularity that it had enjoyed in the middle of the decade. Simultaneously, WCW experienced financial woes due to the amount of money it had promised wrestlers in their contracts in the early and mid 1990s. The company was ultimately unable to sustain itself while paying wrestlers their contracted salaries, and it went up for sale. The war ended with the sale of WCW's assets by its parent company, AOL Time Warner, to the WWF.
History
Before the War
1980–1987: Cable television
Television had been a significant part of professional wrestling presentation in the United States for decades. Still, after the 1950s, it had been relegated to local stations as the national networks ceased airing it. Many local programmers turned to professional wrestling as a means to fill out their schedules, as it was relatively inexpensive to produce but drew high ratings. This reinforced the then-accepted organization of professional wrestling, which were consisted of a patchwork of territorial promotions aimed at – and broadcast to – local audiences, without a centralized, national promotion. However, most territories were members of a common sanctioning body of championship titles, the National Wrestling Alliance.As cable television arose in the 1970s, local stations were often retransmitted to new markets as superstations. When Atlanta television station WTCG became a superstation in the late 1970s, Georgia Championship Wrestling, a member of the NWA that aired on the station, reached a national audience. GCW's television show, hosted by Gordon Solie, was recorded in one of WTBS's studios at 1050 Techwood Drive in downtown Atlanta. Shows were taped before a small live, in-studio audience, as were most professional wrestling television shows of the period. They featured wrestling matches, plus melodramatic monologues and inter-character confrontations, similar to the programming offered by other territories, including the Northeast-based WWF. GCW's show, which aired on Saturday evenings, was complemented by a Sunday evening edition. Jim Barnett, Jack and Gerald Brisco had major stakes in the organization, while Ole Anderson was head booker and was in charge of operations. In 1982, in order to appear less regional in scope, the television show was renamed World Championship Wrestling, a name Barnett had used for promoting shows in Australia in the 1970s.
In 1983, the WWF started its cable show called WWF All American Wrestling, airing Sunday mornings on the USA Network. Later that year, the WWF debuted a second cable show, also on USA, called Tuesday Night Titans, a late-night talk show spoof hosted by WWF owner Vince McMahon and Lord Alfred Hayes.
While still running steadily, Barnett and the Briscos sold their entire stock in GCW to McMahon. On July 14, 1984, the WWF took over GCW. With this move, McMahon controlled all nationally televised wrestling in the United States. However, the WWF's show on WTBS was a ratings disaster, as GCW fans, disliking the cartoonish characters and storylines of the WWF, stopped watching. Two weeks after Black Saturday, WTBS debuted the show of a successor promotion to GCW created by holdout shareholders, Championship Wrestling from Georgia, albeit on early Saturday mornings.
Moreover, despite originally promising to produce original programming for the WTBS time slot in Atlanta, McMahon chose instead to provide only a clip show for WTBS, featuring highlights from other WWF programming as well as matches from house shows at Madison Square Garden, Boston Garden and other major arenas. This format would eventually be the cornerstone of the WWF Prime Time Wrestling program. In May 1985, McMahon sold the WTBS time slot to another Southern-based and NWA-affiliated wrestling company, Jim Crockett Promotions, under heavy pressure from station owner Ted Turner, who was unhappy with the declining ratings. This set up a rivalry between McMahon and Turner that would continue for sixteen years.
That same year, "PTW" replaced "TNT" on USA Network, which expanded the format of the WWF's WTBS program to two hours. The most-remembered Prime Time format featured Bobby Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon introducing taped matches and analyzing them afterward, with Monsoon taking a neutral/babyface position and Heenan unashamedly cheering on the heels. The chemistry between Monsoon and Heenan made this show popular with fans for many years. However, it was not considered one of the WWF's "primary" shows for most of its history, and many other wrestling programs attempted to copy this formula, with varying degrees of success.