World Championship Wrestling

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For the Nintendo Entertainment System video game, see WCW Wrestling.

There was also a World Championship Wrestling circuit in Australia from 1964 to 1978. This article is about the U.S. promotion.

World Championship Wrestling

Details
Acronym	WCW
Established	1988
Style	American Wrestling
Location	Atlanta, Georgia
Founder(s)	Ted Turner
Owner(s)	Eric Bischoff
Parent	Time Warner
Formerly	Universal Wrestling Corporation
Merged with	World Wrestling Entertainment

World Championship Wrestling or WCW, was a professional wrestling promotion that was based in Atlanta and existed from 1988 to 2001. Originally known as Universal Wrestling Corporation, the company was formed when Turner Broadcasting System acquired control of the wrestling related assets of Jim Crockett Promotions, at the time the flagship of the dissipating National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) for $9 million (the Crocketts continued to own a minority stake in the promotion until selling out altogether a few years later). In March 2001, the company's assets were purchased by the World Wrestling Federation, who continued to use the name as part of a storyline until November, when the promotion officially ceased. WCW was also a member of the NWA until September 1993.

1 In the Beginning : The NWA Years
2 The Bischoff Era Begins
3 Monday Night Wars
4 WCW vs. nWo
5 Vince McMahon Strikes Back
6 The Death of WCW
7 Final champions
8 Books
9 See also
10 WCW Titles
11 WCW Special Tournaments
12 External links

[edit]

In the Beginning : The NWA Years

By 1986, Jim Crockett, Jr. controlled key portions of the NWA (National Wrestling Alliance) under the name Jim Crockett Promotions, including the traditional NWA territories in The Carolinas, Georgia, and St. Louis. Crockett merged his various NWA territories into one group, and began promoting under the name "NWA World Championship Wrestling." A simmering feud between Crockett and Vince McMahon's WWF sprang up, and both companies attempted to outmaneuver the other to acquire key TV slots.

In the same year, he also purchased Heart of America Sports Attractions Inc (HASA), which owned the rights to promote wrestling shows through several central states (Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa). HASA was known to many fans as NWA Central States, and ran a TV show called All Star Wrestling.

In 1987, Crockett's buying spree continued, with the purchase of Florida Championship Wrestling, and the Universal Wrestling Federation (which covered Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana), which was not an NWA member. The Florida & UWF (and its wrestlers) were absorbed into Crockett Promotions.

Crockett had almost accomplished his goal of creating a national federation. Between his purchasing several NWA territories, World Class Championship Wrestling in Texas leaving the NWA in 1986 (and later merging with Jerry Lawler's Championship Wrestling Alliance in Memphis to create the United States Wrestling Association), and the once highly viable Portland territory going bankrupt (it closed in 1992), he was the last bastion of the NWA, and the last member with national TV exposure. Since it was all they now saw, many people began to believe that World Championship Wrestling was the NWA. World Championship Wrestling and the NWA were still two separate entities, though, with Crockett as NWA President, they were very much on the same page. By this point, the NWA was effectively an on paper organization funded by Crockett, and allowed Crockett to use the NWA brand-name.

However, it takes a large amount of capital to take a wrestling federation on a national tour, and Crockett's territorial acquisitions had seriously drained WCW's coffers. He was in a similar situation to that of the WWF in the early 1980s: a large debt load, and the success or failure of a federation hinging on the success or failure of a couple of PPVs. Crockett marketed StarrCade '87 as the NWA's answer to WrestleMania, however neither it, nor Bunkhouse Stampede, drew enough money to keep Crockett's promotion afloat.

On November 21, 1988, Crockett's struggling firm was purchased outright by billionaire media mogul Ted Turner, the Atlanta-based owner of the cable TV networks TBS and TNT, among other interests. Crockett remained NWA President until 1991.

Originally incorporated by TBS as the "Universal Wrestling Corporation", Turner promised the fans that WCW way would be the athlete-oriented style of NWA, as opposed to the cartoonish and simplistic exploits of the WWF.

1989 proved to be a huge year for WCW, with Ric Flair on top for most of the year both as World Champion and also as head booker. Flair drafted in two genuine pro wrestling legends in Ricky Steamboat and Terry Funk, and his PPV matches with both were hugely successful, financially and especially critically. Young, hot stars such as Sid Vicious, Sting, Scott Steiner, The Road Warriors, Brian Pillman, The Great Muta and Lex Luger were given big storylines and equally notable championship opportunities.

Despite this influx of talent, WCW soon began working to gradually incorporate much of the glamor and showy gimmicks for which the WWF was better known. Virtually none of these stunts, such as the live cross-promotional appearance of RoboCop at a PPV event in 1990, the "Chamber of Horrors" gimmick and the notorious "Black Scorpion" storyline, succeeded. Behind the scenes, WCW also becoming more autonomous and slowly started separating itself from the historic NWA name. In January 1991, WCW officially split from the NWA and began to stand alone, recognizing its own WCW World Heavyweight Champion and WCW World Tag Team Championships.

Confusingly, both the WCW and the NWA recognized Ric Flair (who was by now no longer the head booker) as their "World Heavyweight Champion" throughout most of the first half of 1991, but WCW, particularly recently-installed company president Jim Herd, turned against Flair for various reasons and fired him just prior to the July 1991 Great American Bash PPV. In the process, they officially stripped him of the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. However, according to Flair's autobiography, they refused to return the $30,000 deposit he had put down on the (physical) belt, so he kept it and took it with him when he was hired by the WWF at the request of Vince McMahon. Flair then incorporated the belt into his gimmick, dubbing himself "the real World's Champion" (a jab at then-WWF Champion Hulk Hogan).

WCW later renegotiated the use of the NWA name as a co-promotional gimmick with New Japan Pro Wrestling, and sued the WWF to stop showing Flair with the old NWA World title belt on its programs, claiming a trademark on the physical design of the belt. The belt was personally returned to WCW by Flair when Jim Herd was let go and he received his deposit back, and it was brought back as the revived NWA World Heavyweight Title.

During the brief, complex period that WCW operated with its own World Champion while also recognizing the NWA's world title, Flair quit the WWF and returned to WCW, regaining the title from Barry Windham in July 1993. Immediately, the other, now much smaller, member organizations of the NWA began rightfully demanding that Flair defend the title under their rules in their territories, as mandated by old NWA agreements. The title was later scheduled to be dropped by Flair to "Ravishing" Rick Rude, a title change which was exposed by the months-in-advance taping of WCW TV shows at Disney-owned studios in Florida. The NWA board of directors, working separately from WCW, objected to Rude, therefore forcing WCW to finally leave the NWA for good again in September 1993.

However, WCW still legally owned and used the actual NWA World Heavyweight Championship belt (Rick Rude even defended it as "The Big Gold Belt") but they could no longer use the "NWA" name. The title thus became known as the WCW International World Heavyweight Title. WCW knew that the title belt, because of its rich in-ring history and visual impact, was highly sought after and respected over in Japan and as such created a fictional subsidiary dubbed "WCW International" to inject some credibility back into the belt. WCW claimed that their subsidiary still recognized the belt as a legitimate World Title.

Sting eventually won the WCW International Championship and lost the belt to then-WCW World Champion Ric Flair in a unification match in May 1994 when the experiment was jettisoned. To make things more confusing, the WCW title belt, as introduced in 1991, was dropped and the old NWA Championship belt was revived and officially replaced it as the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. It was used as such until WCW's closure in 2001. The belt (in a slightly altered design) is still seen today in WWE as the World Heavyweight Championship on their SmackDown! brand (previously on RAW), and WWE has claimed on various programs that the World Heavyweight Championship is a continuation of the World Heavyweight Championship lineage from WCW.

[edit]

The Bischoff Era Begins

WCW logo from 1988-1999.

No matter how technically amazing and athletic WCW's action could be, it did not make as much money as the WWF. The creative product of the company sank very noticeably in 1992 and 1993 under the presidency of Jim Herd and, subsequently, Bill Watts. There were signs of gradual recovery in late 1993 when former commentator and American Wrestling Association (AWA) booker Eric Bischoff joined WCW. Bischoff, originally brought in as a secondary commentator behind Jim Ross after the AWA became defunct, was desperate to give WCW a new direction and impressed Turner's top brass with his confrontational tactics and business-savvy.

Bischoff did not disappoint, declaring open war on McMahon's WWF in the media and aggressively recruiting high-profile former WWF superstars such as Hulk Hogan and "Macho Man" Randy Savage in 1994. Using Turner's superior monetary resources, Bischoff placed his faith in the established, WWF-made stars with proven track records. Because of their high profiles, however, Hogan and Savage were able to demand and get several concessions not usually allowed to wrestlers at the time, such as multi-year, multimillion dollar guaranteed contracts and significant creative control. This problem only became worse during subsequent years of competition with the WWF, as other wrestlers were able to make similar demands, and contract values soared out of control. Hogan, in particular, was able to gain considerable influence through a blossoming friendship with Bischoff. Another problem Bischoff failed to consider was the fact that many WCW fans watched it as an alternative to the cartoony product of the WWF in the early 90s, and many NWA fans saw the hiring of former WWF talent as an attempt to copy its success, as opposed to being a high-quality alternative product with an emphasis on in-ring action.

However, WCW's first major event since Hogan's hiring, Bash At The Beach, saw the former WWF mainstay cleanly defeat longtime WCW stalwart Ric Flair for the WCW Championship in a genuine dream match. Interestingly enough, the two had worked for the WWF at the same time from 1991 to 1992, and a feud was teased between them, but the big-money match originally planned for WrestleMania VIII was changed to Flair/Savage and Hogan/Sid. When WCW delivered the match, the PPV drew a high buy rate by WCW standards due to mainstream intrigue and hype if nothing else, but the hoped-for long-term effects on ratings and buy rates simply did not materialize. Hogan was, to an extent, still a definite draw and celebrity, but his style was not as suited to the southern NWA audience.

This was not lost on Turner management, however, and Bischoff's bold, expensive steps didn't quite meet their expectations when they came to check up on things in mid-1995. Thus, Bischoff called Turner and requested a private meeting, which he was granted.

[edit]

Monday Night Wars

Bischoff's largest impact on the North American pro wrestling landscape was the launch of the weekly show WCW Monday Nitro in September 1995. In the aforementioned top-level meeting that summer, Turner asked Bischoff how WCW could conceivably compete with McMahon's WWF. Bischoff, not in his wildest dreams expecting Turner to comply, said that the only way would be a primetime slot on a weekday night, possibly up against the WWF's flagship show, Monday Night Raw. Turner, impressed by Bischoff's candor, gave him what he asked for: a live hour on TNT every Monday night, which specifically overlapped with Raw. This format quickly expanded to two live hours in May 1996, and then later three. Bischoff himself was initially the host, alongside Bobby Heenan and ex-NFL star Steve "Mongo" McMichael.

McMahon later admitted to being hugely bitter about Turner's decision to air Nitro live on Monday nights, saying that Turner and Bischoff's only reason for doing this could be to hurt and damage the WWF. Turner and McMahon certainly had something of a personal history: in the early 1980s, when McMahon began buying up local organizations in order to create a nationwide wrestling system, one of the promotions he took over was Georgia Championship Wrestling; thus he was in the position of providing a Saturday night show for Turner's TBS station. When viewers tuned to WTBS on July 14, 1984 (a date known as "Black Saturday" in the wrestling community) and saw WWF programming instead of the GCW wrestlers they were used to seeing, many called the station and demanded the NWA's return; two weeks later, GCW returned, albeit on Saturday mornings. Turner quickly grew tired of the personality-driven glitz of McMahon's product and was upset at the fact that McMahon had gone back on his earlier promise not to dump second-rate stars and matches onto TBS. Turner therefore axed McMahon's show and turned to Jim Crockett to fill the Saturday night pro wrestling slot. Furthermore, on the very same day that Turner later acquired Crockett's territories, he famously called McMahon personally to say "Vince, I'm in the rasslin' business!"

In 1995, Turner (as sole head and owner of both TBS and TNT), could air Nitro whenever he wanted. The WWF on the other hand was constrained by having to deal with the USA Network, whose executives were pleased about the viewers Raw brought to their network, but were also weary of the stigma associated with being the "wrestling channel." WCW Monday Nitro made its debut in September 1995 live from the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, and featured the surprise appearance of then-WWF wrestler Lex Luger, who had been working on a handshake deal with WWF after his most recent contract expired, on a week when Raw was pre-empted by the US Open Tennis tournament. In the first head-to-head ratings the following week, Nitro managed to convincingly defeat Raw, seeing WCW beat the WWF for the first time ever. For most of Nitro's first year, the ratings battle between the two promotions were close. In the end, Nitro ended up beating Raw in the Nielsen ratings for 84 straight weeks between 1996 and 1998.

Raw and the WWF in general was at a creative nadir from 1995 to 1997, thus helping WCW's meteoric rise. The WWF tried in vain to fight back in early 1996 with the infamous "Billionaire Ted" sketches, which occasionally starred an unbilled Vince Russo and viciously parodied Turner, Hogan ("The Huckster") and Savage ("Nacho Man") in particular. Only when stars such as ex-WCW wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin began to emerge, and when McMahon swallowed his pride and turned to Russo, a New York DJ and WWF magazine writer, did the WWF begin to pick up steam.

Siphoning off the WWF's talent and airing Nitro on Monday night was not the end of WCW's less-than-honorable tactics to defeat the competition. In the early days, as Raw was only live once every three weeks at that point, and as hours of upcoming shows would be taped in one arena on one night, announcers on Nitro could (and would) often give away the results of that week's Raw to keep viewers tuned to Nitro. Much later, with the WWF firmly back on top, this tactic memorably backfired on January 4, 1999, when WCW announcer Tony Schiavone was instructed by Bischoff over his headset to announce that Mick Foley (wrestling as Mankind in the WWF), would win the WWF Championship that night on the USA Network. Schiavone then sarcastically remarked, "That'll put a lot of butts in the seats!" Ironically, the comment became true. Nielsen ratings for that night showed that almost immediately after Schiavone's comment, more than 600,000 viewers switched from Nitro to Raw in a matter of seconds. This startling ratings switch was a true testament to Foley's dedication to wrestling and the WWF's ever-growing popularity, and "Mick Foley put my ass in this seat" signs were seen in crowds for years afterward.

[edit]

WCW vs. nWo

Everything changed in 1996, when WCW became the hottest promotion in North America. It did this with the groundbreaking WCW vs. nWo storyline that was masterminded by Bischoff. It was based on an idea of two warring promotions that he had seen in Japan. The storyline kicked off with Scott Hall, who was recently seen on WWF TV as Razor Ramon, walking into the ring unexpectedly during the middle of a match, 'declaring war' on WCW. At the end of a Nitro episode a few weeks later, he was joined by Kevin Nash, another former WWF wrestler who was recently seen on WWF TV as Diesel. The two wrestlers named themselves "The Outsiders" and sent out a challenge to any three wrestlers on the WCW roster, against them, and their mystery partner. Many wrestling fans were confused, thinking that Hall and Nash were still WWF wrestlers. McMahon himself took notice and said during a Raw telecast that they were no longer WWF wrestlers. Hall and Nash's attitude and similarities to their WWF characters also sparked a copyright infringement lawsuit against WCW by the WWF.

At Bash At The Beach '96, Sting, Lex Luger, and "Macho Man" Randy Savage took on The Outsiders but the third man never showed up for the Outsider team. When Hall and Nash began to get the upper hand, Hulk Hogan ran in to seemingly make the save for Team WCW. Hogan threatened The Outsiders but turned around and dropped his patented legdrop finishing move on Savage instead. The fans and the announcers went crazy wondering what was going on. Hogan had shockingly "defected" from WCW to The Outsiders. In his post-match speech, Hogan revealed that he, Hall and Nash were the "New World Order of professional wrestling." The crowd was so incensed by Hogan's turn that many of them threw garbage at the ring, and within minutes it was literally covered with refuse. Bischoff was ecstatic, knowing that this meant the crowd was truly shocked by Hogan finally turning heel after years as a babyface.

Hogan, as a bad guy, leading the (fictional) nWo (or New World Order) faction in their attempt to "take over" WCW and run the WWF out of business was a compelling and original storyline. Fueled by this new scenario, WCW Monday Nitro managed a string of wins against WWF Raw that lasted from June 10, 1996 to April 1998, and included a popular feud between nWo leader Hulk Hogan and WCW leader Sting.

The nWo was so wildly successful that Eric Bischoff entertained the thought of branching them off as a separate promotion. There were some experiments to see if such an idea would hold. The first PPV event of 1997 for WCW was nWo Souled Out which saw radical departures from the WCW formula. The entire set, the ring and every banner was a shade of black with scattered white nWo logos. The show itself was both a critical and financial disappointment. The matches more-or-less spent more time playing-up nWo members than providing quality matches. One segment, featuring Bischoff hitting on biker chicks caused a "boring!" chant to echo from the crowd. In late 1997, Bischoff decided to see if a separate nWo show would work instead. The newly branded nWo Nitro aired in December 1997 and was a complete dud both in terms of quality and ratings. The first hour was nothing more than nWo tearing down WCW sets while more time was spent celebrating the career of Hulk Hogan in an extended segment. Ratings for that show dropped nearly a full point on the Nielsen Ratings causing the idea to be scrapped. It was later re-designed in 1998 as WCW Thunder and was a complement to WCW Monday Nitro.

[edit]

Vince McMahon Strikes Back

After WrestleMania XIV in March 1998, the WWF regained the lead in the Monday Night Wars with its new WWF Attitude brand, led in particular by rising stars Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock and Mankind. The classic feud between McMahon (who was re-imagined and re-branded as the evil company chairman character Mr. McMahon) and Austin (who, ironically, had been released by Bischoff in the summer of 1995 for not being marketable) caught the imaginations of fans. The April 13, 1998 episode of RAW, headlined by a match between Austin and McMahon, marked the first time that WCW had lost the head-to-head Monday night ratings battle in the 84 weeks since 1996. WCW attempted to counter this by dividing the nWo into the Hogan-led heel nWo Hollywood faction and the Nash-led face nWo Wolfpac faction, but many felt that it was a poor rehash of the original WCW vs. nWo storyline. Undeterred, WCW also launched a new Thursday TV show, WCW Thunder, around this time.

WCW's next big attempt at ratings supremacy was marketing ex-NFL newcomer Bill Goldberg as an invincible monster with a record-breaking winning streak. Goldberg was indeed incredibly popular from the outset, with chants of 'Gold-berg, Gold-berg' heralding his approach to the ring, but business still quickly fell off for WCW, especially as the list of stars ready to be destroyed by Goldberg grew shorter. One of WCW's last big genuine wins in the Monday night ratings war was on July 6, 1998, when WCW gave the long-awaited World Title match in Atlanta between Hogan and Goldberg (which Goldberg won), away for free on Nitro. By doing this, they indeed 'spiked' and inflated their TV ratings for a week, but flushed away millions of possible PPV dollars in the process, as Hogan vs. Goldberg was a clear PPV main event. On September 14, 1998, WCW won the ratings war once again with a memorable moment that featured Ric Flair's return to WCW and the reformation of the legendary Four Horsemen. On October 25, 1998, WCW's Halloween Havoc PPV ended up running longer than the time allowed due to the last-minute addition of a Tag Team Title match. As a result, several thousand people lost the PPV feed at 11pm which was during the World Title match between Diamond Dallas Page and Goldberg. The following night, WCW decided to correct the problem by airing the entire match for free on Nitro and thus winning the ratings war for the final time.

WCW slowly slid into a period of extravagant overspending and creative decline; why this happened and who let it happen is a matter of debate among wrestling fans and historians. Some attribute the slump to the overuse of celebrities (such as employing Dennis Rodman and Jay Leno) to wrestle PPV matches. Others blame the stale, pointless, and at times self-serving storylines concocted by inexperienced bookers such as Nash, while still others claim that the top-level stars had no motivation to excel in the ring due to their long-term guaranteed-money contracts, and only gave their utmost when it suited them to do so.

As mentioned above, people were growing suspicious of Nash's questionable storylines, which were dominated by his on-screen persona. After booking himself to win World War 3 in November 1998, he went on to end Goldberg's winning streak on the StarrCade PPV just one month later. Then came the infamous 'fingerpoke of doom' match with Hogan. The World Heavyweight Championship changed hands when Hogan knocked Nash to the ground by prodding him in the chest with one finger and then pinning him, further damaging the credibility and perceived value of the title. It was the same episode of Nitro that Tony Schiavone announced the Mick Foley WWF Title win.

Also in 1998, The Ultimate Warrior, a former WWF star, was recruited to feud with Hogan. Their October 1998 encounter at Halloween Havoc was subpar, and Warrior vanished soon after. The Ultimate Warrior also insisted on a number of elaborate and costly apparatuses such as a trapdoor in the ring, which badly injured The British Bulldog when he landed on it.

In addition, no matter who was in charge, WCW did not like promoting its younger stars to the company's top slots. Despite having many talented younger wrestlers such as Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Billy Kidman, Chavo Guerrero, Jr., the late Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, Raven, and Booker T (just to name a few) on its roster, they were kept away from the main event scene. WCW's poor talent decisions combined with the massive popularity of the new, hip and edgy WWF Attitude Era, likely began WCW's rapid demise.

Bischoff was eventually removed from power by the Turner higher-ups in September 1999, the last straws perhaps being a mystifying and expensive on-screen push for the 1970s rock group KISS through WCW shows, a storyline involving rapper Master P and The No Limit Soldiers that saw Master P last only two weeks (the No Limit Soldiers flopped so badly that the West Texas Rednecks heel stable that they were feuding with was cheered by the southern WCW fans); an announced million-dollar contest that was later cancelled; a planned Nitro animated series that was scrapped, as well; and Bischoff's long-standing desire to put on a huge, outdoor rock 'n' wrestling concert on December 31, 1999.

[edit]

The Death of WCW

Bischoff was unexpectedly replaced by former WWF head writer Vince Russo and his colleague Ed Ferrera. Russo and Ferrera had been the head writers for the WWF at the beginning of the Attitude Era, subordinate only to Vince McMahon himself. WCW offered them lucrative contracts to jump ship in October 1999 in an effort to revitalize their own flagging product and weaken the product of the WWF. Russo and Ferrera tried to push the younger WCW talents straight away, and phase out aging stars such as Hogan and Flair. However, Russo was thought by many to be incapable of recreating the intriguing and cutting-edge TV he had produced while working for McMahon.

Russo and Ferrera struggled to gain approval for their near-the-knuckle ideas from the conservative WCW management, such as the introduction of an effeminate (and possibly incestuous) tag team called 'The West Hollywood Blondes' (Lenny Lane and Lodi; their name spoofed the Hollywood Blondes, an enormously successful early 90s tag team of Steve Austin and Brian Pillman), and 'Piñata-On-A-Pole' matches between Mexican wrestlers. In late 1999, Russo and Ferrera hired their friend Jeff Jarrett from the WWF and revived the nWo storyline, this time with Jarrett and Bret Hart at the helm. They next targeted WWF announcer Jim Ross with a tasteless parody character called 'Oklahoma', who was played onscreen by Ferrera (Ross had been suffering from Bell's palsy, and the character lampooned his resultant facial defects). Bad luck struck in December 1999 when Hart suffered a genuine (and ultimately career-ending) concussion at the hands of Goldberg, who severely damaged his own hand less than a week later while punching through a limousine window in Salisbury, Maryland as part of an storyline that was written by Russo. Russo himself became an onscreen character during this period, though one whose face was never shown on camera, in a manner not dissimilar to Doctor Claw from Inspector Gadget. Only his hand and the back of his chair were ever actually seen, as he called wrestlers into his office to receive their marching orders for the night.

Both Russo and Ferrera were suspended just three months later amid rumors that they wanted to make former UFC fighter Tank Abbott the WCW Champion (Abbott, despite his legitimate fighting background, had little wrestling experience and had utterly failed to connect with WCW audiences). Kevin Sullivan, who had been an on/off booker over the course of several years, was placed in charge in the interim. The new writing team attempted to appease the demoralized wrestlers and fans by making Chris Benoit the WCW Champion at the Souled Out PPV in January 2000. However, after learning he'd be quickly stripped of it, and because of the real-life personal issues between himself and Sullivan, Benoit handed the belt back the next day and left WCW. He signed with the WWF along with his similarly frustrated friends Perry Saturn, Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko.

On February 11, 2000, black wrestlers Bobby Walker and Harrison Norris and Japanese manager Sonny Onoo launched racial discrimination lawsuits against WCW, claiming that they had not been pushed as a result of their ethnicities, had not been paid as well as other wrestlers and personalities, and had been given offensive gimmicks. Some speculated that the charges of racism brought against WCW (and the resultant bad publicity for the company, which had been dogged by accusations of racism for years), were partially responsible for black wrestler Booker T winning the WCW Championship later that year and his brother Stevie Ray being made a color commentator, with Ray himself acknowledging that it might have been a factor.

In April 2000, with ratings hitting new lows, both Russo and Bischoff were reinstated by WCW. They formed an on-screen union that stood up for the younger talent in the company (which they dubbed the "New Blood"), claiming they had been held down for years by the establishment. Russo and Bischoff led the New Blood against the "Millionaire's Club," which consisted of the older, higher-paid, and more visible stars such as Hogan, Sting, and Diamond Dallas Page. Though initially well-received, the storyline quickly degenerated into yet another nWo rehash, with the heel nWo recast as the New Blood and the face WCW embodied in the Millionaire's Club. As well, the unorthodox and often controversial storylines continued. These included making actor David Arquette the WCW Champion in order to promote a WCW-themed movie, Ready to Rumble; Russo himself winning the WCW Championship in September 2000 (Russo, like Arquette, was not a trained wrestler); a botched (and, in the eyes of many, completely unnecessary) June heel turn for Goldberg that greatly diminished his drawing power; and a shoot speech by Russo at Bash At The Beach 2000 aimed at Hulk Hogan which led to Hogan resigning and filing a defamation of character lawsuit against the company (which, in 2002, has been dismissed). Bischoff vanished once more in July 2000, and Russo was gone from WCW completely by late 2000, leaving Terry Taylor holding the reins. It was later revealed in 2005 that Russo's shoot promo had actually just been a storyline between Russo and Hogan, meant to set up Booker T's winning the WCW World Title and Hogan's departure from the company without a loss of face.

Meanwhile, when Time Warner bought out Turner's cable empire in 1996, it also purchased WCW. Even though Turner was a big fan and faithful to the professional wrestling shows on his stations (a professional wrestling program had helped get Turner's very first TV station, WTBS, off the ground, and WCW was, in fact, the modern incarnation of the promotion that Turner had run on WTBS back in those days) regardless of whether it was losing him money, Time Warner did not share his loyalty, especially when accounts showed that WCW was losing between $12-$17 million a year because of its decline. However, Turner was still the single largest Time Warner shareholder, and WCW was supported at his behest. When AOL merged with Time Warner in 2000, Turner was effectively forced out of his own empire. The new AOL Time Warner finally had the power to auction off WCW, which they saw as an unncessary drain on resources.

In late 2000, Bischoff and a group of private investors, calling themselves Fusient Media Ventures, enquired about buying WCW but backed out when Turner networks head (and The WB founder) Jamie Kellner formally cancelled all WCW programming from its TV networks. With no network to air its programming, WCW was of little value to Fusient, whose offer was dependent on the Turner networks continuing to air WCW programming.

On March 23, 2001, WCW, along with virtually all of its trademarks and archived footage, was sold to Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. for a paltry $7 million (although the book The Death of WCW said it was $3 million). McMahon did not employ all of the WCW wrestlers and staff, though, passing over proven draws such as Goldberg due to contractual compensation reasons. A gloating McMahon then opened the last-ever episode of WCW Monday Nitro simulcast with RAW on March 26, 2001 with a self-praising speech. Sting vs. Ric Flair (won by Sting) was the nostalgic final match of the final broadcast, ending affectionately with a respectful embrace.

The WCW logo used in the WWF during the Alliance.

When Vince came on RAW after the Sting/Flair match to declare victory over WCW, Shane McMahon appeared at the Nitro event, declaring that he had bought WCW. This set up a storyline with Shane leading the WCW Invasion of the WWF (a highly anticipated storyline that most considered as a huge missed opportunity), which lasted from March to November 2001 and marked the end of WCW. Despite aborted attempts to run WCW-branded events, the WWF only ran a handful of matches on RAW and SmackDown! under the WCW banner.

The WCW World Heavyweight Championship (which was renamed the World Heavyweight Championship) would continue to be used in WWF until it was merged with the WWF Championship into the WWF Undisputed Championship when Chris Jericho defeated The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin for the respective titles on December 9, 2001 on the PPV, Vengeance (the current World Heavyweight Championship, despite the fact it uses the old WCW World Title belt, is generally considered to be a new title that does not share lineage with its WCW namesake).

[edit]

Final champions

This is a list of the champions as they were at the end of the last WCW Monday Nitro on March 26, 2001 (though all these titles, with the exception of the Cruiserweight Tag Team Championship, continued to be active in WWF until November of that year).