By Jerome Wilen

Marketed as the most decorated tag team in professional wrestling, Team 3-D (Formally known as the Dudley Boyz. Brother Ray and Brother Devon debuted February 1, 1995 in then the Paul Heyman owned and operated Extreme Championship Wrestling.

The Extreme Championship Wrestling years

On March 15, 1997 at Hostile City Showdown, The Dudley Boyz then known at Buh Buh Ray (Mark LoManaco and Devon Hughes) and D-Von won the ECW tag team titles for the first time from The Eliminators (John Kronus and Perry Saturn), thus beginning a feud with this team. Later on at ECW’s very first PPV Barely Legal, The Eliminators would then recapture the tag titles. The Dudley’s would go on to regain the titles in a handicap match due to an injury to Perry Saturn.

The Dudley’s would then began a rivalry with The Gangstas (New Jack and Mustafa Saed) which resulted in yet another title win at Orgy of Violence on June 28, 1997. However, just under a month later on July 19, 1997 at Heat Wave, The Dudley’s would lose titles to The Gangstas in a steel cage weapons match. In just less than one month later, at Hardcore Heaven, The Dudley’s would yet again win back the ECW Tag Team Titles. Following the departure of Mustafa and Saturn from ECW, New Jack and Kronus formed the tag team known as The Gangstanators and defeated The Dudley’s on September 20, 1997 at As Good as it Gets.

In the summer of 1998, The Dudley’s began a feud with Tommy Dreamer and Sandman, who defeated The Dudley’s at Wrestlepalooza. Later than year, The Dudley’s would again have tag team gold back around their waste by beating Sabu and Rob Van Dam, but just one month later The Dudley’s would go down in defeat losing the ECW Tag Team Titles to Masato Tanaka and Balls Mahoney at November to Remember.

After the Sandman left ECW, The Dudley Boyz capitalized on Sabu’s ban from competing in the U.S. with D-Von beating Rob Van Dam in singles competition which would again award them what would be a sixth time title reign. In 1999, the newly formed team of Spike Dudley and Balls Mahoney would capture the ECW Tag Team Titles from The Dudley’s.

With rumors circling, that The Dudley’s would be leaving ECW for the WWF, during an ECW house show, The Dudley’s won the titles for the seventh time from Spike and Mahoney, only to lose them again at a another house show. During the second show of ECW on TNN, The Dudley Boyz won the tag team titles for a record eighth time. With threats to jump to the WWF and take the ECW tag team titles with them, The Dudley’s lost the titles to Tommy Dreamer and Raven, in what was their last match with ECW before going to the WWF.

The World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment years

In 1999, The Dudley Boyz joined the World Wrestling Federation. They requested a substantial raise above the WWF’s offer to stay with ECW, but owner Paul Heyman denied their request as he was working on negotiations with Vince McMahon to supply the WWF with ECW talent. When the Dudley’s first began in the WWF, Buh Buh Ray was renamed “Bubba Ray Dudley.” Both he and D-Von wore thick black glasses with white tape around them. Bubba would stutter during his promos, with D-Von slapping him in the back of the head to assist him in getting his words out. This same gimmick was used early on in ECW. After several weeks, the WWF dropped the gimmick and both Dudley’s began wearing camouflage ring attire.

The Dudley’s biggest claim to fame in the WWF was using their signature double-team move, the 3D to put their opponents through a table. As heels, they put several women, including Terri Runnels, Trish Stratus, Lita, and Mae Young. In mid 2000, the Dudley’s turned face after beginning a feud with D-Generation X. During 2000 and 2001, the Dudley Boyz had a three-way rivalry with the Hardy Boyz and Edge and Christian. This feud culminated into Table, Ladders and Chairs matches at Summer Slam 2000 and at WrestleMania X-Seven in April 2001.

After the WWF purchased their rival company World Championship Wrestling in 2001, the Dudley’s turned heal by joining The Alliance, a faction of former WCW and ECW wrestlers led by Shane McMahon and Stephanie McMahon in an attempt to take over their father’s company. The Dudley’s mainly acted as enforcers of The Alliance, causing interference in matches. During this storyline, they became the first tag team to have ever held the ECW, WCW, and WWF/E Tag Team Championships. At Survivor Series 2001, the Dudley’s defeated the Hardy Boyz in a cage match, thus unifying both the WWF and WCW Tag Team Titles.

Following WrestleMania X8 in March of 2002 after a court battle with the World Wildlife Fund, the WWF was renamed World Wrestling Entertainment with the roster being divided into separate brands for RAW and SmackDown! As a result of the brand split, the WWE separated the Dudley’s. Bubba Ray was sent to RAW, while D-Von went to SmackDown! Bubba reunited with Spike Dudley thus forming a new version of the Dudley Boyz, which were fan favorites. Meanwhile, D-Von on SmackDown!, D-Von’s new character was a heal like preacher known as “Reverend D-Von”

At Survivor Series 2002, The Dudley Boyz reunited when D-Von assisted Bubba in a March, thus in a trade for D-Von for the Big Show. Two years later, in March of 2004, The Dudley’s, were drafted to the SmackDown! and were reunited with Paul Heyman, thus beginning a feud with The Undertaker.

Following this feud, the Dudley’s disappeared off T.V. for an extended period of time. In July 2005, the WWE opted not to continue contract negotiations. The “One Night Stand” pay-per view event in June 2005 was their final appearance for the WWE. Just one month later, both Bubba and D-Von were issued legal notices informing them the WWE had trademarked the Dudley name thus making it impossible for them to use the name they have had since 1996. This caused animosity between the Dudley’s and the WWE. The Dudley’s were under the impression that Paul Heyman had given them rights to the name.

Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling

On September 21, 2005 Nashville based Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling made the bombshell announcement that Bubba and D-Von (now known as Brother Ray and Brother D-Von – Team 3D) signed a multi-year contract with TNA. Team 3D made their first appearance on the October 1 episode of Impact! saving the 3Live Kru from Jeff Jarrett and Team Canada. Team 3D’s first rivalry was with the heal version of America’s Most Wanted (James Storm and Chris Harris). At TNA’s “Turning Point” pay-per view in December 2005 Team 3D successfully beat AMW in a tables match. The pay-per view Final Resolution on January 15, 2006, Team 3D had a rematch with AMW for the NWA World Tag Team Titles. Team 3D won the match, but due to outside interference from Team Canada, AMW was awarded the match.

P1040119The beginning of 2007, TNA announced that Team 3D as the number one contenders for the NWA Tag Team Championship held at the time by the Latin American Xchange (LAX). After several matches leading up to all cage match “LockDown” pay-per view in April of 2007, Team 3D successfully defeated LAX in an Electrified Six Sides of Steel match thus winning the NWA Tag Team Titles for the very first time.

May 13, 2007, the Executive Director of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) announced that Team 3D had been stripped of the NWA World Tag Team Championship due to permanent split between TNA and the NWA. However, TNA still recognized Team 3D as their first office TNA World Tag Team Champions, thus giving them brand new TNA Tag Team Title belts.

On the June 21, 2007 episode of Impact!, Jim Cornette announced a Champions versus Champions match to be held at the July “Victory Road” pay-per view, which the Tag Team Champions would face both the World Champion and X-Division Champion. After a run in by Rick and Scott Steiner, Team 3D lost the titles to Samoa Joe. On next episode of Impact!, Team 3D blamed Scot and the fans for their loss, thus the beginning of a heal turn for Team 3D.

After appearing to join the newly formed Main Event Mafia, Team 3D made a surprise face turn, thus siding with the TNA Frontline, which is a similar storyline as the New World Order (NWO) take over and the New Blood versus the Millionaires Club in the now defunct World Championship Wrestling (WCW).

On January 4, 2009, Team 3D defeated Togi Makabe and Toru Yano to win the New Japan IWGP Tag Team Championship thus making them 21-time world tag-team champions.

P1040107Following the “Against All Odds” pay-per view, Team 3D began an intense rivalry with Beer Money, Inc. (James Storm and Robert Roode). At the April 19th, 2009 “LockDown” pay-per view in a title for title Philadelphia Street Fight, Team 3D defeated Beer Money, Inc. and won the TNA World Tag Team Titles, thus now making them 22-time world tag team champions.

Team 3D is on the only tag team in pro wrestling history to hold the ECW, WWE, WCW, NWA, TNA, All Japan, HUSTLE and New Japan World Tag Team Titles.

On May 21, 2007, Team 3D opened the Team 3D Wrestling Academy in Kissimmee, Florida.

Sources: Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia and www.myspace.com/team3dacademy

World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE) is a publicly traded, privately controlled integrated media (focusing in television, internet, and live events), sports, and entertainment company dealing primarily in the professional wrestling industry, with major revenue sources also coming from movies, music, product licensing, and direct product sales. Vince McMahon is the majority owner and Chairman of the company and his wife Linda McMahon holds the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Together with their children, Executive Vice President of Global Media Shane McMahon and Senior Vice President of Creative Writing Stephanie McMahon-Levesque, the McMahons hold approximately 70% of WWE’s economic interest and 96% of all voting power in the company. The company’s global headquarters are located at 1241 East Main Street in Stamford, Connecticut, with international offices in Los Angeles, New York City, London, and Toronto. The company was previously known as Titan Sports, Inc. before changing to World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc., and most recently becoming World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.

WWE’s business focus is on professional wrestling. It is currently the largest professional wrestling promotion in the world, and holds an extensive library of videos representing a significant portion of the visual history of professional wrestling. The promotion previously existed as the Capitol Wrestling Corporation, which promoted under the banner of the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF), and later the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). WWE promotes under three brands; RAW, SmackDown! and ECW. WWE is also home to three of the eight world heavyweight championships recognized by Pro Wrestling Illustrated.

WWE’s revenue in fiscal 2006 (from May 2005 to April 2006) was approximately $400 million (US), with a net profit of approximately $47 million. As of August 2006, the company’s market capitalization is over $1 billion (US). Its stock is traded on the NYSE as WWE.

History

The beginning/Capitol Wrestling

Roderick James “Jess” McMahon was a boxing promoter whose achievements included co-promoting a bout in 1915 between Jess Willard and Jack Johnson. In 1926, while working with Tex Rickard (who actually despised wrestling to such a degree he prevented wrestling events from being held at Madison Square Garden between 1939 and 1948), he started promoting boxing in Madison Square Garden in New York. The first match during their partnership was a light-heavyweight championship match between Jack Delaney and Paul Berlenbach.

Around the same time, professional wrestler Joseph Raymond “Toots” Mondt created a new style of professional wrestling that he called Slam Bang Western Style Wrestling to make the sport more appealing to spectators. He then formed a promotion with wrestling champion Ed Lewis and his manager Billy Sandow. They persuaded many wrestlers to sign contracts with their Gold Dust Trio. After much success, a disagreement over power caused the trio to dissolve and, with it, their promotion. Mondt formed partnerships with several other promoters, including Jack Curley in New York City. When Curley was dying, Mondt moved to take over New York wrestling with the aid of several bookers, one of whom was Jess McMahon.

Together, Roderick McMahon and Raymond Mondt created the Capitol Wrestling Corporation (CWC). The CWC joined the National Wrestling Alliance in 1953. Also in that year, Ray Fabiani, one of Mondt’s associates, brought in Vincent J. McMahon to replace his father Jess in the promotion. McMahon and Mondt were a successful combination, and within a short time, they controlled approximately 70% of the NWA’s booking, largely due to their dominance in the heavily populated Northeast region. Mondt taught McMahon about booking and how to work in the wrestling business.

World Wide Wrestling Federation

The NWA recognized an undisputed NWA World Heavyweight Champion that went from wrestling company to wrestling company in the alliance and defended the belt around the world. In 1963, the champion was “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers.

The rest of the NWA was unhappy with Mondt because he rarely allowed Rogers to wrestle outside of the Northeast. Mondt and McMahon wanted Rogers to keep the NWA World Championship, but Rogers was unwilling to sacrifice his $25,000 deposit on the belt (title holders at the time had to pay a deposit to insure they would honor their commitments as champion). Rogers lost the NWA World Championship to Lou Thesz in a one-fall match in Toronto, Ontario on January 24, 1963, which led to Mondt, McMahon and the CWC leaving the NWA in protest, creating the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) in the process.

In April, Rogers was awarded the new WWWF World Championship following an apocryphal tournament in Rio de Janeiro. He lost the title to Bruno Sammartino a month later on May 17, 1963, after suffering a heart attack shortly before the match. To accommodate Rogers’ condition, the match was booked to last under a minute.

Mondt left the company in the late sixties for unclear reasons, probably due to old age.

Although the WWWF had withdrawn from the NWA, Vince McMahon Sr. still sat on the NWA Board of Directors, no other territory was recognized in the Northeast, and several “champion vs. champion” matches occurred (usually ending in a double disqualification or some other non-decisive ending).

In March 1979, the WWWF became the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). The change was purely cosmetic, and the ownership and front office personnel remained unchanged during this period.

World Wrestling Federation

The World Wrestling Federation logo (1998 – 2002) that WWE is now prohibited from using after its agreement with the conservation organization WWF.

Business advances

On April 29, 1999, the WWF made its return to terrestrial television by launching a special program known as SmackDown! on the fledgling UPN network. The Thursday-night show became a weekly series on August 26, 1999.

On the back of the success of the Attitude Era, on October 19, 1999 the WWF’s parent company, Titan Sports (by this time renamed World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc.) became a publicly traded company, offering 10 million shares priced at $17 each. WWF announced its desire to diversify, including creating a nightclub in Times Square, producing feature films, and book publishing.

In 2000 the WWF, in collaboration with television network NBC, announced the creation of the XFL, a new professional football league that debuted in 2001. The league had surprisingly high ratings for the first few weeks, but initial interest waned and its ratings plunged to dismally low levels (one of its games was the lowest-rated primetime show in the history of American television). NBC walked out on the venture after only one season, but McMahon intended to continue alone. However, after UPN demanded that SmackDown! be cut by half an hour, McMahon shut down the XFL.

Acquisition of WCW and ECW

With the success of the Attitude Era, WCW’s already shaky financial situation deteriorated even further. It only survived because Ted Turner retained control over it as a result of Turner Broadcasting System’s merger with Time Warner. However, after Time Warner merged with AOL, Turner’s power was considerably reduced, and the newly merged company decided to shed its dead weight, namely WCW which was now losing scores of millions of dollars each year. In March 2001, WWF Entertainment, Inc. acquired World Championship Wrestling, Inc. from AOL Time Warner for a number reported to be around $7 million. With this purchase, WWF was now the largest wrestling promotion in the world, and practially the only one in North America. It would remain so until the launch of Total Nonstop Action Wrestling in 2002.

The assets of Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), which had folded after filing for bankruptcy protection in April 2001, were purchased by WWE in mid-2003.

World Wrestling Entertainment

In 2000, the World Wildlife Fund (also WWF), an environmental organization now called the World Wide Fund for Nature, sued the World Wrestling Federation. A British court agreed that Titan Sports had violated a 1994 agreement which had limited the permissible use of the WWF initials overseas, particularly in merchandising.[4]

On Sunday May 5, 2002, the company quietly changed all references on its website from “WWF” to “WWE”, while switching the URL from WWF.com to WWE.com. The next day, a press release announced the official name change from World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. to World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., or WWE, and the change was publicized later that day during a telecast of Monday Night RAW, which emanated from the Hartford Civic Center in Hartford, Connecticut. For a short time, WWE used the slogan “Get The ‘F’ Out”. The company had also been ordered by court to stop using the old WWF Attitude logo on any of its properties and to censor all past references to WWF, as they no longer owned the trademark to the initials WWF in ‘specified circumstances’.

In April 2002, about a month before the name change, WWE decided to create two separate rosters, one on RAW, the other on SmackDown! due to the overabundance of talent left over from the Invasion storyline (which involved talent from the absorbed ECW and WCW rosters interacting in WWF storylines). This is known as the WWE Brand Extension. Following the Brand Extension, a yearly Draft Lottery was instituted to exchange members of each roster and generally refresh the lineups.

In August 2002, the company launched WWE Niagara Falls, a retail establishment in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

On May 26, 2006, WWE revived Extreme Championship Wrestling as its third brand. The new ECW program airs Tuesday nights, on the Sci Fi Channel.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 1994, Jim Crockett’s non-compete agreement with Ted Turner, who purchased World Championship Wrestling (WCW) from Crockett in 1988, was up and he decided to start promoting with the NWA again. Crockett went to Tod Gordon and asked him to hold a tournament for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship at the ECW Arena on August 27, 1994. NWA President Dennis Coralluzzo thought that Crockett and Gordon were going to try to monopolize the title (much like Crockett did in the 1980s) and told them they didn’t have the NWA board’s approval so he took control over the tournament. Gordon was upset at Coralluzzo for his power plays so Gordon and Shane Douglas, who was booked to win the title against 2 Cold Scorpio, planned to have Douglas throw the title down after he won it and break ECW from the NWA. In a now classic post-match speech, Shane Douglas said that he didn’t want to be a part of an organization that “died” seven years earlier (presumably when Jim Crockett sold his NWA super territory to Turner Broadcasting in 1988).

After ECW withdrew from the NWA and officially changed its name from Eastern Championship Wrestling to Extreme Championship Wrestling, it became an underground sensation. The group would showcase many different styles of professional wrestling, popularizing bloody hardcore wrestling matches and the 3-Way Dance. ECW was always intended to be counter-culture and a grittier alternative to multi-million dollar organizations such as World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and WCW. In addition to their hardcore match types, they provided an alternative to North American wrestling with technical wrestling that was common overseas. International stars such as Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko anchored a solid technical wrestling core in ECW. Rey Misterio, Jr., Psicosis, Konnan and Juventud Guerrera brought a lucha libre style rarely seen in the national wrestling promotions.

Wrestlers such as Shane Douglas, Tommy Dreamer, Raven, The Sandman, Cactus Jack, Terry Funk, Sabu, Public Enemy and The Tazmaniac were seen as being too dangerous for the multi-million dollar companies and were given a chance in ECW. They also helped launch the new ECW at this time. One of the promotion’s marquee feuds was the long-standing feud between Tommy Dreamer and Raven, which involved many ECW wrestlers over a period of two and a half years. Another was between Raven and the Sandman, which included the crucifixion angle, one of the most controversial angles in wrestling history.

The bulk of ECW’s shows remained at the ECW Arena, a rundown bingo hall secluded under a section of Interstate 95. Seating comprised simple folding chairs and four sets of portable bleachers, and the whole sort of unconventional set up reflected the gritty style of the wrestling itself. Shows were actually broadcast on a Philadelphia local cable sports station (SportsChannel America’s local affiliate, Sports Channel Philadelphia) on Tuesday evenings. After Sports Channel Philadelphia went off the air in 1997, the show moved to WPPX-TV 61. It later moved to a former independent broadcast station (WGTW 48) in Philadelphia on either Friday or Saturday night at 1 or 2 a.m. Due to the obscurity of the stations and ECW itself, many times expletives and violence were not edited out of these showings, helping to get ECW noticed.

After noticing ECW’s growing popularity, the “Big Two” (World Championship Wrestling and the World Wrestling Federation) started adopting their ideas and hiring away their talent. Paul Heyman believes that ECW was the first victim of the “Monday Night Wars” between WCW Monday Nitro and Monday Night RAW. While the WWF had somewhat of a working relationship with ECW (going as far as allowing cross-promotional angles, and providing financial aid to Heyman for a considerable period of time), WCW refused to even mention ECW by name (the sole exception being a passing remark by Raven in late 1996), referring to it as “barbed wire city” and “a major independent promotion” that wrestled in bingo halls during a segment directed at Diamond Dallas Page.

Vince McMahon claimed that he put Paul Heyman on the WWF’s payroll as compensation for the talent (namely Tazz, Steve Austin, Mick Foley, and The Dudley Boyz) leaving ECW for the WWF. On the other hand, Heyman believed that Eric Bischoff never compensated him for ECW bred talent such as Mikey Whipwreck, Raven, The Sandman, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, Steven Richards, Public Enemy (Johnny Grunge and Rocco Rock) and Chris Jericho leaving to go to WCW.

Cross-promotion

Storyline-wise, Vince McMahon first became “aware” of ECW while at the 1995 King of the Ring event in ECW’s home base of Philadelphia. During the match between Mabel and Savio Vega, the crowd suddenly started to angrily chant “ECW.” At the September 22, 1996 In Your House: Mind Games event in Philadelphia, ECW stars (The Sandman, Tommy Dreamer, Paul Heyman, and Taz) were on hand in the front row with Sandman even interfering in one match (when he spat beer on Savio Vega during his strap match with Justin “Hawk” Bradshaw). McMahon acknowledged ECW’s status as a local, up and coming organization on the air.

On February 24, 1997, ECW “invaded” Monday Night RAW from the Manhattan Center. They advanced a storyline, plugged their first ever pay-per-view and worked three matches in front of the WWF audience while Vince McMahon called the action with both Jerry Lawler and Paul Heyman.

The Manhattan Center in New York was peppered with a large number of ECW fans, who gave the WWF wrestlers “BO-RING” chants when they felt it was warranted. Likewise, when the ECW performers arrived, they popped and introduced the WWF Monday night audience to some trademark ECW group chants. It was said that this episode was the beginning of what would eventually be called The Attitude Era of the WWF.

After a series of struggles, on April 13, 1997, ECW broadcasted its first pay-per-view wrestling card, Barely Legal, highlighted by Terry Funk winning the ECW World Heavyweight Title.

At the 1997 Wrestlepalooza event, Jerry Lawler, a noted critic of ECW made a surprise appearance at the ECW Arena. Wrestlepalooza ’97 featured Raven’s final ECW match before leaving for WCW. In this match, Tommy Dreamer finally beat his long time nemesis Raven. Dreamer’s celebration was short-lived, though, as Jerry Lawler, along with Sabu and Rob Van Dam showed up to attack Dreamer. This set up a match between Tommy Dreamer and Jerry Lawler at the 1997 Hardcore Heaven PPV on August 17, which was won by Dreamer.

In March 2000, Mike Awesome suddenly left ECW to join WCW even though he was still the reigning ECW World Heavyweight Champion. There were rumors that Eric Bischoff wanted to drop the ECW belt in the trash can on television, as he did with the WWF Women’s title with Alundra Blayze. This led to threats of legal action from ECW, so Awesome agreed to return to ECW to drop the title to anyone – which turned out to be Tazz, who was working for the WWF at that time. This would mark the only time that a WCW contracted wrestler would wrestle against a WWF contracted wrestler in an ECW sanctioned event.

In August 1999, ECW began to broadcast nationally on TNN (for what was initially a three year contract). Despite no advertising and a low budget, ECW became TNN’s highest rated show. ECW on TNN was canceled in October 2000 (with the final episode airing on October 6, 2000) in favor of WWE RAW moving to the network.

To this day, Paul Heyman strongly believes that the lack of a national television deal (especially after the TNN ordeal) was the main cause of ECW’s demise.

Bankruptcy

ECW struggled for months after the cancellation, trying to secure a new national TV deal. On December 30, 2000, ECW Hardcore TV aired for the last time and Guilty as Charged 2001 was the last PPV aired on January 7, 2001. Living Dangerously was going to air on March 11, 2001, but because of financial trouble it was cancelled before March 11. Despite help from the WWF, Heyman could not get out of financial trouble and filed for bankruptcy on April 4, 2001.

The company was listed as having assets totaling $1,385,500. Included in that number was $860,000 in accounts receivable owed the company by iN DEMAND Network (PPV), Acclaim (video games), and Original San Francisco Toy Company (action figures). The balance of the assets were the video tape library ($500,000), a 1998 Ford Truck ($19,500) and the remaining inventory of merchandise ($4,000).

The liabilities of the company totaled $8,881,435.17. The bankruptcy filing included hundreds of claims, including production companies, buildings ECW ran in, TV stations ECW was televised on, travel agencies, phone companies, attorney’s fees, wrestlers, and other talent. Wrestlers and talent were listed, with amounts owed ranging from $0 for Sabu and Steve Corino to hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of dollars. The highest amounts owed to talents were Rob Van Dam ($150,000), Tommy Dreamer ($100,000), Joey Styles ($50,480), Shane Douglas ($48,000), and Francine ($47,275).

Revivals

Alliance storyline

A few months after the promotion’s 2001 demise, ECW resurfaced as a stable as part of the World Wrestling Federation Invasion storyline. As a participant in the inter-promotional feud between Shane McMahon’s WCW and Vince McMahon’s WWF, ECW was initially “owned” by Paul Heyman and harbored no loyalty to either promotion. Soon after, it was revealed Stephanie McMahon was ECW’s new “owner”, and she would soon conspire with her brother Shane to oust their father from his leadership position in the World Wrestling Federation. With the creation of The Alliance, the inter-promotional feud shifted into an internal power struggle among the McMahon family. The defection of WWF superstars to The Alliance continued the shift as less focus was placed on WCW and ECW performers. The feud lasted six months and concluded with WWF defeating The Alliance at the 2001 Survivor Series. The WWF’s victory also marked the end of the Invasion storyline, and WCW and ECW wrestlers were reintegrated into the WWF.

Documentaries

In the summer of 2003, WWE purchased ECW’s assets in bankruptcy court, acquiring the rights to ECW’s video library. They used this video library to put together a two-disc DVD entitled The Rise and Fall of ECW. The set was released in November 2004. The main feature of the DVD was a three-hour documentary on the company’s history, with the other disc featuring matches from the promotion. The DVD sold well, and is currently ranked as WWE’s second highest-selling DVD of all time, behind WrestleMania 21.

An unauthorized DVD called Forever Hardcore was produced by former WCW crew member Jeremy Borash in response to The Rise and Fall of ECW. The DVD had stories of wrestlers who were not employed by WWE telling their side of ECW’s history.

Reunion shows

The strong sales of both The Rise and Fall of ECW and Forever Hardcore prompted both World Wrestling Entertainment and Shane Douglas to run ECW reunion shows in 2005. Douglas’s first Hardcore Homecoming show was held before WWE’s ECW One Night Stand and subsequently went on tour.

Lawsuits

Mass Transit

On November 23, 1996, aspiring wrestler Eric Kulas teamed with D-Von Dudley to wrestle The Gangstas. Substituting for Axl Rotten, Kulas was beaten with various weapons and suffered a deep cut as a result of blading incident by his opponent New Jack. Kulas sued ECW and New Jack for physical and psychological damage claiming they were unaware the match was going to be a hardcore match. Furthermore, criminal charges were filed by the State of Massachusetts against New Jack. During the civil trial, it was revealed that Kulas and his father lied that Kulas was 19 years old instead of 17. Also, Kulas had misrepresented his wrestling experience by stating he was trained by retired wrestler Killer Kowalski. In the end, ECW and New Jack were acquitted of the charges, however, ECW suffered long term repercussions. The lawsuit delayed the broadcast of ECW’s first pay-per-view after distributors viewed video of the incident. Eric Kulas died on May 12, 2002 at the age of 22 due to complications from gastric bypass surgery.

Tod Gordon

In December 2005, Eastern Championship Wrestling founder Tod Gordon challenged WWE’s ownership of the Eastern Championship Wrestling section of the ECW video library, claiming that the state didn’t have the right to sell that section of the video library to Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Entertainment. He also claims that Eastern Championship Wrestling, Inc. was separate from Extreme Championship Wrestling. On May 8, 2006 the case was thrown out and Gordon plans to appeal the decision. Tod Gordon is now one of the owners of Pro Wrestling Unplugged, running out of the New Alhambra Arena.

Tradition

There were several distinctive fans that were always in the front row at ECW shows. Among them were Sign Guy,Tye Dye Guy, Hat Guy(also known in the Philadelphia area as Straw Hat), Faith No More Guy, and Kato. They gained their respective nicknames because Sign Guy always had different creative signs with him, Hat Guy always wore a straw hat and Hawaiian shirt, Faith No More Guy bore an uncanny resemblance to “Big” Jim Martin, former guitarist for rock band Faith No More and Kato resembled OJ Simpson house guest Kato Kaelin. Regular patrons of ECW Arena events were given Club ECW status by the promotion and were able to reserve seats ahead of the general public. Many members of Club ECW were present at Shane Douglas’s 2005 Hardcore Homecoming shows in Philadelphia, and at ECW One Night Stand.

Crowds at ECW events were well known for their rowdiness and distinctive chants that either supported or demeaned what was transpiring in the ring. ECW Chants such as “You fucked up” and “Holy shit” became infamous during those shows, and are still used by fans of other promotions.

In ECW, there were virtually no rules. Weapons were abundant, with much blood spilled. There were referees, but their role was normally limited to counting pinfalls and acknowledging submissions, occasionally performing tag team maneuvers with a wrestler during the match, several times becoming the winner of the match themselves though not officially a part of the bout.

ECW was known for making popular several types of matches:

Barbed Wire Match
Flaming Tables Match
Singapore Cane Match
Stairway to Hell Match
Three-Way Dance
ECW was also infamous for regularly holding Bring Your Own Weapon Nights at the ECW Arena in the early days of the promotion. Fans were encouraged to bring their own weapons to give to wrestlers, as fighting in the crowd was a staple of ECW matches. A dollar store located next to the ECW Arena often supplied the bulk of the weapons, with fans purchasing them while they waited in line for each show. Memorable weapons included crutches, a large piece of cardboard with the words “Use Me!” handwritten on it but actually concealing a full-sized Stop sign, a two-man kayak, a Leonard Cohen vinyl record, a VCR (with remote), and a Nintendo Entertainment System. An accident actually helped put an end to Bring Your Own Weapon Night when wrestler Cactus Jack, believing the weapon he was holding to be an inexpensive aluminum pan, swung the object full force into The Sandman’s head. When he heard the resulting “clang” noise, he realized the object was in fact a cast-iron skillet, and The Sandman’s resulting injury put him out of action for two weeks.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

World Championship Wrestling (WCW) was an American professional wrestling promotion which, in its proper form, existed from 1988 to 2001. Although the name “World Championship Wrestling” had been used as a brand and television show name by various National Wrestling Alliance (NWA)-affiliated promotions (most notably Georgia Championship Wrestling and Jim Crockett Promotions) since 1983, it was not until five years later that an actual NWA-affiliated promotion called World Championship Wrestling appeared on the national scene, under the ownership of Atlanta, Georgia-based media mogul Ted Turner.

For the entirety of its existence as a separate promotion, WCW was the chief rival of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE), and even the owners of its NWA-affiliated forerunner promotions regarded the WWF as their major competitor. At the outset of WCW’s existence, as well as with the promotions that came before it, the company was strongly identified with the Southern style of professional wrestling (or rasslin’), which emphasized athletic in-ring competition over the showmanship and cartoonish characters of the WWF . This identification persisted into the 1990s, even as the company signed former WWF stars such as Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. WCW dominated pro wrestling’s television ratings from 1996 to 1998, mainly due to its incredibly popular New World Order (nWo) storyline, but thereafter began to lose heavy ground to the WWF, which had recovered greatly due to its new WWF “Attitude” branding. The promotion began losing large amounts of money, leading to parent company AOL Time Warner selling the name, copyrights and tape library to the WWF for $4.3 million in 2001 [3].

History

The NWA years

Although World Championship Wrestling was a brand name used by promoter Jim Barnett for his Australian promotion,[4] the first promotion in the United States to use the World Championship Wrestling brand name (though it was never referred to as “WCW”) on a wide scale was Georgia Championship Wrestling (GCW, although Vincent J. McMahon’s Northeast-based Capitol Wrestling Corporation, then also affiliated with the NWA, also sometimes used the name in house show promotion). GCW, owned primarily by Jack Brisco and Gerald Brisco and booked by Ole Anderson, was the first NWA territory to gain cable TV access.

In 1982, Vince McMahon Jr. purchased his father’s Capitol Wrestling Corporation. The CWC changed its name to the WWF and became the top promotion in North America, and GCW devised the name “World Championship Wrestling” in an effort to compete. In 1982, GCW changed the name of its television show (and thus its public face) to World Championship Wrestling since it was already starting to run shows in “neutral” territories such as Ohio and Michigan. These efforts helped to keep GCW competitive against the WWF, as both promotions had secured TV deals and were trying to become national, as opposed to regional, entities. The change in name helped make GCW the top promotion once again, until the WWF was able to officially leave the NWA and create the show WWF All American Wrestling. The NWA, led by President Jim Crockett, countered by creating Starrcade in the fall of 1983, thus propelling it back to the top, but Vince McMahon again regained the lead with Hulk Hogan’s dramatic World title victory at Madison Square Garden in January 1984.[7], as well as the creation of the television show Tuesday Night Titans.

On April 9, 1984, the Brisco brothers sold their shares in GCW, including their prime time slot on the TBS cable TV network, to Vince McMahon. However, GCW’s core audience was not interested in the WWF’s cartoonish approach, preferring a more athletic style. As a result, when GCW’s faithful television viewers tuned into TBS on July 14, 1984 and saw WWF programming instead of the GCW wrestlers they were used to seeing, they were outraged, and sent many complaints to the network, demanding the return of GCW. This day has since gone down in wrestling lore as Black Saturday. Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that, despite originally promising to produce original programming for the TBS timeslot, McMahon chose instead to provide only a clip show for TBS featuring highlights from other WWF programming, a move which angered network head Ted Turner and was a major factor in his decision to discontinue showing the WWF on his network. Luckily for Turner, Ole Anderson had refused to sell his shares in GCW to the WWF, and he teamed with fellow holdout shareholders Fred Ward and Ralph Freed to create Championship Wrestling from Georgia. Turner quickly secured a TV deal with the new promotion, as well as with Bill Watts’ Mid-South Wrestling.

Jim Crockett Promotions

In March 1985, McMahon sold his TBS timeslot to Jim Crockett Promotions [11] (owned by Jim Crockett, Jr.) under pressure from Ted Turner, who resurrected the World Championship Wrestling name (Turner Broadcasting had copyrighted it and prevented McMahon from using it). The WWF and Hulk Hogan, however, were now the superior figures of wrestling after the success of WrestleMania I, so the sale took place to successfully put the company in better shape. The new WCW, which was now a combination of Jim Crockett Promotions (Mid Atlantic Wrestling) and Championship Wrestling from Georgia, was now the top show on TBS, and Jim Crockett Jr. became NWA President for the second time.[12]

By 1986, Jim Crockett, Jr. controlled key portions of the NWA 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, promoting under the banner of the National Wrestling Alliance (in fact, JCP virtually became synonymous with “the NWA”). A feud between Crockett and Vince McMahon’s WWF sprang up, and both companies attempted to outmaneuver the other to acquire key TV slots. It was the WWF, however, who was able to become a big hit in St. Louis (and the rest of Missouri as well), which brought trouble to the NWA Central States. The WWF was able to become a hit across the country as well, as the feud between Hulk Hogan and Paul Orndorff appealed to a large audience. Following this, Bob Geigel became the NWA President once again.[12]

In the same year, JCP also purchased Heart of America Sports Attractions Inc. (HASA),[13] promoters of the the Central States territory, which owned the rights to promote wrestling shows through several central states (Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa).

A national promotion

In 1987, JCP would enter into agreement to control Championship Wrestling from Florida (though JCP never bought that company), and Universal Wrestling Federation (which covered Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana), and which was not an NWA member; this helped make him NWA President once again. The Florida & Mid-South territories (along with those companies’ rosters of wrestlers) were absorbed into JCP. Jim Crockett now owned NWA St Louis, the UWF, his own Jim Crockett Promotions, Georgia Championship Wrestling, Central States Wrestling, Championship Wrestling from Georgia and the CWF as well.[14]

Crockett had almost accomplished his goal of creating a national promotion. Between his purchasing several NWA territories, World Class Championship Wrestling in Texas leaving the NWA[15] in 1986 (and later merging with Jerry Jarrett’s Championship Wrestling Alliance in Memphis to create the United States Wrestling Association brand)[16], 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 Jim Crockett Promotions was the NWA. Although JCP and the NWA were still two separate entities, with Crockett as NWA President, they were very much on the same page. The NWA was effectively an on-paper organization funded by Crockett, and allowed Crockett to use the NWA brand name for promoting.

With the large amount of capital needed to take a wrestling federation on a national tour, Crockett’s territorial acquisitions had seriously drained JCP’s coffers.[17] 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 series of PPVs. Crockett marketed Starrcade ’87 as the NWA’s answer to WrestleMania. However, the WWF-promoted Survivor Series 1987 on the same day. The WWF informed cable companies that if they chose to carry Starrcade, they would not be allowed to carry future WWF events [18] . The vast majority of companies showed Survivor Series (only three opted to remain loyal to their contract with Crockett). In January 1988, JCP promoted the Bunkhouse Stampede PPV, and McMahon counter-programmed with the first Royal Rumble on USA Network. Both NWA PPVs achieved low buyrates and the resulting financial blow due to the low buyates both Starrcade and Bunkhouse Stampede were in many ways both the beginning of the end for Jim Crockett Promotions and the birth of WCW in which would take Jim Crockett Promotions’ place. In addition, the decision to hold these events in Chicago and New York alienated the Crockett’s main fanbase in the Carolinas, hampering their drawing power for arena shows in the Southeast. [19]

Dusty Rhodes as booker

In 1985, Crockett had signed Dusty Rhodes and made him booker for JCP. Rhodes had a reputation for creativity and authored many of the memorable feuds and storylines of this period and gimmick matches like WarGames. By 1988, after three years of trying to compete with Vince McMahon, and a long, drawn-out political struggle with champion Ric Flair, Rhodes was burned out [20] . Fans were getting tired of the “Charlotte Clique” (Rhodes, Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Nikita Koloff among others), and the Dusty finish (and other non-endings for shows) had obliterated the once-profitable house show market. One of the last creative things Dusty Rhodes could do was create the first Clash of The Champions, on the night of WrestleMania IV, and gained a high amount of viewers- even over WrestleMania IV, for a whole quarter-hour- as the Ric Flair vs. Sting match continued to take place; and as an epic match, that also made Sting now a top player for WCW; However, this main event match ended long before the four-hour WrestleMania IV ended, and people soon afterwards saw Randy Savage win his first WWF title, and insured more victory for the WWF. By the end of 1988, Rhodes was booking cards seemingly at random, and planning at one point to have mid-card wrestler Rick Steiner defeat Ric Flair in a five-minute match at Starrcade for the NWA World Championship. At the end of 1988, Rhodes was fired by the promotion after an angle he booked where Road Warrior Animal pulled a spike out of his shoulder pad and jammed it in Rhodes’s eye busting it wide open, despite a strict “no-blood” policy laid down by Turner after his recent purchase of the company.[21]

WCW Under Ted Turner: The Early Years

To preserve the inexpensive network programming provided by professional wrestling, Jim Crockett Promotions was purchased outright by Turner on November 21, 1988. Originally incorporated by TBS as the Universal Wrestling Corporation, Turner promised the fans that WCW would be the athlete-oriented style of NWA.

Despite this influx of talent, WCW soon began working to gradually incorporate much of the glamour 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[22], the Chamber of Horrors gimmick and the notorious Black Scorpion[23] storyline- succeeded. Behind the scenes, WCW was 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 recognize its own WCW World Heavyweight Championship and WCW World Tag Team Championship.

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 after failed contract negotiations. In the process, they officially stripped him of the WCW World Heavyweight Championship[24]. However, according to Flair’s autobiography, they refused to return the $25,000 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”.

WCW later renegotiated the use of the NWA name as a co-promotional gimmick with New Japan Pro Wrestling, and sued 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 returned to WCW by Flair when Jim Herd was let go and he received his deposit back plus interest, and it was brought back as the revived NWA World Heavyweight Championship.

Final split with the NWA

During the period that WCW operated with its own World Champion while also recognizing the NWA’s world title, Flair would later leave the WWF on good terms and returned to WCW, regaining the title from Barry Windham in July 1993[24]. Immediately, the other, now smaller, member organizations of the NWA began 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 Rick Rude, a title change which was exposed by the Disney Tapings, the months-in-advance taping of WCW’s syndicated television shows at Disney-owned studios in Orlando, Florida. The NWA board of directors, working separately from WCW, objected to Rude, with WCW finally leaving the NWA for good again in September 1993.

However, WCW still legally owned and used the actual belt which represented the NWA World Heavyweight Championship (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 (meaning the World heavyweight championship as sanctioned by “WCW International,” a fictional organization made up of promoters from around the world, essentially their in-house version of the real NWA).[25]

WCW realized that the title belt, because of its rich in-ring history and visual impact, was highly sought after and respected in Japan and as such created this fictional subsidiary dubbed WCW International to inject some credibility back into the belt. WCW claimed that “WCWI” still recognized the belt as a legitimate World Championship. For a short while, there were essentially two World titles up for competition in the organization.

Sting eventually won the WCW International Championship and lost the belt to then-WCW World Champion Ric Flair in a unification match[26] on June 23, 1994 when the experiment was jettisoned. The Big Gold belt (or “Big Goldy”) was then used to represent the lone World title in the company. 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). WWE considers it a separate title and WWE.com officially lists the title history of the World Heavyweight Championship as beginning with Triple H being awarded the belt by Eric Bischoff on RAW on September 2, 2002,[27] however they also cite the older title (and NWA World Title) as being part of its lineage. [28]

The Eric Bischoff era begins

The creative product of the company sank very noticeably in 1991 and 1992 under the presidency of Jim Herd and, subsequently, Bill Watts. There were signs of gradual recovery in early 1993 when former commentator Eric Bischoff was appointed as Executive Vice President of 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 unconfrontational tactics and business savvy.[29]

Bischoff’s first year running the company was considered extremely unsuccessful. Dusty Rhodes and Ole Anderson were still in full creative control at this point, and under their watch WCW presented cartoonish storylines as well as seemingly pointless feuds with little or no buildup (for instance, the “Lost in Cleveland” and “Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal” angles involving Cactus Jack and Sting respectively, as well as the “White Castle of Fear” and Beach Blast mini-movies).[30]

The summertime saw the company’s reputation take another hit due to a mishap at a live televised event. In 1993, Ric Flair returned to WCW from his WWF tenure, but was constrained by a no-compete clause from his WWF contract. In response, WCW gave him a talk show segment on its television shows called “A Flair for the Gold,” in the mold of the old “Piper’s Pit” segments from 1980s WWF programming starring Rowdy Roddy Piper. During a segment of the talk show on an August Clash of the Champions event building up the Fall Brawl PPV, WCW decided to introduce a “mystery partner” for the babyfaces, a masked man known as The Shockmaster. The Shockmaster (previously known as “Typhoon” in the WWF) was supposed to crash through a fake wall and intimidate the heels. Instead, he tripped through the wall and fell on his face on live television, inadvertently rendering himself a joke character (despite winning some matches).

Late in 1993, WCW decided to once again base the promotion around Ric Flair. This was seen as more or less a necessity after prospective top babyface Sid Vicious was involved in an incident with Arn Anderson (which resulted in hospitalisation of both men)[31] while on tour in England, four weeks before Starrcade, and was fired. Flair won the title at Starrcade and was once again made booker.[32]

Beginning of aggressive competition with the WWF

Beginning in 1994, Bischoff declared open war on McMahon’s WWF in the media and aggressively recruited high-profile former WWF superstars such as Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage to work for WCW. Using Turner’s monetary resources, Bischoff placed his faith in established 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 over their characters. This would later become a problem 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 friendship with Bischoff. Another thing Bischoff may have failed to consider was the fact that many WCW fans (especially those who had followed the company since its NWA days) watched it as an alternative product to the WWF that focused on in-ring action as opposed to cartoonish characters and storylines. As such, these fans viewed Bischoff’s signing of former WWF talent as an attempt to copy its success instead of remaining true to the idea of WCW being an alternative to the WWF.

Nevertheless, WCW’s first major PPV event since Hogan’s hiring, Bash at the Beach, saw the former WWF mainstay cleanly defeat Ric Flair for the WCW World championship. 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 buyrate by WCW standards due to mainstream intrigue and hype. Despite being a critical and financial success, the glory would not last long, as the Hogan/Flair feud was only a one-off match and the hoped for long-term effects on PPV buyrates and ratings did not materialize. Turner management came to this realization when they checked up on the state of the company in mid-1995. Hence, Bischoff called Turner and requested a private meeting, which he was granted.

The company was, at one point, losing $10 million dollars a year, but Bischoff turned that around into $350 million in sales and $40 million in profit.[33]

WCW Monday Nitro

Bischoff would be instrumental in launching the weekly show WCW Monday Nitro, which debuted on September 4, 1995 live from the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.[34][35] Turner asked Bischoff how WCW could conceivably compete with McMahon’s WWF. Bischoff, not expecting Turner to comply, said that the only way would be a primetime slot on a weekday night, possibly up against WWF’s flagship show, Monday Night RAW. Turner granted him a live hour on TNT every Monday night, which specifically overlapped with RAW. [36] 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.

Scott Hall and Eric Bischoff.The initial broadcast also featured the re-debut of Lex Luger to the WCW audience,[37] who had been absent since the very early ’90′s. WCW’s coup of obtaining Luger was significant for several reasons. Because Nitro was live at the time, premiering major stars on the show would signal to the fans the amount of excitement the broadcasts would contain. Also, Luger had just come off a successful run in WWF; and was at one time one of the company’s top stars.[38] Finally, because Luger had been employed with WWF as recently as a week prior to his Nitro appearance, WCW fans would be intrigued to see others possibly “jump ship.”

Dominance

The tide began to turn in WCW’s favor on Memorial Day 1996 when Scott Hall (who wrestled as Razor Ramon in WWF) interrupted a match by walking down through the crowd into the ring. He delivered his famous “You want a war?” speech, stating that he and two of his associates were going to “take over.” Hall challenged the best WCW wrestlers to stand up and defend the company against their onslaught. This officially kicked off the nWo storyline.[39]

The next week, Hall reappeared on Nitro and pestered the WCW announcers. Sting confronted him, and was rewarded with a toothpick in the face for his efforts. Sting retaliated by slapping Hall across the face, and in response Hall promised Sting a “little… no… BIG surprise” the next week in Wheeling, West Virginia. This surprise ended up being Hall’s good friend and former WWF World Heavyweight Champion Kevin Nash, and in the weeks following Hall and Nash were collectively referred to as “The Outsiders.” Both men took to showing up unexpectedly during Nitro broadcasts, usually jumping wrestlers backstage, distracting wrestlers by standing in the entranceways of arenas, or walking around in the audience. Within a couple of weeks, they announced the forthcoming appearance of a mysterious third member.

The nWo formation.

At Bash at the Beach, Hall and Nash were scheduled to team with their mystery partner against Lex Luger, Randy Savage and Sting. At the onset of the match, Hall and Nash came out without a third man, telling Announcer “Mean” Gene Okerlund that he was “in the building”, but that they did not need him yet. Shortly into the match, a Stinger Splash resulted in Luger being crushed behind Kevin Nash, and being taken away on a stretcher, reducing the match to The Outsiders vs. Sting and Savage. Hall and Nash took control of the match when Hulk Hogan came to the ring. After standing off with The Outsiders for a moment, he suddenly attacked Savage, showing himself to be the Outsider’s mysterious third man. Giving an interview with Okerlund directly after the match, Hogan claimed the reason for the turn was that he was tired of fans that had turned on him. Hogan labeled the new faction a “new world order of professional wrestling”, beginning a feud between wrestlers loyal to WCW and the nWo. The fans in attendance were so outraged at Hogan’s betrayal that they pelted the ring with debris, such as paper cups and plastic bottles, for the duration of his interview. One fan even jumped the security railing and tried to attack Hogan in the ring, but was quickly subdued by Hall, Nash, and arena security.[40]

Shortly after, the World Wrestling Federation filed a lawsuit, alleging that the New World Order storyline implied that Hall and Nash were invaders sent by Vince McMahon to destroy WCW, despite the fact that Bischoff asked Nash point blank on camera at a WCW show “Are you employed by the WWF?” to which Nash emphatically replied “No.” Another reason for the lawsuit was WWF claimed Scott Hall acted in a manner too similar to the character Razor Ramon which was owned by WWF. The lawsuit would drag out for several years before being settled out of court. One of the settlement’s terms was the right for the WWF to bid on WCW’s properties, should they ever be up for liquidation; a settlement that would prove invaluable in 2001.

Largely due to the events described above, Nitro would defeat RAW for 84 consecutive weeks. During this time, WCW would, though infrequently, “give away” the endings to pre-taped matches on RAW during it’s live Nitro broadcast, adding fuel to the bad feeling between the two companies.

Starrcade 1997

In 1997, WCW entered its peak, largely due to the nWo storyline. During that time, the nWo feuded with the revived (and face-turned) Four Horsemen as well as returning WCW hero Sting (who now had a gimmick that resembled The Crow). The latter feud served to build up the Starrcade pay-per-view in December. When WCW delivered the Sting vs. Hogan match for the WCW World Championship, the PPV drew WCW’s biggest buyrate and Bischoff was largely praised in the months leading up to this pay-per-view because of his refusal to “hotshot” (give away a big money PPV match before proper build up, causing a lesser buy rate) Sting vs. Hogan for the WCW World Title.[41]

However, some wrestling fans consider this show to be the beginning of the end for WCW, even though WCW was dominating the WWF in the television ratings at the time.[42] Hogan was heavily criticized for not doing a clean finish to the match, which confused and irritated fans who had waited over a year to see Sting take down the nWo. The finish actually involved a recently-introduced Bret Hart (who had refereed the preceding match between Bischoff and Larry Zbyszko for control of Monday Nitro) coming down to the ring after Hogan had supposedly won the match. Hart alleged that referee Nick Patrick had performed a fast count on Sting, and wanted to “make things right.”[43] Although, according to Eric Bischoff, in his book Controversy Creates Ca$h the count looked like a normal count. Bret Hart insisted the match continue (with himself as referee) in order to prevent Sting from being “screwed” just like he had been in the WWF with the Montreal screwjob.

Signs of a decline

When Hart left the WWF after the Montreal Screwjob at the 1997 Survivor Series, it looked as though WCW was in position to push the WWF straight into perpetual ratings ruin. WCW seemingly possessed the biggest stars in the industry, such as Hogan, Savage, Sting, Flair, Hart, Hall, and Nash. In addition, the company also had credible midcard stars such as Chris Benoit and Raven, as well as an exciting cruiserweight division featuring high-flying competitors from Mexico (the luchadors) and Japan as well as the United States and Canada. However, things would not unfold as WCW had planned.

Popular opinion was that the Screwjob and the acquisition of Hart were deathblows for the WWF and major victories for WCW. The combination of a company screwing over a popular wrestler and angering many fans should have dealt a massive blow to the WWF and given WCW a great amount of hype to work with. However, after WrestleMania XIV in March 1998, Vince McMahon regained the lead in the Monday Night Wars with his new WWF “Attitude” branding, led in particular by rising stars “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H, and Mankind. The classic feud between McMahon (who was re-branded as the evil company chairman) and Austin (who Bischoff had released via telephone by in the summer of 1995[44]) captured the imagination of fans. The April 13, 1998 episode of RAW, headlined by a match between Austin and McMahon, marked the first time that WCW lost the head-to-head Monday night ratings battle in 84 weeks (since 1996). The WWF did not stop there – their ratings increased to unprecendented levels over the next two years. 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 launched a brand new Thursday night show on TBS, WCW Thunder, in January of 1998.

A television ratings comparison for the period of the Monday Night WarsWCW’s next big attempt to regain ratings supremacy was by marketing ex-NFL player Bill Goldberg as an invincible monster with a record-breaking winning streak. Goldberg was 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 genuine wins in the Monday night ratings war was on July 6, 1998, when WCW aired the long-awaited World Title match in Atlanta between Hogan and Goldberg (which Goldberg won), on free television. This significantly increased the rating for the show, but only for that week.[46] 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 ran longer than the time allocated because of the last-minute addition of a Tag Team Title match. As a result, several thousand people lost their PPV feed at 11pm during the World Title match between Diamond Dallas Page and Goldberg.[47] The following night, WCW decided to correct the fault by airing the entire match for free on Nitro and won the ratings war for the final time.

At this time, Kevin Nash was in charge of booking the shows. After winning the World War 3 battle royal in November 1998, he went on to end Goldberg’s winning streak and win the World Title on the Starrcade PPV just one month later. Then came the infamous “fingerpoke of doom” match between Nash and Hogan in January 1999. The match was originally advertised as a Starrcade rematch between Nash and Goldberg. As a result, the Georgia Dome in Atlanta was a complete sellout, with over 40,000 people watching live expecting to see the rematch. Throughout the broadcast the announcers hyped the main event as being the “biggest match in the history of our sport” and said that “unlike the other guys, we have a real main event.” Instead, Goldberg was forced to forego his title match and was replaced by Hogan. Hogan knocked Nash to the mat by poking him in the chest with one finger and then pinning him, winning the World Heavyweight Title and further damaging the credibility of it as a result.[49] This outcome also damaged the credibility of the company as a whole, having failed to present the advertised match and using underhand tactics to sell out the arena for that night’s telecast. On the same episode of Nitro, Tony Schiavone mockingly announced Mick Foley’s WWF Title win, which ended up being counter-productive as Nielsen ratings showed that over 100,000 households[50] changed channel to watch the historic victory and shifted the ratings for the night in the WWF’s favor.

Decline

WCW slid into a period of extravagant overspending and what was viewed almost universally as creative decline, though the reasons and people responsible are still a matter of debate. One possible reason was the overuse of celebrities (such as Dennis Rodman[52] and Jay Leno[53]) to wrestle PPV matches. Another was that WCW’s credibility was badly damaged by embarrassing product placement, like Rick Steiner trading barbs with Chucky the killer doll (which was roundly booed by the in-house audience on the live Nitro broadcast) in the hopes of generating interest in the 1998 film Bride of Chucky.[54] Yet another possible reason was the fact that the top-level stars had no motivation to excel in the ring due to their long-term guaranteed-money contracts, only giving their utmost when it suited them to do so. What is known is that WCW programming slowly started to go downhill in quality, with people turning off their TVs or switching to WWF programming, and in reaction the company began to panic and tried to solve its problems by throwing money at a variety of personalities, a practice it could ill-afford to engage in. Many talents were reportedly signed simply to keep them from appearing on WWF television. At one point, WCW held over 260 individual performers under guaranteed contracts, and often paid many of them to simply stay at home and collect a paycheck.

Also in 1998, The Ultimate Warrior, a former WWF star, was recruited by Eric Bischoff to feud with Hogan (Warrior’s WrestleMania VI opponent). Their October 1998 encounter at Halloween Havoc was mostly seen as sub-par[55], 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 promote its younger stars to the company’s top slots. Despite having many talented younger wrestlers like Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Billy Kidman, Chavo Guerrero, Jr., Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, Raven, Booker T, and Rey Mysterio, Jr. on its roster, they were kept away from the main event scene.

Bischoff was eventually removed from control of the promotion on September 10, 1999, after a failed push for the 1970s rock group KISS through WCW shows, and a storyline involving rapper Master P and The No Limit Soldiers.[57] The “No Limit Soldiers” stable flopped so badly that the West Texas Rednecks heel stable that they were feuding with was cheered by the WCW’s traditional southern fanbase).[58] An announced “million-dollar contest” was later cancelled [59] and a planned Nitro animated series was scrapped, as well.

Another factor that led to the demise of the WCW, which has largely gone unnoticed, is that unlike Nitro, the locations WCW hired for their PPV events had capacities much lower than could have been sold. WCW staged some of their biggest wrestling matches in arenas with only moderate capacity. For example, the much awaited encounter between Randy Savage and Ric Flair at the 1995 Great American Bash was scheduled at the Hara Arena, in Dayton, Ohio, which had a capacity of only 6,000 seats. Similarly, the match between Sting and The Giant for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship at the 1996 Slamboree took place at the Riverside Centroplex in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where less than 8,000 seats were available.

Bischoff replaced by Russo

Bischoff was unexpectedly replaced by former WWF head writer Vince Russo and his colleague Ed Ferrara. Russo and Ferrera had been writers involved in the creation of the WWF “Attitude” era, but billed themselves as the brains behind the operation. 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.

Russo and Ferrera struggled to gain approval for their near-the-knuckle ideas from WCW management, such as a Novermber 15 1999 “Piñata on a Pole” match[64] between Mexican wrestlers. In late 1999, Russo and Ferrera revived the nWo storyline, this time with Jeff Jarrett and Bret Hart at the helm. They next targeted WWF announcer Jim Ross with a parody character called “Oklahoma,” who was played onscreen by Ferrera (Ross suffered 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 a storyline that was written by Russo. Russo himself became an on-screen character during this period, though one whose face was never shown on camera, in a manner similar to Doctor Claw from Inspector Gadget and the George Steinbrenner character from Seinfeld. 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 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, because of the real-life personal issues between himself and Sullivan (Sullivan’s wife Nancy had left him for Benoit) , let alone that prior to the PPV he and a few other wrestlers demanded their releases from the company, Benoit handed the belt back right after winning it and the next day left WCW. He signed with the WWF along with his similarly frustrated friends Perry Saturn, Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko. The four quickly became popular in the WWF as “The Radicalz.”

On February 11, 2000, 12 wrestlers including African American Harrison Norris and Japanese manager Sonny Onoo launched racial discrimination lawsuits against WCW, claiming that, as a result of their ethnicities, they had not been pushed, 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) in their battle against the Millionaires 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 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 [80](which was eventually dismissed in 2002). Bischoff vanished once more in July 2000, and Russo was gone from WCW completely by late 2000, leaving Terry Taylor holding the reins.

Meanwhile, when Time Warner bought out Turner’s cable empire in 1996, it also purchased WCW. Even though Turner was 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 unnecessary drain on resources.

In late 2000, Bischoff and a group of private investors, calling themselves Fusient Media Ventures, inquired about buying WCW and indeed a deal was reported to be in place. However Fusient backed out when Turner networks head (and The WB founder) Jamie Kellner formally cancelled all WCW programming from its TV networks[84]. 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, all of WCW’s trademarks and archived footage, as well as twenty-five of the lower-tier-to-mid-card wrestler contracts was sold to Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. [86]

Acquisition by the World Wrestling Federation

A gloating McMahon opened the last-ever episode of WCW Monday Nitro simulcast with RAW on March 26, 2001 with a self-praising speech.[87] US Champion Booker T cleanly defeated the world champion, Scott Steiner[88], to become WCW’s final World Heavyweight Champion, as well as its final US Heavyweight Champion. Sting vs. Ric Flair (won by Sting) was the highlight nostalgia match of the final broadcast, ending affectionately with a respectful embrace.

When the WWF bought WCW in March 2001, several top WCW wrestlers, including Flair, Goldberg, Kevin Nash, and Sting had high-priced contracts with AOL Time Warner that the WWF was unwilling to pick up.[90] WCW was not seen as a powerhouse organization invading the WWF when most of their top stars did not appear. However, all of the above wrestlers except Sting eventually signed contracts with the WWF/E after the Invasion subsided.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Survivor Series “screwjob” is an event in World Wrestling Federation which will remain in the minds of many for a long time. The following is a detailed account of what happened before, during and after the match in question. To best explain and describe one of the most infamous sagas in all of professional wrestling, we have posted an article by professional wrestling journalist, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer and credit goes to him for this.

It will go down in history as the single most famous finish of a pro wrestling match in the modern era. Twenty or thirty years from now this story, more than any famous wrestler jumping promotions, more than and prominent death, and more than any record setting house, will be remembered vividly by all who watched it live, and remembered as legendary from all who hear about it later. Through the magic of video tape, the last minute of this match will live forever and be replayed literally millions of times by ten of thousands of people all looking for the most minute pieces of detail to this strange puzzle. But the story of what led to those few seconds starts more than one year ago, far more reminiscent of the dirty con man past of the industry than the current attempted facade of a multi-million dollar corporate above board image those in the industry like to portray outwardly that it has evolved into

October 20, 1996 – Bret Hart was in a hotel room in San Jose, Ca, hours from making the biggest decision of his life – who would win the biggest bidding war in the history of pro wrestling. He had pretty well leaned toward staying with the World Wrestling Federation despite a much larger offer from World Championship Wrestling, but had changed his mind a few times over the previous two weeks as each side presented new offers. In the waining hours, Eric Bishoff and Kevin Nash were trying to convince him to change his mind and how great life was with an easier schedule. Bischoff was offering big money and a shot at becoming a movie star, a goal Hart had been pursuing while on semince McMahon was offering him, in the now immortal words of Arn Anderson, not just a spot but the top spot in the company, and almost literally to be WWF 4 life. Many close advisers of Hart’s tried to tell him going to WCW was the best move for his present, and more importantly his future after wrestling. But largely out of loyalty, and that obviously wasn’t the only factor involved, he declined the offer. McMahon, not to lose a very public fight, offered him the famous 20-year contract where he’d, after retirement in about three years, become almost a first lieutenant when it came to the booking process. Hart would earn somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5 million per year as an active wrestler, and a healthy but far lesser figure working in the front office for the 17 years after retirement as an active wrestler. As part of McMahon’s offer, he also was going to allow Hart to explain live on television his decision making process, should he sign with WCW. Hart flew to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where the WWF was holding it’s live Raw taping after having already verbally agreed to the deal, signed the contract, and gave the interview saying basically that he would be in the WWF forever, figuring to be positioned as the top babyface and perennial champion until he finished his active career riding off into the sunset in a blaze of glory, like Hog an and Savage and the rest of the Superstars before him didn’t. As is the case in wrestling, not all the promised scenarios that everyone believed were going to happen transpire as originally planned. And just over one year later, the feelings between McMahon and Bret Hart had taken a 180 degree turn, to the degree nobody would have ever believed.

March 10, 1996 – Top babyface didn’t last long as McMahon asked him to turn heel. At first Hart balked at the idea but after three days, McMahon presented him with two lists. One list was his prospective opponents as a babyface – Vader, Mankind, and Steve Austin. the other list was his prospective opponents as a heel, Undertaker, Michaels, and Austin. Hart agreed for drawing money. His opponents as a heel made up a better list and he and McMahon agreed that he would turn back babyface over the last few months of his contract and end his career on a positive note. He and Steve Austin did the double-turn at Wrestlemania. Hart himself then came up with the Anti-American angle, where he would remain a babyface in Canada and Europe and do interviews that would for the most part speak the truth, so he could, when the time came to turn back in the U.S., have a reasonable explanation.

September 8, 1997 – Vince McMahon and Bret Hart had their first meeting where McMahon seriously approached Hart about his contract. About three months earlier, McMahon had told Hart that the company was in bad financial straights and that they might have to defer some of the money until later in the contract. This time his approach was more than point blank. He wanted to cut Hart’s regular salary, around $30,000 per week, more than in half and defer the rest of the money until later in the contract period when hopefully the company would be in better shape financially. Hart declined the suggestion, because he didn’t want to risk not getting the money in the future after he was through taking all the bumps.

September 20, 1997 – About one hour before the beginning of the PPV show in Birmingham, England, McMahon approached Davey Boy Smith and asked him to put over Shawn Michaels that night for the European title. Smith was apparently shocked, having been told all along in the build-up of the show, that Michaels was going to do a job for him, since Europe was promised to be “his territory”. the explanation, which made and still makes logical business sense, is that they wanted to build for a bigger show – a second PPV show from Manchester, England, Smith’s former home town, where Smith would regain the title – the same scenario the WWF did to draw 60,000 fans in San Antonio with Michaels in the other role working a program with Sycho Sid. So while it all made sense, it was rather strange he wasn’t approached with this idea until just before the start of the show. At around this same time period, McMahon approached Hart about working with Michaels. Hart said that he had a problem with that since Michaels had still n ever really apologized to him for the Sunny days comment, and said it would be hard to trust somebody like that in the ring and due to their past, and told McMahon that he would figure that Michaels would have the same concerns, since a few weeks earlier after first making it clear he would never work with anyone in the Hart Foundation, Michaels had finally agreed to work with only Smith, saying he still couldn’t trust Bret or Owen.

September 22, 1997 – On the day of the Raw taping at Madison Square Garden, McMahon told Bret Hart flat out that they were going to intentionally breach his contract because they couldn’t afford the deal. He told a shocked Hart that he should go to World Championship Wrestling and make whatever deal he could with that group. “I didn’t feel comfortable doing it, “Hart said of the suggestion. “I feel like an old prisoner in a prison where I know all the guards and all the inmates and i have the best cell. Why would I want to move to a new prison where I don’t know the guards and the inmates and I no longer have the best cell? I felt really bad after all the years of working for the WCW.” Hart had an escape clause in his contract since he had so much negotiating leverage when making his WWF deal 11 months earlier, in that he could leave the company giving 30 days notice and that he would have what the contract called “reasonable creative control” of his character during that lame duck period so that he couldn’t be unreasonably buried on the way out. There was a window period for giving that notice and negotiating elsewhere that hadn’t begun yet, so McMahon, showing he was serious, gave Hart written permission to begin negotiating with WCW and Hart contacted Eric Bischoff. the same day, during a meeting with Hart,Michaels and McMahon – Michaels told both of them point blank that he wouldn’t do any jobs for anyone in the territory, word that when it got out made most of the other top wrestlers feel even more warmly than usual toward Michaels. Michaels later reiterated that statement to Hart on 10/4 in St. Paul when the two agreed that for the good of the business that they’d work together. At a meeting, McMahon proposed a scenario where the two would have their first singles match in Montreal, where Undertaker would interfere causing a non-finish. This would lead to Hart wrestling Undertaker on the 12/7 PPV in Springfield, Ma., where Michaels would interfere causing Bret to win the title, which was poetic justice sinc e it was his interference that caused Bret to win the title in the first place, and that Royal Rumble on 1/8, in San Jose, would be headlined by Undertaker vs. Michaels. During the meeting, Hart told Michaels that he’d be happy to put him over at the end of the run, but Michaels told Hart flat out that he wouldn’t return the favor to him. Michaels and Hart spoke again on the subject on 10/12 in San Jose, when once again Michaels told Hart that he wasn’t going to do a job for him.

October 21, 1997 – McMahon approached Hart wit the idea of losing the title to Michaels in Montreal but promised that he would win it back on 12/7. Hart, remembering his conversations where Michaels was adamant about not doing any more jobs in the territory, was reluctant, saying after the way the angle had been done with him representing Canada and it becoming a big patriotic deal, that he didn’t want to lose the title in Canada. He was then asked to lose to Michaels on 12/7 in Springfield, Ma. Hart told McMahon that since Michaels had told both of them that he wasn’t doing any more jobs in the territory, that he had a problem doing a job for somebody who wouldn’t do a job back. He told McMahon that he didn’t want to drop the title in Montreal. Later, McMahon, Pat Patterson, Michaels, and Hart had another meeting where Michaels, teary eyes, sad that he was looking forward to returning the favor to Bret an and once again talked about his mouth saying the stupidest things. Hart still refused to lose the title in Montreal. the night before, he had been asked to put Hunter Heart Helmseley over in Oklahoma City via pin fall due to Michaels’ interference, but changed the finish to a count out. On this night he was asked to tap out to Ken Shamrock, before the DQ ending involving Michaels, which he had no problem doing because he liked and respected Shamrock and wanted to help elevate him. The personal problems with himself and Michaels, which had become legendary in the business, resurfaced once again when the two and McMahon made an agreement to work together but to leave their respective families out of their interviews. It took just one week before Michaels did the interview talking about Stu Hart being dead but walking around Calgary because his body and brain hadn’t figured it out yet. By this point, Hart had already stopped watching Raw because he had problems wit the content of the show because he has four children that were wrestling fans that he didn’t want seeing the direction it was going, so he was reacting to the remark based on the fact that his father and brother Owen heard the remarks and were upset about them.

October 24, 1997 – McMahon, before the show at Nassau Coliseum, told Hart that the money situation in the company had changed and they would have no problems paying him everything promised in his contract. Hart told McMahon that WCW really hadn’t made him a serious offer and that he really didn’t want to leave but that he was still uncomfortable doing the job for Michaels in that situation. He left the country for the tour of Oman with the idea that he was staying with the WWF, but knowing due to his window in his contract, he had to make the decision to give notice by midnight on 11/1.

October 31, 1997 – Never one to work without a flair for the dramatics, Bischoff finally caught up with Hart who was basically incommunicado in a foreign land most of the week. Just one day before Hart had to either give notice or stay for another year, Bischoff made a huge concrete offer. We don’t know the exact terms of the offer, only that Hart said of the $3 million per year figure that both Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler talked about on the 11/10 Raw, that “they don’t have any idea what I was offered”, but other close to the situation say that figure is “close enough that you couldn’t call it wrong”. Hart neither agreed nor turned down the deal, but gave the impression to WCW that they had a great shot at getting him.

November 1, 1997 – Hart had until midnight to make up his mind. he called McMahon and told him about the WCW offer and said that he wasn’t asking for anymore money to stay, but that he wanted to know what his future in the WWF would be over the next two years as an active wrestler and that at this point he was leaning toward accepting the WCW offer. McMahon said he’d think about it and call him back in an hour with some scenarios. Before McMahon called back, Bischoff called again trying to solidify the deal. McMahon ended up calling back four hours later from his barber shop and told Hart he didn’t know what he was going to do with him but that he should trust his judgment because of their past relationship. That he had made him into a superstar and he wanted him to stay and that he should trust him and asked Hart to give him idea of where he wanted to go. During the conversation, McMahon still brought up the scenario of wanting Hart to drop the title in Montreal, but promised that he would get it back in Spr ingfield. “I realized he ha given the top heel spot to Shawn, but to turn back babyface it was too soon,” Hart said. Like in the negotiations one year earlier, it was going down to the wire and he had until midnight t make up his mind. When he was talking to McMahon, McMahon told him he could extend the deadline for giving notice., Hart asked for the permission in writing but McMahon told him that he was going out to a movie that night wit his wife and said he was verbally giving permission to extend it and get written permission from the chief financial officer of the company. When Hart called to get the written notice he wasn’t given it because he was told he couldn’t get it in writing in such short notice. AT 7pm Bischoff called again and presented a deal that, according to Hart, ” would have been insane not to be taken”. at that point Hart was really having mixed emotions. He somehow felt bad about leaving the WCW and was hoping McMahon would lay out a good set of sceneries for him and convince him to sta y, At 9pm, McMahon called and, reversing fields once again, urged him to take the WCW offer. Hart told him that his heart was with the company ad it would break his heart to leave, and that he appreciated everything McMahon and the company had done for him. McMahon told Hart that he wanted him back as a babyface, and had been wanting him to turn babyface for two or three months but just hadn’t brought it up until this point. he then presented a scenario to Hart, presenting it as a way to get Hart to stay, but obviously designed to get Hart to take the WCW offer. He wanted Michaels to win the title in Montreal. For Springfield, they would do a final four match with he, Michaels, Undertaker, and Ken Shamrock, that Michaels would again win. At the Royal Rumble, the two would have a ladder match, which Michaels would win. On Raw, on 1/19 in Fresno, Ca., Hart would open the show and say that if he couldn’t beat Michaels and win the title that night. that he would retire from wrestling, and in that match he would r egain the title. And then in Boston at Wrestlemania he’d drop the strap to Austin. Hart looked at the scenario of four major losses with only one win and before his midnight deadline, gave official notice to the WWF and signed the contract WCW had sent over, with the agreement from all parties that the word wouldn’t leak out until 11/10 to protect the Survivor Series PPV. Hart went so far as to have his few confidants sign written confidentiality letters to make sure word of his negotiations and signing with WCW didn’t get out until 11/10.

November 2, 1997 – Hart and McMahon started a very amicable conversation wit the pressure finally off and the decision for Hart to leave having been made. he again suggested that Michaels win the title in Montreal and in what will go down as perhaps the ultimate irony, said they could do s screw job ending to steal the title from him, and that the next night, on Raw, McMahon suggested the two get into a mock argument where Hart would punch him, blaming him for the screw job. McMahon< even suggested to hardway him to make it look legit. Hart again refused to do the job in Montreal, saying that he had never refused to do a job but he wasn’t going to lose on Sunday or Monday (at Raw in Ottawa). He agreed to put Michaels over in Madison Square Garden on 11/15, Springfield or anywhere else and said he’d put over Vader,Shamrock, Mankind, Undertaker or even Steve Lombardi. McMahon< then made legal threats to Hart if he wouldn’t lose in Montreal. Hart talked about the clause in his contract giving him “reasonable cre ative control” but McMahon claimed that refusing to drop the strap in Montreal wasn’t “reasonable”. The two argued about the finish in Montreal and the legalities of their respective positions all day Sunday and well into the night before finally agreeing to do a DQ finish in Montreal. then in Springfield, in the final four match, Michaels would win the title. Bret would then go out on Raw on 12/8 in Portland, Me. and give a farewell interview as a babyface to the WWF fans and put the company and McMahon over as big as possible. He would apologize to the American fans and try to reasonably explain his actions in a way to end his 14-year assocaiton with the WWF on the highest note possible, something largely unheard of in pro wrestling, so that all parties and the fans could come out if it and his legacy with the company with a good feeling, Technically there was a problem, in that his WCW contract began on 12/1 so Hart called Bishoff, who when presented the scenario, agreed to allow him to work through 12/8 w ith Titan. Hart asked an associate who monitors news for him if he thought it was possible to keep the secret from the public until 11/10. Hart specifically asked about being able to keep it secret from one person until after the show and the associated laughed and said they would be a million dollars that person already knew.

November 4, 1997-McMahon called Hart and said that he had changed his mind. He suggested now that Michaels should lose clean in Montreal, then he’d “steal” the title with a controversial finish in Springfield and Hart would get to do his farewell speech in Portland. He said he was going to call Michaels and present the scenario to him. By this point word that Hart had signed with WCW had actually been reported the previous night on the Observer and Torch hotlines and it was only about one hour later before the fokes who call those hotlines for much of their news started breaking the latest “biggest story in the history of wrestling” as their “exclusives”. In response, WWF Canada released a press statement originally totally denying the story, claiming it was simply propaganda being spread by WCW. However, as the word got out Titan Sports in Connecticut a few hours later contradicting that story saying simply that Bret Hart was exploring all his options but not going any further, with the feeling that they wan ted to protect the PPV show. Hart wouldn’t publicly talk to anyone.

November 5, 1997-The internet had paved the way for stories in the Calgary Sun, the Toronto Sun and one line in the Montreal Gazette in a PPV preview story about Steve Austin a line which resulted in the paper getting an incredible switchboard-blowing response of phone calls. McMahon called Hart and said that Michaels had agreed to the previous day’s scenario, but that now he had changed his mind. He said the news was out everywhere and that Bret had to drop the belt before Monday because he couldn’t have Bishoff go on television on 11/10 and announce the signing of his world champion while he still had the belt. Hart said that he would get Bishoff to postpone the announcement, but with Bishoff on a hunting trip all week in Wyoming. Hart couldn’t get a hold of him. McMahon then asked Hart to drop the title on 11/8 at the house show in Detroit. Hart again refused, feeling the way everything had been built up, he wanted the match with Michaels, which in the wake of all the insider publicity was building up a li fe of its own like no match in the recent history of wrestling, to not come off as anti-climatic and for that to happen he needed to go into Montreal as champion. He said that he would drop the title any time after 11/12 suggesting he’d do it at the house shows in Youngstown, OH, on 11/13, Pittsburgh on 11/14, or in Madison Square Garden if they wanted it that soon rather than waiting for 12/7. Jim Ross on the company’s 900 line acknowledged the statement that Hart was exploring other options said that nobody knows the real story, and in hyping the big match tossed in the phrase they’d be pushing in the final days leading up to the match–it will be their first meeting in 18 months, and most likely the final match between the two ever.

November 6,1997-In a story in the Toronto Sun, Tiger Ali Singh, at a press conference promoting the WWF house show the next night in Toronto said of Hart’s leaving. “It’s very disheartening. He’s not only been a mentor, but I’ve been a great admirer of him since I was a kid, and if he leaves you’re going to see a whole bunch of other people leaving. And I’m not going to mention any names but WCW has been approaching a lot of people>”

November 7, 1997-There is no question that the power of on-line services when it comes to influence of pro wrestling was established this past week. It was generally portrayed that it was a power struggle between Hart and Michaels, that Michaels had won out, and to a lesser extent Hart was leaving over the direction of the product. While there was some truth to all of this, probably the greatest truth of all is it was simply a manipulation by McMahon to get out of a contract that in hindsight he wished he’d never offered. Whether Michaels who the wrestlers feel has McMahon’s ear right now and has convinced him that what turned around WCW is Kevin Nash and Scott Hall and not Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper, and that he should and the company should do what they do to get WCW over. There is also a feeling amongst WWF wrestlers that Michaels pushed McMahon in the direction to rid the company of his hated rival who had apparently one-upped him when signing the new deal that made him so much higher paid. Maybe it was s imply economics because the company is in financial straights. Hart did have a lot of problems over the direction of the company and his own decision was partially made based on that, but it’s clear in hindsight that McMahon had a strong hand in manipulating Hart decision to get out of the contract. In the vast majority opinion on-line from people who really had no clue as to what was really going on, Titan, McMahon and Michaels were coming off as major heels. The WWF’s own on-line site said to be the domain of young kids with no clue about wrestling was besieged with reports about Hart leaving and the so-called marks were reacting very negatively toward Titan to the point Titan pulled all it folders by the early afternoon which caused another outcry of censorship of opinions from wrestling fans. Finally McMahon responded publicly on-line with a letter of his own stating-”Over the past few days I have read certain comments on the internet concerning Bret Hart and his “alleged” reasons for wanting to pursue ot her avenues than the World Wrestling Federation to earn his livelihood. while I respect the “opinions” of others, as owner of the World Wrestling Federation I felt that it was time to set the record straight. As it has been reported recently on line, part of Bret Hart’s decision of pursue other options is “allegedly due to his concerns with the “direction of the World Wrestling Federation. Whereby each and every individual is entitled to his, or her opinion I take great offense when the issue of the direction of the World Wrestling Federation is raised. In the age of sports entertainment, the World Wrestling Federation REFUSES to insult it audience in terms of “Baby Faces” and “Heels”. In 1997, how many people do you truly know that are strictly “good” guys or “bad” guys? World Wrestling Federation programming reflects more of a reality based product in which life, as well as World Wrestling Federation superstars are portrayed as they truly are–in shades of gray…not black or white. From what I am reading i t has been reported that Bret may be concerned about the morality issues in the World Wrestling Federation. questionable language, Questionable gestures, Questionable sexuality, Questionable racial issues. Questionable? All of the issues mentioned above are issues that every human being must deal with every day of their lives. Also, with that in mind, please be aware that Bret Hart has been cautioned–on “numerous” occasions–to alter his language by not using expletives or God’s name in vain. He was alto told–on numerous occasions–not to use certain hand gestures some might find offensive. My point is:regardless of what some are reporting, Bret’s decision to pursue other career options IS NOT genuinely a Shawn Michaels direction issue, as they would like you to believe! In the personification of DeGeneration X, Shawn Michaels character is EXPECTED to be living on the edge–which I might add Mr. Michaels portrays extremely well. The issue here is that the “direction” of the World Wrestling Federation is not determined by Shawn Michaels, OR Bret Hart for that matter. It is determined by you–the fans of the World Wrestling Federation. You DEMAND a more sophisticated approach! You DEMAND to be intellectually challenged! You demand a product with ATTITUDE and as owner of this company–it is my responsibility to give you exactly what you want! Personally, I regret the animosity that has built up between Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart, but in the end, it is the World Wrestling Federation that is solely responsible for the content of this product–NOT Bret Hart –NOT Shawn Michaels–NOT Vince McMahon for that matter. May the best man win at the Survivor Series!…This only made the situation worse in regard to how fans were viewing McMahon and the company even worse. “You demand to be intellectually challenged?” By doing racial angles. The fans chose that direction? The asked to see Michaels pull his pants down and jump up and down on television? Hart was booked for his first public appearance before the house show tha t night at the Sky Dome in Toronto. It was on a half hour TSN (The Sports Network, the Canadian version of ESPN) talk show called “Off the Record” Host Michael Landsberg opened the show saying the show had received more than 1000 calls to ask Hart if he was leaving for WCW. Despite the word being out everywhere by this point Hart would only go so far as to say that he had given his 30 day notice to the WWF, that he’s reviewing offers from both groups and is strongly leaning going one way. “I’d like to really come more clean on this as I can, you know, that I have, but I have to do this thing by the book kind of thing’. Hart categorized the split as not being a money issue but said that he and the WWF had “reached” kind of a crisis or we’ve reached professional differences as to what direction that the wrestling shows are taking. You know, I’m not saying I’m always right, but I feel that some of the content of the shows goes against my belief in what wrestling should be and can be. Later in the show he critici zed Michaels and then stated that “wrestling is often scoffed at as a form of entertainment sometimes. or it used to be. I believe it came way up and I was very proud in the direction which has a lot to do with where I am right now today-Wrestling was cleaned up and it became something families could watch. He talked about inner workings of the business having to trust the guy you are working with because you give them your body and said the real animosities and hatred that exists have to be set aside. He said that everything he has said about Shawn Michaels is about the Shawn Michaels character, but said that Michaels has said things that have hit a raw nerve with him to the point it unprofessional. The show aired the footage of the Shawn Michaels interview where he blamed the Hart Foundation for trashing the NOD dressing room and insinuating that Hart was a racist. Hart said that he doesn’t blame Michaels for that, That’s obviously a promotional direction and that’s a poor concept. I think that racial tensi on is something to be very very careful with. When you start messing around with racial things that I don’t like. Hart said that he stopped watching Raw about five weeks earlier because he didn’t like the direction and agreed when the host brought up Michaels calling him the Grand Wizard (a KKK reference, not a reference to a famous wrestling manager of the 70s) and then brought up what Michaels said about his father that he didn’t see. You know I don’t mind if anyone pokes fun at my dad. Jerry Lawler’s made a living the last two or three years saying comments about my mom and dad but he’s always fairly humorous about it. Actually I used to get offended at some of the things he used to say about my mother–until I realized that my mother thought they were humorous and this it was kind of OK with me. He then spoke at length about Brian Pillman. By this point in certain circles and particularly within the industry, interest in he match on Sunday due to all the uncertainty some of which was known and most of whi ch actually wasn’t had reached a level not seen in years. For all of Hart and McMahon’s wanting to keep the story quiet, word getting out was the greatest thing for the buy rate. There were 14,374 fans paying $496,674 at the Sky Dome one night before the show. To credit the huge house to the interest in Canada since Hart leaving had been reported in the local newspapers would be incorrect as WWF officials a week before the event had figured on a crowd of 15,000. Obviously some fans knew and there were chants of “you sold out” directed at Hart. Although this should have been expected and Hart had been a pro wrestler for 21 years and been around the business a lot longer than that, the chants in his home country knowing what he was going through did get to him. The main event was a six-man tag with Undertaker & Mankind & Austin vs. Bret & Smith & Neidhart, subbing for brother Owen who was supposed to start back but wasn’t ready to return after a severe concussion from a few weeks earlier. Bret was asked to do t he job for the stone cold stunner, debated the question for a while then refused figuring he was the only Canadian in the main event in the U.S. vs Canada type match with the big nationalistic angle and Austin ended up using the stunner on Neidhart instead.

November 8, 1997-The WWF ran a house show in Detroit at Cobo Arena for what would turn out to be Bret Hart’s final match in the United States as a wrestler for the World Wrestling Federation. Tensions were really high and the prospect of a double-cross were looming by this time in many of the more paranoid types. By really this was 1997 and this was the World Wrestling Federation. That’s stuff from the 20′s where the real bad guy low-lifes were running the business. The days of making Lou Thesz world champion because you needed someone who could handle himself in the case of a double-cross had been over for more than three decades. That day Hart went to the one member of the front office he knew he could trust, Earl Hebner. While there are what you call a lot of good acquaintances in this business Hart and Hebner were genuine close friends for years. Hart said he’d use his influence to get Hebner to referee the match because he wanted someone in the ring that he could trust. Hebner said he understood the situ ation and told Hart “I swear on my kids lives that I’d quit my job before double-crossing you” On a personal basis a little more than 24 hours later, remembrance of that conversation crushed him more than anything. At about the same time the WWF braintrust was in Montreal one day early. Vince McMahon held a meeting at the hotel with Jim Ross, Jim Cornette, Pat Patterson and Michaels. Reports are that at least two of the aforementioned names looked extremely uncomfortable leaving the meeting. Ross on the WWF 900 line filed a report saying due to the tension between Hart and Michaels that there would be armed security backstage and the two would dress as far apart from each other as possible. That was a total work since Michaels and Hart actually dressed together and were on professional terms the next afternoon. He also said that McMahon was not going to announce the show and instead would be handling any last minute problems backstage. Ross also hinted that it could be Harts final match in the world Wrestling Federation something Hart at that point wasn’t aware of.

November 9, 1997-The Prelude-Imagine giving into the most anticipated match on the inside of pro wrestling in years and on the day of the show not having any semblance of a finish? McMahon and Hart met that afternoon and McMahon said something to the effect of “What do you want me to do,You’ve got me by the balls” Hart said that he just wants to leave the building with his head up. Hart said to McMahon “let me hand you the belt on Raw (the next night in Ottawa). Everyone knows I’m leaving I’d like to tell the truth on Raw Monday. At this point the “truth” wouldn’t include talking about finances, contract breaches, arguments about finishes, or anything that would make McMahon or the company look bad publicly. McMahon said he agreed., that it was the right thing to do and the two shook hands on it. Hart and Michaels were dressing together putting together a match. both were professional with one another and talking about putting on the best match possible in Harts last hurrah. agreeing to a DQ finish in about 1 7:00 after a lengthy brawl before the bell would even sound to start the match. As they were putting their spots together Patterson came in. He had a suggestion for a high spot in the match as a false finish. There would be a referee bump. Michaels would put Hart in his own sharpshooter. Hart would reverse the hold . Hebner would still be down at this point and not see Michaels tap out, Hart would release the hold to revive Hebner. Michaels would hit him when he turned around with the sweet chin music. A second ref. Mike Ciota would haul ass to the ring and begin the count. A few paces behind Owen Hart and Smith and possibly Neidhart as well would run down to the ring. Ciora would count 1-2, and whomever got to the ring first likely Owen would drag Ciota out of the ring. While they think they’ve saved the day on the pin on Bret suddenly Hebner would recover 1,2 and Bret would kick out. That would set the pace for about five more minutes of near falls before it would end up in a disqualification ending. Before the show started both Vader with his Japanese experiences and Smith told Hart to watch himself. He was warned not to lay down and not to allow himself to be put in a compromising position. He was told to kick out at one, not two and not to allow himself into any submission holds. Hart recognized the possibility of the situation but his thoughts regarding a double-cross were more along the lines of always protecting himself in case Michaels tried to hit him with a sucker punch when he left himself open. The idea that being put in a submission or one of the near falls while working spots would be dangerous for him would be something to worry about normally, but he put it out of his mind because he had Hebner in the ring as the referee.

The Match:People on the inside were watching this as close as on the outside. Would Bret do the job? Would Shawn do the job? Would Bret give Shawn a real beating before putting him over? The Molson Center was packed with more than 20,000 rabid fans, who up to that point had seen a largely lackluster undercard. While the fear going in about the word getting out of Hart leaving hurting the PPV most likely turned out to be just the opposite, the sellout was not indicative of that either or it was well known by the advance that the show was going to sellout one or two days early. It appeared that about 10 to 20 percent of the crowd knew Hart was leaving and there were negative signs regarding his decision and negative signs toward the promotion for picking Michaels above him or the direction that seemingly forced him to leave. Some things were also strange and not just the absence of McMahon from the broadcast. Hart the champion in the main event wasn’t scheduled for an interview building up the match. When his n ame was announced early in the show there were many boos from fans who knew he signed with the opposition. Once he got in the ring for the introduction, Michaels wiped his but, blew his nose and then picked his nose with the Canadian flag. He then put the flag on the ground and began humping it. Hart was immediately established as a babyface. The two began the match as a brawl all around ringside and into the stands. The crowd was so rabid that it appeared there was genuine danger they’d attack Michaels. As one point they were brawling near the entrance knocking down refs as planned, knocking down Patterson as planned and as planned Hart and McMahon had an argument almost teasing the idea of a spot later in the match where Hart would deck McMahon. Yet it was also clear that everything going on was 100% professional and the only curiosity left at that point was how good the match was going to be (it appeared to be very good) and how would they get “out” of the match (with something nobody will ever forget) But one thing was strange. Why were so many agents circling the ring and why was McMahon right there and acting so intense? About eight minutes before the show was “suppose” to end, Bruce Prichard in the “Gorilla” position (kind of the on-deck circle for the wrestlers) was screaming into his headset that we need more security at the ring, Why? The had already done the brawl in the crowd. The finish was going to be a DQ and it was still several minutes away.

The Double-Cross:Hart climbed the top rope for a double sledge on Michaels. Michaels pulled Hebner in the way and Hart crashed on him. Just as planned. Michaels for a split second looked at McMahon and put Hart in the sharpshooter, just as planned. The next split seconds were the story. Ciota listening to his headpiece for his que to run in heard the backstage director scream to Hebner it was time to get up. Hebner, listening himself, immediately got up. Ciota started screaming that he wasn’t supposed to get up. Owen Hart and Smith readying their run in were equally perplexed seeing him get up. Prichard was freaking out backstage saying that wasn’t supposed to happen. Bret still not realizing anything was wrong laid in the hold for only a few seconds to build up some heat before the reversal. Michaels cinched down hard on the hold and glanced at Hebner and then looked away which more than one wrestler in the promotion upon viewing the tape saw as proof he was in on it, but than fed Bret his leg for the revers al. Hebner quickly looked at the timekeeper and screamed “ring the bell.” At the same moment McMahon sitting next to the timekeeper elbowed him hard and screamed “ring the fucking bell”. The bell rang at about the same moment Bret grabbed the leg for the reversal and Michaels fell down on his face on the mat. Michaels music played immediately and was immediately announced as the winner and new champion. Hebner sprinted out of the ring on the other side, into the dressing room through the dressing room and into an awaiting car in the parking lot that already had the motor running and was going to take him to the hotel where he’d be rushed out of town with his ticket home instead of staying to work the two Raw tapings. Michaels and Hart both leaped to their feet looking equally mad, cursing in McMahon’s direction and glaring at him. Hart spit right in McMahon’s face. The cameras immediately pulled away from Hart and to Michaels. Vince screamed at Michaels to pick the fucking belt up and get the fuck out of ther e. Michaels still looking mad was ordered to the back by Jerry Brisco who told him to hold the belt up high and get to the back. The show abruptly went off the air about four minutes early.

The Aftermath: The officials left the ring immediatley, McMahon went into his private office in the building with Patterson and a few others and locked the door behind him. Hart in the ring flipped out on the realization of what happened and began smashing the television monitors left behind until Owen, Smith and Neidhart hit the ring to calm him down. The four had an annimated discussion in the ring all looking perturbed. Finally Hart thanked his fans who for the most part left with the air let out of their sails, gave the I love you sign to the fans and finger painted “WCW” to all four corners of the ring, which got a surprisingly big pop, and went back to the dressing room. He first confronted Michaels who swore that he had nothing to do with it. Michaels obviously afraid Hart would punch him out right there told Hart that he gets heat for everything that happened but this time it wasn’t his fault and he was as mad as Hart about the finish. He said he didn’t want to win the belt that way, was disgusted by what happened and to prove it would refuse to bring the belt out or say anything bad about Hart on Raw the next night. Hart said that Michaels could prove whether he was in on it or not by his actions on television the next night. The entire dressing room was furious at McMahon by this point. The feeling was that if Hart having worked for the company for 14 years and not missing shots due to injuries the entire time and having made McMahon millions of dollars throughout the years could get double-crossed this bad, then how could any of them trust anything he would say or do? People were saying that how could anyone trust anyone ever again and that it was an unsafe working environment.

For three years after the steroid trial and all the bad publicity McMahon had worked feverably to change his legacy in the industry as not the man who ran all the other promoters out of business not the man who marketed pro wreslllting to young children while pushing steroid freaks and the man who tried to destroy wrestling history and create his own, not his worked Harvard MBA, worked billion dollar company, a man who was so vain as to give himself a Hugh award in Madison Square Garden as “the genius who created Wrestlemania” not the man who at one time tried to monopolize every aspect of the business for himself but instead as the working man’s hero, coming from humble beginnings, fighting those ruthless rich regional promotors and through nothing but guts,gusto and vision became the dominant force in this industry and taking it to a new level. And now against all odds the generous friend trying to keep all the mall regional promoters acknowledging the past history of the business, fighting against Billiona ires Ted, the man who was selling all his self-made creations while wasting his stockholders money because of some alleged petty vendetta because the WWF would never be for sale, stealing his patented ideas of Monday night wrestling, was banging to there and would outlast his enemy again and outshow in the end coming out on top. Three years of a facade that was largely working to a new generation wrestling fans who saw him as their underdog hero. The man who to a generation that didn’t know better created pro wrestling. Hulk Hogan and localized interviews and rose this grimy little industry from carnival tents to major non-smoking arenas and who was the friendly face in the Father Flanagan collar who every Monday night epitomized the world of pro wrestling was flushed down the commode. Even though he was so good at hiding who the old Vince McMahon was to the point only those who had deal with him for many years remembered about not letting your guard down when the pressure was on the old Vince returned. Only this time it was in a situation where those who didn’t “know” him were truly “introduced” to him for the first time.

Undertaker was furious, pounding on this locked door and when he cam out to talk with him Undertaker told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to apologize to Hart. he went to Hart’s dressing room where Hart had just come out of the shower. Smith answered the door and Hart said he didn’t want to see him. Vince and son Shane McMahon came in with Sg. Slaughter and Brisco anyway. Vince started to apologize saying that he had to do it because he couldn’t take the chance of Hart going to WCW without giving back the belt and he couldn’t let Bishoff go on television the next night and announce Hart was coming while he was still his champion and said how it would kill his business. Hart shot back that he had no problem losing the belt and told McMahon that he was going to dry off and get his clothes on and told McMahon “If you’re still here I’m going to punch you out.” Hart called McMahon a liar and an piece of shit and talked about having worked for him for 14 years only missing 2 shots the entire time and being a role model for the company and the industry and this was his payback, McMahon tried to say that in 14 years this was the first time he’d ever lied to him and Hart rattled off 15 lies over the last year alone without even thinking about it. Those in the dressing room watching were stunned listening to Hart rattle those off and McMahon not offering a comeback. Hart got dressed and twice told McMahon to get out. Hart got up and a scuffle started with them locking up like in a wrestling match, Hart breaking free and throwing a punch to the jaw that would have knocked down a rhino. One punch Ko in 40 seconds. McMahon growled like he was going to get up but he had no legs. Shane McMahon jumped on Harts back and Smith jumped on Shane’s back pulling him off. Not realizing there would be trouble Smith had already taken off his knee brace and hyperextened his knee in the process of pulling Shane off. Hart nearly broke his hand from the punch. McMahon’s jaw was thought to be fractured or broken. Hart asked Vince if h e was now going to screw him on all the money he owed him and a groggy Vince said “No”. He told Shane and Brisco to get that “piece of shit” out of here and glaring at both of them told them if they tried anything they’d suffer the same results. In dragging McMahon out someone accidentally stepped on his ankle injuring it as well.

And later: Hebner, at the hotel and on his way out of town was confronted by one of the wrestlers who asked how he could do that to one of his best friends. Hebner claimed ignorance and swore that he knew nothing about it and was so mad about it he was going to quit. Jack Lanza likely as part of another facade was begging him not to. Patterson, Michaels and Prichard all denied any knowledge to the boys. Everyone denied it, but it was clear everyone had to know from the production truck to go of the air several minutes early, to the director to get the shot perfect of the sharpshooter where you couldn’t see Bret’s face not quit, to Hebner in particular to the ring announcer to get the announcement so quickly to the man handling the music to have Michaels music all cued up to the agents who were surrounding the ring knowing the possibility of something unpredictable happening. when Hart got back to his hotel room in a total daze he was furious at McMahon because he knew he was screaming at the timekeeper to rin g the bell but almost recognizing it as a reality of the business that he should have known better than anyone. But when he had a tape of the finish played to him he clearly heard that it was Hebners voice screaming “ring the bell” and at that point was personally crushed. Phone lines were ringing off the hook around wrestling land that night. People closest to the inside of the business were thinking double-cross, althought the big question was whether Michaels, since he looked so pissed at the finish, was in on it. Some more skeptical types, remembering Brian Pillman and Kevin Sullivan, thought it because of the prominence of the match and the interest, that it had to be a very well acted work. Virtually all the wrestlers back stage thought it was a double-cross, but a few not wanting to be marks were weary of fully committing to the idea. Some people who were close to inside thought it was the greatest worked finish in the history of wrestling because it got everyone talking. Others particularly people who had casual fans watching with them or those attending the show live saw how the finish to a casual fan came off looking so badly thought it was either a poorly conceived angle that was well acted by a company trying to hard to fool smart fans or maybe a double-cross. But by the morning the true story had become obvious.

November 10,1997-When the wrestlers fully realized what had happened, Hart turned into almost a cult hero and McMahon’s image took an incredible tumble. Hart himself remarked that while he had his problems with McMahon in the late 80′s that when Phil Mushnick wrote all those scathing articles about him during the 90′s he defended McMahon even thought he deep do wn knew most of what was written about him to be true. According to two WWF wrestlers roughly 95% of the wrestlers on the company were planning on boycotting the Raw taping that night over what happened. But as the day went on the talk simmered down, Hart told those who asked him that since they had children and mortgages that they shouldn’t risk breaching their contract and should go. However Owen Hart, Smith, Neidhart and Mick Foley were so upset that all flew home, missing the tapings both this night and also in Cornwall Ont. the next night. Many were saying they could no longer work for someone who would do something like that. While rumors abound about Hart, Smith and Foley all quitting at press time it appeared none of the three truly knew their future but that hey all had a bitter taste in their mouth for the company. They weren’t the only ones. Most of the wrestlers were there and with none of the Hart family around McMahon gave his side of the story. He portrayed it as if Hart had agreed to drop the title in Montreal but when he got to the building he said he was a Canadian hero and an ICON and refused to drop the title and said hart said he would give the belt to McMahon Raw the next night and refused to ever drop it. Reports were that by this time few if anyone in the dressing room believed a word of it. Most of the wrestlers by this time knew Hart was more forced out than voluntary leaving over money, although knowing he had signed a great money deal. Most of the heat was on Michaels with the belief that Michaels was younger and more in Vince’s ear and there was a lot of bitterness because it wasn’t a secret by this point that Michaels had told people on several occasions that he would never do a job in the territory. The show went on in Ottawa but not before Bishoff had already announced on Nitro one hour earlier in what was the same angle he’s done so many times to tease and deliver the opposite that Bret hart had signed with the NWO. Bishoff opened the show with the entire NWO holding Canadian flags and badly mockingly singing “Oh Canada”. WCW announcers Tony Schavone,Mike Tenay and Larry Zbyazko talked for most of the first hour about the announcement, with Schiavonne and Teneay, likely on orders from Bishoff acting stunned describing Hart as a second generation wrestler who stands for tradition. In other words positioning him as another Curt Henning or Jeff Jarrett, rather than the level of a Hulk Hogan to justify a nearly $3 million per year salary. Zybysko was the one who acted as if he didn’t believe it. In the first commercial break Gene Okerlund did a 900 line tease saying how Bret Hart punched out a prominent official and he’d have the s tory on his hotline, which did huge business. During the hotline because of fear of legal repercussions the story wasn’t told until late in the report only a sketchy version told. and McMahon’s name was never mentioned. With more curiosity than anything in recent memory the WWF drew its strongest Raw rating since the early days of the Monday Night War- a 3.39 rating and 5.16 share-largely due to curiosity stemming from the publicity, the match, and from the announcement about Hart earlier in the event on WCW and amidst all the chaos and confusion presented one of its all time worst show. Nitro did a phenominal 4.33 rating and 6.39 share. Michaels opened the show Yes, he was carrying the belt. And what did he say about Hart? He said he beat the man in his own country with his own hold and that he ran him out of the WWF to be with all the other dinosaurs down South. And said that the few down there who weren’t dinosaurs are his good friends and some day they’d kick his ass too. Those who were on the fence on th e Michaels issue waiting for his interview to prove himself were give there final answer. McMahon never showed his face on camera. The fight with Hart was never acknowledged in the commentary although Michaels couldn’t resist in his interview saying how hart beat up a 52-year-old man after the show. In the commentary nobody tried to bury Hart but Ross who had never used this figure before on both Sunday and Monday used the phrase 21-year veteran perhaps as subtle acknowledgement of Harts age and Lawler did bring up the $3 million per year figure as a way to encourage the mindless “You sold out: chants. It was acknowledged that it was Harts final match in the WWF although the reasons for it being the case were never even hinted at. The replay was pushed harder than ever and why not as it was the most bizarre finish in modern wrestling history complete with a commercial clearing showing Hart spitting in McMahon’s face and destroying the monitors which took place after the show itself had gone off the air. The s how dragged on and the efforts to push the new stars, Merro as a heel, Goldust back as a heel,Interrogator, Blackjack Bradshaw and Road Dog & Billy Gunn all came off lame. You could almost hear the crowd groan. when it was Rocky Maivia positioned as the next challenger for Steve Austin’s IC title. With all the special effects the Kane gimmick still came across as a sure winner. And Ken Shamrock was thrust into the spotlight as Michael’s first challenger on 12/7 after all. However there was another screw up. Shamrock’s main event with Helmsley was suppose to end with Michaels interfering and then Shamrock pinning him and the ref counting to three, perhaps to take heat off Michaels rep for not doing jobs and perhaps as a way to convince Shamrock to return the favor for such an unpopular wrester on PPV. However the show went off the air with Shamrock down apparently being pinned after Michaels nailed him with the briefcase, however he kicked out just as the show went off the air. The crowd in Ottawa largely pro- Hart finally figured out about 15 minutes before the show was going off the air that none of the Hart Foundation was there and that Bret Hart situation was no angle. The Shamrock-Helmsley main event heat was non-consistant drowned out by adamant changes of “We Want Bret”. Ross went on his hotline and did nothing but praise Hart for all his work even to the point of saying that he himself being right there never heard a submission but that the referee claimed that he heard it.

November 11, 1997-The Calgary Sun ran an article about the double-cross reporting that Hart’s leaving for WCW was actually requested by the WWF due to the WWF claiming financial hardship.

And Where Does It Go From Here:Its hard to make sense out of all that happened. While Harts contract with the WWF was much higher than anyone else’s to dismiss him as being paid above marked value is raising a potential valuable point. What is the Canadian wrestling market worth? Far more than $1.5 million per year. At the Calgary Stampede PPV show alone the marked was worth about $400,000 on PPV and another $200,000 in live gate, granted those are Canadian money and he was being paid in American money but you get the drift. While WWF has lost its foothold in the United States to WCW it owned Canada. WCW with TBS getting moved from premium cable to basic cable nationwide and with TSN picking up Nitro every week was how the tired time getting strong television exposure in the country. NO matter what be did or didn’t mean elsewhere and there is no denying he was a major draw in the United States and probably more so in Europe, Germany in particular, he was the wrestling star in Canada. Beating him to the opport unities will mean from a Canadian standpoint every bit as much as Hulk Hogan joining with WCW and we’ve all seen what the long term effects of that turned out to be. It’s hard to reclaim fan reaction. Fans are more loyal these days to brand names than ever before more than to wrestlers themselves. When in a similar situation only he didn’t get into the ring and was fired before “not” doing the job, Ric Flair came out of a situation with Jim Herd in 1991 recognized by more fans as the real world champion the WCW belt became largely meaningless, Flair went to WWF and did big business in what was never called unification matches but many thought of them as such against Hulk Hogan. For nearly two years before Flair retired as the cult hero the small crowds attending WCW matches never stopped the “We Want Flair” chants There are multitude here and if anything times being different mean more people than ever will be aware of it. making similar chants perhaps more likely. But a lot of the newer fans also for the mos t park have less respect for the wrestlers as people and more as animals to perform stunts to mesmerize them. Like in other sports have more loyalties to the “home team” than its players who come and go for the bigger buck. And while everyone will put their different spin on what happened and like with Hogan and Bruno and nearly every other wrestler of the WWF beforehand, Bret Hart failed one of the things he wanted most out of his career and that was to walk away from the company without the bitterness and with many good memories. Both Bret Hart and Vince McMahon wanted their legacies to be tied together and represented all that can be good about pro wrestling. But the fact it is no matter how great the match with Smith at Wembley Stadium or at at the In Your House in Hershey were or the Wrestlemania match and SummerSlam matches with Owen were or the SummerSlam match with Hennig or the Survivor Series match with Michaels or any of the rest his legacy and Vince McMahon legacy will forever be tied together in wrestling history. The defining moment of both a Hall of Fame wrestler and the man who for a decade was the prominent promoter in the industry will be the moment that the world realized right in front of their eyes with no apologies and with no turning back to rewrite history just how truly deceitful to the core this business can be and just how much 14 years of being one of the great performers in the history of the industry truly meant on the inside to the company that benefited from it. Only the future can determine whether this was a definite moment in the hallmark of business when it comes to pro wrestling. Did McMahon really hand over the keys to Canada to WCW? Will fans really hate McMahon four weeks later when Michaels headlines a PPV show with a four star match? Will Hart be a huge success keeping WCW at it current level or even taking them to a higher level by having main events on PPV shows that can live up to the quality or the preliminary matches? Or are his best years really behind him and McMah on will have the last laugh as how much Bishoff paid for him? How long will Hart remail a cult hero to wrestlers for doing what none of them had the guts to do? Will McMahon file criminal charges for assault and will someday and stranger things have happened although in this case it would be hard today to believe it is possible will the two get back together in a few years for a final triumphant run?

When you go to a Japanese restaurant, you start a “USA! USA!” chant.

When you girlfriend dumps you, you tell her she couldn’t “play with the big boys”, and that she will never get past mid-card status.

When you search & search the bible for the book of Austin.

If you can actually remember Sting’s last public words

If on a job application, you state your residence as “parts unknown”

If you quit your Job because you have to find your “Smile”

When you’re getting beat up in a bar fight, but you honestly believe that with a little crowd support, you can turn this thing around.

When you won’t leave the bathroom until they play your theme music.

If you hit your co-worker in head with a chair while your manager is distracting him.

When you look for Sting on the back of the milk carton during breakfast.

When a guy steals your girl, you consider it an angle.

When you rack your neighbour’s dog.

When you attend a graduation, and yell “Ooooooh yeah!” when ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ plays.

When you are involved in a bar fight with a guy twice your size and you think your best line of attack is putting the Tongan death grip on him.

When you put up your wife or girlfriend up in a card game for 30 days if you lose.

When you go to a dance and start dancing like Alex Wright.

You watch car racing in order to see Bob “sparkplug” Holly

When you try to put your kids to bed with a sleeper hold.

When you wear your Macho Man foam hat out in public

When you win an award and immediately spray paint “nWo” on it.

When you rate women on a scale of Chyna to Sunny.

When you begin to shake someone’s hand in public but then hesitate to look for the crowd’s response.

When you get into a real fight and you blade.

When you do heel turns on your best friends for no reason

If whenever you walk into a party you tell them to “cut the music”

When anytime anybody asks you a question, you “grab the mike” and yell, “MEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAN GEEEEEEEEEEEEEENEE”

When you die you moustache blond while leaving your beard black.

If you keep waiting for run-ins during boxing matches

After an argument with a friend, you shake hands, hug each other and then after you raise both yours and your friend’s arms in the air, as he looks to the side, you clothesline him.

If you think John the Baptist Bladed.

If you wonder why Bob Backlund’s campaign for the presidency never got any press.

If you carry a foreign object in your underwear.

When you go into work you insult everyone you see just to draw heat.

If you’re a Honky Tonk Man impersonator instead of an Elvis impersonator.

If you wore spiked shoulder pads during a football game

If you really think it’s cool to wear a wrestling t-shirt out in public

If you loose a job, you change your look and name before starting a new one.

When you are working for that other company, your old boss is constantly badmouthing you to customers.

If you find out that you have been fired by calling up the company’s hotline.

If you purposely blade yourself while shaving.

If you suspect your best friend is just setting you up for a heel turn

When before a fight, you give away a pair of sunglasses to a kid

When you put your kids to bed, you tell them to “Rest In Peace”

When you go to a funeral and assume that the deceased just lost a Casket Match

When your king-size bed has ropes and turnbuckles surrounding it.

If you walk into church and slap people’s hands in the pews while walking down the aisle.

If you paint your face and don’t speak to your co-workers

When you go to your daughter’s softball game and start a “we want blood” chant.

If you get into an argument with a friend at work and challenge him to a loser must retire match.

When you see a fight in the streets and call the moves.

If at a ceremony at your work to give out awards to the employee of the year, you “turn” and slam a chair across the recipient of the award’s head… then you immediately grab the mic and start talking about how YOU deserved the award.

If you refer to all the women in your work area your valets

If you insist that your professor grades you on your marketability, the ppv buyrate and the pop you get when you walk into lecture

When you keep flour in your underpants (just in case).

If you refer to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal as rag sheets.

If you wondered why Vince didn’t borrow money from Ted DiBiase to prevent WCW from “buying”it’s wrestlers

Info
Scott Hall appears on Nitro promising a “takeover”. The next week, Kevin Nash appears and promises the same thing. They attack people for the next month or so (most notably powerbombing Eric Bischoff through a table) until challenged by Sting, Lex Luger, and Randy Savage to a six-man tag at Bash at the Beach. Nash and Hall – at this point only “The Outsiders” – accept, and say their third man will be revealed later.

Hall and Nash are victorious when their third man is revealed to be Hulk Hogan, who over time adopts the new persona of “Hollywood” Hogan. The newly-christened New World Order begins attacking WCW wrestlers viciously. The first new members to arrive are Ted DiBiase (acting as a manager and “money man”) and Vincent (acting as “head of security”). At Road Wild, Hollywood Hogan defeats the Giant by cheating outrageously to win the WCW World title. Strangely, the Giant joins the nWo two weeks later, citing the money as his primary reason. Also at Road Wild, the Booty Man tries to join, but is beaten up.

The next member of the nWo appears when they debut a “Fake Sting” at Wargames, who wrestles ittermitently over the next few months until the original Fake Sting, now called “nWo Sting”, goes to compete in Japan as part of their version of the nWo. The Nasty Boys try to join the nWo as well, but are beaten up for their trouble. Although he is in fact the seventh member, Sean Waltman joins in November as Syxx.

The nWo announces a “membership drive”, giving “all WCW wrestlers” the chance to join the nWo. In order, the wrestlers accepting this offer are Marcus Bagwell (soon redubbed “Buff”), Michael Wallstreet, Big Bubba, and Scott Norton. Also, Eric Bischoff is revealed as being an nWo member around this time, and Masa Chono and the Great Muta, visiting from New Japan Pro Wrestling, join the North American nWo (although they have little effect). At the same time, Giant is kicked out for demanding a title shot from Hulk Hogan.

Randy Savage joins the nWo at SuperBrawl. Newly appointed WCW Commissioner J.J. Dillon says that according to their contracts, Big Bubba and Michael Wallstreet cannot be members of the nWo. Amidst great hype, Dennis Rodman “joins” the nWo, despite wrestling only one match that year as a celebrity guest at Bash at the Beach. Konnan joins the nWo in August. Ted DiBiase quits the nWo and becomes a manager for the Steiner brothers.

Curt Hennig joins the nWo after turning on the Four Horsemen at WarGames. Rick Rude joins in December. Bret Hart is invited to join the nWo, but declines. The Disciple joins sometime in January, although he is not named until March. Dusty Rhodes joins at Souled Out after turning on Larry Zybysko. Bryan Adams joins in January after turning on Bret Hart. Scott Steiner joins in February after turning on his brother Rick. During most of January, Louie Spicolli acts as a flunky to Scott Hall and wears an nWo t-shirt, although he is never “officially” inducted into the nWo before his death. Syxx disappears when Sean Waltman is fired by WCW.

Randy Savage and Kevin Nash, having issues with Hollywood Hogan, form the nWo “splinter faction”: nWo Wolfpac. Curt Hennig and Konnan immediately join, as do longtime nWo foes Lex Luger and Sting; they immediately distinguish themselves from the “traditional” nWo (now known as nWo Hollywood or nWo Black-And-White) by wearing black-and-red T-shirts rather than black-and-white. Scott Hall is invited to join the Wolfpac, but refuses. Giant rejoins nWo Hollywood.

Curt Hennig quits the nWo Wolfpac to rejoin nWo Hollywood. Randy Savage is injured and disappears from the Wolfpac. Dennis Rodman once again is trumpeted as a member of the nWo for a celebrity match at Bash At The Beach. Stevie Ray joins nWo Hollywood in September. The Disciple quits nWo Hollywood in October to join the “One Warrior Nation”. Horace Hogan joins nWo Hollywood at Halloween Havoc. Bret Hart seemingly joins, quits, and rejoins nWo Hollywood several times during this period, and never wears an nWo shirt or explicitly states his membership in the nWo.

Hollywood Hogan announces his “retirement”, and Scott Steiner becomes the leader of nWo Hollywood. Scott Hall is kicked out of nWo Hollywood in November, but despite his efforts is not allowed to join nWo Wolfpac. Disco Inferno starts claiming he is a member of the Wolfpac.

Hollywood Hogan comes out of “retirement” to “beat” Kevin Nash in a thrown match for the WCW World title and reform the nWo as one single entity. The Wolfpac is now an “elite rank” of the nWo: its members are Hollywood Hogan, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Lex Luger, Buff Bagwell, and Scott Steiner. The remainder of the nWo (Giant, Curt Hennig, Vincent, Stevie Ray, Bryan Adams, Scott Norton, and Horace Hogan) continues wearing the black-and-white, while the Wolfpac wears black, white, and red. The Wolfpac also seems to be conducting a gradual elimination of the black-and-white (also referred to as “the nWo B-Team”); at this writing, both the Giant and Curt Hennig have received turfing-out beatdowns, with more likely to come. Konnan has been explicitly kicked out of the nWo entire. Sting’s status is unknown. Bret Hart’s nWo membership is entirely forgotten.

With Scott Hall in retirement, Hulk Hogan back in semi-retirement, and Bagwell turfed from the group, the only members left are Lex Luger, Kevin Nash and Scott Steiner, and possibly Disco Inferno. Steiner and Nash rarely do anything nWo-related (besides use the Wolfpac music). The nWo black-and-white is whittled down to Vincent, Horace Hogan, Stevie Ray and Bryan Adams, with Scott Norton doing his own thing without the nWo name. Soon after, Horace Hogan is fired, Bryan Adams is repackaged, Stevie Ray leaves to reform Harlem Heat, and Vincent joins the West Texas Rednecks, thus finally ending the group�s legacy once and for all.

The concept was originally started by Scott Hall, who “invaded” WCW on the first two-hour Nitro in May of 1996 (see “Monday Night Wars”) and declared that they were taking over, although he didn’t note who “they” were. The implication was that is was a WWF takeover, which led to a later lawsuit and was publicly denied by Hall at the “Great American Bash” PPV in 1996. Kevin Nash joined him two weeks after he debuted, and the two of them promised a third man at the “Bash at the Beach” PPV in July. The third man was Hulk Hogan, who coined the phrase “New World Order” during his heel turn interview, although in a nebulous and roundabout way. Commentators Bobby Heenan and Larry Zbyzsko later officially named them the nWo, building on Hogan’s speech, and the rest is history.

Off-and-on booker Paul Orndorff is Gene Okerlundrally credited with the creation of the “invasion” angle, and Nitro booker Terry Taylor is credited with coming up with the details (the t-shirt selling, the black and white, the attitude). Hulk Hogan was given much leeway in his own angles (as usual) and improvised a great deal of the mannerisms and catchphrases (as did Hall and Nash). And it should be noted that Eric Bischoff had almost NOTHING to do with the nWo’s creation, although he often takes credit for it regardless by stating that it was based on where else.
 

Members of the nWo: