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The Monday Night Wars pertains to the period of professional wrestling from September 4, 1995, to March 26, 2001. During this time the World Wrestling Federation's Monday Night RAW went head-to-head with World Championship Wrestling's Monday Nitro in a battle for Nielsen Ratings.

Contents 1 Before the Wars 1.1 Wrestling on cable TV before 1993 1.2 WWF between 1993-1995: Monday becomes RAW 1.3 WCW before 1995: Bischoff takes charge 2 1995-1996: The Monday Night Wars begin 2.1 WCW Monday Nitro premieres 2.2 WCW's dominance 2.3 WWF struggles 3 1998: McMahon strikes back 3.1 WCW's attempt to comeback 4 1999-2000: The tide turns 5 2001: The end of the Wars 6 Aftermath 7 Legacy 8 See also 9 External links

By the early 1980s, cable television was rising and one genre of programming responsible for this was professional wrestling. When Atlanta TV station WTCG (now WTBS) became a superstation by the late 1970s, its Georgia Championship Wrestling (GCW) program reached a national audience. Though based in Atlanta, the company also ran live wrestling shows throughout its geographic "territory" of Georgia (the American professional wrestling industry was a patchwork of self-contained, regional and sub-regional companies — there was no single, nation-wide promotion at the time). The territory was affiliated with what had been the world's top sanctioning body of championship titles for decades before, the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). The TV show, hosted by Gordon Solie, was recorded in one of WTBS' studios at 1050 Techwood Drive, in downtown Atlanta. Shows were taped before a small (yet enthusiastic), live in-studio audience, as were most professional wrestling TV shows of that era. The show featured wrestling matches, plus melodramatic monologues and inter-character confrontations — similar to the programming offered by other territories, including the Northeast-based WWF. GCW's show, which aired on Saturday evenings, was complemented with a Sunday evening edition. Jack and Gerald Brisco had major stakes in the organization while Ole Anderson was head booker and was basically in charge of operations.

In 1983 WWF started their own cable show called WWF All American Wrestling on Sunday mornings on USA Network. Later that year, WWF debuted a second cable show also on USA called Tuesday Night Titans (TNT), a talk show spoof hosted by Vince McMahon and Lord Alfred Hayes.

While still running steadily, both Briscos sold their entire stock in the business (including the TV deal) to Vince McMahon and on July 14, 1984, WWF took over the GCW slot, which by that time had changed its name to World Championship Wrestling on WTBS. At that point, McMahon controlled all of nationally televised wrestling. However, the WWF show on TBS was a ratings disaster as the former GCW fans turned off the set (and after two weeks, GCW returned to TBS, albeit in an early-morning timeslot). Despite originally promising to produce original programming for the TBS timeslot in Atlanta, McMahon chose instead to provide only a clip show for TBS, featuring highlights from other WWF programming as well as matches from house shows at Madison Square Garden, Boston Garden and other major arenas. This format would eventually be the cornerstone of the WWF Prime Time Wrestling (PTW) program. In May 1985, McMahon sold the TBS timeslot to Jim Crockett Promotions, under heavy pressure from Ted Turner. That would set up a rivalry between McMahon and Turner that would continue for 16 years.

That same year, PTW replaced TNT on USA Network which expanded to two hours the format of WWF's WTBS program of showcasing matches from WWF superstars and Wrestling Challenge plus matches from house shows The best-remembered Prime Time format featured Bobby Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon introducing taped matches and analyzing them afterward, with Monsoon taking a neutral/babyface position and Heenan unashamedly cheering on the heels. The chemistry between Monsoon and Heenan made this show popular with fans for many years, despite the fact it was not considered one of the WWF's "primary" shows for most of its history, and many other wrestling programs — both produced by the WWF and by other companies-would attempt to copy this formula, with varying degrees of success. As 1993 began, PTW was struggling in the ratings and PTW was canceled. The show that would succeed PTW would change how wrestling on cable TV would be presented, however.

Monday Night RAW was launched on USA Network in January 1993 as PTW's replacement. WWF decided that it should use its cable time as a showcase for original matches and storylines that would serve as the major build-up to the quarterly pay-per-view broadcasts. Originally, RAW, within a two-or-three week period, was broadcast live, but budget constraints later limited live broadcasts so that they could only take place once a month. That, and the defection of such main event talent as Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage to WCW, gave Eric Bischoff an opportunity on which he was quick to exploit.

In the same year as the premiere of Monday Night RAW, WCW promoted former commentator and American Wrestling Association (AWA) booker Eric Bischoff to Executive Vice President. Bischoff's first year as the VP was mostly a disaster. Dusty Rhodes and Ole Anderson were still in full creative control at this point, with what were considered to be cartoonish storylines, as well as seemingly pointless feuds with little or no buildup. For example: The Cactus Jack "Lost in Cleveland" angle, the mini movies that built up the PPV (Spin the Wheel Make the deal, White Castle of Fear and the infamous beach blast mini movie) and Spin the Wheel make the deal angles. During a segment of "A Flair For the Gold" on a live Clash of the Champions to build 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 live television, rendering himself as a joke character (despite winning some matches.) Also that same year, WCW began taping matches months in advance for syndicated programming like WCW WorldWide from Disney/MGM Studios in what would become known as the Disney Tapings. Because the footage recorded would often be shown on television months later, the tapings often exposed bookings and storylines well in advance. WCW was usually forced to have wrestlers appear with title belts before they had won them in regards to the current storyline. This was regarded as a major breach of kayfabe at the time, and ultimately led to WCW's departure from the National Wrestling Alliance in September 1993.

By the end of the year, WCW decided to once again base the promotion around Ric Flair. This was seen as more or less a necessity, as prospective top babyface Sid Vicious tried to injure wrestler Arn Anderson with a pair of scissors four weeks before Starrcade while on tour in England and was fired. (In fact, before the Sid/Arn incident, several weeks of syndicated programming was taped with Sid Vicious as WCW World Heavyweight Champion. Sid was scheduled to defeat Vader at Starrcade 1993, and the material taped would have begun airing in early 1994. but the footage was scrapped or post produced). Flair won the title at Starrcade and was once again made booker. Bischoff would declare open war on McMahon's WWF in the media and aggressively recruited high-profile former WWF superstars such as Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage in 1994. Using Turner's monetary resources, Bischoff placed his faith in the established stars with proven track records. Because of their high profiles, Hogan and Savage were able to demand and get several concessions not usually allowed to wrestlers at the time, such as multi-year, multi-million dollar guaranteed contracts and significant creative control. 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 watched it as an alternative to the product of WWF in the early 90s, and many NWA fans feared that the hiring of former WWF talent was an attempt to copy its success, as opposed to being an alternative product with an emphasis on in-ring action.

But WCW's first major pay-per-view event since Hogan's hiring Bash at the Beach, saw the former WWF mainstay cleanly defeat Ric Flair for the WCW Championship. The two had worked for WWF at the same time from 1991 to 1992, and a feud was teased between them, but the big-money match originally planned for WrestleMania VIII was changed to Flair/Savage and Hogan/Sid. When WCW delivered the match, the PPV drew a high buy rate by WCW standards due to mainstream intrigue and hype. 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 pay-per-view buyrates and ratings did not materialize.

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

Bischoff would be instrumental in launching the weekly show WCW Monday Nitro in September 1995. 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. Surprisingly for Bischoff, Turner granted him a live hour on TNT every Monday night, which specifically overlapped with RAW. This format quickly expanded to two live hours in May 1996, and then later three. Bischoff himself was initially the host, alongside Bobby Heenan and ex-NFL star Steve "Mongo" McMichael.

The initial broadcast also featured the re-debut of Lex Luger to the WCW audience, 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; who had been "pushed to moon" and was at one time one of that company's top stars. 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."

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

In 1995, Turner (as sole head and owner of both TBS and TNT), could air Nitro whenever he wanted. WWF on the other hand was constrained by having to deal with the USA Network, whose executives were pleased about the viewers RAW brought to their network, but were also weary of the stigma associated with being the wrestling channel. WCW Monday Nitro made its debut on September 4, 1995 live from the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, and featured the surprise appearance of Lex Luger, who had been working on a handshake deal with WWF after his most recent contract expired, on a week when RAW was pre-empted by the U.S. Open.

In the first head-to-head ratings the following week, Nitro managed to convincingly defeat RAW, seeing WCW beat WWF for the first time ever. For most of Nitro's first year, the ratings battle between the two promotions was close, and each show would normally trade victory every other two weeks. Nitro was able to once score a victory for four head to head weeks in February and March of 1996, thanks in some part to some storylines involving an alliance between Ric Flair and the Dungeon of Doom feuding with Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan. After Wrestlemania XII occurred, Raw continued to dominate Nitro every week until May 27 (Memorial Day 1996). The really began to turn in WCW's favor on Memorial Day 1996 when Scott Hall (who wrestled as Razor Ramon in WWF) interrupting 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.

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 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. At The Great American Bash 1996, Scott Hall punched WCW boss Eric Bischoff in the stomach, and Kevin Nash powerbombed him through the stage.

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. "Mean" Gene Okerlund came to the ring confused, demanding to know where their mystery partner was. They simply said he was in the building, but that they did not need him right then. Shortly into the match, Sting hit Nash with a Stinger Splash in the corner. However, Nash was holding Luger at the time, and the splash knocked Nash into Luger, thus crushing Luger in the corner. Luger was knocked to the outside, and paramedics came out and took him away, 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. In a post-match interview with Okerlund, 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.

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 because of all this, WCW would defeat WWF for 84 straight weeks. Another way for WCW to beat WWE was to give away the results of RAW on weeks that RAW was on tape delay to keep viewers tuned to Nitro.

RAW and WWF in general was considered to be at a creative nadir from late 1995 to late 1997, thus helping WCW's meteoric rise. WWF tried in vain to fight back in early 1996 with the "Billionaire Ted" sketches, which occasionally starred an unbilled Vince Russo and parodied Turner, Hogan ("The Huckster"), Gene Okerlund ("Scheme Gene") and Savage ("Nacho Man") in particular.

On the November 4, 1996 episode of RAW, WWF aired the infamous "Pillman's got a gun" angle with the feuding Steve Austin and Brian Pillman where Austin visited an injured Pillman at home. Austin was attacked by Pillman's friends as soon as he arrived, but soon subdued them. He then proceeded to break into Pillman's home but Pillman responded by producing a 9mm Glock and pointing it at a hesitant Austin. The camera feed was then disrupted, with the scene fading to black. The on-scene director contacted commentator Vince McMahon and reported that he had heard "a couple explosions." The transmission was restored later showing Pillman's friends dragging Austin from the house in a scene where Pillman screamed "That son of a bitch has got this coming! Let him go! I'm going to kill that son of a bitch! Get out of the fucking way!" The "fucking way" comment was not bleeped and was clearly noticeable which meant that the following week WWF had to apologize for the incident in order to remain on the USA Network. Pillman also had to apologize for the comment as well, saying that it was not usual for him to say that.

On February 3, 1997, Monday Night RAW went to a two hour format, as the Attitude Era was starting to come in full stream in the WWF. In an attempt to break the momentum of what had turned into ratings domination by WCW's competing Monday Nitro, Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) was brought in as Jerry Lawler "challenged" ECW on February 17, 1997. In an episode where RAW returned to the Manhattan Center, the "challenge" answered on the following week's show with Taz, Mikey Whipwreck, Sabu, Tommy Dreamer, D-Von Dudley, and Sandman. ECW owner Paul Heyman did a call-in interview on RAW the week after that.

Throughout 1997, there were more and more controversial elements in RAW and WWF programming such as the Nation of Domination, and the D-Generation X (DX) "racial graffiti" storyline designed to "implicate Bret Hart's 'Hart Foundation'", and the XXX Files series. There was also D-Generation X's "attack" when, on the night of April 27, 1998, the DX army raided WCW and eventually "blew it up".

On March 10, 1997, Monday Night RAW officially became RAW Is WAR. The March 17, 1997 episode featured a heated Bret Hart/Vince McMahon ringside altercation (that unknowingly foreshadowed events in November) with profanity normally unheard on TV. Brian Pillman did a series of XXX Files segments with Terri Runnels, which further 'pushed the envelope'. These segments ended prematurely with the September 29, 1997 episode of RAW, after the death of Pillman on October 5, 1997 due to hereditary heart problems and drug use.

In spite of those controversial elements, WCW's winning streak still went on. However, come the month after WrestleMania XIV in 1998, WWF would have a second chance to beat WCW.

When Bret Hart joined WCW after the Montreal Screwjob at 1997 Survivor Series, it seemed that WCW was in position to push WWE into perpetual ratings ruin. WCW had the big stars people wanted to see: Hogan, Nash, Hall, Hart, Ric Flair, Sting, Randy Savage, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Jr., Lex Luger, Diamond Dallas Page, Raven, Syxx, etc; and the popular opinion was that the Montreal Screwjob was too much of a blow for WWE's image to overcome, since the screwing over of a popular wrestler like Hart would anger many fans and give WCW a great amount of hype to work with. After the Montreal Screwjob, several WWF superstars threatened to leave the WWF. Bret's brother Owen (Claiming a knee injury) left out of loyalty to his brother only to return a month later when he was unable to get out of his contract. Rick Rude, then acting as manager for D-Generation X and working on a pay-per-appearance basis, left a week later after appearing on Nitro the same night as a pre-taped Raw. On November 17, 1997, a clean-shaven Rude appeared live on Monday Nitro and criticized the WWF, calling the company the "Titanic" (a reference to Titan Enterprises, as the WWF's parent company was then known as the "sinking ship") even mentioning Shawn Michaels by name at one point. An hour later on RAW (which aired on a six-day tape delay), Rude appeared unshaven. Brian "Crush" Adams left two weeks after Survivor Series, citing the screwjob as his reason, when, in reality, he felt he would fare better in WCW than in the apparently failing WWF. Mick Foley walked out of WWF, but returned after realizing he would have been in breach of contract; he stated in his autobiography that it was Jim Ross who persuaded him to continue to stay with the WWF, even after his contract expired, as well. Barry Windham also no-showed WWF programming initially as a way of demonstrating how angry he was, though he returned to the WWF a week later, believing he had made his point. Meanwhile, WCW's Starrcade 1997 pay-per-view at Washington DC drew WCW's highest buyrate to that date, largely because of the exceptional job by Eric Bischoff in building up the main-event of Hulk Hogan VS Sting. Although Bischoff was praised for not hotshooting Hogan Vs Sting, the main event ended in controversy when Bret Hart (In his WCW pay-per-view debut) claimed that referee Nick Patrick made a fast three count in order to prevent Sting from being screwed (the three count was of normal speed) and Hart restarted the match with himself as referee. Sting won the WCW title, but the title was striped from him and declared vacant until SuperBrawl VIII, when Sting won the WCW Title.

WCW's winning streak in the ratings continued, but by the time 1998 began, the war would begin to turn in McMahon's favor. After the Montreal Incident, McMahon took advantage of wrestling fan's widespread hatred for him by recasting himself as Mr. McMahon, an evil-owner caricature of who routinely screwed faces to ensure the dominance of his hand-picked heel champions. Wrestlemania XIV also became more watched than Starrcade 1997, and became the most watched WWF ppv since Wrestlemania VIII. Vince then began a feud with Stone Cold Steve Austin, who was fired by Bischoff in 1995 as not being marketable enough. The feud was enormously successful due to fans' universal love of Austin and universal hatred of Vince, and would be a major factor in WWF finally snapping WCW's ratings winning streak. The night after Wrestlemania XIV occurred, Raw dominated Nitro for the first hour [1], but could not maintain victory with the second hour.

Finally, on April 13, 1998, RAW beat Nitro for the first time since June 10, 1996, thanks to a teased Austin/McMahon match and the surprise appearance of X-Pac, who had been released from his WCW contract, and verball attacked Bischoff and Hogan in a comeback promo. Meanwhile, several popular characters emerged on Monday Night RAW that would establish consistently high viewing from fans: Mick Foley (at the time a WCW castoff) was being cheered for playing the heel Mankind; The Rock, after flopping as the babyface Rocky Maivia, was making a new name for himself as the catchphrase spewing member of the Nation of Domination. WWF programming also made a successful attempt to feature edgy characters, and storylines that were adult-oriented. RAW's ratings began to rise steadily and consistently, bringing the newly-christened "Attitude Era" to its highest point.

WCW attempted to right the proverbial ship by pushing ex-football player Bill Goldberg as the new top star. On July 6, 1998, airing out of the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia, Nitro defeated RAW in the ratings when Goldberg pinned Hulk Hogan cleanly to win the WCW World Heavyweight Title. The match drew a 6.91 rating for the quarter-hour, the highest rating recorded in the ratings war up to that time. However, RAW took back the lead not long after the telecast. WCW would win for the last time on October 26, 1998 when the world title match between Diamond Dallas Page and Goldberg from the previous night's Halloween Havoc pay-per-view was aired in its entirely for free on Nitro due to some PPV viewers losing the feed at 11 PM.

As 1999 began, both shows were consistently getting 5.0 or higher Nielsen ratings, and over ten million people tuned in to watch RAW and Nitro every week. Wrestling was the place to be, as wrestlers made the mainstream media, appearing on magazine covers like Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide. But on the first Monday of that year, the momentum would be in the WWF's favor for the rest of the war.

That Monday night, January 4, saw Nitro broadcast live once again from the Georgia Dome. In the second of three hours (the show had expanded to two hours in 1996 and three in 1998), Bischoff ordered announcer Tony Schiavone to announce that Mick Foley (as Mankind) who was in wcw as cactus jack, was going to defeat The Rock for the WWF Championship. Schiavone then said sarcastically that it would "put asses in the seats." Nitro's main event was the infamous "Fingerpoke of Doom" where Hogan tapped his finger on Nash (who had become the booker), causing Nash to lie down for Hogan to win the belt. It led to another heel turn for Hogan, and the reformation of the entire nWo. The match may very well have been the beginning of the end for WCW; the show would only get a 5.0 rating twice afterwards; its 5.8 rating on February 8 (on a night when RAW was pre-empted) was the last time it would get such a number.

By then the majority of WCW's main eventers were over 40 and the fans clamored to see younger stars like Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit and Raven elevated to main event status. The pleas appeared to have fallen on deaf ears, as business began a dramatic decline by the spring of 1999. In June, Jericho left WCW and joined WWF, where a "Countdown to the Millennium" clock heralded his arrival. Jericho made his RAW debut by getting into a verbal confrontation with The Rock. That night RAW beat Nitro by four ratings points. This was now a pattern. RAW was dominating Nitro to the point where WCW was forced to make quick fixes to stem the tide, including hiring rapper Master P, as well as bringing in Megadeth and KISS for concerts (both of which flopped in the ratings). In September 1999, Bischoff was removed from power. Meanwhile, RAW's numbers continued to rise; a 25-minute long This Is Your Life themed skit between The Rock and Foley drew an 8.4 quarter-hour rating on September 27.

On October 5, 1999, Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara, both of whom had written for the WWF, were lured away by WCW. Russo and Ferrera failed to capture the magic of their WWF days when they turned Nitro into more of a RAW clone, and they became known as "The Powers That Be." Ferrara even became a parody of Jim Ross called Oklahoma. Bad luck had begun to strike, starting in December 1999, when Bret Hart suffered a serious concussion during a match with Goldberg at Starrcade. The promotion was becoming more desperate by the month, as WCW entered severe financial crisis, both of which would only get worse in the months to come. Nitro's ratings failed to increase, and in January 2000, both Russo and Ferrara were suspended. Furthermore, the subsequent promotion of Kevin Sullivan to head booker caused an uproar among WCW's wrestlers. In spite of winning the WCW title at Souled Out, Chris Benoit quit in protest, along with Eddie Guererro, Perry Saturn and Dean Malenko. All four of them entered the WWF as The Radicalz, premiering on RAW's January 31 episode—15 days after Benoit's title win.

The departure of the four led WCW down the road to ruin. WCW became even more desperate, even going as far as putting the belt on David Arquette, who was in the promotion's 2000 movie Ready to Rumble. Nitro was cut to two hours in January 2000 in an effort to bolster the aggregate ratings score, but the elimination of the third hour didn't mean higher ratings for Nitro, which now averaged around a 2.5 (while RAW drew double, or sometimes triple that amount).

On April 10, 2000, Bischoff (now a creative consultant) and Russo, returned with equal power to work as a team and attempted to reboot WCW. The premise being that a changing of the guard was in order. The Millionaires Club, consisting of WCW's veteran stars such as Hogan, Flair and DDP, were accused of preventing the younger talent from ascending to the main event circle, and fueded with The New Blood, consisting of WCW's younger stars such as Billy Kidman, Booker T and Buff Bagwell. In theory, the younger stars would finally get an even playing field to breakout as big stars in wrestling. Unfortunately, a lot of the newer stars were relatively green or lacked the charisma and/or ability to truly get over. The new storyline sparked initial interest, but ultimately failed to turn around the ratings, as WCW continued it's downward spiral.

By now, Ted Turner was no longer running the company, having been swallowed up by Time Warner in 1996, and AOL in 2000. That year WCW would lose $62 million, due to the guaranteed contracts of their older performers, plummeting advertising revenues, falling Pay-Per-View buyrates, dropping house show attendance, questionable booking decisions, expensive stunts to boost ratings, and abysmal pay-per-view buyrates. To add to their woes; Bill Goldberg, arguably the biggest star of the promotion at the time, suffered an arm injury that kept him on the shelf for half the year. Upon his return, his momentum was derailed, after being forced to turn heel at The Great American Bash, despite being the most popular performer in the company.

In July, Bischoff would leave again, and in September, Russo left the company due to a concussion, and shows were left to be written by Ed Ferrara, Bill Banks, Jeremy Borash, Disco Inferno, and various other wrestlers, and staff. In the fall, rumors began to spread that WCW was up for sale.

In January 2001, Fusient Media Ventures, led by Eric Bischoff, announced they had bought WCW. The deal was contingent on the Turner networks keeping Nitro on Monday and WCW Thunder on TBS on Wednesday. When Jamie Kellner took over as CEO of Turner Broadcasting, he removed all WCW programming from the network. With no national television outlet to air the shows, Fusient dropped their offer to purchase the promotion. As a stipulation in an earlier lawsuit the WWF filed against WCW, WWF had first dibs on WCW and basically set their price for around $7 million to acquire certain assets, including the trademarks, logos, and video library. On March 23, 2001, Vince McMahon purchased World Championship Wrestling.

Wrestlers' contracts weren't part of the sale; unfortunately for AOL Time Warner, most of the top stars were contracted directly to the parent company instead of WCW, and thus AOL Time Warner was forced to continue to pay many of the wrestlers for years.

McMahon did allow a final Nitro show to air from Panama City Beach which had been scheduled for the following Monday on March 26. It featured him and the WWE stars from Cleveland airing in segments during the show. The final WCW World Heavyweight Championship match for the show and the company saw Booker T unify the WCW World Heavyweight Championship and WCW United States Heavyweight Championship by defeating Scott Steiner. The main event saw Sting defeat Ric Flair with the Scorpion Deathlock as a culmination of their trademark feud, then both men embraced one another at the match's conclusion.

The end was a RAW/Nitro simulcast in which Shane McMahon said that he (and not Vince) had bought WCW. That set up the ill-fated Invasion storyline. The last Nitro drew a 3.0 rating. The final ratings tally in 253 head-to-head showdowns was: 158 wins for RAW (including 122 straight wins from November 1998 until the war ended), 110 for Nitro, and three ties (see the List of television ratings during the Monday Night Wars chart for the complete week-by-week Nielsen ratings rundown).

WWE business has been steadily declining in North America since the end of the wars, with a noticeable drop in buyrates and ratings. To compensate for the decrease in domestic revenue, WWE has expanded their business overseas.

In 2004, WWE produced a DVD called The Monday Night War. The DVD left out a large portion of the "war", breaking off around 1997 before jumping straight to the post-WCW Era of WWE. The accuracy and objectivity of the DVD came into question, as some believed the documentary was simply telling one side of the story.

As a result of the Monday Night Wars; professional wrestling, once confined to weekends, became a prime-time staple on Monday nights. It also eliminated the traditional format of squash matches (where star wrestlers would defeat jobbers) on television, prompting both companies to put on competitive, pay-per-view quality matches on a weekly basis in an effort to increase ratings. The success of the Monday Night Wars led to millions of people who hardly cared about wrestling before 1995 (or those who had stopped watching after the 1980s wrestling boom) to become wrestling fans. Wrestling stars like The Rock, Steve Austin and Bill Goldberg became household names, and some attempted to parlay their newfound fame into other mediums. The most notable examples were Mick Foley, who became a New York Times best selling author with his autobiography, "Have a Nice Day", and The Rock, who branched out into films to become a successful action star.

• History of professional wrestling
• List of television ratings during the Monday Night Wars
• 1990s wrestling boom

• A history of the Monday Night Wars