The Monday Night War: 20 Years Later

By Josh Albarran - September 24, 2015

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Vince McMahon at Madison Square Garden for Monday Night Raw in 1997.
(WWE/MSG Media, Inc.)

A few weeks ago on September 4th, it was the twentieth anniversary of the Monday Night Wars between Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE) and Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling unit as WCW launched Monday Nitro live on TNT to go head-to-head against WWE's Monday Night Raw on the USA Network. On the night, however Raw was pre-empted on USA in conflict of the U.S. Open tennis coverage allows WCW to receive strong completion thanks to the appearance of the then-recent former WWE wrestler Lex Luger appearing on Nitro during the start of the Sting-Ric Flair match:

The rest was history with Hulk Hogan forming the nWo, the birth of Austin 3:16, the mysterious Sting in black & white, the X-rated trio of D-Generation X, the Montreal Screwjob, Goldberg's historic undefeated streak, The Rock's new attitude and many many more that once hit the cable television ratings for many years until the WWE brought WCW in 2001 when the war ended (something we never seen since McMahon launched WrestleMania or Turner buying the NWA which would become WCW back in the 1980s). I talked with Eric Bischoff, the former president of WCW on Twitter back on Sept. 4th, "It was a great moment in time." Bischoff said to me and "Its a pressure to look back and see just how much Nitro changed the industry forever."

Steve McMichael, Eric Bischoff and Bobby "The Brain" Heeman at the broadcast booth of WCW Monday Nitro during its glory days.
(WWE)

The Monday Night War represents all the action that is between "professional wrestling" and "sports entertainment" for all hardcore wrestling fans (didn't meant to those fans in ECW, that's another story!) who were watching either Raw or Nitro back in the 1990s. The WWE side was led by McMahon, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, Kane and many more while the WCW side was led by Turner and Bischoff, "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Goldberg, Sting, Ric Flair and others. Below, Triple H and Sting discuss the battle between WWE and WCW during the Monday Night War:

To this day, fans are still talking about the Monday Night War and the rivalry between WWE and WCW & its larger-than-life superstars changed the landscape of both wrestling and entertainment forever. There will never a wrestling war like this that revolutionizes us!