Something is filling the air of World Wrestling Entertainment since the purchase of World Championship Wrestling from AOL/Time Warner back on March 2001. Vince McMahon should be living the time of his life – after a long struggle, he had beaten the last major wrestling federation and is the only big-time league in North America. With the possibilities of a new and improved WCW on the horizon and potential inter-promotional matches that were only the stuff of dreams, it seemed like McMahon was ready to begin a new era with a bang and take his wrestling company to the next level.
Of course, things did not exactly work that way.
Because of WCW’s tarnished image and the fact that there weren’t enough top-draws from the WCW contracts that WWF had bought out, the idea of a second promotion was scrapped. The Invasion angle, an angle that fans have been longing for, ended up being a badly booked flop. There weren’t enough of big WCW names that they had to go out and include ECW into the mix and merge the two “companies” to form the Alliance. That idea did not go over with fans and within a few months, the Invasion angle reached its conclusion and was never brought up again.
So what’s the next move? Let’s hire Ric Flair, who is given the role of on-air half-owner.
Now what are we going to do about this world title situation? Seems to me that we should unify the WWF World Title and the WCW World Title so we can have an UNDISPUTED World Title! Now, who should participate in this event? The Rock is WCW World champ, so he’s in. Steve Austin is WWF champ already, so he’s in. There we go, our unification match… ah, but wait, that would be obvious. So just to throw a curve ball, let’s throw in Kurt Angle and Chris Jericho and have a mini-tournament with the two titles on the line. Austin retained his title by beating Angle, while Jericho defeated the Rock for the other title. One main event later, Chris Jericho was the new champion and was given a tremendous boost by being the first undisputed World champ in a long time.
It should have been the start of a new main-event picture. Instead, Chris Jericho’s reign as WWF Undisputed champion was tragically and predictably botched. He was put over Austin and Rock… and on the same night no less, but despite that, he was still pretty much treated like a second-stringer who just happened to be World champ. And in the end, Jericho was basically a scapegoat for the returning Triple H, who had been sidelined with a serious injury. Some time later, Triple H wins the title, only to lose it a month later to another returning old foogie, but let’s not jump ahead.
The Royal Rumble was an interesting event because it featured the return of four older faces; Godfather, Val Venis (now known as Chief Morley), Goldust, and the late Mr. Perfect. While Godfather and Venis were in the developmental territories, the last sighting of Goldust was in the final days of WCW and Curt Hennig was seen in the fledging XWF promotion jobbing to Hulk Hogan. Their returns didn’t do much to boost the ratings of WWF television and neither were exactly used properly. Hennig was fired after a plane incident with Brock Lesnar, while Goldust is still around.
The Internet was buzzing over the signing of the nWo: Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Hollywood Hulk Hogan. Their return to the WWF would be hyped on WWF television up until the No Way Out PPV (whose abbreviation, coincidently enough, is N.W.O.), which featured the nWo showing and declaring their intentions to make the company better and later cost Austin his match against Undisputed champ Jericho… already, the nWo entrance has been botched. I mean, their big debut and they just walk out, blah blah blah, and later beat on Austin?
The next night on RAW, Hogan accepts the Rock’s challenge to a match at Wrestlemania, while Austin gets Scott Hall. Kevin Nash is injured, and is useless. Jump to Wrestlemania X-8, where Rock and Hogan are having their match. Suddenly, the Toronto crowd shifts gears for some reason and decide to embrace Hulkamania by cheering Hogan and booing the Rock. Hogan attacked the Rock with his weightlifter’s belt to cheers and even added his usual Hulk Up shtick before jobbing to the Rock. The nWo attacks Hogan and boots him out. Hogan lost the match, but won back his fans. Fans continued to cheer for Hogan the next night on RAW when Hogan was cheered and officially left the nWo. The funny thing about this is that Hulkamania started running wild once again on Canadian soil.
Fast forward to a few months later. Scott Hall was fired due to a plane incident that is documented on other sites, so I won’t go into details here. Kevin Nash introduces former WWF champion and Clique member Shawn Michaels as a new member of the nWo, the stable currently made up of Paul “Big Show” Wight, Sean “X-Pac” Waltman, and Booker T. Kevin Nash, on his first match in months, once again succumbs to injury and is out for several months. He injured his quad by running across the ring. No kidding, that’s what happened. As a result of this disastrous yet hilarious injury, the nWo is scrapped for good and never heard from again.
Vince McMahon hires former WCW president Eric Bischoff to be the on-air General manager of RAW. The signing of Bischoff was kept in secrecy and caused quite a shock to not only the fans watching, but also the talent backstage. Booker T pretty much said it best, “Tell me I did not just see that!” In the end, however, Bischoff was eventually seen as another on-screen corrupt commissioner, an angle that has been done to death in the past couple years already.
The next major signing by WWE was former WCW champ Scott Steiner, who was last seen on a World Wrestling All-Stars PPV winning that company’s championship. Everyone had hyped that Steiner would be the one man to threaten Triple H’s reign as World Heavyweight champion. However, his match with Triple H at Royal Rumble 2003 and the rematch at No Way Out 2003 told a different story; Steiner didn’t exactly thrill us and even attracted some boos despite being the babyface. Steiner isn’t playing much of a major role these days. The “Great Debate” with Christopher Nowinski isn’t exactly my idea of a top-level feud.
When we last saw Hulk Hogan, he was beaten mercilessly by Brock Lesnar. An injured back as well as contract disputes prevented Hogan from making a return. Those issues seemingly resolved, Hulk Hogan made his return and made a challenge to Vince McMahon. McMahon decided to have Hogan fight the Rock, who has returned to WWE from making his latest feature film. Now an arrogant heel, Rock beated Hogan at No Way Out for the second time, but this time with assistance from McMahon. On an airing of Smackdown, Hogan and McMahon had a heated battle of words, with McMahon accusing Hogan of betraying him by jumping to WCW and testifying against him in the steroids trial. Hogan and McMahon were signed to compete in a street fight at Wrestlemania, with Hogan’s career on the line.
For months, there have been reports and rumors about WWE attempting to sign former WCW champ Bill Goldberg. This went on for some time since it was announced that AOL/Time Warner bought out Goldberg’s contract, making him the biggest free agent in the business. Finally, it was announced at Wrestlemania 19 that Goldberg has indeed signed a contract with WWE, and made his debut the following RAW, spearing the Rock and letting him know that “he’s next.” It’s too early to speculate on how Goldberg will be portrayed in a company that botched the WCW invasion angle and the nWo, but we’ll see soon enough.
Roddy Piper made a surprise appearance at Wrestlemania 19, a small role in the Hogan vs. McMahon street fight. Some speculated that Piper’s appearance, as well as the subsequent interview bits, were only a one-time deal, but then Smackdown revealed that Piper’s talk segment, Piper’s Pit, would make a return the week after. He’s even wrestled a match, although maybe he should refrain from doing so in the future.
In another shocking signing, former WWF Women’s champion Rena “Sable” Mero made her return on Smackdown congratulating Torrie Wilson on her recent Playboy shoot. It was certainly a shock considering the negative circumstances that led to her departure from the company back in 99.
To top this all off, there was even speculation that Kevin Nash may return as his old Diesel gimmick… heh, how can that be? Diesel was this hip cool guy while Nash is a broken down guy. Bleh… As it turned out, Kevin Nash returned as… Kevin Nash, complete with dyed hair. Once again, the Clique is in the main event spotlight.
Could the resurgence of old stars in WWE be the answer to the company’s ratings woes? I find it highly doubtful, but now that you have that whole bunch of former WCW guys, maybe that WCW resurgence idea doesn’t sound all too bad. You’ve got the guys for it, and you can now pull off a perfectly reasonable Invasion angle that would lead to the revival of World Championship Wrestling. In that sense, you would have a wrestling promotion in WCW that can feature established talent and some new talent, while the existing promotion can be used to showcase younger, homebrewn talent such as Lesnar, Cena, Dinsmore, and others.
However, that proposal will probably never happen, because McMahon doesn’t want to associate himself with the WCW name. He is even considering bringing back the Ultimate Warrior. Good god shoot me now! I beg of you!
dtm666 