Disco Inferno has been a controversial figure in the wrestling business ever since his WCW debut in 1995. Luger's reign would be brief but his title win was unforgettable. The subsequent promotion of Kevin Sullivan to head booker caused an uproar among WCW's wrestlers. The roster is quite possibly the largest roster of licensed . Hart's heel turn in the US after WrestleMania 13 while remaining a face in Canada and Western Europe was another example of breaking new ground. This includes the list of all WCW Wrestlers, division between Men and Women Roster, as well as Managers, Announcers, Authority figures, Producers and other personalities in World Championship Wrestling. The group, composed of Nash, Hall, Shawn Michaels, Hunter Hearst Helmsley (later known as Triple H) and Sean Waltman (1-2-3 Kid), often used their influence to advance one another's careers, and in some instances harm or ruin the careers of performers who displeased them. In the summer of 2003, WWE purchased ECW's assets in court, acquiring the rights to ECW's video library. During the promo, Russo also reversed the result of the Jarrett/Hogan match and giving the championship back to Jarrett. The World (Sony PlayStation 1, 1997) Complete Tested. Despite efforts to salvage the company, it was ultimately sold to McMahon, ending the Monday Night Wars. Eddy Guerrero challenges Chris Jericho for the WCW Cruiserweight . Overview. But that is why people get on here like Eddy and few other nutjobs and complain about pro wrestling is controlled by satanic Illuminati or freemasons. broadcast, an attempt by WWF to compete with WCW's Thunder broadcast on Thursday nights; they became known on-screen as unseen management known as "The Powers That Be". [27] During the January 18 episode, however, ratings would fall slightly to 4.9,[27] but would recover to 5.0 the following week. Each wrestler comes with at-least 2 attires, though most have 4. I now know I cant use the word B**ch, Can someone release Vince McMahon and ban him from returning to the company. [38] The final WCW World Heavyweight Championship match for the show and the company saw WCW United States Heavyweight Champion Booker T defeat Scott Steiner to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. This was a direct parallel to the very first Nitro. As cable television arose in the 1970s, local stations were often retransmitted to new markets as superstations. This "match" may have started the permanent ratings slide that was to follow for WCW, as Nitro according to Nielsen ratings numbers listed by TWNPNews.com-[27] only got a 5.0 rating three times afterwards. Waltman, who was a member of the nWo, had recently left WCW after wrestling there for a year and a half as Syxx (having been fired while recovering from an injury), and returned to the WWF as X-Pac. WrestleMania XII also began a brief turning point for the WWF, after which Raw would overtake Nitro for two consecutive months. Souled Out was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event promoted by World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in January from 1997 through 2000. Because the fans are not in control! By 1997 though, Mongo was a full-fledged member of The Four Horsemen. But anyway I am elderly old woman who used to be a wrestling fan. With this event, Eastern Championship Wrestling seceded from the NWA and became Extreme Championship Wrestling. Consequently, the late 1990s are commonly referred to as professional wrestling's most recent boom period. Hoping to counter the McMahon/Austin feud, WCW divided the nWo into the Hollywood Hogan-led heel "nWo Hollywood" faction and the Kevin Nash-led face "nWo Wolfpac" faction. RELATED: 10 Cringey nWo Moments We Completely Forgot About. Thus, the WWF became the sole national professional wrestling promotion in the United States. Revenge gained critical praise and tremendous . He states in his autobiography that he intended to resign on the day and when word leaked, they decided to remove him before he could resign. Last Edit: yesterday at 2:25am by Mid-Carder. The struggles of WCW since Russo's arrival to the company came to a head on July 9, 2000, at the Bash at the Beach pay-per-view. hide this ad. Although Turner himself reportedly found the sketches amusing,[10] the sketches stopped airing on the USA Network at the request of network president Kay Koplovitz,[11] and were ended permanently in a short presented before WrestleMania XII, which killed off all the characters. In the late 80s, Lex Luger joined WCW and immediately started being groomed for the main event position as a member of The Four Horsemen. Throughout 1997, Hogan had a stranglehold on the WCW Championship. RELATED: A Look Back On NBA Legend Dennis Rodman's Time In WCW. Wrestlers are going to quit. Television had been a significant part of professional wrestling presentation in the United States for decades, but after the 1950s it had been relegated to local stations as the national networks ceased airing it. The final ratings for the night were 5.7 for Raw Is War and 5.0 for Nitro. In January 2001, Fusient Media Ventures, led by Bischoff, announced that they were going to purchase WCW. Sometimes in pro wrestling, greatness can be seen coming from miles away. WCW World War 3: With Curt Hennig, Ric Flair, Scott Steiner, Rick Steiner. Throughout 1997, Raw Is War began to become more and more controversial, and despite the company not getting any rating victories, the WWF gradually began receiving significantly more acclaim. Rude appeared on both the WWF's Raw Is War and WCW's Monday Nitro on November 17, 1997. Roster. WCW Roster for 1997 The WCW roster for January 1997 was as follows: Bobby Eaton, Sting, "The Enforcer" Arn Anderson, Jack Boot, "Diamond" Dallas Page, Marc "Buff" Bagwell, Lord Steven Regal, "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair, Stevie Ray, Booker T., Brian Knobbs, Jerry Saggs, Mark Starr, Big Bubba Rogers, "Taskmaster" Kevin Sullivan, Steve Armstrong, Meng, "Das Wunderkind" Alex Wright, "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan, Brutus "The Bootie Man" Beefcake, "Hacksaw" Jim Duggin, "Big" John Tenta, "Dirty" Dick Slaytor, Scott Armstrong, Randy "Macho Man" Savage, Sgt. Eventually, that gimmick would die out and Wrath would be able to find moderate success in WCW but 1997 was a rough year for him. WCW ultimately ran into financial difficulties as a result of the amount of money they had promised wrestlers during a hiring binge in the early and middle part of the decade, which had been aimed at acquiring large portions of the WWF's talent roster. All four of them entered the WWF as The Radicalz, debuting on Raw Is War's January 31 episode15 days after Benoit's title win. The garbage they come out with now is disgusting. - WCW Commissioner: The Cat beat Mike Sanders to become the new commissioner - Penalty Box match: Lance Storm, Mike Awesome, & Elix Skipper beat Billy Kidman, Konnan, & Rey Mysterio Jr. . It's hard to imagine Sting being so hot in 1997 without the evil Hogan being his counterpart. After Mankind won the title, many fans then switched back to Nitro (which still had five minutes of airtime left), suggesting that WCW had a show that the fans wanted to see and might have emerged the victor that night had they not given away the Raw Is War results. By Ralphmilne. Characters like Sabu (David Harley) and Ken . "The Total Package" Lex Luger and "Diamond" Dallas Page join forces to face Scott Hall and "Macho Man" Randy Savage in a No Disqualification Match. WCW became even more desperate, going as far as placing the WCW World Heavyweight Championship upon actor David Arquette, who was making promotional appearances for WCW's feature film Ready to Rumble. The sequel wrestling game to WCW vs. NWO: World Tour (1997), introducing ring entrances, improved graphics, a larger roster, more arenas, more signature moves, a championship mode, attire modification, and other improvements. Behind the scenes, executives who had longed to see WCW removed from the Turner organization were eventually able to see it come to fruition after Turner Broadcasting's merger with Time Warner and their merger with America Online (AOL). The time has come to bring back the glorious old days of wrestling where stars were made! He threw down the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, stating that he did not want to be champion of a "dead promotion". RELATED: 9 Huge Matches WWE Fans Surprisingly Didn't Get During The New Generation Era Tony Khan recently made an intriguing comparison between AEW's current lineup and WCW's roster from 1997, owing to the mixture of the veteran and young stars in both.. By 2002, the WWF roster had doubled in size due to the abundance of contracted workers. On January 4, 2010, TNA moved Impact! During their mid-1995 meeting, Turner asked Bischoff how WCW could compete with the WWF. hide this ad. While still running steadily, Barnett and the Briscos sold their entire stock in GCW (including the television deal) to Vince McMahon, and on July 14, 1984 (otherwise known as "Black Saturday"), the WWF took over the GCW show. Secondly, Luger had just come off a successful run in the WWF and was one of the company's top stars. An argument can be made that they had the best match in WWE history up to that point at SummerSlam 1991. By 1988, Crockett's acquisition spree had severely drained his coffers. composed of stock footage of matches featuring current WWF wrestlers who had started their careers as jobbers in WCW, all of which ended in the WWF wrestler suffering a humiliating loss. Welcome back to the clown world that everyone has fallen asleep to! . WCW's coup of obtaining Luger was significant for several reasons. Hellbent on proving Vince McMahon that he had plenty left in the tank, Randy Savage jumped to WCW in December 1994, reuniting with The Hulkster and reigniting his rivalry with Ric Flair. The Disney tapings would ultimately prove disastrous to the company's reputation, largely due to WCW's underestimation of growing internet culture: Because the events were recorded weeks, and sometimes months, in advance, fans in attendance had time to disseminate the results not only to wrestling magazines but also across the internet. The episode included a repeat airing of the Halloween Havoc WCW World Heavyweight Championship match between Diamond Dallas Page and Goldberg after the original airing exceeded the scheduled 3-hour running time and subscribers lost the feed at 11 p.m. EST. In late 1994, "Macho Man" Randy Savage shocked the wrestling world when he departed WWE. Its eventual successor, Extreme Championship Wrestling, aimed its product at males between 18 and 35, breaking a few taboos in professional wrestling such as blading. WCW would capitalize on that interest by signing former Chicago Bear, Steve "Mongo" McMichael. Plays. The former WWE management will still be rich off your hard earned money and chilling on the beach! Absolute egotistical nonsense. Lastly, 1997 featured Disco losing a match at Halloween Havoc to Jacqueline. Stephanie McMahon leaves WWE ; Vince is president, Please dont ban me. Hall and Nash were in control of the match when Hulk Hogan came to the ring. The former WWE management will still be rich off your hard earned money and chilling on the beach! [citation needed] This prompted the WWF creative team to begin looking into the idea of more adult-oriented storylines and characters and mimicking WCW's metafiction elements. Three weeks prior to the final Nitro, ECW owner Paul Heyman had begun an announcing contract with the WWF, as ECW had also fallen to financial problems and was forced to declare bankruptcy and close in January 2001. Some fans tolerated Disco while others hated him. Comments. Russo's booking style was often referred to as "Crash TV": Matches were shortened in favor of story-building backstage vignettes, with an emphasis on shock factor. In contrast to professional wrestling of the time, which was marketed more towards families, Eastern Championship Wrestling was geared more toward adults and fans who craved a more athletic and violent wrestling product. Before World Championship Wrestling was formed, Jim Crockett Promotions existed. This includes the list of all WCW Wrestlers, division between Men and Women Roster, as well as Managers, Announcers, Authority figures, Producers and other personalities in World Championship Wrestling. While Mongo certainly had name identity, he was far from a good wrestler. There will perhaps never be another performer like Sting in 1997, who managed to be the hottest star in WCW while only wrestling one match that year. The Curtain Call would go on to influence the narrative course both companies took by encouraging WCW, and later the WWF, to blur the lines of fantasy and reality in wrestling, incorporating wrestlers' real names and details of their lives into their character's stories. because the show still continued even though a person on the roster had lost his life on the same . Fans went home happy everytime after the show! Rick Rude, a wrestler who had been popular amongst both fans and his fellow wrestlers during the 1980s and 1990s, who had recently made a comeback in the WWF and was one of the on-screen founding members of D-Generation X, left the WWF a week after the Montreal Screwjob, and followed Hart to WCW. These moves prompted retaliatory tactics by the WWF; in January 1996, Raw began airing skits before and after commercial breaks entitled Billionaire Ted's Wrasslin' Warroom, depicting parodies of Ted Turner ("Billionaire Ted"), Hulk Hogan ("The Huckster"), "Macho Man" Randy Savage ("The Nacho Man"), and "Mean" Gene Okerlund ("Scheme Gene"). Our complete Pro Wrestlers Database allows you to travel through time and see the WCW Roster & Alumni by Year or any specific Date in history. The Monday Night Wars or Monday Night War was an era of mainstream televised American professional wrestling, from September 4, 1995 to March 26, 2001, in which the World Wrestling Federation's (WWF, now WWE) Monday Night Raw (later Raw Is War) and World Championship Wrestling's (WCW) Monday Nitro were broadcast opposite each other in a battle for Nielsen ratings each week. This includes the list of all WCW Wrestlers, division between Men and Women Roster, as well as Managers, Announcers, Authority figures, Producers and other personalities in World Championship Wrestling. Dominic Ward is a S Tier troll fr. WWE Roster 1997 Stats Can you name the WWE Roster 1997? By thelesserevil. One of the few performers to have his gimmick changed to a lighter, sympathetic, more traditional face persona was Mick Foley, who had been wrestling as the psychotic heel Mankind. WCW/nWo Revenge is a professional wrestling video game released in 1998 for the Nintendo 64 game console. The game was followed by WCW/nWo Thunder, which was based on Nitro's Thursday night counterpart. The New Blood/Millionaire's Club rivalry was aborted before the start of the New Blood Rising pay-per-view, which was supposed to showcase the rivalry. Despite winning the WCW World Heavyweight Championship at Souled Out, Chris Benoit quit in protest, along with Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn and Dean Malenko. As a result of the increase, WWF was divided into franchises through its two main television programs, Raw and SmackDown!, assigning the now divided roster to either franchise while also designating championships and appointing figureheads to each franchise. Surprisingly for Bischoff, Turner granted him one live hour on TNT[a] every Monday night, which specifically overlapped with Raw. Raw and Nitro traded wins in the "Monday Night Wars" early on, but WWE has conceded that by December 1995 "WCW had the advantage over [the WWF] in the storied Monday Night Wars". [16][17] On top of this, Rude also appeared on ECW's Hardcore TV during that weekend (November 1416 as the show was syndicated differently depending on the market). Pinfalls were allowed this time in a match that was more about individuals than the team effort of the past. When recalling this event years later, Paul Heyman stated the following: The National Wrestling Alliance was old-school when old-school wasn't hip anymore. In May 2002, WWF was renamed to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) after a lawsuit with the World Wide Fund for Nature, which operates in the U.S. and Canada under its former international name of "World Wildlife Fund", and also used the WWF initials. As few WWF performers at the time utilized the type of aerial techniques found in lucha libre, the cruiserweight division and the acrobatic performances of its wrestlers helped not only to draw in new viewers to WCW, but also helped the organization reach out to fans who were used to seeing such feats in wrestling performances in their native countries. Despite losing to Nitro week after week, Raw Is War rallied in the ratings when it introduced its new "WWF Attitude" concept, in which the family-friendly and clear-cut face vs. heel dynamic of the 1980s to mid 1990s was jettisoned in favor of morally ambiguous wrestlers and adult-oriented, often heavily sexualized storylines. vs RAW 2009. . Forget about fans. The garbage they come out with now is disgusting. On this page you find the full WCW Roster & Alumni across the All-Time History of the company. Week after week in 1997, fans tuned in to watch Sting drop from the rafters and foil The nWo's plans. Before World Championship Wrestling was formed, Jim Crockett Promotions existed. The combination of an intimate venue and live action proved highly successful. [44] With the financial and critical success of the production, WWE produced a second One Night Stand in June 2006 and relaunched the ECW franchise as a WWE brand, complementary to Raw and SmackDown. [4], In 1994, Jim Crockett Jr.'s non-compete agreement with Turner, to whom he had sold in 1988, expired and he decided to start promoting with the NWA again. WWE promises big changes. And now we have the New Gen/Attitude Era Ultimate Scale Ring that measures at I think 21.5"x21.5". That year, Savage and Diamond Dallas Page had Pro Wrestling Illustrated's Feud Of The Year. 7. [26], This Nitro's main event was originally scheduled to be Goldberg vs. Kevin Nash for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship and was going to be their anticipated rematch. 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