Acquisition By The World Wrestling Federation and Aftermath
On March 23, 2001, all of WCW's trademarks and archived video library, as well as a select twenty-four contracts, were sold to Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. WCW was purchased for a mere $3,000,000. Most of the main event-level stars including Flair, Goldberg, Kevin Nash, and Sting were contracted directly to parent company AOL Time Warner instead of WCW, and thus AOL Time Warner was forced to continue to pay many of the wrestlers for years.
TNT did allow a final Nitro show to air from Panama City Beach, Florida which had been scheduled for the following Monday on March 26. McMahon opened the last-ever episode of WCW Monday Nitro with a simulcast with WWF Monday Night Raw, which aired from Cleveland, Ohio, with a self-praising speech. 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. The main event featured Sting defeating Ric Flair with the Scorpion Deathlock as a culmination of their trademark feud, then both men embraced one another at the match's conclusion. This was a direct parallel to the very first Nitro, where Sting vs. Flair was also the main event. After the Sting/Flair match, Vince appeared on Raw to close Nitro and to declare victory over WCW. Vince's son Shane McMahon then appeared on Nitro, declaring that it was actually he who had bought WCW. This initiated a storyline in which Shane led a WCW invasion of the WWF, which lasted from March to November 2001 and marked the end of WCW.
Despite aborted attempts to run WCW-branded events (including a proposed Saturday night timeslot that later evolved into WWF Excess and then WWE Velocity) the WWF only ran a handful of matches on Raw and SmackDown! under the WCW banner. These WCW-branded matches were ill-received by the longtime WWF fans so much that on the very first WCW-brand main event between Booker T and Buff Bagwell the crowd cheered when the WWF heels Stone Cold Steve Austin and Kurt Angle ran in to jump the WCW babyface Booker T.
In 2004, WWE produced a DVD called The Monday Night Wars. Two hours in length, the DVD left out a large portion of the wars, breaking off around 1997 before jumping straight to the post-WCW era of WWE. The objectivity of the DVD's content was questioned, as some believed the documentary was simply telling the WWE side of the story. On August 25, 2009, WWE released The Rise and Fall of WCW on DVD. The DVD looked back at the roots of WCW during the days of GCW and Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling, to the glory days of Monday Nitro and the nWo, and to its demise and sale to WWE. This DVD included several new interviews from Vince McMahon, Jim Crockett, Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Bill Goldberg, as well as many of those responsible for running the NWA and WCW. Archive interviews were included from former WCW talent such as Hulk Hogan,and Eric Bischoff, due to their respective contracts with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling not allowing them to provide fresh interviews for WWE.
Read more about this topic: History Of World Championship Wrestling
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