History of World Championship Wrestling - Signs of A Decline

Signs of A Decline

Main article: Monday Night Wars: 1998: McMahon strikes back

When Hart was planning to leave the WWF in 1997 after signing a contract to WCW prior to the Montreal Screwjob at the Survivor Series, it looked as though WCW was in position to permanently eclipse the WWF, if not put them out of business. WCW appeared to possess the biggest stars in the industry, such as Hogan, Savage, Sting, Flair, Hart, Hall and Nash. In addition, the company had credible midcard stars such as Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit and Raven, as well as an exciting cruiserweight division featuring high-flying international competition. However, things would not unfold as WCW had planned.

Turner sought to capitalize on WCW's momentum by launching a new Thursday night show on TBS, WCW Thunder, in January 1998. Popular opinion was that the Screwjob and WCW's subsequent acquisition of Hart were death blows for the WWF. WCW had a golden opportunity to capture the allegiances of WWF fans who were disenchanted with the company after its poor treatment of a popular star. But according to Hart, the company failed to capitalize on his talent and momentum, and had no idea how to properly utilize him. Vince McMahon had described Hart as the kind of wrestler a promoter builds his whole company around, but WCW generally used him as a midcarder. Their biggest hope was that Hart would help create inroads in foreign markets such as his native Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Bischoff contends that due to the events of Montreal, Hart's passion and desire for the business was not as it was during his WWF heyday. "Montreal...had taken his toll on him," Bischoff stated in his autobiography. "It was all he talked about... constantly." In any event, Hart's WCW tenure failed to live up to expectations.

As WCW coasted with the same basic formula they had been following, McMahon set about revamping his creative approach and set in motion events that later put his company ahead of WCW for good. Under the "WWF Attitude" moniker, he elevated rising stars like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H and his DX group, Mankind, and Kane. McMahon himself, after having played in a supporting role on camera as the play-by-play announcer, capitalized on the ill will he received from fans for screwing Bret Hart by turning himself into an on-screen villain. The "Mr. McMahon" heel character feuded with babyface wrestlers and used his influence to screw them out of wins and titles. The April 13, 1998 episode of Raw headlined by a match between Austin and McMahon, marked the first time that WCW lost the head-to-head Monday night ratings battle in 84 weeks. WWF ratings began an ascent to highs previously unheard of in wrestling TV. WCW attempted to counter this by dividing the nWo into the Hogan-led heel nWo Hollywood faction and the Nash-led face nWo Wolfpac faction but this was seen by many fans as a poor rehash of the WCW vs. nWo storyline of 1996-1997 with boring predictable matches and vignettes.

WCW's next big attempt to regain ratings supremacy was by marketing ex-NFL player Bill Goldberg as an invincible monster with a record-breaking winning streak. Goldberg was incredibly popular, but business still quickly fell off for WCW, especially as the list of stars ready to be destroyed by Goldberg grew shorter, not to mention the declining quality of the PPVs. One of WCW's last wins in the Monday night ratings war was on July 6, 1998, when WCW aired Goldberg's long-awaited world title victory over Hulk Hogan on free television. This significantly increased the rating for the show, but only for that week. Such a match could likely have generated millions, possibly tens of millions for WCW on pay-per-view had the angle been built up properly for a matter of months. On September 14, 1998, WCW won the ratings war once again with a memorable moment that featured Ric Flair's return to WCW and the reformation of the legendary Four Horsemen. On October 25, 1998, WCW's Halloween Havoc ran longer than the time allocated because of the last-minute addition of a tag team title match between the champions (Scott Steiner and The Giant) and the challengers (Rick Steiner and Buff Bagwell), which Rick Steiner won by himself although Bagwell abandoned him as a tag partner. As a result, several thousand people lost their pay-per-view feed at 11pm during the highly- anticipated world title match between Diamond Dallas Page and Goldberg. The following night, WCW decided to correct the fault by airing the entire match for free on Nitro and won the ratings war for the final time. This timing faux pas upset millions of viewers who had paid for the pay-per-view of whom WCW were forced to reimburse, only to have to wait to see the main event for free the next night .

At this time, Kevin Nash was in charge of booking the shows. After winning the World War 3 battle royal in November 1998, he went on to end Goldberg's winning streak and win the world title on Starrcade one month later. Many believed it wasn't the right time for the streak to end, nor was it believed Nash should have been the one to end it. Nash's abuse of power in booking was yet another factor in WCW's demise.

Then came the match between Nash and Hogan in January 1999. The match was originally advertised as a Starrcade rematch between Nash and Goldberg. As a result, the Georgia Dome in Atlanta was a complete sellout, with over 40,000 people watching live expecting to see the rematch. Throughout the broadcast the announcers hyped the main event as being the "biggest match in the history of our sport" and said that "unlike the other guys, we have a real main event". Instead, Goldberg was forced to forgo his title match after being arrested by the police for stalking Miss Elizabeth and was replaced by Hogan. Hogan faked a punch on Nash and then poked him in the chest. Nash overselled the poke in the chest by forcefully falling to the mat and allowing Hogan to pin him for the WCW World Heayweight Championship. After the match, Goldberg made his way down the stage along with Lex Luger, only to have Luger blindside him and Hall taser him with a shock stick once again, just like at Starrcade. This bait and switch damaged the credibility of the company as a whole, having failed to present the advertised match and using underhand tactics to sell out the arena for that night's telecast. On the same episode of Nitro, Tony Schiavone, under direction from Bischoff, revealed that Mick Foley won the WWF Title at a taped edition of Raw and mocked the WWF for making what he implied was a bad business decision. Nielsen ratings indicated that over 300,000 households changed the channel to watch the victory and shifted the ratings for the night in the WWF's favor.