Mankind Incident
Airing opposite Nitro this night was the edition of WWF Raw is War in which Mick Foley (as Mankind) won the WWF Championship from The Rock. As per their procedures at the time, the WWF had taped this particular edition of Raw six days in advance of the program's airing. Earlier that night, armed with knowledge of what happened, WCW revealed the results of the taped WWF show on their broadcast. On orders from Eric Bischoff, WCW announcer Tony Schiavone gave away the result of the match before it aired:
"Fans, as Hollywood Hogan walks away and you look at this 40,000 plus on hand, if you're even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, fans, do not, because we understand that Mick Foley, who wrestled here one time as Cactus Jack, is going to win their world title. Ha! That's gonna put some butts in the seats, heh."Within minutes, Nielsen ratings showed that several hundred thousand viewers switched channels from Nitro on TNT to Raw on the USA Network. After Mankind won the title, many fans then switched back to Nitro, which still had five minutes of air time left. The final ratings for the night were 5.7 for Raw and 5.0 for Nitro.
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