Wcw Nitro v Wwe Raw

[TheBigBoot]

I started watching wwe in early 1993 when my folks got sky. Then in 1995 I was channel surfing and discovered the cartoon network which was the home of wcw Nitro. It was a refreshing change to the wwe. The cruiserweights were exciting, I loved seeing the older wrestler. Hogan, Flair, Piper, Lugar etc...

 

1996. After what seemed like months of adverts, TNT started showing Nitro n April 1996. Remember the first episode they showed like it was yesterday: Savage/Finlay, Mister JL/Konnan, American Males/Luger & Sting, Ric Flair/Giant (not the title change this was earlier). The funny thing was they also seemed to go back to that episode every time Nitro was cancelled/unavailable.

 

Was cool to get Nitro at that point sine AFAIK hadn

[Magnum]

My favourite year of Nitro is still 2000, because it's fucking potty. I liked having distinctly different propositions for my wrestling at that point. WWE was awesome, had all my favourite people having great matches and being funny, and was something my mates wanted to talk about for the first time since we were all about 7. WCW put shit on poles and broke character and stuff. It was all great.

 

This bit sums up the year 2000 perfectly for me. WWF was just perfect, whereas Russo's WCW was hilarious. I loved both.

 

Overall, it'd probably have to be WWF for me, too. I really only got back into wrestling in late '96/early 97, but once Austin and the Harts kicked off, forget about it - it was WWF all the way. Mind you, I had my channel-hopping down to a fine art by 98 - catch the massive nWo in-ring promo (where they all just posed and said nothing in particular for 20 mins) at the start of Nitro, watch that until RAW came on and Austin did a big skit with Vince, flick back to TNT once Jericho comes on, then over to RAW for The Rock's latest promo. Catch whatever Scott Steiner's doing on Nitro, and then over to RAW for the rest of the night. Maybe fit in a quick wank over Eurotrash in the meantime, and job's a good un.

[air_raid]

Great post from TheBigBoot. Admittedly those early Nitros suffered because of the repetitive nature of Hogan/Savage vs Dungeon/Horsemen main events, but the little things like Pillman's transformation, the endless surprise debuts/returns and following the bizarre face Sting/heel Luger friendship still made Nitro compelling even before the arrival of the Outsiders, as you say.

[TheBigBoot]

Don't think I'd ever seen an episode of Nitro until then, but I did watch the last few months of it on Bravo. Did the PPVs get shown on Sky? I remember being annoyed at not being able to see them at the time and bought a few of the videos.

No they didn't. I think that's actually one of the reasons WCW never became as established over here as WWF did during the ITV era because all the WCW fans back then (myself included) would watch the shows every week and then moan that there was no way of seeing the the PPVs.In fairness, to ITV they did start showing matches from the PPVs from around Slamboree '94 (may have been earlier) onwards. In the case of Bash at the Beach '94 they even dedicated the whole hour to the show. The matches shown were Regal/Badd, Steamboat/Austin and Hogan/Flair, which is a pretty great Saturday afternoon if you ask me. I have fond memories of watching Chris Cruise in a Hawaiian shirt introducing it.The same thing happened when it was shown on TNA. The only way to see the PPVs was in German on DSF but at that point I lived in an area where we had cable rather than satellite and didn't pick it up.

I really enjoyed the final few months of Nitro actually. Is general opinion the same?

I think so, yeah. Was only really following online at the time and from what I remember WCW was getting a lot of praise whereas WWF whilst still having more supporters was starting to get more criticism by the week. This was during the period where not only did I not have access to Sky but all the (admittedly pretty much WWF exclusive anyway) rasslin fans I had met at Uni had gone off it again so I didn