25 Years Ago Today...

[BomberPat]

...the WWF purchased WCW.

The biggest possible story in wrestling history, barely a week before Wrestlemania 17. As much of an end of an era as you could ever imagine.

It's been discussed and debated to death, but what are everyone's memories of that time, of finding out, and how it played out?

 

I was in school, in an IT classroom. I always made sure to sit  in a corner, where my screen was less visible from the teacher's desk in the centre of the room. I tended to waste time online, and had got into the habit of checking WWF.com for any news or whatever, because I was getting massively into wrestling, but didn't really know how to follow it online properly yet - I had been in some chat rooms, maybe a Yahoo Group, but I didn't know any message boards yet, and didn't know what news sites were worthwhile. WWF.com at least gave you the results of RAW, and the big headlines about the only company I actually watched. 

So I logged on, and the entire front page was a graphic saying "WWF PURCHASES WCW". I couldn't believe my eyes. I told my mates at school, and absolutely none of them believed me. I had never bullshitted them about wrestling before, but this put me in the same category as the lad who claimed Lita was his auntie, and the one who every week insisted that Ken Shamrock was definitely coming back on RAW this week. It was just the biggest possible lie, and for a couple of hours I was a laughing stock for even trying to come up with it. I tried explaining it to my Dad after the RAW simulcast with the final Nitro, and as soon as it got to "and now Shane McMahon owns WCW", he switched off, because obviously it was all just a silly wrestling storyline.

[gmoney]

I've got what can only be a false memory of finding out about it in Power Slam. I didn't have the internet at home back then, or Sky, but my best mate told me what was happening on TV all the time, and I would have heard about it as soon as it was on TV over here.

Probably for another thread, but does anyone else get weird false memories like that? To keep it slightly wrestling focused, I can can clearly picture myself watching PPVs in my old house, even though the PPVs took place years after I'd moved. 

[TheScarlettChad]

As a moment, what a time. Vince appearing on Nitro to announce he bought it. But with 25 years of hindsight, worst thing to happen to wrestling until 2019 of course. Vince didn't help by buyring WCW, And calling their fans rednecks on TV then wondering why nobody was tuning into RAW. And its been discussed to death on here I'm sure, and on various forums, But the excuse that Goldberg cost too much etc. Invasions buyrate was enough to buy them out. I don't believe Vince was scared of Taker and Paul moaning about pay, I think it was just arrogance and hubris. 

[HarmonicGenerator]

I think I first read it on the wrestling letters page on Ceefax. Some real news occasionally made it on there, in amongst “Kane is the Ultimate Warrior in a mask” and “Fake Razor Ramon was the original and Scott Hall’s the fake”, so you couldn’t trust a word of it.

Then I think I saw a news article about it on the Channel 4 website. That sounds odd, but I guess they showed Sunday Night Heat at the time, so they must have had a WWF sub-site.

Then it was all confirmed when, as best as I can recall, JR talked through it a bit on his Ross Report column, which I read religiously because he’d give you the scoop on the next big stars - I first heard about Randy Orton, Brock Lesnar, Shelton Benjamin and The Prototype there, and I’m sure he must have mentioned which WCW stars we’d expect to see move over soon, because I can recall first reading about WWE signing Rey Mysterio and Scott Steiner’s in 2002 via JR.

A very weird roundabout way but that’s how I did wrestling back then. Got to do something to fill the time between the weekend shows on Sky One. Of course the magnitude of the news was completely lost on me, because I never watched a single episode of WCW in full (five minutes on Channel 5 a couple of times, weirdly only ever when MIA were wrestling, was as far as I ventured). Most of my knowledge came from Mick Foley’s first book, and he made WCW sound… well, not as good as WWF, so I don’t remember really being that bothered when I found out!

[Arch Stanton]

Similarly to Bomber, I found out in an IT/computer room. I was in my first year at University, staying in halls of residence. I had no internet in my room and there was no internet on your phone back then. I used to go to the computer room purely to go on WWF.com to read results from Raw and SmackDown, and the Ross Report. I hadn't even discovered message boards or fan forums at that time. It was an incredible headline to read, as far as I was aware there has been zero talk of it happening beforehand.

[Supremo]

We wouldn’t have had a proper PC yet, so I will almost certainly have been refreshing NEWZ sites using my Dreamcast browser at home. The lengths required to get the scoops in those days.

I distinctly remember me and my mates talking about how this would be the biggest storyline of all time, with all the top stars fighting each other. We were clearly not smartened up to AOL Time Warner guaranteed contracts.

Most frustrating part will always be watching your Flairs, Goldbergs, nWo and even Bischoff all drip into the product over the next few years. Makes you wonder how different things would have been if they’d either waited for everyone before doing the Invasion angle or just bought everyone out from the start. I’m sure Meltzer did the maths at one point and determined that based on what the Invasion pay per view did with The Dudley Boys in the main event, they’d have likely made their money back buying out Goldberg with one or two big shows.

Not that I believe any of it would have mattered. If they’d done the Invasion with the proper stars, it would have just been different people for The Undertaker’s wife to pin. It was destined to fail regardless considering their backwards approach to still proving they were the winners even after they’’d already won and owned everything. It’s a trait they have to this very day. Even when they were booming and leaving AEW in the dust, they still had to win more, continuing to counter-program despite how bad it made them look and all the detrimental comparisons it created.

[Ro_y Disco]

I think it would have been the following episode of Heat on Channel 4. I was early in my fandom so didn't really know what WCW was and it was a cool storyline to me.

Similar to Arch, I used WWF.com for all my internet wrestling needs at the time (steady on!) We didn't have internet at home, so I'd have to go to the library. I was very confused in early 2002 when I typed in WWF.com and it kept redirecting me to WWE.com. I thought I'd made a typo at first. I'd heard nothing about the name change, so that was a shocker to me.

[BomberPat]

22 minutes ago, Supremo said:

We wouldn’t have had a proper PC yet, so I will almost certainly have been refreshing NEWZ sites using my Dreamcast browser at home. The lengths required to get the scoops in those days.

I distinctly remember me and my mates talking about how this would be the biggest storyline of all time, with all the top stars fighting each other. We were clearly not smartened up to AOL Time Warner guaranteed contracts.

Most frustrating part will always be watching your Flairs, Goldbergs, nWo and even Bischoff all drip into the product over the next few years. Makes you wonder how different things would have been if they’d either waited for everyone before doing the Invasion angle or just bought everyone out from the start. I’m sure Meltzer did the maths at one point and determined that based on what the Invasion pay per view did with The Dudley Boys in the main event, they’d have likely made their money back buying out Goldberg with one or two big shows.

Not that I believe any of it would have mattered. If they’d done the Invasion with the proper stars, it would have just been different people for The Undertaker’s wife to pin. It was destined to fail regardless considering their backwards approach to still proving they were the winners even after they’’d already won and owned everything. It’s a trait they have to this very day. Even when they were booming and leaving AEW in the dust, they still had to win more, continuing to counter-program despite how bad it made them look and all the detrimental comparisons it created.

I think the issue on making enough money to buy out Goldberg's contracts and so on is that it was Meltzer missing the wood for the trees - even putting aside that Goldberg was probably happy being paid not to wrestle for the duration of his Time Warner deal, the issue was less that Goldberg would be paid so much as that it would have upset the entire wage structure of the WWF if ex-WCW guys were suddenly brought in on bigger deals than your long-standing WWF talent, and they'd have wound up having to pay everyone else more to make up for it. And the appeal of having a monopoly after buying out your biggest competition isn't that you'll have to pay people more.

It's also easy to do in hindsight, but a mate of mine laid out an alternative Invasion storyline where everything happened more or less the same, only The Alliance won at Survivor Series 2001. You can handwave away them not renaming the show by having Shane and Stephanie say they'll keep the WWF name to torture Vince by forcing him to watch his creation in their hands. Then you still get Flair coming in as a new authority figure on RAW, and Flair feuding with the younger McMahons over control of the company instead of with Vince, and then Vince returning in February with the nWo promo about killing his creation. 

As you say, the problem with the Invasion wasn't just the talent - they could have made a lot more of DDP and Booker T as top guys if that was their concern - it was that they never had any inclination to present WCW as a threat in their own right. I can't imagine how you fit Goldberg into that situation without doing an even worse job with him than they eventually did in his first WWE run - is he a big enough star that they stick with their guns and keep WCW babyface? Or do they try and fit his square peg in a round hole and make him a cowardly heel like how they booked Booker and DDP? 

Part of the issue is that people had fantasy booked WWF vs. WCW forever, without ever considering how you go from regular TV to the supercards they were imagining. People want the platonic ideal of those companies, not the weekly TV of 2001 WWF vs. the dregs of WCW of that year, and the WWF had no interest in trying to change things up and shuffle the decks to get more things in their "correct" place, or to bring in older names to flesh out the ranks of WCW. They booked WCW as if they were a young upstart rival organisation, not a promotion with more history than the WWF to pull from! The WWF had Freddie Blassie rising from his wheelchair to give an inspirational speech, but they never bothered trying to get a Dusty Rhodes or a Ricky Steamboat or whoever to create a lineage with WCW's history.

[Cod Eye]

I heard about the buyout from two guys on the back of a bus who was talking way too loudly. I had been a wrestling mega-fan from the age of 6(so1988), but drifted away in about 1995/96.

The conversation really got my attention, as I'd become a huge WCW fan as my mum cancelled Sky, but in the analogue days we still got TNT(was it TNT?), a free channel that went live after Cartoon Network closed for the night and on Friday night showed Nitro and later Thunder back to back, and this was the only wrestling I had access to.

I'd started watching WWF again from Rumble 2000, with it being the first shown on C4, but this news really sparked my renewed interest as, like others, I wanted to see this "Superbowl" of wrestling that we all wanted for so many years.

I still can't get my head around why McMahon wouldnt at least divvy up the cash to get Goldberg, the NWO and probably Flair as the PPV buys from inter-company main events between them and Austin, Rock, 'Taker, DX(even Angle and Jericho who were not at that level yet, but soon wouldn't be far off), would have dwarfed the outlay. The success of Invasion shows the appetite was there, and people were willing to part with their cash to watch it(although I get that the returns would start to dwindle as the novelty wore off).

I think the dream scenario for me though, would be a WWF owned WCW having its own show(I think I saw the original plan, until Buff and Booker turned McMahon off the idea, was WCW to have Monday and WWF to have Thursday, which seemed odd to me), with a year long build up to 'Mania which would be Invasion style. 

I must admit though, I did still enjoy what we got. Just in the same way I'd enjoy a good wank, but not as much as a good BJ!

Edited March 24 by Cod Eye

[LaGoosh]

5 minutes ago, Cod Eye said:

I must admit though, I did still enjoy what we got. Just in the same way I'd enjoy a good wank, but not as much as a good BJ!

[Supremo]

There’s a very quick and easy way to find a whole new appreciation for how The Invasion did play out.

[ReturnOfTheMack]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

 

It's also easy to do in hindsight, but a mate of mine laid out an alternative Invasion storyline where everything happened more or less the same, only The Alliance won at Survivor Series 2001. You can handwave away them not renaming the show by having Shane and Stephanie say they'll keep the WWF name to torture Vince by forcing him to watch his creation in their hands. Then you still get Flair coming in as a new authority figure on RAW, and Flair feuding with the younger McMahons over control of the company instead of with Vince, and then Vince returning in February with the nWo promo about killing his creation. 

I honestly thought they'd use it as a chance to rename the WWF as they had just lost the trademark case. 

[TheScarlettChad]

19 minutes ago, Supremo said:

There’s a very quick and easy way to find a whole new appreciation for how The Invasion did play out.

Terry Funk leading the alliance would be interesting for all the wrong reasons. 

[BomberPat]

God, that Cornette thing is dreadful. It does actually try and get closer to my idea of "the platonic ideal" of the WWF vs. WCW, but doesn't really make any effort to actually get there. The most egregious thing I can remember from it is that it's Cornette, presented as this genius booker and expert wrestling historian, and he's booking The Undertaker in 2001 as if he's got the '90s version of the Deadman gimmick, just no recognition that he had changed his gimmick at all. Which might be excusable if it was just an old booker working from memory, but Cornette worked there! He was on cards with Undertaker in the American Bad-Ass gimmick that year!

For a reminder, this is what Jim Cornette pitched as a WWF vs. WCW card for Wrestlemania 18:

Undisputed Title: Steve Austin vs. Mick Foley

The Undertaker vs. Terry Funk

The Rock vs. Sting

Hulk Hogan (w/Jimmy Hart) vs. Dusty Rhodes (w/Jim Cornette)

Ric Flair vs. Vince McMahon, winner gets 5 minutes in the ring with Eric Bischoff

The Road Warriors vs. The Dudley Boyz

Iron Man Match: Chris Benoit (w/Arn Anderson) vs. Kurt Angle

Intercontinental Title & United States Title Unification Match: Triple H vs. Booker T

Ladder Match: Edge & Christian vs. Nova & Jerry Lynn

The Big Show & Kane vs. The Steiner Brothers

Chris Jericho vs. Lance Storm

Jeff Jarrett & Dustin Rhodes vs. The Hardy Boyz

Eddy Guerrero & Perry Saturn & Dean Malenko vs. Chavo Guerrero Jr & Rey Mysterio & Chris Candido

Brock Lesnar vs. Bam Bam Bigelow

Kevin Nash vs. Rhyno

Battle Royal: Rob Van Dam vs. Steve Blackman vs. D'Lo Brown vs. Val Venis vs. Al Snow vs. Bull Buchanan vs. Justin Credible vs. William Regal vs. Bill DeMott vs. Balls Mahoney vs. Diamond Dallas Page vs. Chris Kanyon vs. Ron Harris vs. Don Harris

Just absolute dogshit. No sense of who was actually doing what in the company, or what an audience would have expected or wanted to see in 2001. No space for half the people actually working WCW at the end, and he buries most of the Powerplant guys as being scrubs who never drew money, yet still finds a space on this card for the fucking Harris Brothers. A five hour show and he can't find a spot for a single woman - impressive work to be worse on that front than the actual WWF of 2001 were. 

In amongst all of that, Cornette was booking the shittest worked shoot ideas I've ever heard, the kind of thing he would eviscerate anyone else for even suggesting - having people come out and openly say that the matches were worked and finishes predetermined, but because this was an interpromotional thing, now they were going to really try and hurt each other. 

Vince Russo did a Guest Booker on this as well, and his ideas were shit, but a thousand times better than Cornette's, and more logical too, though he made the same mistake of completely ignoring the product and storylines of the time and treating it all as a blank slate - people forget that the Vince/Shane feud was already happening, and that's why they went with Shane buying WCW. Russo has the nWo kickstart the angle by attacking Shane to "make it personal" against Vince. But at least, as wonky as some of his ideas are, Russo approaches the whole thing through the lens of how to convince people it's a "real" invasion.

[TheScarlettChad]

Why did I think cornette had funk in the invasion?