title: Analog Devices

text: Amplifiers includes precision and operational amplifiers, instrumentation, current sense, differential amplifiers, audio amplifiers, video amplifiers/buffers/filters, variable gain amplifiers, comparators, voltage, other specialty amplifiers and products for special linear functions.


title: Analog Devices

text: Radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) address the RF signal chain and simplify RF system development. The company's RF portfolio includes TruPwr RMS power detectors and logarithmic amplifiers; PLL and DDS synthesizers; RF prescalers; variable gain amplifiers; ADC drivers, gain blocks, LNAs and other RF amplifiers.


title: Analog Devices

text: Processors and DSP are programmable signal processing integrated circuits that execute specialized software programs, or algorithms, associated with processing digitized real-time data. Analog Devices Processors and DSPs are the Blackfin, SHARC, SigmaDSP, TigerSHARC, ADSP-21xx and Precision Analog Microcontrollers. These make up the company's embedded processing and DSP portfolio, that are multi-DSP signal processing,


title: Analog Devices

text: Analog Devices had a line of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) microphones until it sold that business to InvenSense in 2013. Analog Devices MEMS microphones were found in smart phones, tablet PCs, security systems, and medical applications. ADI's MEMS accelerometers were designed into game pad controllers by Microsoft, Logitech and Pellican.


title: Analog Devices

text: Analog Devices sells linear, mixed-signal, MEMS and digital signal processing technologies for medical imaging, patient monitoring, medical instrumentation and home healthcare. The company's precision signal-processing components and Blackfin digital signal processors are included in Karmelsonix's Wholter, an overnight pulmonary monitor, and the Wheezometer, a personal asthmatic assessment device. Accelerometers produced by Analog Devices are included in ZOLL Medical's PocketCPR, which measures the depth of chest compressions and provides audible and visual feedback to a rescuer to allow adjustment to proper depth and to the correct rate of compression.


title: Analog Devices

text: Analog Devices develops components for safety systems, such as stability control systems and driver assistance systems, infotainment and interior applications. Powertrain systems in hybrid and electric vehicles use high-precision data conversion products in battery monitoring and control systems.


title: Analog Devices

text: Analog Devices industrial market includes process control systems that help drive productivity, energy efficiency and reliability.


title: Analog Devices

text: Analog Devices has technology for consumer electronics, which includes signal processing circuits for image processing, auto focus, and image stabilization for digital still cameras and camcorders, audio and video processors for home theater systems, DVD recorders, and high-definition televisions and advanced touch screen controllers for portable media devices.


title: Analog Devices

text: In 1967, Analog Devices first published "Analog Dialogue". Dan Sheingold took the position of editor two years later, which he held for over four decades. The current editor is Bernhard Siegel. It is currently the longest-running in-house publication in the electronics industry.


title: Analog Devices

text: "Analog Dialogue" is a forum for the exchange of circuits, systems, and software for real-world signal processing and is the technical magazine published by Analog Devices. It discusses products, applications, technology, and techniques for analog, digital, and mixed-signal processing. "Analog Dialogue" is published monthly on the Web. The featured technical articles are also compiled in quarterly print editions.


title: Analog Devices

text: In 2009, Analog Devices announced EngineerZone, an online technical support community. EngineerZone was launched so the design engineering community (customers, prospects, partners, employees and students) can ask questions, share knowledge and search for answers to their questions in an open forum. EngineerZone currently hosts over 100 English forums to discuss ADI products and share projects with other engineers. Members are encouraged to self-serve by searching their rich knowledge base of FAQs and to respond to fellow member's threads. EZ China is also available for members seeking support in simplified Chinese.


title: Analog Devices

text: Analog Devices offers reference circuits through its Circuits from the Lab program. These circuits are engineered and tested for quick system integration to help solve design challenges ranging from common to complex. Reference circuits are smaller, modular designs that are more broadly applicable than application-specific reference designs.


title: Analog Devices

text: Each reference circuit is documented with test data, theory of operation, and component selection decision criteria. In addition, reference circuits are tailored to meet real-world system integration needs and may also include board layout schematics, CAD tools models, device drivers, and evaluation hardware.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: Vinayak Narahari also known as Vinoba Bhave (); 11 September 1895 – 15 November 1982) was an Indian advocate of nonviolence and human rights. Often called Acharya (Sanskrit teacher), he is best known for the Bhoodan Movement. He is considered as National Teacher of India and the spiritual successor of Mahatma Gandhi. He was an eminent philosopher. The Gita has been translated into Marathi language by him with the title "Geetai" (meaning 'Mother Gīta' in Marathi).


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: Vinayak Narahari Bhave was born on 11 September 1895 in a small village called Gagoji (present day Gagode Budruk) in Kolaba in the Konkan region of what is now Maharashtra. Vinayaka was the eldest son of Narahari Shambhu Rao and Rukmani Devi. The couple had five children; four sons named Vinayaka (affectionately called Vinya), Balakrishna, Shivaji and Dattatreya, and one daughter. His father was a trained weaver with a rationalist modern outlook, and worked in Baroda. Vinayaka was brought up by his grandfather, Shamburao Bhave and was greatly influenced by his mother Rukmini Devi, a religious woman from Karnataka. Vinayaka was highly inspired after reading the Bhagavad Gita, at a very young age.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: A report in the newspapers about Gandhi's speech at the newly founded Benaras Hindu University attracted Bhave's attention. In 1916, on his way to Bombay to appear for the intermediate examination, Bhave threw his school and college certificates into a fire. Bhave took the decision after reading the piece of writing in the newspaper written by Mahatma Gandhi.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: He wrote a letter to Gandhi and after an exchange of letters, Gandhi advised Bhave to come for a personal meeting at Kochrab Ashram in Ahmedabad. Bhave met Gandhi on 7 June 1916 and subsequently abandoned his studies. Bhave participated with keen interest in the activities at Gandhi's ashram, like teaching, studying, spinning and improving the life of the community. His involvement with Gandhi's constructive programmes related to Khadi, village industries, new education (Nai Talim), sanitation and hygiene also kept on increasing.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: Bhave went to Wardha on 8 April 1921 to take charge of the Ashram as desired by Gandhi. In 1923, he brought out "Maharashtra Dharma", a Marathi monthly which had his essays on the Upanishads. Later on, this monthly became a weekly and continued for three years. In 1925, he was sent by Gandhi to Vaikom, Kerala to supervise the entry of the Harijans to the temple.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: Bhave was arrested several times during the 1920s and 1930s and served a five-year jail sentence in the 1940s for leading non-violent resistance to British rule. The jails for Bhave had become the places of reading and writing. He wrote Ishavasyavritti and Sthitaprajna Darshan in jail. He also learnt four South Indian languages and created the script of Lok Nagari at Vellore jail. In the jails, he gave a series of talks on Bhagavad Gita in Marathi, to his fellow prisoners. Bhave participated in the nationwide civil disobedience periodically conducted against the British, and was imprisoned with other nationalists. Despite these many activities, he was not well known to the public. He gained national prominence when Gandhi chose him as the first participant in a new nonviolent campaign in 1940. All were calling him in his short name, Vinoba.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: Bhave's younger brother Balkrishna was also a Gandhian. Gandhi entrusted him and Manibhai Desai to set up a nature therapy ashram at Urali Kanchan where Balkrishna spent all his life.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: He was associated with Mahatma Gandhi in the Indian independence movement. He stayed for some time at Gandhi's Sabarmati ashram in a cottage that was named after him, 'Vinoba Kutir'. He gave talks on the Bhagavad Gita in Marathi to his fellow ashramites. These were later published in book form, as "Talks on the Gita", and it has been translated into many languages both in India and elsewhere. Bhave felt that the source of these talks was something from above and he believed that its influence would endure even if his other works were forgotten.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: In the year 1940, he was chosen by Gandhi to be the first individual Satyagrahi (an individual standing up for Truth instead of a collective action) against the British rule. It is said that Gandhi envied and respected Bhave's celibacy, a vow he made in his adolescence, in fitting with his belief in the Brahmacharya principle. Bhave also participated in the Quit India Movement.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: Bhave's religious outlook was very broad and it synthesized the truths of many religions. This can be seen in one of his hymns "Om Tat Sat" which contains symbols of many religions. His slogan "जय जगत्" (Jay Jagat) i.e. "victory to the world" finds reflection in his views about the world as a whole.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: Bhave observed the life of the average Indian living in a village and tried to find solutions for the problems he faced with a firm spiritual foundation. This formed the core of his "Sarvodaya movement". Another example of this is the Bhoodan (land gift) movement started at Pochampally on 18 April 1951, after interacting with 80 Harijan families. He walked all across India asking people with land to consider him one of their sons and so gave him one-sixth of their land which he then distributed to landless poor. Non-violence and compassion is a hallmark of his philosophy, he also campaigned against the slaughtering of cows.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: Bhave said, "I have walked all over India for 13 years. In the backdrop of enduring perpetuity of my life's work, I have established 6 ashrams."


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: The Brahma Vidya Mandir is one of the ashrams that Bhave created. It is a small community for women that was created in order for them to become self-sufficient and non-violent in a community. This group farms to get their own food, but uses Gandhi's beliefs about food production, which include sustainability and social justice, as a guide. This community, like Gandhi and Bhave, has been influenced greatly by the "Bhagavad-Gita" and that is also used to determine their practices. The community perform prayers as a group every day, reciting from the Isha Upanishad at dawn, the Vishnu Sahasranama at mid-morning, and the "Bhagavad-Gita" in the evening. As of today, there are around 25 women who are members of the community and several men have also been allowed to join in the community.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: Since its founding in 1959, members of Brahma Vidya Mandir (BVM), an intentional community for women in Paunar, Maharashtra, have dealt with the struggle of translating Gandhian values such as self-sufficiency, non-violence, and public-service into specific practices of food production and consumption. BVM's existence and the counter-narrative its residents practice demonstrate how one community debate the practicalities and tradeoffs in their application of self-sufficiency, non-violence, and radical democracy to their own social and geographic context. One mainstream narrative described by BVM and the farmers that work with them is that large-scale agriculture is inevitable, necessary, and the sole possibility of feeding the world. Instead, at BVM they reject the narrative that success in agriculture comes from expensive technology. BVM is a small community in India, therefore it does not hold much power to promote its beliefs and practices in the mainstream. Meanwhile, India today proudly proclaims its large and growing middle class, and although many see Gandhi as a hero, some reject his views in favor of US-style-consumerism and look for an alternate route in agriculture with technological advancements. The existence of BVM provides a counter-narrative on enacting alternative agricultural and social practices that were already being practiced by BVM's women back in the 1960s.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: Vinoba Bhave was a scholar, thinker, and writer who produced numerous books. He was a translator who made Sanskrit texts accessible to the common man. He was also an orator and linguist who had an excellent command of several languages (Marathi, Kannada, Gujarati, Hindi, Urdu, English, Sanskrit). Bhave was an innovative social reformer. He called "Kannada" script the "Queen of World Scripts" ("Vishwa Lipigala Raani") He wrote brief introductions to, and criticisms of, several religious and philosophical works like the Bhagavad Gita, works of Adi Shankaracharya, the Bible and the Quran. His views of Dnyaneshwar's poetry and works by other Marathi saints is quite brilliant and a testimony to the breadth of his intellect.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: Bhave had translated the Bhagavad Gita into Marathi. He was deeply influenced by the Gita and attempted to imbibe its teachings into his life, often stating that "The Gita is my life's breath".


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: Vinoba Bhave University, located in Hazaribagh district in the state of Jharkhand, is named after him.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: On 18 April 1951, Bhave started his land donation movement at Pochampally of Nalgonda district Telangana, the Bhoodan Movement. He took donated land from land owner Indians and gave


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: it away to the poor and landless, for them to cultivate. Then after 1954, he started to ask for donations of whole villages in a programme he called Gramdan. He got more than 1000 villages by way of donation. Out of these, he obtained 175 donated villages in Tamil Nadu alone. Noted Gandhian and atheist Lavanam was the interpreter for Bhave during his land reform movement in Andhra Pradesh and parts of Orissa.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: Bhave spent the later part of his life at his Brahma Vidya Mandir ashram in Paunar in Wardha district of Maharashtra. He died on 15 November 1982 after refusing food and medicine for a few days by accepting "Samadhi Maran" / "Santhara" as described in Jainism. The then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, who was visiting Moscow to attend the funeral of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, cut short her visit to be at the Bhave's funeral.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: V.S. Naipaul has scathingly criticised Bhave in his collection of essays citing his lack of connection with rationality and excessive imitation of Gandhi. Even some of his admirers find fault with the extent of his devotion to Gandhi. Much more controversial was his support, ranging from covert to open, to the Congress Party's government under Indira Gandhi, which was fast becoming unpopular. He controversially backed the Indian Emergency imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, calling it "Anushasana Parva" ("Time for Discipline"). Jayaprakash Narayan in his prison diary during the emergency sarcastically wrote about the meaning of Anushasan Parva. Congress party opponents at that time had coined the derogatory term "Sarkari Sant (Government Saint)" to describe him. Noted Marathi writer Pra Ke Atre publicly criticised him and mocked him by writing an article titled as "Vanaroba" which is a disambiguation of the name "Vinoba" and literally means monkey.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: In 1958 Bhave was the first recipient of the international Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously in 1983.


title: Vinoba Bhave

text: "Vinoba Bhave, The Man", a documentary film on the social-reformer directed by Vishram Bedekar was released in 1963. It was produced by the Government of India's Films Division. Indian film director Sarvottam Badami had earlier made another documentary on him, "Vinoba Bhave", in 1951.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: Oleg Cassini (11 April 1913 – 17 March 2006) was a fashion designer born to an aristocratic Russian family with maternal Italian ancestry. He came to the United States as a young man after starting as a designer in Rome, and quickly got work with Paramount Pictures. Cassini established his reputation by designing for films.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: He became particularly well known as a designer for Jacqueline Kennedy while she was First Lady of the United States. The "Jackie Look" was to become highly influential and much admired. Among Cassini's inspirations were sports and Native American culture.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: He was born in Paris as Oleg Aleksandrovich Loiewski, the elder son of Countess Marguerite Cassini and her husband Count Alexander Loiewski, a Russian diplomat, thereby obtaining the title of Count. His maternal grandfather Arthur Paul Nicholas Cassini, Marquis de Capuzzuchi di Bologna, Count Cassini, had been the Russian ambassador to the United States during the administrations of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Count Arthur Cassini signed the Treaty ending the war between Japan and China. His mother's family claimed Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini as an ancestor. In 1918, the Russian Revolution caused the Loiewski family to flee for their lives, leaving behind their wealth, lands, and homes. As a young child, Oleg saw his cousin shot to death. The family reached Denmark and next moved to Switzerland. The Greek Royal family invited them to Greece, but, while traveling through Italy, revolution began in Greece as well. They got off the train in Florence, eventually settling there. In Italy the children started using the surname of Cassini.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: In his early youth, Cassini suffered a major accident, almost losing his leg. He spent much of a year in bed in recovery, during which time he studied history and read extensively, including authors such as American James Fenimore Cooper. He developed a love of history and the mysticism of Native American tribes. He also discovered American culture through the movies from the United States that were shown in Italy.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: When he started school, Oleg had to learn Italian, but he already knew Russian, French and Danish. His mother, Marguerite Cassini, founded her fashion house in Florence, gaining American clients from people she knew in Washington, D.C., as the daughter of the Count Arthur Cassini.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: Cassini played soccer with the teenage team, the "Boys" of Fiorentina, and was on the university track and ski teams. He also played tennis for the Italian Jr. Davis Cup team, becoming Italian Jr. Champion.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: Cassini studied Political Science at the University of Florence and became an accomplished equestrian. He studied fine art under painter Giorgio de Chirico at the Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze. Eventually he started in fashion, studying under the French couturier, Jean Patou. Cassini won a number of international fashion competitions in Turin, including five first prizes in Mostra Della Moda for sketches and Most Creative Presentation for an evening dress painted in dramatic colors on silver foil, garnering a prize of 5,000 lire. Cassini opened his own boutique in Rome and designed for the local film industry as well as Roman society.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: Oleg became engaged to a debutante in Rome, Anna Donnina Toeplitz, and subsequently left for America after winning a duel. He sailed to America on the "Saturnia" and arrived in New York on Christmas Day 1936. His autobiography describes his possessions upon arrival in America as being limited to a tuxedo, two tennis rackets, a title, and talent. He briefly worked as a political cartoonist in Washington, D.C., upon his arrival prior to traveling to Hollywood.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: Upon arriving in California, Cassini began playing tennis at the West Side Tennis Club. After he competed in and won a doubles tournament, his partner introduced himself as the head of Paramount Pictures, saying he was "looking for another designer". Cassini went to the studio the next day and got the job as a full designer for Paramount Pictures. In 1941, his first film was "I Wanted Wings", for which he created the look for its star, newcomer Veronica Lake.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: Cassini designed costumes for films including "The Shanghai Gesture" (1941), starring Gene Tierney, "Tales of Manhattan" (1942) for Rita Hayworth, "The Razor's Edge" (1946), "It's a Joke Son!" (1947), "Born to Speed" (1947), "Lost Honeymoon" (1947), "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" (1947), "That Wonderful Urge" (1948), "Whirlpool" (1949), "Night and the City" (1950), "Where the Sidewalk Ends" (1950), as well as "The Mating Season", "Close to My Heart", "On the Riviera" (all 1951), "Rampage" (1963), "The Tammy Grimes Show" (1966), "The Day Dreamer" (1966), "Peligro ... ! Mujeres en acción", (1967), "The Ambushers" (1967) for Dean Martin, "SOS Conspiracion Bikini" (1967), "The Sentinel" (2006) for Kim Basinger, and "Say It in Russian" (2007) for Faye Dunaway.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: His designs are worn in the climactic scene of "Meet Joe Black" (1998) and throughout "Ready or Not" (2009). He worked for the major film studios and dressed numerous stars over the course of his career including Audrey Hepburn, Shirley Temple, Anita Ekberg, Janet Leigh, Loretta Young, Rita Hayworth, Betty Grable, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Ursula Andress, Jayne Mansfield, Lana Turner, Sandra Dee, Suzy Parker, Gina Lollobrigida, Renée Zellweger, Malin Åkerman, Kim Basinger, Carroll Baker and Taylor Swift.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Cassini quickly enlisted in the war effort. Initially, he joined the United States Coast Guard, but he later served in the U.S. Army as a cavalry officer. He reached the rank of first lieutenant. Cassini became a United States citizen (in December 1941/January 1942, losing his titles of nobility); he was commissioned as a first Lieutenant at Fort Riley, Kansas. After serving five years in the U.S. Cavalry, Cassini moved to New York City in 1952 to open his own fashion house on Seventh Avenue, the center of the fashion industry.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: After the war, Cassini designed ready-to-wear dresses while continuing to design for television, motion pictures, and Broadway theatre. According to his autobiography, Jack L. Warner offered Cassini the position of head of design for Warner Bros. Studios proclaiming, "You're better than Errol Flynn". He remained in New York rather than work with Warner Brothers and opened his own designer brand. Cassini had enough money to launch one line, his first Collection, which was received with rave reviews. Cassini also took his designs "on the road" to his customers in trunk shows and special fashion events in order to promote the new lines. The in store events evolved into the emerging medium of television and Cassini displayed his product on Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Dinah Shore, Phil Donahue, and "Good Morning America". "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" provided nightly recognition as Carson had a line designed for him by Cassini, which he wore exclusively for the show.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: His reputation developed as a result of his genius for original spontaneous design and in 1953, shortly before her marriage to John Kennedy, Cassini met Jacqueline Bouvier, named by his brother, society columnist Cholly Knickerbocker as "Queen Deb of the Year" in 1947.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: Cassini's appointment by Jacqueline Kennedy as her exclusive couturier in 1961 dubbed him her "Secretary of Style" and provided him a position of prestige. "We are on the threshold of a new American elegance thanks to Mrs. Kennedy's beauty, naturalness, understatement, exposure and symbolism," Cassini said when his selection as the couturier to shape the entire look of the First Lady was announced.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: Utilizing the technique and high fashion fabrics of French couture, Cassini's unique designs for Jacqueline Kennedy ushered in a new era of timeless simplicity based on clean lines and crisp forms and opulent and luxurious fabrics. Cassini brought American design to the world stage as the First Lady's identity became synonymous with sophistication and taste. The "Jackie look" that he created was copied by women all over the world. Cassini visualized her as an American Queen and Mrs. Kennedy acknowledged that "Oleg dressed me for the part".


title: Oleg Cassini

text: The publicity Cassini derived from his work for Mrs. Kennedy led women from 18 to 80 to copy the look of simple, geometric dresses in sumptuous fabrics and pillbox hats with an elegant coiffure. Meticulously tailored and featuring oversized buttons and boxy jackets, as well as occasionally dramatic décolletage. Cassini designed a reported 300 outfits for the First Lady, including a much-copied coat made of leopard pelts and a Swiss double satin white gown decorated by a single cocarde which she wore to the Inaugural Gala Ball in 1961. This was Mrs. Kennedy's first official appearance as First Lady Elect. The dress was subsequently named one of the "50 Dresses that Changed the World" by the Design Museum in England.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: In 1961, Eugenia Sheppard announced in the "New York Herald Tribune", "According to Tobe's most recent coast to coast survey, the best known name in American fashion is Oleg Cassini."


title: Oleg Cassini

text: Cassini became known primarily for his licensing agreements. He was the recipient of a Doctorate of Fine Arts, in 1989,


title: Oleg Cassini

text: His name adorned everything from luggage to nail polish, as well as special luxurious coupé versions of the 1974 and 1975 AMC Matador automobile. Outside, striping, rub rails, wheel covers and a crest mark the Matador as Cassini's. He helped promote the car in AMC's advertising. The special Oleg Cassini Matador was positioned in the popular and highly competitive "personal luxury car" market segment. The "distinctive" styling of the Cassini "designer editions" merit collector interest


title: Oleg Cassini

text: In 1960, with his younger brother, society columnist Igor, Oleg opened Le Club in Manhattan, which becomes a leading private club with such members as Gianni Agnelli, Stavros Niarchos, Aristotle Onassis, and Ray Stark. In 1960 Oleg Cassini was named personal couturier by Mrs. Kennedy, launching the Jackie look in 1961. He was awarded the Chicago Gold Coast Award for Excellence in Design. In 1962, he was awarded the National Cystic Fibrosis Distinguished Service Citation. In 1967, he created deep tonal shirts for men adding special colors where there had only been white. The sales of dress shirts rose dramatically, and the look was launched on "The Tonight Show", Starring Johnny Carson. Oleg created the "Johnny Carson" line of Men's wear. In 1968, the Peacock Revolution is hailed by Newsweek, wherein Cassini is credited with leading a revolution in men's fashion worldwide. The "Competitors" Collection menswear campaign was also launched by Cassini. It featured icons of sport wearing Cassini including: Ted Turner for sailing, Bob Hope and Raymond Floyd for golf, Michael Jordan for basketball, Mario Andretti for racing, Gary Carter for baseball, Lynn Swann and Lawrence Taylor for football and Charlton Heston, Regis Philbin, and Kenny Rogers for tennis.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: In 2003 The Council of Fashion Designers of America Board of Directors noted Cassini's extraordinary design achievements with their first ever, Board of Directors Special Tribute. The presentation was made to Oleg by President Stan Herman and Diane von Furstenberg.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: Oleg Cassini excelled at tennis and competed seriously since his early days as a ranked Italian Junior Davis Cup player. His skill at tennis led to a fortuitous design connection. Recounted in his autobiography, newly arrived in Hollywood, Cassini played tennis at the prestigious West Side Tennis Club which led to a doubles game with the head of Paramount Pictures. Decades later, Cassini also created collections of printed and multi color tennis wear, bringing 'color to the court'. He is noted for having outfitted the US Davis Cup team and for participating in celebrity pro-am tournaments such as the Alan King Tournament in Las Vegas. Cassini also participated and won the 5th Annual RFK Pro Celebrity Tennis Tournament in 1976. The silver winner's cup was presented to him personally by Jackie Kennedy Onassis.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: Cassini competed professionally in the sport of harness racing. In 1985 he earned a professional harness racer license and won races at the Meadowlands Raceway, Yonkers Raceway, Freehold Raceway, Monticello Raceway, and Roosevelt Raceway. He received awards in recognition of his efforts to support equine charities from "HORSE" and "The Equine Society" which recognized Cassini with its Man of the year award. He participated in golfing events, scoring three holes in one at the Deepdale Golf Club and one hole in one at the Westhampton Golf Club. Cassini also participated in the ABC TV Superstars Competition.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: Oleg Cassini received the James Herriot Award ("All Creatures Great and Small") as the Man of the Year from the Humane Society of the United States for his work and care for animals. He created collections of manmade fashion fur, the 'evolutionary furs'.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: In 1999, he was awarded the Humanitarian Award at a fashion show and Gala at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, honorary chairpersons Eunice Shriver and Senator Ted Kennedy, show hosted by Montel Williams. Among the 40 models were movie star Tippi Hedren. In his own words "What we're designing is as elegant and attractive as fur and eliminates the enormous cruelty that goes on in the killing of animals for fur."


title: Oleg Cassini

text: In his autobiography Cassini claims to have suggested to President Kennedy that he take steps to organize The Bureau of Indian Affairs, the action which led to the American Indian Movement. Cassini was named an honorary member of the Chickasaw and Navajo nations in 1981 due to his fund raising and organization of gala charity events for the tribes. Cassini and his brother, Igor under the pen name of society columnist Cholly Knickerbocker, threw "The Knickerbocker Charity Balls" to raise money for the tribes.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: An author of best-selling books, "In My Own Fashion", "A Thousand Days of Magic: Dressing Jacqueline Kennedy for the White House" a book which is a tribute to Jacqueline Kennedy and reflects the "Camelot Era" and the "Jackie Look", and "Oleg Cassini: The Wedding Dress". Cassini appeared on hundreds of television shows worldwide in many languages and also hosted a special 13-part TV series, "Conversations with Cassini", on the Arts & Entertainment Network.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: On September 2, 1938, in Elkton, Maryland, Cassini became the husband of Mary "Merry" Fahrney (1910-1974). The couple divorced in 1940. Cassini married actress Gene Tierney, on June 2, 1941. Their daughter, Antoinette Daria, was born on 15 October 1943 blind, deaf and with severe brain damage. She died on 11 September 2010. The couple separated on 20 October 1946, and entered into a property settlement agreement on 10 November 1946 in which Cassini's fifty percent share of the marital estate was dedicated to the ongoing care of Daria. Tierney won an uncontested divorce in California on 13 March 1947, and the divorce would have been finalized one year later, on 13 March 1948. However, according to Cassini's diary, they reconciled some months before that. They announced that they were back together in April 1948. Gossip columnist Hedda Hopper reported the news in the "Los Angeles Times" on 9 April 1948. Their second daughter, Christina "Tina" was born on 19 November 1948 and died in 2015. They finally divorced in 1953.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: After his divorce from Gene Tierney, Cassini dated and was engaged to Grace Kelly. Susanna Moore claims that she was raped by Cassini. He and Tierney remained cordial until her 1991 death, when she bequeathed one dollar to their daughter Daria and the residual to Christina. In 1971, Cassini married model Marianne Nestor. Beginning in 1971, Marianne operated the licensing and public relations portion of the brand, which they famously defended. Their marriage was kept secret until after his death; Marianne and his daughter Tina engaged in a bitter court battle over the estate. The status of that struggle was updated in an article in "Vanity Fair" in 2010. Christina died in 2015. A piece in "Newsday", updated in September 2018, updated the history of the legal battle; at the time Marianne was in jail for refusing to comply with a court order. Cassini's estate was auctioned by Doyle in June 2019.


title: Oleg Cassini

text: Oleg Cassini died from complications of an aneurysm in Manhasset, New York, in 2006 at age 92. He is survived by his wife, Marianne.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: The Georgian Civil War lasted from 1991 to 1993 in the South Caucasian country of Georgia. It consisted of inter-ethnic and international conflicts in the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as well as the violent military "coup d'état" against the first democratically-elected President of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, and his subsequent uprising in an attempt to regain power.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: While the Gamsakhurdia rebellion was eventually defeated, the South Ossetia and Abkhazia conflicts resulted in the de facto secession of both regions from Georgia. As a result, both conflicts have lingered on, with occasional flare-ups.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: Ethnic minority separatist movements, primarily on the part of the Ossetians and the Abkhaz, demanded greater recognition in the new order of the early 1990s. Asserting its newly gained national prerogatives, Georgia responded with military attempts to restrain separatism forcibly. On January 5, 1991 Georgia's National Guard entered Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, and fighting broke out in and around the city. The Georgian-Ossetian Conflict was the first major crisis faced by Gamsakhurdia's government.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: Opposition against the authoritarian Government of Zviad Gamsakhurdia soon turned violent in the autumn of 1991. Following the police dispersion of a large opposition demonstration in Tbilisi on September 2, several opposition leaders were arrested and their offices raided and pro-opposition newspapers were closed. The National Guard of Georgia, the major paramilitary force in the country, split into two factions; pro- and anti-Gamsakhurdia. Another paramilitary organization, the Mkhedrioni, led by Jaba Ioseliani, also sided with the opposition.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: Demonstrations and barricade-building marked the next three months, with sporadic clashes between pro- and anti-Gamsakhurdia forces. On September 24 a state of emergency was declared in Tbilisi. By late October 1991, most of the leadership of the opposition National Democratic Party (NDP), headed by Giorgi Chanturia, had been arrested. A stand-off followed as former National Guard leader Tengiz Kitovani's armed supporters withdrew to the outskirts of Tbilisi where they remained until late December 1991. The opposition claimed that President Gamsakhurdia had left no chance to peacefully settle the crisis.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: On 20 December 1991, Kitovani's fighters returned in force to begin the final onslaught against Gamsakhurdia. The armed opposition released Jaba Ioseliani and mounted barricades in central Tbilisi. On December 22, the rebels seized several official buildings, and attacked the Parliament building where Gamsakhurdia and his supporters were holding the position. Simultaneously, the rebels, already controlling most of the city, brutally suppressed pro-Gamsakhurdia protests in and around Tbilisi. They fired on the crowds, killing and wounding several people.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: On 6 January 1992, President Gamsakhurdia with other members of his government was forced to flee first to Armenia and then to Chechnya, where he led a form of government-in-exile for the next 18 months.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: Within several days of the fighting, the main boulevard in the city, Rustaveli Avenue, had been destroyed, and at least 113 people were killed.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: After the successful coup, an interim government, the Military Council, was formed in Georgia. Initially it was led by a triumvirate of Jaba Ioseliani, Tengiz Sigua and Tengiz Kitovani, but it was soon chaired by Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister who returned to Tbilisi in March 1992. The 1992 elections established Shevardnadze as the Chairman of Parliament and the Head of State.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: Zviad Gamsakhurdia, despite his absence, continued to enjoy substantial support within Georgia, especially in rural areas and in his home region of Samegrelo in western Georgia. The supporters of the ousted president, the "Zviadists," responded to the coup with spontaneous street demonstrations, which were brutally suppressed by the government forces and paramilitary groups. Clashes between pro- and anti-Gamsakhurdia forces continued throughout 1992 and 1993 with Zviad Gamsakhurdia's supporters taking captive government officials and government forces retaliating with reprisal raids. One of the most serious incidents occurred in Tbilisi on June 24, 1992, when armed Gamsakhurdia supporters seized the state television center. However, they were driven out within a few hours by the National Guard.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: The armed "Zviadists" actually prevented the new government forces from gaining control of Gamsakhurdia's native Samegrelo region, which became the stronghold of the overthrown president's supporters. Numerous acts of violence and atrocities committed by the Mkhedrioni and government forces in this region contributed to further confrontation between the local population and Shevardnadze's regime.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: Following the coup and armed clashes in western Georgia, Aslan Abashidze, the leader of southwestern autonomous province of Adjara, closed an administrative border and prevented both sides from entering Adjarian territory. This established Abashidze's authoritarian semi-separatist regime within the region, and created long-term problems in relations between the regional government and the central government of Georgia.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: In February 1992, the fighting escalated in South Ossetia, with sporadic Russian involvement. Facing interior instability and political chaos, Shevardnadze agreed to negotiations to avoid a confrontation with Russia. A cease-fire was agreed upon and on 14 July 1992, a peacekeeping operation began, consisting of a Joint Control Commission and joint Russian – Georgian – Ossetian military patrols.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: By the summer of 1992, tensions in another secessionist region, Abkhazia, were close to developing into a full-scale Georgian-Abkhaz conflict. On August 14, Georgian forces entered Abkhazia to disarm separatist militias. By the end of September 1993, Russian-backed separatists fought back and took the region's capital, Sukhumi, after fierce fighting on September 27. Georgia's military defeat was followed by the ethnic cleansing of the Georgian majority in Abkhazia. The war produced approximately 20,000 deaths on both sides, and about 260,000 refugees and IDPs.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: During the Abkhazian war, the role of Vakhtang (Loti) Kobalia's militia, the major force of the former President's supporters, continued to be controversial. Kobalia's militia fought on the Georgian side near the village of Tamish in Abkhazia and played an important role in defeating the Abkhaz-North Caucasian commandos. This step was assessed by Shevardnadze as a 'beginning of national reconciliation'. At the same time, they stirred their activities in anticipation of the fall of Sukhumi and public discontent with Shevardnadze's policy which they expected to follow (as they openly stated). On July 9–10, 72 deputies of the former Supreme Council that had been ousted in January 1992, held a session in Zugdidi and declared the 'restoration of the legitimate government' there. Broadcasting on their TV channel became more frequent. From July to August Kobalia's militia effectively established its control in a significant part of the Samegrelo province.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: In September 1993, Zviad Gamsakhurdia took advantage of the struggle in Abkhazia to return to the city of Zugdidi, western Georgia, and rally enthusiastic but disorganized Georgians in Samegrelo region against the demoralized and unpopular government of Eduard Shevardnadze. Although Gamsakhurdia initially represented his return as a rescue of Georgian forces after the Abkhazian disaster, he actually disarmed part of the Georgian troops retreating from the breakaway region and established his control over the significant part of Samegrelo. Ex-president's advance made Shevardnadze to join the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and appeal for Russian military assistance. In mid-October, the addition of Russian weapons, supply-line security, and technical assistance turned the tide against Gamsakhurdia. On October 20, around 2,000 Russian troops moved to protect Georgian railroads.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: On October 22, 1993, the government forces launched an offensive against pro-Gamsakhurdia rebels led by Colonel Loti Kobalia and, with the help of Russian military, occupied most of Samegrelo province. The ex-president forces counter-attacked on October 27. Heavy fighting concentrated around the towns of Khobi and Senaki. From November 2, following an agreement between Eduard Shevardnadze and Russian leadership, a Russian marine battalion was deployed to Poti in order to secure critical transport infrastructure, including railroads and ports, from Zviadist rebels under the direction of Admiral Eduard Baltin, commander of the Black Sea Fleet. In order to obtain this support, Shevardnadze had to agree to Georgian accession to CIS and the establishment of Russian military installations within Georgia. On November 4, 1993, the government forces broke through the defence lines of the Zviadist militias and entered Zugdidi without fighting on November 6. Zviad Gamsakhurdia and his bodyguards escaped to the forests chased by the government forces. He died in late December under controversial circumstances. It was later reported that Gamsakhurdia had shot himself on December 31, in a village Jikhashkari (Samegrelo region of Western Georgia). The revolt was crushed and the region was overrun by the pro-governmental paramilitaries. Several Zviadist leaders were arrested in the following years.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: The three-year civil war produced a decade of political instability, permanent financial, economic and social crises. The situation began to stabilize in 1995. However, radical "Zviadists" organized several acts of terrorism and sabotage. They were charged for the assassination attempt of President Eduard Shevardnadze on 9 February 1998. A few days later, supporters of the former president kidnapped four observers from the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia from their compound in Zugdidi in western Georgia. Some of the hostage takers surrendered, but Gocha Esebua, the leader of the Zviadist team, escaped and was killed in a shootout with police on 31 March.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: On October 18, 1998, there was an attempted revolt led by Colonel Akaki Eliava, former "Zviadist" officer near Kutaisi, Georgia's second largest city. After the collapse of the mutiny, Eliava and his followers hid in the forests of Samegrelo. He had produced permanent problems for the government until he was shot by security officers in 2000.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: On January 26, 2004, the newly elected President Mikheil Saakashvili officially rehabilitated Gamsakhurdia to resolve the lingering political effects of his overthrow in an effort to "put an end to disunity in our society", as Saakashvili put it. He also released 32 Gamsakhurdia supporters arrested by Shevardnadze's government in 1993–1994 and still remaining in prisons.


title: Georgian Civil War

text: The relationship between Georgia and the separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia remained tense and lead to renewed warfare during the 2008 South Ossetia war.


title: The Best (song)

text: "The Best" is a song by Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler for her seventh studio album, "Hide Your Heart" (1988). In the following year, the song was covered by Tina Turner for her seventh studio album, "Foreign Affair". The song was written by Holly Knight and Mike Chapman.


title: The Best (song)

text: Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler recorded the original version of "The Best" for her seventh studio album "Hide Your Heart" in 1988. It was released as the album's lead single through CBS, and produced by Desmond Child.


title: The Best (song)

text: "The Best" peaked at no. 10 in Norway, but did not make significant commercial gains elsewhere. Tyler stated that Tina Turner's subsequent success with the song restored her confidence in choosing recording material. She added that Turner "did it much better than I did".


title: The Best (song)

text: Co-writer Holly Knight claimed that the song had first been offered to a male artist "whom [she] admired and had a silly crush on", but he declined.


title: The Best (song)

text: In 1989, American singer and songwriter Tina Turner recorded a cover version of "The Best" for her seventh solo studio album, "Foreign Affair" (1989), with a saxophone solo played by Edgar Winter. Prior to recording the song, Tina Turner approached the songwriter Holly Knight and requested some changes: the addition of a bridge, which Turner felt was missing, and a key change.


title: The Best (song)

text: Released as the lead single from "Foreign Affair" on 21 August 1989, the song was an international success, becoming a top-five hit in numerous countries. It is one of Turner's most recognizable tunes, often considered synonymous with the singer's name. The song was used in a Pepsi commercial featuring Turner, which also served as a promo for her sponsored by Pepsi. Additionally, the song was adopted by other brands for their advertising including Applebee's and T-Mobile, as well as the Australian rugby league competition the National Rugby League, for which it remains an iconic anthem more than 30 years after its release.


title: The Best (song)

text: The song title is often colloquially mis-cited as "Simply the Best", reflecting a phrase in the chorus. This became so commonplace that the bracketed word 'Simply' was included in the titles for releases of some subsequent versions, and in the track listing for some Tina Turner compilation albums.


title: The Best (song)

text: Bill Coleman from "Billboard" described the song as an "easy-paced pop offering which finds Turner's voice taking front and center stage." The Daily Vault's Mark Millan called it an "sing-along anthem". Pan-European magazine "Music & Media" stated that the singer's "dramatic range is fully utilised on this impressive and polished production (courtesy Dan Hartman and Turner)." A reviewer from "People Magazine" said it "features such pizza-box lyrics as "You're simply the best/ Better than all the rest/ Better than anyone/ Anyone I've ever met"." The reviewer also noted that Edgar Winter adds a saxophone solo "with bite". Pop Rescue called the song "flawless", adding that it was probably the fact that it's such a simple song that "helped it to become so widely popular."


title: The Best (song)

text: In 1992, Turner recorded "(Simply) The Best", a duet version of the song with Australian rock singer Jimmy Barnes, to promote that year's New South Wales Rugby League season in Australia. The single subsequently appeared on a limited edition bonus disc as part of the Australian release of her compilation album "Simply the Best" (1991).


title: The Best (song)

text: "The Best" served as the theme song of Iceland's Best Party in the 2010 Reykjavik local council elections. Party members recorded a version of the song titled "Við erum best" ("We're the Best"), with lyrics describing the party in Icelandic.


title: The Best (song)

text: In the mid-1990s, the Hong Kong Tourist Association produced a series of television advertisements featuring "The Best" as sung by Elisa Chan.


title: The Best (song)

text: Research by Co-op Funeralcare regularly places "The Best" in the top ten most popular songs requested to be played at funerals.


title: The Best (song)

text: "The Best" has appeared three times in the Canadian sitcom "Schitt's Creek", in scenes involving the characters David Rose and Patrick Brewer. In the season 4 episode "Open Mic", Noah Reid as Patrick performs an acoustic version of the song, which Reid arranged himself. After airing, Reid's version of the song was released on Spotify and iTunes, where it reached No. 1 on the Canadian charts. All proceeds from the single were donated to an Ontario charity, LGBT Youth Line. Later that season, in the episode "The Gesture", Dan Levy as David performs a dance routine while lip-synching to Turner's recording of the song. In the series finale, "Happy Ending", the Jazzagals (the a cappella group to which David's mother, Moira, belongs) perform an a cappella version of the song at David and Patrick's wedding.


title: The Best (song)

text: In October 2021, Canadian multi-instrumentalist/singer-songwriter Billianne's acoustic cover went viral on TikTok, with 1.5M views, 265K likes, and 22K video creates to the sound, and garnered her a six-figure following.


title: The Best (song)

text: The song is often used in sport-related contexts. It is played at Ibrox Stadium, Scotland, when the players of Rangers Football Club and the visiting team run onto the park. On 19 April 2010, Rangers FC fans began a campaign to get "The Best" to number one in the UK Singles Chart. It subsequently charted at number nine.


title: The Best (song)

text: In the 1990s, Chris Eubank used "The Best" as both his nickname and entrance music before all of his world championship boxing matches.


title: The Best (song)

text: Dutch association football club PSV Eindhoven play the Tina Turner version of the song when the team takes to the pitch ahead of every home match at the Philips Stadion in Eindhoven. This was introduced by then-head coach Dick Advocaat and has since remained a club tradition.


title: The Best (song)

text: The song is particularly associated with rugby league. In 1990, it was used for the NSWRL promotional campaign. After appearing in NSWRL's ad a year earlier (with "What You Get Is What You See"), Tina Turner was invited to Sydney, Australia, to shoot the 1990 campaign ads, in which she appears alongside rugby league players, and perform the song at that year's Grand Final. The campaign featuring Tina Turner and the song is considered one of the greatest campaigns in sports marketing, which helped changed the perception of rugby league as a sport turning what was essentially a suburban game popular with working-class men into entertainment for the whole family. Such is the enduring popularity of the song as the rugby league anthem that it was featured again in the 2020 promotional campaign of NRL, more than 30 years after its release.


title: The Best (song)

text: Tina Turner sings "The Best" in homage to Ayrton Senna in her Australian concert in 1993. Since then, several mentions link the music to the car racer.


title: The Best (song)

text: "The Best" by Tina Turner was played at the 2022 US Open for tennis player Serena Williams in her final game career.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: The Monday Night Wars or Monday Night War was an era of mainstream televised American professional wrestling, from September 4, 1995 to March 26, 2001, in which the World Wrestling Federation's (WWF, now WWE) "Monday Night Raw" (later "Raw Is War") and World Championship Wrestling's (WCW) "Monday Nitro" were broadcast opposite each other in a battle for Nielsen ratings each week. It largely overlapped with the Attitude Era, a term used by WWF to describe that company's programming from November 9, 1997 to May 6, 2002.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: The rating war was part of a larger overall struggle between the two companies, originating in personal animosity between WWF owner Vince McMahon and WCW owner Ted Turner. The rivalry between the companies steadily escalated throughout the 1990s to include the use of cutthroat tactics and the defections of employees between the two companies. Throughout the wars, the WWF and WCW would both adopt different concepts and narrative techniques. Meanwhile, both companies would establish both formal and informal partnerships with ECW, with ECW performers either appearing on WWF and WCW shows while still under contract, or outright leaving ECW to work for one of the other two promotions.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: While WCW was the dominant promotion for much of the mid-1990s, a variety of factors coalesced to turn the tide in the WWF's favor at the end of the decade, including a radical rebranding of their formerly family-friendly product to highly sexualized and violent shows geared towards older teens and adults. WCW ultimately ran into financial difficulties as a result of the amount of money they had promised wrestlers during a hiring binge in the early and middle part of the decade, which had been aimed at acquiring large portions of the WWF's talent roster. Behind the scenes, executives who had longed to see WCW removed from the Turner organization were eventually able to see it come to fruition after Turner Broadcasting's merger with Time Warner and their merger with America Online (AOL). With Turner no longer in control, the corporate executives of the combined AOL Time Warner would sell its assets. Despite efforts to salvage the company, it was ultimately sold to McMahon, ending the Monday Night Wars.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: In retrospect, wrestling commentators have come to see the era of the Monday Night Wars as a golden age of pro wrestling, along with the 1940s-1950s Gorgeous George era and the 1980s professional wrestling boom, with the feud between the two companies bringing out their best quality product both in terms of creativity and the performances of their wrestlers.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: The Monday Night Wars largely sprang from a rivalry between WWF owner Vince McMahon and WCW owner Ted Turner, dating back to an incident in the 1980s known as Black Saturday, when McMahon acquired a monopoly on all nationally televised wrestling broadcasts by purchasing a stake in Georgia Championship Wrestling, whose flagship show aired on WTBS, Turner's own network. Turner, displeased with McMahon's handling of programming on his network, pressured McMahon into selling his time slot to Jim Crockett Promotions, another wrestling promotion. As wrestling began to grow in popularity in the early 1990s, the organizations – and, as a result, their programming – became a venue through which the business feud could continue, with each company working to drive the other out of business.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: WCW dominated the ratings through much of the mid-1990s, as Ted Turner's financial resources allowed the company to purchase the services of numerous high-profile WWF performers, including Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. The company also drew casual fans' attention by filming events at popular tourist venues such as Disney's Hollywood Studios, and reached out to Mexican and Japanese wrestling fans through its cruiserweight division, which featured wrestlers from a diverse array of ethnic and racial backgrounds competing in matches featuring styles of wrestling popular in Latin America and Asia. Under the auspices of Eric Bischoff, WCW introduced a new, complex metastory involving the defection of multiple wrestlers to a rival organization called the nWo. WWF owner Vince McMahon's controversial treatment of Bret Hart in an incident known as the Montreal Screwjob immediately precipitated Hart's departure from the WWF to WCW, alienating a large segment of WWF's fanbase at the same time WCW came to employ virtually all of the established wrestling stars then in competition.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: Throughout the late 1990s, the WWF began to rise in popularity after it rebranded itself as a more adult-themed, sexualized and violent product, a period in the company's history now referred to as the Attitude Era. The shift in programming helped lead the company to achieve mainstream success similar to the 1980s professional wrestling boom. Concurrently, many WWF performers became crossover successes: during this period The Rock would become very popular and then would embark on a successful acting career, while Mick Foley published a "New York Times"-bestselling autobiography; Stone Cold Steve Austin quickly became the company's most popular star and the company's flagship performer, and would be featured in mainstream media all over America and made guest appearances on a variety of television shows, from "Nash Bridges" to "Dilbert". The heightened profiles of WWF wrestlers helped to draw the attention of both new and casual wrestling fans to the company's programming.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: In the late 1990s, WCW's ratings began to suffer as fans grew tired of the nWo storyline, which many viewers perceived as having been allowed to go on for too long. Fans also responded negatively to several gimmicks intended to reinvigorate interest in WCW, including the introduction of actor David Arquette as the company's new champion. The company was able to briefly reinvigorate itself after the introduction of Bill Goldberg, who was presented as an unbeatable force who won matches within a matter of minutes or even seconds. Goldberg quickly rose to stardom within the organization and became a crossover star similar to the WWF's performers, with appearances in commercials and music videos. However, a controversial backstage decision to end Goldberg's winning streak, followed quickly by an anticlimactic match involving Kevin Nash and Hollywood Hogan – now known as the Fingerpoke of Doom – effectively killed the company's credibility in the eyes of many of its diehard fans, and the company was never able to recreate the initial level of popularity that it had enjoyed in the middle of the decade. Simultaneously, the company experienced financial woes due to the amount of money it had promised wrestlers in their contracts in the early and mid 1990s. The company was ultimately unable to sustain itself while paying wrestlers their contracted salaries, and WCW went up for sale. The wars ended with the sale of WCW's assets by its parent company, AOL Time Warner, to the WWF.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: Television had been a significant part of professional wrestling presentation in the United States for decades, but after the 1950s it had been relegated to local stations as the national networks ceased airing it. Many local programmers turned to professional wrestling as a means to fill out their schedules, as it was relatively inexpensive to produce but drew high ratings. This reinforced the then-accepted organization of professional wrestling, which were consisted of a patchwork of territorial promotions aimed at – and broadcast to – local audiences, without a centralized, national promotion, though most territories were members of a common sanctioning body of championship titles, the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA).


title: Monday Night Wars

text: As cable television arose in the 1970s, local stations were often retransmitted to new markets as superstations. When Atlanta television station WTCG (later WTBS) became a superstation in the late 1970s, Georgia Championship Wrestling (GCW), an NWA member which aired on the station, reached a national audience.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: The company's television show, hosted by Gordon Solie, was recorded in one of WTBS's studios at 1050 Techwood Drive, in downtown Atlanta. Shows were taped before a small live, in-studio audience, as were most professional wrestling television shows of that era. They featured wrestling matches, plus melodramatic monologues and inter-character confrontations, similar to the programming offered by other territories, including the Northeast-based WWF. GCW's show, which aired on Saturday evenings, was complemented by a Sunday evening edition. Jim Barnett, Jack and Gerald Brisco had major stakes in the organization, while Ole Anderson was head booker and was in charge of operations. In 1982, in order to appear less regional in scope, the television show was renamed "World Championship Wrestling", a name Barnett had used for promoting shows in Australia in the 1970s.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: In 1983, the WWF started its own cable show called "WWF All American Wrestling", airing Sunday mornings on the USA Network. Later that year, the WWF debuted a second cable show, also on USA, called "Tuesday Night Titans" (TNT), a talk show spoof hosted by Vince McMahon (also the WWF owner) and Lord Alfred Hayes.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: While still running steadily, Barnett and the Briscos sold their entire stock in GCW (including the television deal) to Vince McMahon, and on July 14, 1984 (otherwise known as "Black Saturday"), the WWF took over the GCW show. With this move, McMahon controlled all nationally televised wrestling in the United States. However, the WWF's show on TBS was a ratings disaster, as GCW fans, disliking the cartoonish characters and storylines of the WWF, simply stopped watching. Two weeks after Black Saturday, TBS debuted the show of a successor promotion to GCW created by holdout shareholders, Championship Wrestling from Georgia, albeit on early Saturday mornings.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: Moreover, despite originally promising to produce original programming for the TBS time slot in Atlanta, McMahon chose instead to provide only a clip show for TBS, featuring highlights from other WWF programming as well as matches from house shows at Madison Square Garden, Boston Garden, and other major arenas. This format would eventually be the cornerstone of the "WWF Prime Time Wrestling" (PTW) program. In May 1985, McMahon sold the TBS time slot to another Southern-based and NWA-affiliated wrestling company, Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP), under heavy pressure from station owner Ted Turner, who was unhappy with the declining ratings. This set up a rivalry between McMahon and Turner that would continue for 16 years.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: That same year, "PTW" replaced "TNT" on USA Network, which expanded to two hours the format of the WWF's WTBS program. The most-remembered "Prime Time" format featured Bobby Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon introducing taped matches and analyzing them afterward, with Monsoon taking a neutral/babyface position and Heenan unashamedly cheering on the heels. The chemistry between Monsoon and Heenan made this show popular with fans for many years despite the fact it was not considered one of the WWF's "primary" shows for most of its history, and many other wrestling programs attempted to copy this formula, with varying degrees of success.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: During a span of five months between November 1987 and March 1988, a bitter event-scheduling war broke out between Vince McMahon and Jim Crockett, Jr., the owner of JCP. Throughout the 1980s, Crockett had steadily bought out other NWA-affiliated promotions in an attempt to make his organization a national one similar to the WWF. As a result, the term "NWA" became virtually synonymous with JCP. On Thanksgiving night 1987, McMahon's WWF aired Survivor Series on pay-per-view (PPV) against the NWA's Starrcade, which Crockett marketed as the NWA's answer to WrestleMania. However, many cable companies could only offer one live PPV event at a time. The WWF then threatened that any cable company that chose not to carry Survivor Series would not carry any WWF PPV events sixty days before and twenty-one days after the show. Therefore, the WWF PPV was cleared 10–1 over Starrcade, as only three cable companies opted to remain loyal to their contract with Crockett.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: After this incident, the PPV industry warned McMahon not to schedule PPV events simultaneously with the NWA again. However, he was still not willing to fully cooperate with Crockett. On January 24, 1988, another scheduling conflict took place between the WWF and NWA: the NWA presented the Bunkhouse Stampede on PPV, while WWF aired the Royal Rumble for free on the USA Network. Later that year, with WWF's WrestleMania IV around the corner, Crockett decided to use McMahon's own tactics against him, developing his own PPV-caliber event and airing it for free on TBS opposite WrestleMania. The result was the "Clash of the Champions I". On March 27, 1988 – the same night as WrestleMania IV – the first "Clash of the Champions" aired. This show made Sting a star after he wrestled NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair to a 45-minute draw. The NWA repeated the practice again the following year, with a "Clash" coinciding with WWF's WrestleMania V. Although the main event of the "Clash" saw NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ricky Steamboat defeat Flair in a best-of-three-falls match that lasted for almost an hour, ratings and attendance for the event fell well below expectations compared to WrestleMania V. Thus, the practice of conflicting major events would cease for six years.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: By 1988, Crockett's acquisition spree had severely drained his coffers. As a result, he was forced to sell his company to Turner, through a subsidiary named Universal Wrestling Corporation, who wanted to retain the steady, strong ratings of the JCP wrestling programs. Turner named the company World Championship Wrestling (WCW) after the flagship television show; it remained affiliated with the NWA until 1993.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: As 1993 began, "Prime Time Wrestling" was struggling in the ratings and was canceled by USA. The show that succeeded it, "Monday Night Raw", changed how wrestling on cable television would be presented. The WWF decided that it should use its cable time as a showcase for original matches and storylines that would serve as the major build-up to the quarterly pay-per-view broadcasts. The original "Raw" broke new ground in televised professional wrestling. Traditionally, wrestling shows were taped on sound stages with small audiences or at large arena shows. The "Raw" formula was very different than that of "Prime Time Wrestling": instead of taped matches, with studio voice overs and taped chat, "Raw" was a show shot to a live audience, with storylines unfolding as they happened. The first episode featured Sean Mooney reporting from the streets of New York City and interviews by Bobby Heenan, Yokozuna defeating Koko B. Ware, The Steiner Brothers defeating The Executioners; WWF Intercontinental Champion Shawn Michaels defeating Max Moon; and The Undertaker defeating Damien Demento. The show also featured an interview with Razor Ramon.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: "Raw" originated from The Grand Ballroom at the Manhattan Center, a New York City theater, and aired live each week. The combination of an intimate venue and live action proved highly successful. However, the weekly live schedule became a financial drain on the WWF, and the company began taping shows; sometimes up to a month's worth of shows were taped at a time.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: In the same year as the premiere of "Monday Night Raw", WCW promoted former commentator and American Wrestling Association (AWA) announcer/sales associate Eric Bischoff to the position of Executive Vice President. During Bischoff's first year at the top of WCW, bookers Ole Anderson and Dusty Rhodes concocted cartoonish, unbelievable, and poorly built-up storylines that were poorly received by fans, such as "Lost in Cleveland," a storyline in which Cactus Jack developed amnesia and disappeared in Cleveland, Ohio; The White Castle of Fear, a match between Sting and Vader themed around B movies meant to promote SuperBrawl III; and tongue-in-cheek, short beach-party movies used as promotional videos for Beach Blast. Anderson and Rhodes' booking style was generally in line with the lighthearted, morally uncomplicated narrative that had been popular in 1980s wrestling, but which was generally looked upon with growing disdain by younger wrestling fans.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: In February 1993, longtime NWA stalwart Ric Flair returned to WCW after an 18-month WWF tenure, but since Flair was constrained by a no-compete clause from his WWF contract, WCW gave him a talk show segment on its television shows called "A Flair for the Gold". At Slamboree 1993, WCW reunited the Four Horsemen with Flair, Arn Anderson and Paul Roma. Ole Anderson was part of the group as an advisor, but made only one appearance on "A Flair for the Gold". "A Flair for Gold" would eventually play host to one of the most infamous incidents of 1990s wrestling: On a live "Clash of the Champions XXIV" building up the Fall Brawl pay-per-view, WCW decided to introduce a "mystery partner" for the babyfaces, a masked man known as The Shockmaster. The Shockmaster was supposed to crash through a fake wall and intimidate the heels. However, he tripped through the wall, fell on live television, and briefly knocked off his helmet. The incident would be talked about for years to come in the burgeoning internet wrestling culture, and, along with WWF's Gobbledy Gooker, "Shockmaster" became wrestling parlance for an exceptionally poorly executed idea.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: That same year, WCW began taping matches months in advance for syndicated programming like "WCW WorldWide" at the Disney/MGM Studios which would become known as the "Disney tapings". The Disney tapings would ultimately prove disastrous to the company's reputation, largely due to WCW's underestimation of growing internet culture: Because the events were recorded weeks, and sometimes months, in advance, fans in attendance had time to disseminate the results not only to wrestling magazines but also across the internet. Seating at the events was also partially contingent upon wearing merchandise promoting different wrestlers, and audience members being made to respond on-cue to particular in-ring events. This was regarded as a major breach of kayfabe at the time and ultimately led to WCW's departure from the NWA in September 1993.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: By the end of the year, WCW decided to once again base the promotion around Ric Flair. The decision was largely made out of necessity: The company had intended to place heavy emphasis on Sid Vicious, but he was involved in a legitimate altercation with fellow wrestler Arn Anderson while on tour in England. A heated argument between the men escalated into a physical altercation, which culminated in them stabbing one another with a pair of scissors. Because Sid's attack on Anderson was more violent, and because of Arn Anderson's close relationship with Ole Anderson, the decision was made to fire Sid. Sid's departure resulted in a further problem for the company: As he had been scheduled to defeat Big Van Vader for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship at Starrcade 1993, several weeks worth of Disney Tapings had been filmed with Sid as the champion, with the intention not to air it until the following year. Sid's departure from the company meant that hours worth of footage had suddenly become worthless.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: In 1994, Bischoff took a more aggressive stance in his capacity as vice president. He declared open war on the WWF and aggressively recruited high-profile former WWF wrestlers such as Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage, using Turner's funds. Because of their high profiles, Hogan and Savage were able to demand – and get – several concessions not usually allowed to wrestlers at the time. Notably, the men negotiated total creative control over their characters, in addition to multiyear, multimillion-dollar contracts at a time when many top wrestlers were only receiving around $1 million a year. Bischoff's concessions to Hogan and Savage would set a precedent for WCW's hiring process that would prove problematic in later years: As Bischoff began to aggressively pursue rival talent for jobs with WCW, performers—aware of the deals Hogan and Savage had been given—began to demand similar contracts, ultimately causing wrestlers' salaries to soar out of control. Concurrent with Hogan's arrival in WCW, he and Bischoff formed a close, real-life friendship that would afford Hogan a degree of influence over the day-to-day operations of the company.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: WCW's first major pay-per-view event since Hogan's hiring, Bash at the Beach, saw Hogan defeat Ric Flair for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. The match was a reworking of a long-teased but never realized feud between the men while they were still working for the WWF: An intended main event match between them at WrestleMania VIII was changed to Hogan vs. Sid and Flair vs Savage, and the rivalry was never realized. Bischoff's attempt to deliver a "dream match" never produced by the WWF paid off, and the PPV drew a disproportionately high buy rate by the company's standards.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) had its origins in 1991 as the Tri-State Wrestling Alliance, owned by Joel Goodhart. In 1992, Goodhart sold his share of the company to his partner, Tod Gordon, who renamed the promotion Eastern Championship Wrestling. When Eastern Championship Wrestling was founded, it was a member of the NWA, and "Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert was its head booker. After a falling-out with Gordon, Gilbert was replaced in September 1993 by Paul Heyman (known on television as Paul E. Dangerously), who had just left WCW and was looking for a new challenge. In contrast to professional wrestling of the time, which was marketed more towards families, Eastern Championship Wrestling was geared more toward adults and fans who craved a more athletic and violent wrestling product. Its eventual successor, Extreme Championship Wrestling, aimed its product at males between 18 and 35, breaking a few taboos in professional wrestling such as blading. Heyman saw ECW as the professional wrestling equivalent to the grunge music movement of the early 1990s, and focused on taking the company in a new direction.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: In 1994, Jim Crockett Jr.'s non-compete agreement with Turner, to whom he had sold in 1988, expired and he decided to start promoting with the NWA again. Crockett went to Gordon and asked him to hold a tournament for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, in ECW's home city of Philadelphia on August 27, 1994. NWA President Dennis Coralluzzo alleged that Crockett and Gordon were attempting to monopolize the title, and stated Crockett did not have the NWA board's approval, which resulted in Coralluzzo personally overseeing the tournament. Gordon took offense at Coralluzzo for his power plays and began contemplating a plan to secede ECW from the NWA in a controversial and public manner that would attract attention to ECW and insult the NWA organization. Gordon and Heyman planned to have Shane Douglas, who was scheduled to face 2 Cold Scorpio in the tournament finals, throw down the NWA World Heavyweight Championship upon winning it as an act of defiance.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: Heyman pitched the plan to Douglas, noting that the only negative would be that NWA traditionalists would just see them as traitors to tradition. Additionally, there was animosity between Douglas and Coralluzzo, who had publicly criticized Douglas and advised NWA-affiliated bookers not to schedule him for shows, as he believed Douglas was a "bad risk" and had the tendency to not appear at shows he was scheduled to wrestle at. Douglas ultimately decided to go through with Gordon and Heyman's plan, inspired by his father's motto of "doing right by the people that do right by you". He threw down the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, stating that he did not want to be champion of a "dead promotion". He then raised the Eastern Championship Wrestling title and declared it to be a world heavyweight championship, calling it the only real world title left in professional wrestling. When recalling this event years later, Paul Heyman stated the following:


title: Monday Night Wars

text: With this event, Eastern Championship Wrestling seceded from the NWA and became Extreme Championship Wrestling. The revamped promotion's unorthodox style and controversial storylines made it popular among fans in the 18- to 35-year-old male demographic. It showcased many different styles of professional wrestling, popularizing hardcore wrestling matches as well as lucha libre and Japanese wrestling styles. ECW was promoted as counterculture and a grittier alternative to multimillion-dollar organizations such as the WWF and WCW.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: "Monday Nitro" premiered on September 4, 1995 as an hour-long weekly show, and Bischoff was instrumental in the launching of the show. During their mid-1995 meeting, Turner asked Bischoff how WCW could compete with the WWF. Bischoff, not expecting Turner to comply, said that the only way would be a prime-time slot on a weekday night, possibly up against the WWF's flagship show "Monday Night Raw". Surprisingly for Bischoff, Turner granted him one live hour on TNT every Monday night, which specifically overlapped with "Raw". This format expanded to two live hours in May 1996 and later three. Bischoff himself was initially the host; he handled the second hour along with Bobby Heenan and former NFL football player Steve "Mongo" McMichael, with Tony Schiavone and Larry Zbyszko hosting the first. Other co-hosts included Mike Tenay (usually for matches involving cruiserweights or international stars), Scott Hudson, and Mark Madden.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: The initial broadcast of "Nitro" also featured the return of Lex Luger to WCW. Luger had worked for the company from 1987 to 1992, when it was still affiliated with the NWA, before joining the WWF the following year. WCW's coup of obtaining Luger was significant for several reasons. Because "Nitro" was live at the time, premiering major stars on the show would signal to the fans the amount of excitement the broadcasts would contain. Secondly, Luger had just come off a successful run in the WWF and was one of the company's top stars. In fact, he had been in line to get the WWF World Heavyweight Championship (he had had several previous title matches), and worked a WWF house show the night before. Since nobody but Bischoff and Luger's good friend Sting knew that Luger would return to WCW, the shock value generated by his appearance was great. Thirdly, Luger's defection created speculation among fans as to which other big-name stars would "jump ship". Notably, Luger would be followed by former WWF Women's Champion Alundra Blayze, who appeared with the WWF Women's Championship belt on the December 18, 1995, edition of "Nitro" and insulted her former employers before throwing the belt in the garbage.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: "Raw" and "Nitro" traded wins in the "Monday Night Wars" early on, but WWE has conceded that by December 1995 "WCW had the advantage over [the WWF] in the storied Monday Night Wars". "Nitro" began airing a weekly segment entitled "Where the Big Boys Play!" composed of stock footage of matches featuring current WWF wrestlers who had started their careers as jobbers in WCW, all of which ended in the WWF wrestler suffering a humiliating loss. Bischoff also began to give away the results of "Raw" matches on "Nitro", as "Raw" was usually taped a week prior to airing. These moves prompted retaliatory tactics by the WWF; in January 1996, "Raw" began airing skits before and after commercial breaks entitled "Billionaire Ted's Wrasslin' Warroom," depicting parodies of Ted Turner ("Billionaire Ted"), Hulk Hogan ("The Huckster"), "Macho Man" Randy Savage ("The Nacho Man"), and "Mean" Gene Okerlund ("Scheme Gene"). While the material involving Hogan and Savage usually poked fun at their old ages, the skits aimed at Turner were decidedly more inflammatory in nature and contained material that could have been considered slanderous. Although Turner himself reportedly found the sketches amusing, the sketches stopped airing on the USA Network at the request of network president Kay Koplovitz, and were ended permanently in a short presented before WrestleMania XII, which killed off all the characters.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: WrestleMania XII also began a brief turning point for the WWF, after which "Raw" would overtake "Nitro" for two consecutive months. The event saw the return of 1980s fan favorite "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, who made a face turn to fight Goldust. Another 1980s fan favorite returning that evening was The Ultimate Warrior, who would go on to enjoy a brief revival in popularity. The main event, a heavily promoted ironman match between Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart, lasted for more than an hour.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: In April 1996, two of the WWF's top performers, Kevin Nash (Diesel) and Scott Hall (Razor Ramon), signed contracts with WCW. Prior to their departure, the men had been part of The Kliq, a tight-knit affiliation of wrestlers in the WWF whose backstage influence allowed them to wield an enormous amount of power over the direction of the company. The group, composed of Nash, Hall, Shawn Michaels, Hunter Hearst Helmsley (later known as Triple H) and Sean Waltman (1-2-3 Kid), often used their influence to advance one another's careers, and in some instances harm or ruin the careers of performers who displeased them. Accounts varied as to the reason for Nash and Hall's departure: Whereas wrestling analysts speculated that their contracts had been allowed to expire in order to break the Kliq's influence within the company, the WWF's official stance was that they could not match WCW's contract offer. On May 19, 1996, in their last WWF match before leaving for WCW, Nash and Hall were involved in a highly publicized incident at Madison Square Garden dubbed "The Curtain Call", in which four members of The Kliq (Nash, Hall, Michaels, Helmsley) broke character in the ring after their match to say goodbye to Nash and Hall (Waltman was in drug rehab and did not appear at the event). Michaels and Hall were playing babyface characters, while Nash and Helmsley were playing heel characters, and the four of them embracing saw an explicit breaking of kayfabe. Though the incident was not televised, it was nonetheless recorded by fans who had smuggled cameras and camcorders into the event, and photos and videos were widely disseminated on the internet. The incident marked one of the first times that pro wrestlers had so flagrantly broken character in front of an audience, and forced both the WWF and WCW to begin acknowledging fans' growing awareness of the backstage happenings of their respective companies. The Curtain Call would go on to influence the narrative course both companies took by encouraging WCW, and later the WWF, to blur the lines of fantasy and reality in wrestling, incorporating wrestlers' real names and details of their lives into their character's stories.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: On the Memorial Day 1996 edition of "Nitro", Scott Hall interrupted a match and, apparently out of character, challenged the wrestlers of WCW to a fight against him and unnamed companions. Though Hall was employed by WCW, the storyline took advantage of fans' knowledge of the Curtain Call incident by insinuating that Hall's departure from the WWF had been a ruse and that he was, in fact, staging an "invasion" of WCW on behalf of the WWF.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: Two weeks later, a second WWF defector, Kevin Nash (who had wrestled as Diesel), appeared on "Nitro". Hall and Nash were dubbed "The Outsiders", and would show up unexpectedly during "Nitro" broadcasts, usually jumping wrestlers backstage, distracting wrestlers by standing in the entranceways of arenas or walking around in the audience. A week later, they announced the forthcoming appearance of a mysterious third member of their group. At Bash at the Beach, Hall and Nash were scheduled to team with their mystery partner against Lex Luger, Randy Savage, and Sting. At the onset of the match, Hall and Nash came out without a third man, telling Okerlund that he was "in the building", but that they did not need him yet. Shortly into the match, a Stinger Splash resulted in Luger being crushed behind Nash and being taken away on a stretcher, turning the match into The Outsiders vs. Sting and Savage.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: Hall and Nash were in control of the match when Hulk Hogan came to the ring. After standing off with them, he attacked Savage, showing himself to be the Outsiders' mysterious third man and thus turning heel. In a post-match interview, Hogan christened his alliance with Hall and Nash as the New World Order (nWo). Hogan's statements, which broke with his earlier face persona, inspired enough vitriol in the audience that they began to pelt the ring with debris: a wayward beer bottle broke Okerlund's nose, and one fan jumped the security railing and attempted to attack Hogan.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: The following evening on "Nitro," most of WCW's top stars gave faux indignant interviews, expressing their feelings of betrayal and disappointment with Hogan's actions. The ensuing storyline, in which the nWo waged a campaign of anarchy against WCW, blurred the lines between reality and scripted entertainment, a unique presentation that acknowledged fans' growing awareness of backstage wrestling politics and kayfabe. WCW and the nWo continued to grow in popularity, and for the next 84 consecutive weeks "Nitro" beat "Raw" in the ratings.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: At the outset of the storyline, the WWF filed a lawsuit against WCW, alleging that WCW was illegally representing the nWo as a WWF affiliate and that Hall's persona was too close to his "Razor Ramon" character (itself a parody of Al Pacino's character in "Scarface"), to which the WWF retained the rights. WCW countered that in June, Hall and Nash had emphatically stated on-camera that they were no longer WWF employees, and that Hall's current persona was, in fact, a reworking of his previous WCW character, The Diamond Studd. The lawsuit dragged on for several years, culminating in the WWF agreeing to drop the suit in exchange for the right to bid on WCW properties should they ever come up for liquidation.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: "Raw", and the WWF in general, was considered to be at a creative nadir before "Nitro" started. Into the early 1990s, the WWF had continued the creative formula that had given the company success in the 1980s: clear-cut face vs. heel storylines, colorful wrestlers with themed gimmicks, and alluring female valets who nonetheless maintained a "PG-13" level of sex appeal. Although the formula had been popular during the MTV-fueled "rock n' Wrestling" era of the 1980s, fans in the 1990s began to gravitate towards more morally ambiguous characters, wrestlers whose personas were more grounded in reality, and metafiction storylines that acknowledged their awareness of backstage politics via the use of the Internet. With the introduction of the nWo, the June 10, 1996, episode of "Raw" would be the last rating victory for the WWF for nearly two years.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: On the November 4, 1996, episode of "Raw", the WWF aired a storyline involving Stone Cold Steve Austin and Brian Pillman, two former friends who were feuding with each other. In a series of vignettes broadcast from Pillman's real-life home in Newport, Kentucky, Pillman – supposedly debilitated following an attack by Austin – vowed to protect himself and his wife with the help of a group of friends should Austin appear. At the end of the evening, the final vignette depicted Austin breaking into Pillman's home, prompting Pillman to pull a gun on Austin, and the feed being "interrupted" in the ensuing chaos, with Vince McMahon (serving as a commentator) stating that he had been informed of "a couple explosions". When the feed resumed, Austin was shown being dragged out of Pillman's house as Pillman screamed, "That son of a bitch has got this coming! Let him go! I'm going to kill that son of a bitch! Get out of the fucking way!", with none of the profanity censored.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: The angle polarized fans and shocked the USA Network, which was not accustomed to airing a program with the profanity and level of violence presented in the vignettes. Although the WWF (and Pillman himself) were forced to issue apologies to avoid "Raw" being canceled for breach of contract, the ensuing discussion of the incident in the fan community generated the most attention the WWF had received since the beginning of the Monday Night Wars. This prompted the WWF creative team to begin looking into the idea of more adult-oriented storylines and characters and mimicking WCW's metafiction elements. On February 3, 1997, "Monday Night Raw" changed to a two-hour format. In an attempt to break the momentum of "Nitro", WWF entered into a cross-promotional agreement with ECW. "Raw" commentator Jerry Lawler insulted and "challenged" ECW on the show's February 17 episode, and in the weeks to come, several ECW wrestlers appeared on "Raw" in a story arc similar to the nWo storyline playing out in WCW, with the WWF pursuing the "renegade" ECW. On March 10, 1997, "Raw" was officially renamed "Raw Is War" in reference to the ongoing rating battle.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: Throughout the 1990s, Bret Hart had been arguably the most popular wrestler on the WWF roster since winning the WWF Championship from Ric Flair in 1992, and one of the few performers to remain steadfastly loyal to the company through its numerous changes. After losing the title to Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XII, Hart took a hiatus from the WWF, returning in late 1996 at the Survivor Series soon after signing a 20-year WWF contract. Despite hesitation, Hart agreed to turn heel at WrestleMania 13, becoming an anti-US, pro-Canadian character who would deride the morals of US wrestling fans in increasingly cheering for heel wrestlers, which later expanded into more political anti-US remarks. Though Hart became strongly disliked in the United States, this had no effect on his popularity in Canada or Western Europe where he remained a babyface. Hart's heel turn in the US after WrestleMania 13 while remaining a face in Canada and Western Europe was another example of breaking new ground. From the point of view of Hart and the Canadian/European wrestling fans, it was the US wrestling fans that were the bad guys and whose morals had changed for the worse compared to previous years. Hart's feud against the aggressive, morally ambiguous yet patriotic Stone Cold Steve Austin, would dominate WWF storylines through most of 1997. During the year, as part of Hart's anti-US angle and his feud with Austin, Hart allied with his brother Owen Hart, his brothers-in-law The British Bulldog and Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, and with close Hart family friend Brian Pillman, to form the new Hart Foundation.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: Upon being told by Vince McMahon on September 22, 1997, that the WWF's current financial situation precluded the company from fulfilling his 20-year contract, Hart signed a contract with WCW in October 1997. At the time, Hart was the WWF Champion, and wanted to part ways with the WWF amicably, and had agreed to vacate the title following a farewell speech on the November 10, 1997 broadcast of "Raw Is War" in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, which would take place one day after the 1997 Survivor Series in Montreal. Although McMahon agreed to the arrangement, he later decided to renege on the deal and have Hart unwittingly lose the title at Survivor Series, to real-life rival Shawn Michaels. The incident, which took place in Hart's home country of Canada, became known as the Montreal Screwjob.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: The incident severely demoralized the WWF roster, shaking wrestlers' faith in McMahon and resulting in a near strike the following evening, with Mick Foley (Mankind) actually going on strike for one day. Bret Hart's two brothers-in-law, the British Bulldog and Neidhart left with Hart for WCW, although Neidhart made one more appearance on "Raw Is War" as a quid pro quo before leaving, where Neidhart was beaten up by D-Generation X. Hart himself (who punched McMahon in the dressing room following the match in Montreal) prevented a mass strike by asking his former co-workers not to risk their careers for his sake. Bret's brother, Owen, also attempted to quit the WWF, citing a knee injury but was unable to get out of his contract. Owen Hart remained with the WWF until his controversial death at Over the Edge on May 23, 1999.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: Rick Rude, a wrestler who had been popular amongst both fans and his fellow wrestlers during the 1980s and 1990s, who had recently made a comeback in the WWF and was one of the on-screen founding members of D-Generation X, left the WWF a week after the Montreal Screwjob, and followed Hart to WCW. As Rude was being paid by the WWF on an appearance-by-appearance basis, no extant contract prevented him from leaving the WWF without prior notice. Rude appeared on both the WWF's "Raw Is War" and WCW's "Monday Nitro" on November 17, 1997. A mustachioed Rude appeared on "Nitro", which was live, and proceeded to criticize Vince McMahon, Shawn Michaels, DX, and the WWF, calling the WWF the "Titanic", thereby calling it a "sinking ship". An hour later on "Raw Is War" (which had been taped six days earlier), Rude then appeared with the full beard that he had been sporting during his last few weeks in the WWF, making Rude the only performer to appear on both "Nitro" and "Raw" on the same evening until the last night of the ratings wars. On top of this, Rude also appeared on ECW's "Hardcore TV" during that weekend (November 14–16 as the show was syndicated differently depending on the market). Rude made many appearances with ECW during 1997, including during the period when he was in the WWF as a part of DX, as the WWF and ECW often co-operated in terms of talent.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: Bret Hart's departure from the WWF would ultimately turn the tide of the "Monday Night Wars." With Hart now on the WCW roster, "Nitro" boasted the most well-known names in wrestling; WCW had also been highlighting new talent, with up-and-coming stars such as Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, and Rey Mysterio, Jr. forming the company's new cruiserweight division. As many of the cruiserweights incorporated elements of lucha libre into their performances, the division also helped WCW take advantage of the popularity of wrestling amongst Hispanic, Latin American, and Asian fans. As few WWF performers at the time utilized the type of aerial techniques found in lucha libre, the cruiserweight division and the acrobatic performances of its wrestlers helped not only to draw in new viewers to WCW, but also helped the organization reach out to fans who were used to seeing such feats in wrestling performances in their native countries.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: WCW's Starrcade pay-per-view in Washington, D.C. drew WCW's highest buyrate to that date, including the highly anticipated main-event of Hollywood Hogan vs. Sting, a match that fans had been waiting to see since Sting first appeared as the leader of an anti-nWo faction a year before. However, the anticlimactic end of the match proved unpopular: Bret Hart made his WCW debut by accusing the referee of corruption, declaring himself the referee, and then awarding the belt to Sting, only for it to be stripped moments later on a technicality. As many fans had waited for a decisive victory of one faction over the other, the convoluted sequence of events was seen as a way to artificially extend the storyline without allowing it to come to an organic conclusion, beginning a sharp decline in the popularity of the nWo angle amongst fans.


title: Monday Night Wars

text: Throughout 1997, "Raw Is War" began to become more and more controversial, and despite the company not getting any rating victories, the WWF gradually began receiving significantly more acclaim. Storyline elements included racist graffiti targeted at the Nation of Domination (a stable loosely based on the Nation of Islam), drinking beer on camera by Stone Cold Steve Austin, and emphasizing the sexuality of valets Sunny, Sable, and Marlena. These women began appearing on-camera in increasingly revealing clothing and in swimsuit and lingerie-oriented spreads in the WWF's "Raw" magazine, a lad mag designed as an alternative to the family-friendly "WWF Magazine" and a competitor to the likewise family-friendly "WCW Magazine". Although these elements helped to garner the WWF more attention than it had enjoyed in the wake of the nWo storyline, the injury of Steve Austin at the SummerSlam pay-per-view, which put him out of action for three months, proved to be a severe blow to "Raw Is War"'s popularity.