page_title: History of World Championship Wrestling
section_title: WCW under Ted Turner (1988–2001)
hierarchical_section_title: History of World Championship Wrestling / WCW under Ted Turner (1988–2001)
caption_attribution_description: English: Media mogul Ted Turner at the opening ceremonies of the 2007 Jules Verne Film Festival.Español: El magnate de medios de comunicación Ted Turner en la ceremonia de apertura del Festival de Cine Julio Verne 2007.
context_page_description: World Championship Wrestling is a defunct American professional wrestling promotion that existed from 1988 to 2001. It began as a promotion affiliated with the National Wrestling Alliance that appeared on the national scene under the ownership of media mogul Ted Turner and based in Atlanta, Georgia. The name came from a wrestling television program that aired on TBS in the 1980s, which had taken the name from an Australian wrestling promotion of the 1970s.
  In the 1990s, World Championship Wrestling, along with the World Wrestling Federation, were the top two wrestling promotions in the United States. Its flagship show WCW Monday Nitro went head-to-head with WWF Raw is War in a ratings battle known as the Monday Night Wars. However, lackluster storylines, the increasing popularity of the WWF's Attitude Era, interference and restrictions from Time Warner eventually led to its decline and eventual acquisition of key assets by its main competition, Vince McMahon and the WWF.
context_section_description: To preserve the inexpensive network programming provided by professional wrestling, Jim Crockett Promotions was purchased outright by Turner on October 11, 1988. Originally incorporated by TBS as the Universal Wrestling Corporation, Turner promised fans that WCW would be the athlete-oriented style of the NWA. The sale was completed on November 2, 1988, with a television taping of NWA World Championship Wrestling that very same date in WCW's hometown of Atlanta.
  1989 proved to be a turnaround year for WCW, with Ric Flair on top for most of the year as both World Champion and head booker. Flair helped bring in Ricky Steamboat and Terry Funk, and his pay-per-view matches with Steamboat were financially and critically successful. Young stars such as Sid Vicious, Sting, Scott Steiner, The Road Warriors, Brian Pillman, The Great Muta and Lex Luger were given major storylines and championship opportunities. 1990, however, would be an entirely different story, as Flair would be fired from being head booker in March 1990 after WCW talent began to argue that Flair was booking things in his favor. One of these examples was Flair's refusal to drop the WCW World title to Lex Luger, as he had already promised to drop it to Sting, who himself had been injured earlier in the year. Most in the business agreed that Sting was a much better talent than Luger. Under Flair's booking TV ratings climbed and had great PPVs. Flair was eventually replaced by Ole Anderson.
  Despite this influx of talent, WCW soon began working to gradually incorporate much of the glamour and showy gimmicks for which the WWF was better known. Virtually none of these stunts—such as the live cross-promotional appearance of RoboCop at Capital Combat  in May 1990, the Chamber of Horrors gimmick, and the notorious Black Scorpion storyline—succeeded. In addition, house shows were also dropping to record lows after Ole continuously pushed older wrestlers who were loyal to him during the shows. Behind the scenes, WCW was becoming more autonomous and slowly started separating itself from the historic NWA name. In January 1991, WCW officially split from the NWA and began to recognize its own WCW World Heavyweight Championship and WCW World Tag Team Championship.
  Both WCW and the NWA recognized Ric Flair (who was by now no longer the head booker) as their World Heavyweight Champion throughout most of the first half of 1991, but WCW, particularly recently installed company president Jim Herd, who was formerly the manager of the St. Louis TV station KPLR-TV and had also once been the regional manager of Pizza Hut, turned against Flair for various reasons and fired him before The Great American Bash in July 1991 after failed contract negotiations. In the process, they officially stripped him of the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. According to Flair's autobiography, they refused to return the $25,000 deposit he had put down on the physical belt, so he kept it and brought it with him when he was hired by the WWF at the request of Vince McMahon. Flair then incorporated the belt into his gimmick, dubbing himself "The Real World's Champion". On a sidenote, Flair eventually received his deposit which with interest was over $38,000. WCW later renegotiated the use of the NWA name as a co-promotional gimmick with New Japan Pro Wrestling and sued the WWF to stop showing Flair with the old NWA World Title belt on its programs, claiming a trademark on the physical design of the belt. The belt was returned to WCW by Flair when Jim Herd was let go and he received his deposit back plus interest. It was brought back as the revived NWA World Heavyweight Championship.
  Meanwhile, the creative product of the company sank in 1991 and 1992 under the presidency of the inexperienced Herd. Ric Flair, who had conflicts with Herd, once stated that Herd "knew nothing about wrestling, other than the fact that the station he ran had a hot show" (referring to the once-popular show Wrestling at the Chase. which was broadcast by KPLR-TV while Herd was manager there). According to Flair, Herd also wanted him t
caption: Ted Turner.
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