World Championship Wrestling

World Championship Wrestling (WCW) is an American professional wrestling promotion which has existed since 1989 and is WWF's main competitor, it is owned by Ted Turner.

## Company history

### Prior to WCW(1920-1989)

NWA had existed since 1920 being the main wrestling alliance, in 1963 a fake war began between NWA, WWWF, AWA and Stampede Wrestling as they form an Alliance and stage a war between companies to bring wrestling its golden days. Throught the 22 years, NWA started losing popularity to WWWF rapidly.

In 1980, a real war began as NWA, AWA and WWWF all competed to hold a monopoly on wrestling.

In 1984, Jim Crockett Jr. bought NWA and renames it JCP with only 1 company as he tries to take down Vince. After Wrestlemania I, Wally gives Jim AWA as they stage an AWA invasion on JCP all culminating on their big supershow, Starrcade 1985 in december which fails and WWF oficially wins the war as Wally resigns from JCP.

In 1987, Jim Crockett created NWA again with multiple companies but the main one would always be JCP.

After a couple of years of not being mainstream attention and lazy booking without counterattacking against WWF, Ted Turner buys JCP and renames it WCW(Jim Crockett Jr. still owned NWA and Jim kept wanting NWA guys to show up at WCW but Turner wanted to do his own thing causing conflict between the 2)

### Nature Boy Era(1989-1992)

In april 15th 1989, WCW oficially debuted with Saturday Night and Turner immediatly declared war on WWF, on the same night Sting shockingly showed up on their set of tapings while he was still WWF Champion showcasing the first big move from WWF to WCW.

This era is its namesake, it was dominated by Ric Flair who held the WCW Heaviweight Championship from 1989 until april 1992 and he only vacated it because he signed with WWF.

These were the years that put WCW on the mark as being the first potential threat to WWF since 1985 as with the help of Ric Flair and Sting, they managed to sign former WWF Champions like Ricky Steamboat, Junkyard Dog, Ultimate Warrior who main evented Starrcade against Ric Flair. After a great first year, WWF decided to sign a contract with WCW as they would have an event every 5 years pitting WWF talent against WCW talent, Turner was okay with this as it gave them a lot of money while they could still be at war against WWF.

The undercard scene was also great building up stars like Lex Luger, Brian Pillman, The Great Muta, Vader and Steiner Brothers.

In 1990, Turner oficially withdrew from NWA as he signed a working relationship with NJPW, which got them wrestlers like Jushin Liger, Kensuke Sasaki, Hiroshi Hase, Masahiro Chono.

In the end of 1991, Turner stepped away from being a personality on the shows announcing stuff and Dusty Rhodes became its kayfabe owner

This era is mostly known also as a wrestling era as they offered a true alternative to WWF with its better wrestling matches and less gimmicks.

### Aquisition Era(1992-1994)

After Ric Flair left WCW out of nowhere, WCW were forced to make new main event stars fast, thus came their biggest monster Vader as they pulled the trigger on him and decided to make him WCW Heaviweight champion, this worked really good as Vader elevated stars like Kensuke Sasaki, Rick Rude and Cactus Jack with his brutal matchups, this all led to Starrcade 1992 when after a 3 year long chase, Sting finally won the WCW Heaviweight Championship and dethroned Vader.

Overall this was one of the most underappreciated eras of WCW as they were pulling out bangers everywhere but wrestling interest was going down, the peak of this era was Starrcade 1993 with amazing matches and storylines blowing off such as Rick Rude and Stunning Austin, Dustin taking down his dad from ownership and Meng taking over Vader as the new WCW monster. During this show, we also had WCW commentator, Eric Bischoff, announce himself as the new owner after Dusty lost his match and Bischoff introducing Hulk Hogan to WCW, their biggest aquisition to date.

And this is why it's called the aquisition era, during this age they would sign the people that would shape WCW to mainstream and would also start to steal BIG talent from WWF, such talent included former WWF champions Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage and Meng and talent that would become main event stars like The Giant and DDP.

Starrcade 1993 got a higher buyrate than Wrestlemania IX and Bischoff decided to do something big as he was now getting big WWF stars and thus he created Monday Nitro.

### Nitro Era(1994-1996)

WCW Monday Nitro debuted on 25th April 1994 the day after Wrestlemania X, this was the first time WCW competed head on against WWF and on this first week WCW had a 3.5 viewership while RAW had a 4.0 so Vince was not worried, this changed when the next week with a Ric Flair vs Hulk Hogan main event hyped up, WCW beat RAW in ratings 3.7 to 3.4, the monday night wars had begun.

This was 2 years of Hulk Hogan dominating as he became a 3 time WCW Heaviweight champion during this time, this era had a lot of big changes as they tried to capitalize on the signings they had made to go mainstream but it was 2 years of a below average main event scene but an amazing undercard with the CWs making their mark with the CWs vs HWs storyline.

The monday night wars heated up as in WAR 2, Vince screwed over Bischoff and made WWF look better than them which was not in the deal, Bischoff cancelled the WAR deal and was now set on destroying Vince and RAW, with this screwjob more interest came into both companies and WCW capitalized the most as they built up Nitro #100 in every single show.

Nitro #100 came and the women's champion Alundra Blayze threw the women's title in the garbage, Razor Ramon showed up and cashed in his WWF MITB to win the WCW Heaviweight Championship and Diesel beat up Luger and Sting while still holding the Intercontinental Championship, 3 big future WWF talent had just signed with WCW and immediatly made an impact with WCW getting 5.0 and RAW getting 1.5

### Golden Age(1996-1999)

Hall, Nash and Alundra invaded Nitro 100 and the sunday afterwards Hulk Hogan turned heel and joined them to form the NWO on Uncensored 1996, a B Show that took place during the same time as Wrestlemania and got a bigger buyrate than it.

WCW was completely riding high with the NWO angle as they beat RAW in ratings for 63 weeks straight, more WWF aquisitions happened with HHH, Roddy Piper, Curt Hennig, the whole show was being amazing left and right, the CWs were being great, the main event scene were all over, the midcard scene had great stuff with Eddie Guerrero, The Mob and multiple others.

They did a slow buildup of Sting and The Resistance rising up against NWO which led to the highest buyrate in WCW history with Starrcade 1997 as Sting beat Hogan in a minute and NWO weren't owners of the company anymore.

In 1998, they built up their biggest homemade talent Goldberg with him peaking on Nitro 215 as he defeated Hollywood Hogan, Randy Savage, The Giant and Sting in 1 night to become WCW Heaviweight champion, this all built up to him becoming a monster heel and finally getting defeated by the big babyface, DDP to end his streak at 199-1

During 1998, the main focus was the NWO Civil Wars, after the NWO lost their ownership, they started cracking and split in 3 parts, NWO Wolfpac led by Scott Hall, NWO Chaos led by Kevin Nash and NWO Hollywood led by Hollywood Hogan, this had some great moments but WCW put too much focus on this as soon every single WCW member was in one of the NWO's, it all culminated at World War 3 in a great wargames match as NWO Wolfpac stood tall, this feud and year was all filled with DQs and non finishes which started tiring the crowd very quickly who were starting to tune into WWF more and more with the rise of the Attitude  Era.

Starting in 1999, Bischoff signed WWF's booker Vince Russo as a way for them to destroy WWF yet again, we were left with 4 months of absolutely awful booking that included Hall beating a really hot DDP to win the WCW Heaviweight Championship in 2 weeks for no reason, Tank Abbott beating Goldberg after tasering him, the WCW tag team championships being vacated for 5 months because WCW forgot about them, fingerpoke of doom, Hall showing up drunk to his 30 minute iron man match against Bret and they had to improvise ending it in 30 seconds, young talent leading a strike against WCW as they weren't being showcased at all on WCW and to top it all off, their 3 biggest stars that were the focus of WCW since 1996 were no longer on TV, Hogan was running for president and became a part timer, Kevin Nash was injured and Scott Hall was on rehab.

With these 4 awful months, WCW needed to make a quick change as they were losing viewership rapidly, they hyped up a "Revolution Era" to start on Nitro 252

### Revolution Era/Downfall

The Revolution Era as WCW called it while the fans called it WCW's Downfall started on Nitro 252 with every single talent they had being showcased in what was a mess of a show, the show ended with Chris Jericho shockingly beating Bret Hart to win the WCW Heaviweight Championship as they wanted to show that they could make young talent stars, the problem here was that Chris Jericho was already signed to WWF and was set to debut there in 1 week and EVERYONE knew about this, Bischoff thought this would bring interest to WCW but it just brought more interest over to WWF.

More details to be written when I finish 2001.

## Accomplishments

 Starrcade Countdown | Raven
 Havoc Battle Royal | Chavo Guerrero Jr.