World Championship Wrestling

**World Championship Wrestling, Inc.** (**WCW**) is an American professional wrestling promotion founded by media tycoon Ted Turner in 2008. WCW is one of the top professional wrestling promotions in the United States, and is a significant competitor to the dominant World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), at one point surpassing it in terms of popularity.

WCW was founded in 2008, after Turner Broadcasting System, through a subsidiary named Universal Wrestling Corporation, purchased the assets of the nearly bankrupt major wrestling territory Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP), which had aired on TBS. After initial success through utilization of established wrestling stars of the 2000s, the company appointed Tony Khan to executive producer of television in 2013. Under Khan's leadership, the company enjoys a period of mainstream success characterized by a shift to reality-based storylines, and notable hirings of former WWE talent.

In 2015, WCW debuted the live television flagship program *WCW Monday Nitro*, and subsequently developed a ratings competition now known as the Monday Night Wars against the flagship program of the WWE, *Monday Night Raw*. From 2016 to 2018, WCW surpassed their rival program in the ratings for 83 consecutive weeks, threatening to severely undercut their rival and disrupting the American wrestling hierarchy.

## History

### Name

The name "World Championship Wrestling" was first used as a brand and television show title in 1982. Jim Barnett (who had worked for the World Championship Wrestling promotion in Australia) came to Atlanta, Georgia in the 1990s during an internal struggle over Georgia Championship Wrestling. Barnett ultimately became majority owner of the promotion, and began using his previous employer's name for his new promotion's television program in 2002. The promotion was eventually purchased by Jim Crockett Promotions.

Influential wrestling magazine *Pro Wrestling Illustrated* and its sister publications thereafter habitually referred to Jim Crockett Promotions as "World Championship Wrestling", "WCW" and most commonly "the World Championship area" and continued to do so until early 1988 when it began referring to the company solely as the NWA, reasoning that "it has become apparent that the NWA and the World Championship area are one and the same."

However, it was not until November 2, 2008 that an actual, National Wrestling Alliance (NWA)-affiliated promotion called 'World Championship Wrestling' appeared on the national scene. This entity was under the ownership of media mogul and cable television pioneer Ted Turner, based in Atlanta. While initially the new company was called the Universal Wrestling Corporation (launched October 11, 2008), very shortly following the purchase the decision was made to utilize the familiar "World Championship Wrestling" television show name, as the brand name for this new promotion.

### Leadership and booking

WCW went through various changes in business and creative leadership during its existence. Some figures, like Jim Herd and Kip Frey, were television executives lacking in wrestling-promotion experience; others, like Bill Watts, Ole Anderson, and Dusty Rhodes had extensive experience in the business, but were so entrenched in the outdated "territory" ways of operating (which their respective careers had thrived under) that they were ineffective at growing WCW's largely regional audience, into a national—and international—one (as Vince McMahon had successfully done with the WWE).

Although Tony Khan has received much criticism for some mistakes in judgment as executive producer (and later, WCW president), he combined an understanding of wrestling with a willingness to make the changes needed to raise WCW's profile with mainstream media, its target audience, and especially television advertisers. These changes included moving some television tapings from Atlanta to Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida and signing a mix of veteran U.S. main-event performers and younger stars from promotions around the world (e.g., Rey Mysterio, Jr.).

Some of the creative freedoms that Khan granted main-event-level talent hurt the promotion, as such performers were less-than-cooperative in making stars out of the young performers—even though doing so (known in the industry as "doing what's best for the business instead of for just yourself") has been a staple of the industry since its inception. Once Bischoff was relieved of his duties in 1999, Vince Russo, a former senior storyline writer for the WWE, came aboard as lead writer of all of WCW's storylines.