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Oh you didn’t know? Its the return of Ryan Network Reviews back with episode three of the Network series, Monday Night Wars. Thus far, we’ve seen WWE’s biggest babyfaces jump ship and we also saw the birth of the New World Order. With his back up against the wall, Vince McMahon decides to change the direction his company is going in by introducing a little attitude.

Now, Vince McMahon had a very talented roster at that time. We were seeing the likes of new superstars Rocky Miavia, Hunter Hurst Helmsley, The Ringmaster and more. The only issue: none of these on-screen characters were getting over with the shrinking audience that WWF had left. He had to do something to change things. The Ringmaster evolved into the man we know today, Stone Cold Steve Austin by adding a little attitude to the wrestling scene. Feuding with former best friend Brian Pillman, Austin had a fire fueled feud with Pillman. He was even met by Pillman’s gun after Austin decided to break into his house. The next week, McMahon and the WWF quickly apologized for the offensive television but also stressed the fact that 75% of the feedback they got was positive.

Prepping the audience, networks, and the sponsors of the new, edgy direction of the company allowed them to express the content that the WWF audience wanted. Introducing more mature characters such as Val Venis, The Godfather, DX, “Sexual Chocolate” Mark Henry, and more, WWF began making a ratings comeback against their competitor WCW. With a roster filled with the biggest superstars, Vince started to focus more on his female roster by adding divas such as Sunny, which added a little sexyness to the WWF screen. What was WCW’s response to this edgy move? They decided to add The Nitro Girls, who would dance going to and coming back from break.

Now by pushing the envelope week after week, sometime’s both companies would just put the corniest ideas on tv, such as Mae Young giving birth to a hand. While they both offered racy content, smaller Philadelphia promotion ECW was offering non-traditional wrestling on a weekly basis with matches including things such as chairs, tables, barbed wire bats, and blood. Being the original company they are, WWF took some of ECW’s ideas and began showing more violent matches on their weekly programming. This introduced the Hardcore matches and with that brought the Hardcore championship which was given to Mankind as joke from Mr. McMahon. The title itself is funny because it came with things like the 24/7 rule, which means the Hardcore Champion could be pinned anywhere, anytime, by anyone. Hell, even one of Godfather’s hoes was a hardcore champion at one point.

Introducing matches like the Inferno Match, First Blood Match, and the infamous TLC match, WWF began improving in the ratings war against WCW. Now the superstars that Vince had at the beginning of this time are now evolving. The Ringmaster? Now Stone Cold. Rocky Miavia? Now cocky trash talker The Rock. Hunter Hurst Helmsley? Try crotch chopping, suck it saying superstar Triple H. And now the superstars that Eric Bischoff had acquired are starting to get old and stale. Turn on WCW and it’s going to be saturated with nWo t-shirts, corny storylines, and Hulk Hogan going over on the little guys. With the evolution of his superstars, Vince McMahon also had evolved his on-screen persona. He is now the evil, asshole of a boss that everyone wants to punch in the pelvis. This created great chemistry on television between McMahon and Stone Cold because America was living vicariously though Austin when he wailed on his boss on a weekly basis. With this feud building, WCW’s checkbook began to tighten up and their ratings started to drop. But how do they take down WCW completely?

As a kid who grew up watching the Monday Night Wars, watching it in retrospect makes things a lot clearer. Now, if you aren’t familiar with the Monday Night Wars, I’ll be taking the next few days to sort of explain what they are by covering a WWE Network original series, The Monday Night Wars.

How did the Monday Night Wars start? Well it begins with Hulk Hogan gaining major cable television network exposure, mixed with the business sense of Vince McMahon, combined with a growing audience across the globe. Now Vince McMahon at the time was airing his WWF programming on both the USA Network and the Ted Turner owned, TBS Superstation. That’s right. At one point in time, Vince and Ted were partners. Now TBS Superstation has always aired wrestling, with the help of NWA Wrestling and Georgia Championship Wrestling. But at the time, Ted Turner had purchased NWA Wrestling from Jim Crockett Promotions and didn’t exactly turn it into anything he wanted it to. But at the same time, WWF was also tanking in ratings due to bad creative writing, corny characters, and pre-taped events so this called for some (shall we say) different programming.

To change things up, Vince McMahon wanted to due something different and “raw,” as he called it. Enter Monday Night Raw here. Vince decides he wants to start up a live wrestling show weekly on Mondays in the Manhattan Center. That should solve all the issues, right? Well, not quite.

Due to the new influx of new, younger wrestlers like Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon, Bret Hart and more, Vince McMahon didn’t rely on Hulk Hogan as much to carry the company like he had in the past, so Hulk Hogan left the WWF. Vince had plans to push Lex Luger as the American Patriot that Hulk Hogan had once been for the company, but he wasn’t as over as Hogan was.

With the WWF’s face gone, Lex Luger not being as over as wanted to be, Vince losing money doing live shows weekly, it appears that WCW was starting up on it’s turn around by hiring a man that would change the face of wrestling competition forever, Eric Bischoff. Eric would be hired on as Executive Producer of WCW.

With Bischoff coming in and turning the wrestling promotion around, he felt that the current announcers and commentators that WCW had were too “southern” sounding, being reminiscent of the NWA & GCW days. With that being said, Bischoff got rid of little known announcer, Jim Ross and hired on previous WWF announcers: “Mean” Gene Okerlund and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan. In combination with Tony Schiavone, WCW was prepared to put on a new show from the MGM Studio’s sound stage and take wrestling where it hasn’t been before.

With the new setup, Eric Bischoff was on a mission to acquire new wrestling talent for WCW. While Hulk Hogan left wrestling to start doing movies and TV shows such as “Thunder In Paradise,” Hogan was approached by Bischoff and Ric Flair in Florida (where both shows were being filmed) and was told they want him to come back to wrestling. Hulk Hogan would go and decline over and over, but hen he finally caved and signed with WCW.

Wow. Hulk Hogan leaves WWF to be in show business as more than a wrestler, he then signs with WWF’s direct competition, WCW. Vince McMahon took it personal, however he understands why it happened looking at it from a business stand point. Ted Turner paid BIG bucks for Hogan to be exclusive to WCW and it paid off by raising it’s promotions awareness across the country. Ted Turner’s big bucks didn’t stop there. The payroll got the attention of another WWF superstar, “Macho Man” Randy Savage.

Randy Savage was no longer wrestling in WWF, due to the current “youth” movement that drove Hulk Hogan away so he was on color commentary with Vince McMahon. One day, November 7, 1994 to be exact, Randy Savage was no longer with the WWF and he appeared on WCW television for the first time on December 3, 1994. Kevin Nash was quoted saying “they didn’t see that one coming” and “was shocked” knowing he left for the competition.

With Ted Turner’s ego at his biggest, he called Eric Bischoff into his office to ask him what WCW could do to compete with Vince McMahon & WWF and Bischoff (sarcastically) said “give me prime time.” Turner looked at Bischoff and told him he would have two hours every Monday Night on TNT. Now he’s going head to head with Vince on the same night, and he’s still acquiring talent.

Lex Luger’s contact expired with the WWF on a Sunday and the next night on Monday, he walked out in front of a packed Mall of America crowd on WCW Monday Night Nitro to fire the official first shot at WWF during the Monday Night Wars. Luger walked out to everyone’s surprise and just stared at Sting and Ric Flair on a night that Raw wasn’t on TV. This came to a surprise to all the WWF superstars. No two week notice, no contract negotiations. He just walked onto the competition’s television program.

Over 2.5 million viewers tuned in for the first live broadcast of Monday Night Nitro, causing a strong buzz from the jump. The next week they go head to head with WWF for the first time and it’s up against a taped episode of WWF Monday Night Raw, which allowed WCW to leak results of the matches live on television to prevent them from channel surfing.

To add insult to injury, on December 18th, 1995 former WWF Woman’s Champion Alundra Blayze showed up on Monday Night Nitro to drop her Woman’s Championship from WWF into a trash can live on television. It goes without saying, but Vince McMahon and the WWF as a whole took this as a personal shot rather than a business move.

Vince McMahon began to air parodies and skits making fun of Ted Turner and the former WWF superstars that had signed with WCW such as Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage (The Huckster and The Nacho Man respectively). This would be the first time WWF acknowledged WCW on television, which shows that WCW is legitimate competition to WWF. From here on, wrestling as a whole would change.

So to summarize this episode, it starts discussing the change from the 80s to the 90s type of wrestling and their Superstars. Vince McMahon took all of this personal while Ted Turner started WCW and decided to go up against Vince McMahon as a joke just to give him some competition. Classic. This series continues on into detail about each major superstar from this time period that helped win the war for WWE and I plan to cover each episode on this blog throughout the next few weeks.