WWE Extreme Rules 2012 Fan Diary Day 5: A Look Back at the WCW vs WWE Feud

Thank you for joining me on day five of my Extreme Rules fan diary. All week I have been looking back on some of the better memories from my long history as a wrestling fan as I prepare to attend my first PPV event this Sunday in Chicago.

Today I will look back on the most significant feud in the history of professional wrestling, the feud between WCW and WWE during the Monday night wars.

I was fortunate enough to witness the entire span of the Monday Night wars from the first night WCW went live with Monday Nitro until the last night when Vince McMahon shut the doors on the second biggest promotion in the country.

I was a fan of both promotions prior to the Monday night wars. Both companies had amazing rosters of wrestlers that would both be forgotten and make history.

In September of 1995 Monday Nitro went live from the Mall of America for their first one-hour broadcast, and they did not disappoint.

The night featured three matches; Sting vs. Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan vs. Big Bubba Rogers, and my personal favorite, Brian Pillman vs. Jushin Thunder Liger.

This was a great lineup as Sting and Flair provided the wrestling, Hogan and Rogers provided the power and Pillman and Liger provided the high-flying excitement.

I do not remember what WWE had on Raw that night as I was making sure I did not miss a second of Nitro since Eric Bischoff had promised us a big surprise, and what a surprise it was.

Lex Luger, who had just wrestled a PPV match the previous night in WWE, showed up during the broadcast, sending a shock wave through the wrestling world.

After that first night I thought WCW would soon settle into a pattern, but for quite awhile they seemed like they would never stop surprising us.

When Scott Hall first showed up in WCW I could not believe my eyes. This was Razor Ramon, one of my favorites from the WWE and here he was, in a WCW audience.

Then Kevin Nash showed up and I knew this was going to be the start of something big. These were two of WWE's more established stars at the time and they had just jumped ship. It was a shock to say the least.

As the two ran all over anyone who tried to stop them, it became clear that they were not just here to collect a paycheck and jump ship; they were there to raise hell.

While all of this was going on, WWE was doing its best to keep their remaining talents happy while also putting on a good show.

They had guys like The Undertaker, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels carrying the load while others like Triple H, Billy Gunn and Mankind were working to become bigger stars.

Choosing which show to watch on any given Monday became difficult after awhile because both shows had wrestlers I wanted to see. They ran Raw and Nitro side by side, so switching back and forth became the only way to ensure I knew what was happening on both shows. It was exhausting.

Had the DVR been invented 20 years earlier we may have seen WCW and WWE share the time slot without necessarily stealing ratings from one another, but the VCR was the only way we had to record something on television, and you had to watch what you were recording.

I soon began to find myself watching more and more WCW as it seemed like they had the better wrestlers and more interesting storylines through 1996 and 1997.

The NWO took things to the next level when they got Hulk Hogan to join the stable and turn heel for the first time since becoming the Hulkster.

Soon, WWE superstars began making the jump to WCW and some of the older guys like Ted Dibiase and Rick Rude showed up to take the side of WCW and NWO in the ratings war.

Rick Rude was another superstar who made appearances on both WCW and WWE shows in the same week, except unlike Luger, he did it on the same night.

Raw was pre-taped and Nitro was live, allowing WCW to pull a fast one on WWE and bring out Rude, who was the enforcer for the newly formed DX stable in WWE.

Speaking of DX, they were the ones who started to bring viewers back over to the WWE side. Shawn Michaels had always been a top name for me, but when he formed the stable with Triple H and Chyna he became a much more magnetic character.

The war was on. WCW had the NWO and WWE had Degeneration-X. The two stables were both known for taking things and turning them on their heads, but it was DX who was making the censors nervous every Monday.

The NWO soon began to gain more and more members, eventually seeming to be as large as the WCW roster itself.

The stable got so large at one point that WCW had no choice but to begin dismantling it and forming other groups. This led to the birth of what I like to call "the Era of Stables."

In WCW we began seeing groups like the LWO, NWO classic, NWO Wolfpac and Raven's Flock all making headway. In the WWE we had groups like The Hart Foundation, The Nation of Domination and DX.

Both companies had stables come and go over the years, but these were the groups that made a lot of money for their respective employers.

Meanwhile, WCW and WWE had some guys working their way up the ladder to prominence. Diamond Dallas Page and Jeff Jarrett both gained their first World Titles in WCW while Mankind won the WWE Championship in a historic match on Raw.

WCW tried to keep viewers from switching to Raw by revealing the results ahead of time, but when they told everyone that Mick Foley would be winning the title, it had the reverse effect, and people tuned in to see Mankind win the strap and the love and respect of fans all over the world.

Towards the later part of the '90s we began seeing more and more changes to both products, but not all of them were good changes.

WWE was going in the right direction by pushing guys like Steve Austin, Mankind, The Rock and Triple H while WCW seemed to be faltering under the new leadership of former WWE writer Vince Russo.

Russo did things like divide the wrestlers into two groups, strip every champion of his title, unmask all the Luchadors and even get in front of the camera himself to be the World Champion at one point.

If you ask me, Russo holding the belt was just as big a slap in the face to the championship as David Arquette holding the title.

Soon, the current shifted and WCW stars began jumping over to WWE because of the poor management WCW was under at the time.

Some guys were even handed a mic and told to go out and tell everyone why they were leaving, and they did. Two of the more significant names to jump to WWE were Chris Jericho and Eddie Guerrero.

Once it became clear that WCW was a sinking ship and WWE was in control, Vince began circling his enemy like a shark.

WCW won over 80 weeks in a row in the ratings war until WWE began running the angle between Vince McMahon and Steve Austin.

It became clear that WCW was the horse with the broken leg and McMahon seemed perfectly happy to come up and put it out of its misery.

When the Monday night wars ended, it was like the end of an era. WWE was now the sole provider of national weekly televised wrestling in the United States and with ECW being bought up around the same time, it looked like we were entering the era of a WWE world.

In the decade since WCW closed their doors, we have seen some other small promotions like Ring of Honor and TNA start to make headway with fans and bring a renewed interest to indy wrestling.

TNA is now the second dog in the fight, but they are like a Chihuahua to WWE's Doberman right now, so really, WWE is still the only company claiming supremacy right now.

I loved the time between 1995 and 2001 when it felt like anything could happen in the wrestling industry and I yearn for another promotion to step up and start taking ratings away from WWE because that is what I think they need to light the fire under their butts.

When WWE was worried about whether or not WCW would beat them they put on the best storylines and matches, and now it seems as if they are just coasting on the fact that they are the only big company left.

I love WWE, but I want them to have a reason to try harder, and the only thing I see coming along and doing that is another big competitor with lots of cash to start the company on a high not.

Maybe Donald Trump will get into the Rasslin' business the same way Ted Turner did as another way to make money.

I miss the days of two big promotions duking it out for supremacy, but until TNA starts touring the US on a full-time basis and competing with WWE in the ratings, we are still going to see a one-horse race.

Thanks for reading and please take a moment and check out the first four days of my Extreme Rules fan diary below.

I should probably comment on the photo I used as well. This was the cover of the my Spring, 1996 issue of Wrestle America, a quarterly publication from Pro Wrestling Illustrated.

This issue featured a story about a potential Super-Card between WCW and WWE which obviously never ended up happening. It was a great cover photo and since I just recently went through all my wrestling stuff from years ago for this series of articles, I figured it would make the perfect article photo.

Please take a moment and check out the first four days from my Extreme Rules fan diary.

Day 1: A Hesitant Fan Gets His Feet Wet

Day 2: My First Live Event

Day 3: My first WrestleMania PPV

Day 4: Looking at my favorite wrestler, Bret Hart