WWE Date in History: WCW Launches Nitro and the 'Monday Night War' Begins

Sept. 4, 1995, launched the beginning of one of the most historic feuds in wrestling history.

At the time, WWE was the king of Monday night wrestling.

That was until WCW boss Ted Turner green-lighted a live weekly wrestling show airing Monday nights on TNT.

This particular show was set on a grand stage, as never before or since has a wrestling event been held at The Mall of America in Minnesota.

This version of Nitro was an hour-long show featuring three matches. The first pitted Brian Pillman versus Jushin Thunder Liger, followed by Sting versus Ric Flair, and Hogan versus Big Bubba main-eventing. The live taping also allowed for a few surprises, one of which was Lex Luger's return to WCW.

This would not normally be that big of a deal—however, Luger was coming off  wrestling at rival WWE's SummerSlam pay-per-view. Which had only just occurred eight days prior, so this was a real "holy crap" moment.

Overall, the show was pretty solid and gave us a peak at what was to come.

As we all know, WCW's biggest move eventually helped with its demise. As Nitro played a very small, yet significant part of WCW's long history.

However, after beating WWE in the ratings for 84 consecutive weeks, the programming became stale and any attempts to revive it failed.

Sadly, Nitro and WCW would meet their demise in 2001, as Vince McMahon bought out his biggest competition.

On a side note, this date is also synonymous with Hulk Hogan's launch of the ill-fated restaurant PastaMania.