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March 26th, 2001 was a day that nobody ever thought would come. WCW had been on a downward slide for a long time now, but no matter how much money it lost, it always seemed that there were too many alternatives to it simply going out of business. Time Warner had too much money, and it would never allow WCW to fold. Even when the news that WCW was up for sale came out, nobody expected it to completely disappear, and even up until a week before this event, it wasn't supposed to. Eric Bischoff had put together a group of investors called Fusient Media, and they were going to purchase WCW and, under their own auspices, attempt to restore it to the glory of years past. In fact, they were so convinced that the deal was going to happen that they went around telling people that it was already done.
Then the bottom fell out on the deal: AOL-Time Warner executive Jamie Kellner decided that in spite of wrestling being a major building block in establishing the Turner networks to begin with, it would have no place in their empire going forward, and made the decision to cancel both Nitro and Thunder. Luckily for Fusient, the deal they had been proudly proclaiming as signed, sealed and delivered just weeks earlier had actually not yet been finalized. WCW was no longer worth anything to Fusient Media with no TV outlet, and they were left with no choice but to pull out of the deal.
Enter Vince McMahon and the WWF, who had made moves toward buying the company when it first went up for sale before later backing off. Now that Fusient had backed out of the deal and AOL-Time Warner were looking to unload it any way they could as quickly as possible, the WWF were more receptive to the idea of picking WCW up for far lower than the previous asking price. Before you knew it, WWF personnel were at WCW going over the books, and by the morning of March 26th, the WWF had finalized the deal for less than $3 million. Yes, for less than three million dollars, the WWF had absorbed its only real competition and created what amounted to a monopoly in which they were the only game in town.
Even with Shane McMahon in Florida for the final Nitro, most people still couldn't believe that this was happening. Unfortunately for WCW, it was, and the wrestling business would never be the same.
We begin the evening in Panama City at the final episode of Monday Nitro. Announcers Tony Schiavone and Scott Hudson were hyping the shocking developments that saw the WWF take the company over, and I wouldn't think that what we saw on TV was far from their real frame of mind as they outwardly wondered whether they were going to have paychecks going forward.
The Conquered People
In one of the most surreal moments in wrestling history, the final episode of Monday Nitro opened with Vince McMahon on screen, announcing to anyone who didn't already know that he had bought WCW, and gloating that it was only a matter of time before he bought his competition. He will address both the fans and the wrestlers later in the evening in a simulcast that would air at the same time on both TNN and TNT, because the fate of WCW was now in his hands.
We headed to the ring to start the show, but before we got too far in, Ric Flair came out to address the live crowd, and he was disgusted with Vince McMahon saying he held WCW in his hands. He ran down the names of many famous NWA/WCW wrestlers and champions and said that Vince would never hold them in his hands. Flair's been champion 14 times (by the count at that time) in the greatest company in the world, and WCW is equal to any other company. Flair reminds Vince that his father Vincent J. McMahon was on the NWA board in 1981 when they voted for Flair to get the title, and says that WCW has been here bleeding and sweating for years, and Vince could never do what they did and they can't control their future. Flair says that Sting was his greatest opponent and challenges him to a match tonight because if they're going to go out, there's nobody he would rather go out against.
After Flair left the ring, we began with the Night Of Champions, as all of the active WCW titles would be defended on the evening's show, beginning with WCW World Champion Scott Steiner facing former champion and current US Champion Booker T in a title for title match. Steiner had beaten Booker for the World Title in late 2000 and put Booker on the shelf, with Booker coming back months later and beating Scott's brother Rick for the US Title to set this match up. Scott was going to drop the title one way or another in this match because he was suffering from foot injuries that limited his mobility and were going to require Scott to take a break from the ring. Because of that, this match seemed more like a formality than anything, with Steiner toughing it out and not doing much more than kicking and punching. Booker reversed a powerbomb to the Bookend to become the four time WCW World Champion and go out holding the two top titles in WCW.
In a backstage interview later on, Booker said that this is the end of a chapter, but there were many more pages to come for WCW. In the same spirit, more matches would come throughout the evening, with Rey Mysterio Jr & Billy Kidman winning a three way match over the Jung Dragons and Three Count to earn a shot at the Cruiserweight Tag Team Title, as well as the singles Cruiserweight Champion Shane Helms (known in coming days as the Hurricane) defeating former champion Chavo Guerrero, Jr, World Tag Team Champions Chuck Palumbo & Sean O'Haire successfully defending against Lance Storm & Mike Awesome in a really physical match, and Shawn Stasiak (accompanied by Stacy Keibler) defeating Bam Bam Bigelow in a match where he would have been forced to get a tattoo from Bigelow if he had lost.
But other than the World Title match and the Sting-Flair match to come, the in-ring action was secondary that night, as the focus was on Vince McMahon's upcoming speech. We were treated to backstage segments where Vince McMahon was joined by his companion Trish Stratus (who brought champagne so they could "celebrate" together), and together they observed the action on Nitro from the comfort of the Gund Arena in Cleveland. By contrast, Vince referred to Panama City as the Redneck Riviera, and said how appropriate he though it was that WCW was running its final show at a redneck bar in the Florida Panhandle.
Michael Cole (then a backstage announcer) came in to speak with Vince and said that a lot of the fans and employees were a bit concerned about their future and that they may be going away forever, to which Vince responded that Cole had better get lost if he didn't want to be gone forever too. WWF Commissioner William Regal took a softer approach, asking Vince if he really wants WCW because it's an awful place and he can tell him stories about some of the outrageous things that go on there (to which Tony Schiavone later replied "Hey STEVEN REGAL, we had to put your ass over on TV!"), but Vince assured Regal that he knew what he was doing.
As the first hour of Nitro came to a close at 9pm, let's take a break and head over to TNN to see what's happening on the WWF side of things as we get ever closer to the Simulcast.
Meanwhile, over on Raw...
There was an understandably more celebrative atmosphere over on TNN as Vince McMahon, his employees, and fans were riding high after the white flag had gone up in Atlanta. As on Nitro, Vince McMahon was seen in several backstage segments in his office watching both shows, and opened Raw by making the same promise he had made on Nitro: that he would address the fans of both companies tonight in a simulcast that would air on both shows. He would then spend most of the next hour evaluating the stars of WCW as they appeared on screen, saying that Jeff Jarrett is gone after tonight, the Lex Express ran out of gas a long time ago, and Buff has been stuffed. As during the Nitro segments, Vince was enjoying the company of Trish Stratus as she fed him strawberries and then, as Vince was watching Dustin Rhodes on Nitro and relating a story about how he wanted breast implants when he was Goldust in the WWF, distracted Vince with her own accessories.
The fun continued out in the ring as they continued to tease the WCW subject, having Kurt Angle come out to discuss the shocking news we all discovered this past week: that the Gobbledy Gooker has a match at Wrestlemania and he doesn't, leading to Chris Benoit coming out and challenging him for Wrestlemania and then Edge & Christian running in to beat Benoit down 3-on-1. Also, WWF Commissioner William Regal came out to tell us about WC...Fields, and then prepares for his Wrestlemania match against Chris Jericho by beating up Crash & Molly Holly, leading to Chris Jericho running out dressed as Doink the Clown and putting Regal in the Walls Of Jericho to set up their Wrestlemania match.
The stage was set, and after one last good luck kiss from Trish, Vince was ready to address the troops. But we're getting a little ahead of ourselves, let's head back to Florida to catch up on the WCW side...
Lowering The Curtain
Back on Nitro, we opened the second hour with a backstage promo from DDP, who said that he loved every minute of his experience in WCW and wouldn't trade it in for anything. He thanked the fans for letting a kid from the Jersey shore who was never supposed to amount to anything live his dream by becoming the World Champion, and if we think we've seen it all from Diamond Dallas Page, we ain't seen nothing yet. This led us into a video package looking back at all the past champions in the history of WCW, covering everyone from then-champion Scott Steiner back to Jack Brisco and Harley Race in the 70s. I thought it was a really classy and respectful thing to do. From there, we went to the Cruiserweight Tag Team Title match, with Rey Mysterio Jr & Billy Kidman avenging their loss to Elix Skipper & Kid Romeo in the tournament finals at Greed by defeating them to become the second and final champions as the title was retired following this show.
Finally, we reached the final match ever on Monday Nitro, pitting Ric Flair against his longtime nemesis Sting. This was Sting's first match since late 2000, and Flair had been focusing more on managing than wrestling himself recently, and was out of shape enough that he decided to wrestle in a t-shirt because he didn't want to be seen on TV in the shape he was in. You could then reasonably ask how he feels about the way he looks when he gets in the ring today, but that's another conversation for another day. A far cry from some of the classics Flair and Sting had in years past, this was only a five or six minute feel good match to close out the promotion with neither man extending themselves to any great degree. Flair got Sting in the figure four, but Sting escaped and then got a superplex and the Scorpion Deathlock to win the final ever WCW match. Flair and Sting shared a hug after the match as two of the biggest icons of WCW closed the doors to the applause of the Panama City, Florida crowd.
With the last Flair-Sting match in the books, there was only one thing left, and the fate of WCW would now be addressed by the new owner.
The Simulcast
We now came to the moment we had all been waiting for, as Vince McMahon walked to the ring to address both the WCW and WWF audiences. To the raucous cheers of the fans in Cleveland, he began by telling us that he had acquired WCW because Time Warner couldn't sett it to anyone else and nobody else would know what to do with it anyway. They begged Vince to take it for pennies on the dollar, and now that he had done so, Vince announced one new stipulation to the transaction: he wanted Ted Turner to come to Wrestlemania and sign the contract in the ring. Vince said that you might ask how he was able to compete against a billionaire and his media conglomerate, and the answer is that he may have had a little help along the way from various WWF superstars, but the truth is that he did it all by himself through his own hard work and determination, and he beat the billionaire by becoming one himself. After signing the contract, Vince is going to leave Ted Turner a seat at ringside so he can watch Vince beat Shane up.
As for WCW, he could put it on the shelf and spend hours and hours watching tapes of Hogan flexing and everyone in WCW say they're going to bury the WWF, but he wants the input from the WWF fans on who he should bring in if he were to decide to relaunch WCW. He asks the fans for a thumbs up or a thumbs down on Hulk Hogan, Lex Luger, Buff Bagwell, Booker T, and Scott Steiner with mixed results. The crowd starts chanting Goldberg's name, so Vince asks for a call on Goldberg and Sting as well. Vince said that he could have come in and gloated or gone to Florida to give every WCW star a piece of his mind at their last show which, appropriately enough, is in a beer hall, and then line them all up, look them in their faces and say YOU'RE FIRED!
Vince said that's what's going to happen, because WCW is buried just like anyone else who tries to compete with him, including Shane. The crowd started to chant a-hole at him, to which Vince replied that they can't do that to him because he's Vince McMahon, he owns WCW, he owns the WWF, and the fans will treat him with respect. Suddenly, No Chance In Hell began playing over the speakers and Vince turned to the entranceway expecting to see Shane come walking out. Shane did come out, but he walked out to the ring in Panama City and informed Vince that asking Ted Turner to come to Wrestlemania was just the opening he wanted, and that the deal had in fact been finalized. The name on the contract does say McMahon...only it says Shane McMahon, because Shane has bought WCW out from under Vince's nose, and now WCW will kick his ass just like it has in the past and like he will do to Vince at Wrestlemania.
Vince stood seething in the ring as Shane, having ruined the moment Vince had waited years for, smirked back at him.
After the simulcast, Jim Ross hyped the Rock/Austin vs Undertaker/Kane main event on Raw, and then the last thing we ever saw on Monday Nitro was a commercial for Wrestlemania X-7.
Best Laid Plans
Vince McMahon's moment, which he had waited nearly 20 years for, had been stolen from him by his own son, and he was livid. With Nitro having finished its final broadcast, we saw the rest of the story play out on Raw, as Vince went backstage and yelled at his attorneys on the phone for letting this happen and ruining the whole thing. Vince's evening continued to go downhill, because Mick Foley appeared for the first time since Vince had fired him in December and showed a video taken shortly before his firing where he was with Linda McMahon and, suspecting that his days as Commissioner were numbered, sat down with Linda to sign several contracts and documents that, because they were signed when he was still Commissioner, were legally binding. Vince came out to try and eject Foley, but Foley had the legal right to be there as per the contracts, and furthermore, one of the documents he signed would allow him to referee a match of his choosing at Wrestlemania, and...you guessed it, he chose to referee the Vince McMahon vs Shane McMahon match.
Foley's replacement William Regal was also not a happy man, and put Chris Jericho into a match with Big Show in retaliation for what he had done earlier, and then interfered in the match to cost Jericho the win. Regal also made a six man tag with Kurt Angle, Edge & Christian taking on Chris Benoit and the Hardyz, and though Benoit tapped Christian out to the Cripper Crossface, Rhyno made his WWF debut by running in and hitting the Gore on Matt Hardy and then Lita. Speaking of crooked tactics, X-Pac defeated Test when Test's Wrestlemania opponent, Eddy Guerrero, somehow was assigned to referee this match and helped X-Pac get the win.
Finally, the main event saw Steve Austin and the man he would challenge for the WWF Title at Wrestlemania, the Rock, team up to take on the Undertaker & Kane. Rock and Austin never liked each other, and though they agreed to work together tonight, all bets would be off once the match was over. Undertaker chokeslammed Austin and was about to put him away when Triple H, who would face Undertaker at Wrestlemania and was supposed to be on vacation, ran in and hit Undertaker with a chair, allowing Austin to cover Undertaker and get the win. A beer bash ensued after the match and was interrupted when the Rock snuck up behind Austin and gave him his own Stunner, much to the dismay of Debra (who was in the unenviable position of being Rock's manager and Austin's wife), and then walked up the ramp and flashed the People's Eyebrow at Austin as he lay unconscious in the ring.
* * *
This night changed the wrestling business forever, and when you watch the tape and see all the cheering fans waving signs saying "Vince owns wrestling", "RIP WCW", and "Vince can buy the world", you really realize how shortsighted their excitement was over the end of the competition that made the wrestling business in the late 90s and early 2000s what it was. For as down as so many people were on WCW, and how quick they were to (justifiably or not) mock every move they made and make daily predictions of the impending doom of the company to the point where they almost appeared to be cheering for it, none of those people understood the reality of what the end of WCW would mean to the business.
The truth is that the WWF had spun into a decline in the early to mid 90s and had gone from the phenom it had been in the 80s during the Hogan Era to being a pedestrian shadow of what it used to be. Even with Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels working their asses off to carry everyone they got in the ring with to classic matches, the gimmicks and goofy, self-parodying nature of the company amounted to a sharp drop of interest in their product. Without the NWO angle to carry WCW to the heights it eventually reached and leave the WWF in the dust, it's pretty likely that they never would have made the effort to make the changes that led to the Attitude Era, and you can just look at the way the company has been presented since WCW closed to understand what I mean.
Simply put, competition is what made the WWF what it was from 1997-2001, and without it the Attitude Era wouldn't have happened. Steve Austin would have never gotten near the WWF Title, the Rock would still have been wearing streamers and smiling and high fiving fans like a goof, Mankind would have spent the rest of his career in the sewers playing with the rats, the TLC matches with Edge & Christian, the Hardyz, and the Dudleyz never would have happened, and Benoit, Guerrero, Angle, and Jericho would never in a million years have gotten the pushes they did. What we would have gotten is what we have gotten since 2001, because Vince McMahon knows what he likes and, without any competition there to threaten him, he's going to push it down our throats because there's nobody out there to potentially steal his audience. If someone did, you can bet that things would change pretty damn quickly like they did in 1997.
Beyond just the on-screen presentation of the WWF, WCW and ECW going out of business also created an immense glut of unemployed wrestlers who now had only one company in which they could make a decent living, and the WWF, knowing that they had nowhere else to go, had all the power. They were able to lowball wrestlers on contract offers where they would have been making far more when WCW was around. They could book wrestlers in any way they saw fit, no matter how embarrassing it was to the wrestler. And if the wrestler didn't like it, where were they going to go? And once they picked up whatever stragglers drew their fancy, the others were cast off to make a career in Japan or on the indies or, if neither were an option, outside the business.
Now that we're a decade removed from these events, enough time has passed for a new generation of fans to grow up, look at WWE, TNA, and ROH, and not see the forest for the trees. While they're sitting on their computers writing nasty blogs and columns attacking TNA and ROH and all but outwardly cheering for them to go out of business, I think they would do well to learn the lessons of March 26th, 2001 and realize how much things changed after that day. Having only one choice is never healthy, and we'll see why as this series progresses.
Coming up next in Part 4: the party continues at Wrestlemania X-7!
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