Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
The Monday Night Wars that took place in wrestling in the 1990’s brought about many great things. Ratings, attendance and pay per view buy rates went through the roof. It made superstars out of the likes of Steve Austin, the Rock and many others. Many wrestlers made more money during this period of time than any other point in their careers. With all that said, today on the blog, we look at the top five things that were not so great about the Monday Night Wars between WWF and WCW.
The end of Enhancement Talent aka “Jobbers”
Wrestling was a bit different before the Monday Night War with promotions usually using enhancement talent on their shows to hype up their top talent. In the process, saving premier match ups for pay per views and house shows instead. Once the War began, promoters mostly got rid of these squash matches and replaced them with stars against stars for free TV.
The End of Kayfabe
Oh sure, deep down we all know that pro wrestling is scripted and not what we see in the ring on TV. There was an art to wrestlers keeping the secrets of their craft locked up tight. Heels remained heels and babyfaces remained babyfaces inside the ring and out in public. Suddenly, we started seeing wrestlers and promoters make light of a lot of what they do and in many ways killed off some of the mystique of what pro wrestling use to be.
Storylines Dropped Without Reason
If you go back and watch WCW and or WWF during this period, many angles and storylines were dropped out of the clear blue sky without reason. Everything became crash TV, with so many things happening at once. At times, some of what we saw one week, was dropped and never to be seen again. The thing was, at the time as fans, we really didn’t notice…or care.
Titles Rendered Meanigless
Titles had so much history, meaning and purpose throughout the years. When the Monday Night Wars took place, titles became nothing more than props in a story. There were way too many title changes that the prestige of being called a champion didn’t have the meaning it once did.
The Death of ECW and WCW
All is fair in Love and War…and in the case of the Monday Night War…we loved what we were watching week in and week out, but it had serious casualties. The competition became so intense that smaller groups like ECW collapsed under the pressure of trying to keep up. ECW wasn’t the only one to fold, as bad management decisions also led to WCW collapsing and ending..thus making the WWF essentially a monopoly for a bit.