Posted on by bdamage1
Throughout the years that World Championship Wrestling had been in business, there had been many storylines revolving around powerful factions. We can start with the Four Horsemen and work our way down to the likes of the Dangerous Alliance, The Dungeon of Doom, the New World Order, the Natural Born Thrillers and the New Blood. All had varying amounts of success and failures. It seems that most of the history of WCW involved an evil group of wrestlers wanting to take control of the company.
In 2001, while WCW was on its last legs, that same formula hadn’t changed. I would like to reintroduce you to the last “great” faction in WCW…’The Magnificent Seven’. It was the company’s last big storyline before WCW went under and was sold to Vince McMahon and the WWF. The Magnificent Seven was formed at the WCW Sin pay per view on January 14th, 2001. If that event sounds familiar to you, yes, it was the same show that Sid Vicious legitimately broke his leg in two at.
At the time, ‘Big Poppa Pump’ Scott Steiner was the reigning WCW world heavyweight champion and ‘The Nature Boy’ Ric Flair had been made the CEO of WCW. As we already knew, Steiner and Flair had had real heat with one another over a promo that Scott Steiner had cut in the ring a while prior. So it was turned into an angle, where it seemed that now that Flair had all this executive power…he would come after the world champion. A big title match was booked at WCW Sin where Steiner had to defend the belt in a Fatal Four Way match against Sid Vicious, Jeff Jarrett and a mystery opponent.
As the match developed, Steiner and Jarrett were working together against Sid, the Mystery Man would perhaps even the odds. That is when Sid broke his leg and the mysterious masked man was revealed to be none other than Road Warrior Animal. Animal was supposed to turn on Sid and join with Steiner and Jarrett, but since Sid was laying on the mat with an injury….all Animal could do was a light stomp on Sid to complete the swerve. That same night, Lex Luger and Buff Bagwell defeated the team of Goldberg and Sgt. Buddy Lee Parker aka Dwayne Bruce to retire Bill Goldberg from wrestling (as per the pre-match stipulation).
It was revealed that Ric Flair and Scott Steiner were in cahoots with each other and formed a powerful group around the world champion called …’The Magnificent Seven.’ The faction consisted of Ric Flair, Scott Steiner, Buff Bagwell, Lex Luger, Jeff Jarrett, Animal and Scott’s brother Rick Steiner. Flair had become so drunk with power after taking over control of WCW that he formed this group of wrestlers to maintain it. With two of WCW’s bigger stars such as Goldberg and Sid out of the picture…the Magnificent Seven ran the company. Others who were affiliated with the Magnificent Seven, but weren’t official members included Lance Storm, Chris Kanyon and Mike Sanders.
Kevin Nash, Diamond Dallas Page, Booker T, Dustin Rhodes and Ernest Miller were the babyfaces trying to restore order within WCW and battle the Magnificent Seven. Nash would be the unofficial leader of the babyfaces and would challenge Steiner for the World title. Eventually, Nash lost a match and was forced to retire as was the case with Goldberg. Around the same time, one by one, members of the Magnificent Seven were being knocked out backstage by an unknown assailant.
The pay off to that angle was never revealed because WCW would be sold to the WWF. The Magnificent Seven was no more. Who was the mysterious attacker or attackers? How far would the Magnificent Seven faction have gone if WCW never went under? We will never really know. What we do know is that it was the very last big angle in the company’s history before being sold off.
BDCThug
Who were the bookers/writers at the time? Ask them.