Text By Jed Shaffer

What if...What if D-Generation X got into the Norfolk Scope during their attack on WCW Nitro?

Part II

(The following Re-Writing The Book is written not as a narrative story, but as an article on a wrestling website, commemorating the tenth anniversary of the D-Generation X invasion of WCW Monday Nitro, and looking back at how the event changed the wrestling landscape.)

1998 should've been the year WCW killed the WWF.

WCW had entered 1998 having just signed Bret Hart, coming off the Montreal Screwjob. They'd just cashed in on the hottest angle in their company, Sting vs. Hollywood Hogan and pulled a buyrate that rivaled, and beat, many WrestleManias. You wanted high-flying cruiserweight action? They specialized in it. Superior technical wrestling? Right here. The biggest name--nay, icons--in wrestling history, all under one roof? Only in WCW, brother! Between WCW's momentum, their product and the WWF's dire straits, 1998 should've been little more then a mop-up exercise.

One day in April changed all that. One day, and one segment on Nitro, stalled WCW's momentum. One decision shattered the precarious balance in WCW, sending two big-name wrestlers to a small hole-in-the-wall indy promotion in Philadelphia. On that day in pril, the fortunes of three companies were altered forever.

The events in the wrestling industry, both in front of the camera and behind, that transpired in 1998 and carried through to the WWF's WrestleMania 15, seemed surreal to everyone, even the most jaded long-time fans: inter-promotional wars, wrestlers from one company winning belts in another, wrestlers purposefully injuring others, mutinies, booking regime changes, backdoor payments, surprise successes, and lawsuits ... oh, boy, were there lawsuits.

But what happened two days after WrestleMania 15 shook everyone, everyone, right to the marrow.

Attackers on all fronts: Spring 1999:

"Within thirty minutes of that press release hitting the wire, my phone blew up," said Paul Heyman in the documentary Forever Hardcore: The (Seemingly Improbable) Rise Of ECW. "Everybody in ECW, they're calling me; 'Is it true? No joke?' Somehow, Eric Bischoff got my phone number, and he called me; I don't think I've ever heard the word 'cocksucker' so many times in two minutes. And Vince? You'd think I knocked up his daughter after killing his cat or something, the way he tore into me; 'backstabbing bastard' this, and 'ungrateful son of a bitch' that. He's really funny like that; when someone hits him between the eyes with some his predatory business tactics? Oh, that's unfair. I'll burn in the seventh circle of Hell for what I did to him, says Vince. But when it's him dealing it out, there's nothing on the south side of the moral line, far as he's concerned."

What had gotten Eric Bischoff and Vince McMahon in such a screaming rage was that Unleashed, ECW's new weekly two-hour program, was going to debut as a permanent part of Fox's primetime line-up on Thursday, April 29th. Bischoff had his panties in a bunch because Unleashed would be going head-to-head with WCW's Thunder on TBS. Why Bischoff was upset about this is a mystery; Thunder had become a very obvious red-headed stepchild in comparison to Nitro. Stars like Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Ric Flair and other main eventers weren't required (and some, like Hogan, flat out refused) to pull double-duty when they had guaranteed contracts for a set number of dates. As such, Thunder had evolved into the Thursday night mid-carders and jobbers showcase. Also confounding Heyman (and others) was Bischoff even voicing an opinion at all; his involvement in WCW was so minimal now, it was a common joke backstage that Bischoff had probably spent more time taking a shit in 1999 then at a WCW event. While hard data on that is somewhat lacking, the truth behind the joke is no joke: Bischoff hadn't been seen backstage at a WCW event since February, and had called in precisely twice (a charge he vehemently denies to this day). No doubt, his expressing his concerns to Heyman was motivated by the worry that TurnerSports and Time-Warner would start eyeballing Bischoff's performance and contributions closer with ECW now sending shots across the bow, and he didn't want those free paychecks to stop. Or to have to earn them.

But for Vince McMahon, Unleashed was a hit between the eyes for a whole different reason: it stole the thunder (no pun intended) of his upcoming SmackDown! special on UPN, which was set to broadcast on the same day, at the same time. For the first time in almost 10 years, three wrestling companies would be available on the dial ... but, for the first time ever, all three of them would face off, head-to-head-to-head. And while Vince viewed WCW as a rival, ECW had always been sort of the simple-minded but nice little brother that got to tag along with the big boys. Suddenly, the simple-minded little brother was had taken the money Vince had given them, the talent they'd picked up with it, and parlayed that into a position not of an obedient and grateful, third-place regional feeder system, but of a serious company trying to take on the big dogs fight for fight and bite for bite. In Vince's mind, ECW had stabbed him in the back and stepped out of line.

Within those actually active in WCW--i.e., the booking team--panic set in. Never mind the headaches of trying to split the audience three-ways; the looming possibility of Bischoff coming back and pissing in the pool they had so carefully cleaned out was a very real threat in everyone's minds, one nobody wanted to come true. On-screen, they marched forward like nothing was happening, but to those backstage, the employees of WCW were walking around like the last camp counselor in a "Friday The 13th" movie: nervous that, at any time, around any corner, the axe might swing out of the darkness on their neck.

Something not as heavily reported on at the time, though, was that the announcement of Unleashed did not mean a instant world of rainbows and puppy dogs in ECW. "What most people didn't know," said Heyman, "was that the Fox deal, yeah, it gave us a lot of leeway, and we got a lot of money out of the deal. But up front, they wanted a lot, and they expected a lot. And some of it went against the culture of ECW." Some of those expectations that "went against the culture of ECW" included increasing camera coverage to a more traditional set-up, like the WWF's; adding a second person to the booth; improving production values, including pyro; changing numerous members of the production staff, including long-time director Ron Buffone; ditching licensed music and going to an in-house composer (or getting cover versions); and, perhaps hardest to swallow for Heyman, hiring more staff, both behind the curtain and in the front office (which was a running gag in the locker room, since ECW would need an office in the first place to have a "front office").

"Before Fox, we all helped run ECW," said Buh-Buh Ray Dudley in Forever Hardcore. "I helped book venues and arrange travel. Tommy helped run the merchandise at the events. Stevie Richards answered the merch hotlines and shipping. Many of us acted as road agents. Taz designed a lot of the shirts. Paulie handled the books, and did the booking. We all pitched in, and we were like a family. ECW was all our baby. Then we got the Fox deal--which wasn't a bad thing, obviously--but all the shit they wanted us to do ... a lot of it kinda attacked the spirit of ECW."

"Joey Styles suddenly had a partner in the booth," added Tommy Dreamer. "They took Joel Gertner away from the Dudleys and put him in the booth. For the first few months, Joey hated it. He was so used to doing it by himself. He got used to it, and they ended up doing some great stuff ... like Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan used to do. But that first few month or two ... everything that we had to change, it was painful. It changed ECW. We were used to the gritty, by-the-skin-of-our-teeth mentality. We all wanted to take ECW big-time ... but we had no idea what that meant."

And while ECW and Fox were able to come to some concessions (Ron Buffone got to stay after many contentious arguments, and the pyro idea was killed), many of the demands Fox had for investing in the product ended up coming to fruition: Unleashed featured a two-man booth; the multi-camera set-up was put into play; licensed music was killed and cover versions or custom music was recorded; production values were upped; and more staff was hired, including road agents (scoring some truly amazing finds, including Terry Funk, Dutch Mantel and brand new WCW exile Dusty Rhodes) and accountants. Rumors flew that when the accountants got a look at what passed for ECW's books--piles of receipts in old shoeboxes and orange crates, with no attempt at organization--they almost nearly quit en masse.

The last side effect of the Fox deal and all these new expenses was just that: the cost. Because improving the TV equipment, hiring new staff, and paying for cover songs was all brought on at once, that meant a draining of ECW's bank accounts just to get up to Fox's minimum acceptable threshold. And with the backdoor stipend from Stamford no longer there, that meant ECW's recently swelled bank accounts were suddenly claimed. Somehow, Heyman used his "cult leader" status to keep the troops from revolting when he laid it out that, to keep ECW open to make the first TV taping, performers would have to go without paychecks ... for a month, maybe more ... with a promise to make it up to them down the road, once the expenses and income from the new TV show were balanced out. Heyman offered anyone on the roster who wasn't comfortable with this arrangement his blessing to seek work with WCW or WWF, but promised that, for those who stuck around, he'd make sure their loyalty was rewarded.

"We'd all put our blood, sweat and tears into this company," said Little Spike Dudley of the offer to go. "Paulie may have owned the company, but it was every much ours as it was his. Nobody was gonna give that up."

So, April 29th rolled around, and wrestling fans were treated with three incredible choices. On Raw, the headliner was a tag team match with The Rock and Steve Austin teaming (!) to take on Triple H and The Undertaker. The heavily hyped show featured a lot of screw-job endings, bizarre angles and confusing plots, which were becoming the standard for the WWF anymore. WWF apologists were quick to jump on detractors, saying the storylines were edgy and captivating and obviously successful, since their ratings were on a constant climb. Never did they address, however, that while the storylines were successful, they weren't very good. The WWF partisan's reply was to invoke the Attitude era's slogan, saying detractors didn't "get it".

WCW, meanwhile, featured a double main event with Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko trying to recapture the WCW Tag Titles (and failing), while Bret defended the WCW Title against a surprise opponent, brought in by on-screen WCW executive JJ Dillon: Goldberg. Not advertising the return of Goldberg (a return authorized by TurnerSports executives who were anxious to make some traction in the ratings) was something the booking team questioned, but they made the most of it, and told a convincing story, with the Horsemen stacking the deck with a guest referee Tully Blanchard, and Flair and Arn not too far away. The interference was WWF-esque, but it helped advance the plot that the Horsemen were centered on protecting Bret, while Benoit and Malenko were second-class citizens; old-school NWA fans and those looking for more wrestling-based storylines were in nirvana over the angle, and what it might spell for the future.

ECW, meanwhile, used their debut to showcase their best, and give the network censors enough of a workout to cause a heart-attack. While the true punch had been taken out of the anti-ECW angle, Hall and Nash were still utilized as crusaders against the ethics of the company and wanting to remold it in their image; only now, a twist was added that Vince had abandoned them and they would now use ECW to strike back at him as well as Bischoff. Hall and Nash would go on to take the ECW Tag Titles from Rob Van Dam and Sabu on that night, and found a new partner in their crusade against hardcore: the "King Of Old School" Steve Corino, a man who had been preaching against the hardcore lifestyle, yet always managed to get involved in wild brawls and ended up bleeding enough to fill a Red Cross blood-mobile. That night, Corino would challenge, and fail to defeat Taz, but it would be only the opening salvo in what had now transitioned from a WWF-sponsored invasion to a war of insinuated insiders. Hall and Nash were escorted to and from the ring by armed guards (with nightsticks, pepper spray and guns, as the heat on the duo was big enough for Heyman to be truly concerned with their safety), adding yet another touch to the brilliant angle. ECW and Hall & Nash continued the angle through their websites, including a legendary stunt on May 1st that had ECW.com "hacked" by their enemies, with anti-ECW propaganda spread about the "new" webpage design and some content coming just this close to looking like the nWo.

When ratings came in for the three-way battle, jaws were left on the floor: Smackdown had, predictably, won the night. Thunder, like normal, performed miserably, putting Unleashed in the middle. What stunned the pundits was that the margin of difference between Smackdown and Unleashed was less than a full point. And Thunder's rating dropped by .5. Clearly, ECW was no longer the glorified regional indy promotion, living only to feed talent to the Big Two or act as a dumping ground for those that didn't fit the mold of the other companies. Suddenly, saying "The Big Three" wasn't a joke; ECW was big.

With Thursday's results, Stamford and Atlanta realized that they could no longer underestimate ECW or take it for granted. Talent scouts and agents immediately descended on the roster of ECW, waving big money contracts in an attempt to drain the talent pool. For days, rumors swirled that, with the May 9th WCW PPV Slamboree just over the horizon--featuring the entire Horsemen stable either defending titles (Bret and his WCW Championship against Booker T, and Ric Flair putting his presidency up against real-life nemesis Shane Douglas) or challenging for them (Benoit for the US, Malenko for the TV)--the company was pushing to sign a good three to six wrestlers from ECW's talent pool for a hot upper-mid-card angle; this "extreme invasion", while derivitive, would compliment the red-hot main event angle, with the long-teased splintering of the Horsemen and Benoit and Malenko taking a run at Bret and Flair. The WF, meanwhile, had their eyes on some of ECW's more technical wrestlers--an area of wrestling they were sorely lacking--and a few of ECW's premier tag teams.

In the end, the hiring blitz came up against a heretofore unknown brick wall: binding contracts for all performers, a portion of the Fox deal ECW didn't broadcast. The only casualty ECW would suffer would be Mike Awesome, who was negotiating to return to the fed from Japan when the WWF and WCW feelers went out. ECW twisted the knife further when they threw their hat into the ring for the biggest name to declare their free agency: Chris Jericho. While he had made his WWF intentions clear for months, Heyman couldn't resist making Vince uncomfortable by making an offer to the former ECW Television champ anyway.

With the recruitment attempts coming up dry, ECW's competitors recalculated their strategies, and came up with different conclusions: the WWF's answer to the growing threat from Philly was "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". The main event continued to be dominated by Steve Austin, Undertaker, The Rock, Mankind and Kane, and just under the bubble about to break through sat Billy Gunn, Val Venis, Jeff Jarrett and Triple H, who was earmarked for a WWF Title reign in the summer.

Those counting the beans in WCW, meanwhile, saw things a little differently. Exactly why they saw things as they did remains a mystery to this day, but what is known is that ECW's numbers (Unleashed's numbers sparked fears of a Monday night slot in TurnerSports, and the 1.04 buyrate for Living Dangerously that beat WCW's Uncensored didn't help) put the fear of God into the number crunchers and check signers. The Leathers/Hart/Flair/Sting/Anderson booking team's storylines--slow-burn, and slow to payoff in hard numbers and dollars--was deemed no longer a sound business model in the now-crowded industry. Effective the Nitro after Slamboree, Eric Bischoff would be coming back full time, with full creative authority.

The news hit the WCW locker room like a wrecking ball to the chest. Everyone--fans and wrestlers alike--feared that Bischoff would sweep away months of storylines, kill pushes and turn to his favorites. At Slamboree, the tension was palpable on the wrestlers' faces and in their performances, as word had gotten out and confirmed the worst fears: the Benoit main event push would be cancelled. Malenko, Raven, Bam Bam Bigelow, Chris Kanyon, Shane Douglas and Booker T were all looking at their pushes slowing down. Ric Flair and the Horsemen as an entity would be shelved. And rumors of layoffs were flying everywhere. Finally, as the main event was set to launch, Bret Hart broke the script and came out first, sans entrance music, grabbed the microphone from over-payed ring announcer Michael Buffer and launched into a tirade.

Bret: "Some of you may know, I've been wrestling a little over 20 years, and I've seen a lot in this business. Now whether you like me, or you don't like me, I never let that stop me from coming out and giving you folks every dollar's worth that you spent on tickets or pay-per-views or toys or whatever. Even when I was a kid up in Canada, wrestling for Stampede, I never let the backstage politics and all the bullcrap get in the way of giving you your money's worth. I didn't do it then, I didn't do it for the World Wrestling Federation, and I'm not doing it tonight. But there's something you gotta understand; by this time tomorrow, Eric Bischoff will be in charge of WCW again. I was World Wrestling Federation Champion five times! I'm only the second guy to do that behind Hogan, but that don't matter to Bischoff. He wanted me as a trophy. He doesn't want Bret Hart as WCW Champion; he just didn't want me being WWF Champion. That's why I sat around for a year, playing Hogan's shadow and going nowhere. So tomorrow night, I'll probably end up losing this belt, because tomorrow night, Eric Bischoff is gonna come in here and ruin the wrestling show that we've entertained you with for the past five months while he was in Hollywood trying to leave WCW behind! He doesn't think guys like me and Benoit and Raven and Booker can headline. Well, if that's what he wants, he can have it. But not me. I've been screwed every time I turn around for the past two years. I'm not getting screwed again by that pompous son of a bitch, not again. I'd sooner go back to Vince on my hands and knees. Chris, I'm sorry we never got our chance."

The promo reportedly sent Bischoff into a rage ... and once he realized the trap Bret had put him in, he got even madder: the crowd had responded with nothing less than visceral hatred--not heel heat, but real, demand-refunds and change-the-channel heat--at Bret's promo. But his bosses were demanding changes. It was the proverbial catch-22. In the end, Bischoff would take a course of action that would piss off both camps: Benoit was demoted to upper-mid-card status, chasing the US Title, and promised a match with Bret at Bash At The Beach, while Bret was scheduled to lose the WCW Title in a four-way at the Great American Bash without being pinned to Diamond Dallas Page (a close friend of Bischoff, surprise, surprise). The Horsemen would be dropped, but Flair would continue his reign as WCW President. In Bischoff's mind, everybody got what they wanted from the deal.

Then, May 23rd, and the WWF's Over The Edge PPV, rolled around, and it all went to hell.

Tragedy in Kansas--the aftermath of May 23, 1999:

The tragic events that took place at Over The Edge thrust the wrestling industry under a harsh new spotlight. Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, long a champion of a wrestlers' union, renewed his calls for workers to unionize to keep themselves protected and provide for their post-grappling futures. Discussions of federal laws regulating safe workplace restrictions for wrestling promotions buzzed, but never got anywhere. Longtime nemesis of Vince McMahon, Bruno Sammartino, railed about how Owen Hart was symbolic of the corruption of the industry that Vince had caused.

Still, for the WWF, the unwanted attention magnified another problem that had been nagging the company since their popularity explosion: media scrutiny over their content. While their viewership wasn't hurt, their image and quest for mainstream acceptance was hampered by conservative watchdog groups that campaigned against their shows, which had morphed from the Hulk Hogan "prayers, training and vitamins" cartoon 80's to rampant swearing, heavy adult themes and lots of sexual content. Advertisers suddenly seemed hesitant to endorse a product that looked like a cross between a porn movie and a street fight.

ECW got off light, in that their Fox deal already established certain broadcast standards by which ECW had to abide; house shows, PPV and the syndicated show were exempt, and, in a clever loophole, footage from any of these sources could be shown on Unleashed, as the standards applied only to tapings for Unleashed itself. However, following the death of Owen Hart, the deal was restructured to close the loophole with regard to any stunts or spots in which (per the contract's language, courtesy of Paul Heyman) "the potential for the loss of human life is magnified by the stunt's inherant nature". For those who aren't law school graduates, that effectively killed fire spots, any aerial spots from high places such as balconies, ladders or mezzanines and made New Jack matches really, really even more unwatchable then before.

WCW, by contrast, was never about shock value and controversy, so when it came to complying with standards and practices in the wake of Owen Hart, there almost no transition to be made, save for Sting his dropping down from the rafters gimmick. But just because WCW were more family-friendly didn't mean they escaped the tragedy's impact. In fact, their hit was probably the hardest; Bret Hart phoned in his intention to take an indefinite leave of absence, vacating the WCW Championship and killing numerous angles in the process. After deep discussion lasting (per several WCW wrestlers, and denied vigorously by Bischoff) all of a couple minutes, the decision was made not to replace Bret Hart in the match, and let the three participants wrestle for the now-vacant title. On the surface, this seemed the most logical solution, as Bret's opponents--Diamond Dallas Page, Booker T and Raven--were all selected for being screwed during prior title shots by the Horsemen, and the match was being built as a reckoning for Bret. But, without Bret, the storyline motivation was gone, and it became three guys just wrestling for a belt, with no chance at vindication. And, rather then pencil in a rematch of some kind of the main event for the next PPV, Bischoff was looking to bring back Randy Savage and have him feud with the winner (someone who had to be the worst kept secret in WCW's history).

To make matters worse, with the Bret/Benoit match at Bash At The Beach now cancelled, Bischoff decided that continuing Benoit's upper-card run was pointless and sent him crashing back down to the TV Title ranks. Likewise, Raven and Booker T would see their pushes evaporate, with the justification that they weren't "catching on fast enough" and "needed more time to develop". People who heard about Bischoff's comments were baffled, considering the arenas full of WCW fans who were chanting for Raven and Booker and Benoit and several other on-the-rise wrestlers that Bischoff decided weren't "worth the effort". Dave Meltzer suggested in an op-ed piece that WCW should adopt The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" as their new theme song, if only for one famous, and depressingly appropriate, lyric: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

Crossroads: Summer 1999

As summer approached, all three promotions were in a state of flux.

For the World Wrestling Federation, the change came in multiple ways, from multiple directions. Externally, the pressure from media watchdog groups was gaining steam. Efforts to score new advertisers--high-end sponsors, such as car companies--were meeting with dead ends as their angles and content with met with increased skepticism. Vince would rail against his detractors, but his comments did little to buoy the self-appointed neo-PT Barnum persona he considered himself to be; it more supported the appearance of being the man in charge of a bunch of troglodytic muscleheads; the smartest moron in the room, so to speak.

Internally, the problems came from injuries; Steve Austin was breaking down, and needed to take time off for a risky neck surgery that could either extend or end his career. The Undertaker, likewise, needed time off to rest up on some nagging injuries. Mick Foley's injuries were so extensive and debilitating that he was contemplating retirement. To lose three top superstars was bad enough, but worse was that Vince couldn't line up replacements fast enough; Triple H wasn't catching on with his new bad-ass persona as fast as hoped. The returned British Bulldog was an older, injury-plagued shell of his former self. Billy Gunn's singles push was coming undone. There was a strong push to make midcarders Val Venis, Ken Shamrock and Test into big stars, but when held up to Austin, Mankind and Undertaker, they all fell short. The only midcarder who was on the cusp and seemed poised to successfully break out was Jeff Jarrett ... but Austin went to Vince and killed a proposed program between the two that would've elevated Jarrett. Jarrett would later state that, because Austin was the one making the company the most money, he'd told Vince not to promote Jarrett "or else". While whatever Jarrett says has to be taken with a grain of salt for obvious reasons, one thing is clear: as summer began, Jarrett went from the the #2 heel in the company to midcard also-ran so quick, it's a miracle he didn't break his tailbone upon landing.

ECW, too, was facing some changes. As Unleashed continued to steamroll on Thursdays, buyrates continued to outpace predictions, and attendance continued to climb, Heyman was forced to make some tough choices, and the hardest to make was abandoning the small venues once and for all and moving up to larger buildings to house his show. The loss of the intimacy provided by small venues like the ECW Arena sat uneasy with Heyman, and it showed in his occasional struggles to appeal to the larger audience; the trademark travelling brawls no longer seemed as impactful in a building twice, three, four times the size of their old haunts. The larger buildings lacked a "crow's nest" like the ECW Arena, meaning Joey Styles and Joel Gertner had to either be stuck at ringside or by the entrance, which to Heyman, smacked of imitation of WCW and WWF.

But the growing pains were nothing compared to the issues in the locker room. Rumblings had it that Taz was growing bored and wanted to move on to another company. The WWF was also sniffing at the contracts of the Dudleys. And Hall and Nash had both "suggested"--campaigned would be a better word, said unnamed sources to Meltzer--that they both needed singles title reigns to compliment their tag titles. Heyman proposed a number of alternatives, including having them lose the ECW Tag Titles, then mention how they never lost the WCW Tag Titles and run an angle similar to the one that introduced Ric Flair to the WWF. No sale. Heyman said he had no intention of putting them over his champions, not when so many other people had worked in the company longer and not had the opportunity. And with that, Hall and Nash grabbed their bags and left. ECW's morale suddenly went into a frenzy; as much as nobody liked the politicking duo, everybody knew that it was on the names and faces of Kevin Nash and Scott Hall that ECW had gained their newfound explosion of success, and nobody wanted to lose the brass ring they'd just found. On the next episode of Unleashed, Heyman started off the show in the ring and delivered a fiery speech that turned the situation on its ear.

Heyman: "Tonight, you were supposed to see Kevin Nash and Scott Hall defend the ECW Tag Team Titles against Tommy Dreamer and a partner of his choosing. Earlier this week, Hall and Nash came to my office and made demands, things that I, as owner, felt served only to benefit Scott Hall and Kevin Nash. This isn't the first time that the two have put their own needs above the needs and the best fortunes of the promotion they work in, and if you wanna see how it turns out, flip the channel to TBS and try not to puke. But unlike other promoters, I am no shrinking violet. I'm not a corporate stooge with bottomless pockets that can cover my mistakes. I'm not some desperate fool looking to keep hold of what I built. I kept these men working, despite the fact that no less then three of my top stars--men like Shane Douglas, Chris Candido, and Bam Bam Bigelow, men who bled for this company, men who invested of their souls--came to me and threatened to walk out, and warned me of the consequences of bringing them in. They warned me I was bringing in a disease to a healthy body, and I'll be damned if they weren't ... right. For all the good having them in this company did for this company's profile, it was not worth the heartache, the turmoil, the migraines of dealing with two spoiled, self-centered, egomaniacal prima donnas who are only in this business for the money. You wanna wreck a company, boys? You wanna piss in someone's pool? I'm not gonna let you do that to these fans, not to the fans who've just discovered ECW, and not to the fans who sat in a sweatbox bingo hall in Philadelphia while we fixed the ring ropes at a quarter to midnight to put on our main event. I'm not gonna do that to the boys in the back, who've put themselves through hell and back because they love this business, and because they love this company. I'm not going to let you infect ECW with your cancer, not ever again. Kevin Nash and Scott Hall are hereby banned from ECW and are stripped of the ECW World Tag Team Titles. I apologize for the change in tonight's card; for those of you who feel that there is no suitable replacement for this loss, please see the box office for a refund of your ticket. But I do ask you to stay and give us the chance to make good. Thank you all."

The speech (which managed to keep every ass in the sold out arena where they were) was both a brilliant invective, a sales pitch, a subtle swipe at his competitors ... and a clever, if ironic, coda to the ECW invasion angle. Forum posters, columnists and insiders across the world had a mountain to chew on, and they chewed and chewed for weeks on end; was this just the latest chapter in the angle, a cunning way to work the smark audience? Was this a work that turned into a shoot? A shoot that turned into a work? Was it just Heyman saving face, like he did when he publicly fired Sabu? Whatever the case, once again, ECW was the buzz of the industry. It was only years later, on the Forever Hardcore documentary, that Heyman opened up about the situation:

"I know everyone thought it was part of the angle, that I was 'working' them. And you know what? That's what I wanted. The angle with Hall and Nash was built on blurring the line, on making people believe that they were this invading force, this cancerous legion that wanted to kill ECW. Yeah, they took their bags and went home, and when I went into that ring, I was goddamned positive I would never work with them again. But I couldn't afford to let the audience know that ... so, I spun it. I worded that speech very carefully, so the messages I intended reached their respective targets. I needed that audience to believe I'd finally cut them out, but give 'em enough of a hook the other way, just in case. And I needed those two sons of bitches to know that I wasn't going to take their shit anymore."

And did it ever work; for months ... literally, months, all the way into the winter of 1999/2000, there wasn't a week that went by where some piece of gossip floated up about Hall and Nash coming back, or going back to WCW, or going to one of the Japanese promotions. In truth, they sat at home and bided their time. But Heyman's careful manipulation of the minds of the casual fan and insiders alike assured that they could coast on the name value of them even with them not present.

As for the now-spoiled main event of Unleashed that night in August, that tied back to WCW's growing pains.

WCW's main storyline for the summer involved a feud between Diamond Dallas Page and his Jersey Triad against the returning (and suddenly bulked up) Macho Man Randy Savage and the surprise return of Sid Vicious as his bodyguard. The feud got extra-complicated (or, per countless recappers and columnists across the business, stupid) with a whodunit angle involving a white Hummer with a mystery driver trying to run over DDP. Numerous suspects had been hinted at; Goldberg, Sting (a solution nobody was fooled by), Bret Hart (for all of one episode of Thunder, and quietly dropped after Bret made an unhyped appearance on Nitro to say he wasn't sure if he'd ever come back to the ring), Rena Mero (having left the WWF, appearing on camera in WCW before her no-compete clause elapsed), and in a fit of hubris that boggles the mind even in conjunction with Eric Bischoff ... Dave Mustaine and Carmen Electra. Yes, Dave Mustaine, singer and guitarist of Megadeth, and Playboy model/professional bimbo Carmen Electra. To no one's surprise--save Eric Bischoff and the TurnerSports execs--the angle was a flaming disaster; crowds actively chanted for Raven, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Perry Saturn, Booker T, Shane Douglas and virtually every hard-working performer who was once again mired in midcard hell and booed the living crap out of the main event. Bischoff's solution was to commit hasty face/heel turns and pit these midcard heroes against each other, in the hopes of killing their heat so the crowd would cheer who he told them to; instead, he found himself facing crowds as hostile as the one at the 1991 Great American Bash, who rejected an entire PPV event with "WE WANT FLAIR!" chants (speaking of, they chanted for Flair, too, since he'd been pulled off TV again). Confounding fans and the boys alike was that Bischoff entered into negotiations with All Japan Pro Wrestling to swap talent; this flew in the face of a long-standing agreement with All Japan's rival, New Japan, including NJPW having a distaff version of the nWo. When NJPW found out about the negotiations, they pulled their deal; when AJPW found out about Bischoff's duplicity, they pulled out.

Road Wild became Bischoff's Waterloo. The identity of the white Hummer driver was to be revealed, and Bischoff had been keeping it a secret. Sources close to Bischoff, though, said there was no secret to keep--he simply didn't know. Yes, like the Black Scorpion debacle nine years earlier, WCW had a mystery/whodunit angle with no idea about how to pay it off. And while this angle didn't have disappearing tigers and Ole Anderson speaking into a distortion box to stink up the place, it did have performers in the lead positions--DDP and Savage--whom nobody wanted to see. The hope that Bischoff would pluck someone out of the rank and file and give them the push of a lifetime was, despite all the evidence to the contrary, in the air.

Instead, he compounded one mistake with another: he picked Sting, the one person whom the crowd could never--and had already resoundingly rejected as a suspect--buy as a heel. The reveal was met with little more than the chirping of crickets.

Somehow, after the event, Bischoff found a way to twist the failure of the white Hummer angle against the midcarders, saying they had somehow torpedoed the angle by not providing a hot enough undercard to support what was obviously a winner of a main event angle. How he made this leap of logic is anyone's guess, but, in the middle of what was described by those who were there as a "verbal raping", Raven stood up and called out Bischoff. After telling Bischoff the company was going fine with him in Hollywood and calling him a "fucking idiot", Bischoff drew a line in the sand; if you don't like how I run the show, then you can pack your bags and go home.

Without a moment's hesitation, Raven did just that. Bischoff asked if anybody else felt the same, they were invited to do the same; The Sandman (who'd only debuted in January and languished even under the Leathers/Horsemen/Sting regime), Chris Kanyon and Perry Saturn all stood up and followed Raven out the door. Reports from others who witnessed the scene said that several others, including Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, Shane Douglas, Billy Kidman and Rey Misterio all looked to do the same, but ended up staying seated. Amazingly, true to his word, Bischoff gave the four men their releases.

News of a third mutiny in a year, this one resulting in four more losses to the roster, sent the TurnerSports executives into an Godzilla-style uproar. But before Bischoff could be called on the carpet for this latest embarrassment, the nightmare got even worse. On August 26th, the WWF's Smackdown went from a one-time-special to a weekly show. Since they were already being resoundingly thrashed on Thursday nights by Unleashed, this wasn't so much an issue (especially since Thunder had been left for dead, and was frequently scripted by the wrestlers themselves, even if plot developments were ignored on Nitro). What was an issue was that ECW's fateful firing of Hall and Nash ran across from Smackdown, as did their main event to fill the vacancies in the ECW Tag Titles. A four-way elimination tag match was booked, with the Dudleys, the Impact Players, Danny Doring & Roadkill and Tommy Dreamer and a mystery partner. When Joey Styles questioned Tommy at the beginning of the show on who he'd picked, The Sandman surprised the crowd and entered the ring; the two hugged and shook hands, but Dreamer said he'd let fate pick his partner and he'd meet whoever decided to stand beside him in the ring. When, of all people, Raven ended up being Tommy's partner (and helped him win the titles), the crowd came out of their seats.

And so did TurnerSports execs. The first thing they did was check the contracts of the four exiles, and to their chagrin, they discovered that the carefully worded no-compete clauses were a little too specific in their wording; the contracts, drawn up before ECW was anything more then a a regional indy, only addressed the WWF. With litigation out of the question, TurnerSports execs pointed their swords at Bischoff, and without a moment's hesitation, lopped off his head. No defenses, no arguments, no pleading; Friday morning, Bischoff was called on the carpet, and by lunchtime, he was on a plane back to his home in Colorado. In his place was put a temporary ad-hoc team of JJ Dillon, Terry Taylor and announcer Mike Tenay (who only got to book the cruiserweights); the group was given explicit instructions to "hold the fort" until a replacement was found and, under no circumstances, could they book in cooperation with anybody involved in the prior two booking regimes. The placeholder editions of WCW programming were certainly better then the horrid car crashes Bischoff had produced, but that's like saying a stab wound is better then a gunshot.

Fortunately for TurnerSports executives, a possible savior seemed to fall right into their lap at summer's end.

Change In The Wind: Autumn 1999

Vince Russo was not a well-known name in the industry. A few insiders knew it, but by and large, the head of WWF's creative team was a non-entity. But as summer turned into fall, Vince Russo turned himself into one of the biggest names in wrestling, by quitting the WWF over a contract dispute, and signing with WCW. Once the knowledge of just how much of the WWF's success was attributable to Russo got out, pundits and those in the industry were knocked back on their heels; for all intents and purposes, this looked to be the end of the WWF. Their creative head pilot--the architect that had rebuilt the WWF brand from the brink of bankruptcy--had just left the ship rudderless, and was bailing for the competition.

Strangely, internet-savvy fans fell, mostly, into two schools of thought on this: WWF backers claimed Russo was over-credited (not true) and that the style he had crafted was easily imitatable (very true). WCW backers recoiled in horror, as they had been fed a healthy diet of wrestling and down-to-Earth characters, and Russo's style favored over-the-top gimmicks and a breakneck pace of programming. Well, there was a third group of fans: ECW fans. They didn't care either way.

As they faced the loss of their #1 writer, the WWF was also coping with more bad news: Austin's neck was, in fact, worse off then they knew, and he would be taking time off right in the middle of a hot angle with Triple H and The Rock. Undertaker had just bowed out to nurse some injuries. The recent addition of Chris Jericho, plus the coming debut of Kurt Angle looked to stave off some of the bleeding ... but the failure to secure either ECW Champion Taz or the Dudley Boys hurt. And coming into their October PPV, they faced an embarrassing oversight.

Intercontinental Champion Jeff Jarrett had been mired in a go-nowhere feud with Chyna (yes, the Amazonian former body guard of Triple H). "They'd told me, 'Steve don't wanna work with you,'" said Jarrett in an interview a couple months later with Dave Scherer. "And they didn't want me stealin' Hunter's thunder. Undertaker was gone. They wanted Mick Foley to work with the one guy, the porn star gimmick, and make him a star. I had nobody. So they stuck me with Chyna." But, oddly enough, the one thing they didn't do was look at Jarrett's contract, which expired the day before his PPV defense against Chyna in a "Good Housekeeping" match. When they finally noticed, it was too late--Jarrett had no desire to renew if the company intended to keep him buried, and to come back and job out to Chyna, he demanded a payoff of some back-due salary and merch fees totalling over two hundred thousand. Not wanting to see another of their belts get tossed in a trash can on the competition's TV show, McMahon authorized the payment; Jarrett did the job, and McMahon braced himself on Monday night to see Jarrett turn up in Nitro.

He'd have to wait until Thursday ... on Unleashed.

Buyrates were, and continue to be, an important barometer of success. Same for TV ratings, live gates and merch sales. But, arguably, there is no better barometer for a wrestling promotion's stability and market value then monitoring how many people want to get in your door, and how many are scrambling for the exit. ECW had exceptional buyrates, phenomenal ratings, merch sales through the roof, and live gates that grew like a weed on Miracle-Gro.

But Jeff Jarrett represented something wholly new; he was the first wrestler from WWF, long considered the pinnacle of the industry, who purposefully jumped ship and chose that little also-ran in Philly.

With Jarrett's southern wrestling background, he was a natural fit alongside Steve Corino, and immediately positioned against Tommy Dreamer and Raven. The working relationship with FMW was renewed, and talent was brought over and put in high-profile matches and angles. Perrry Saturn and Chris Kanyon were paired up as a rejuvinated Eliminators-style team. Taz, worried about stagnation and having run his course in ECW, found new life by turning heel and aligning himself with Corino and Jarrett, setting up a program between him and perennial ECW favorite Rob Van Dam. Buyrates had settled into a .70-.85 range, which was still amazing. Unleashed's ratings were healthy. And, in a surprising development for those with a nose for history, the NWA--the very organization that Heyman had helped Eastern Championship Wrestling break away from five years prior--came crawling to ECW to work out a deal for ECW to rejoin, and become the central member, of the storied group of promoters. When Heyman demanded the NWA Title be folded into the ECW Title, the NWA backed off, but an informal deal was reached for the NWA to act as a kind of feeder/developmental system. And video game companies were sniffing around, looking to marry the digital entertainment media with. "We felt bulletproof," said Heyman in the Forever Hardcore documentary.

Over in WCW, the arrival of their newest acquisition was met with two different moods: the bean counters and the suits were overjoyed at the steal of the WWF's head writer, and envisioned a bottom line growing so fat with cash, it could qualify as a congessional district. The wrestlers, on the other hand, were apprehensive; promises of pushing new stars was all well and good, but they had seen the WWF product. The comparison in on-screen delivery between WCW and WWF was night and day. Many feared that the traditional, wrestling-oriented product WCW had presented would clash with Russo's "Crash TV" booking style; in fact, Russo's booking, while captivating, at times bore little connection to reality, let alone in-ring events, as his 1999 WWF output would include a pregnant octagenarian giving birth to a hand, and having Vince McMahon employ The Undertaker to terrorize himself in an effort to screw with Steve Austin.

Rather then give him the keys to the kingdom after the next PPV, Halloween Havoc, WCW executives felt there was no point in letting the temporary group of bookers keep the company treading water, not with the promotion bleeding money like a torture victim in an iron maiden (the executives had other reasons to rush Russo's installment, but they weren't letting on about those just yet). Plus, giving him control at the PPV meant he could craft the results of it towards any long-term planning he wished, rather then try and mop up the place after the PPV locked him into a path.

For those who bought Halloween Havoc, they got a taste of the new WCW ... which fulfilled the suspicions of WCW's wrestlers in that it looked a lot like the WWF; fast-paced television, with lots of backstage vignettes, screwjob endings galore, and a tendency to book to the smarks (one storyline had Buff Bagwell, worried about impressing the bosses, taking a dive in his match against Disco Inferno ... how Russo expected the logic of someone taking a dive in a scripted sport to make sense is anybody's guess). And the main event, a triple threat match featuring WCW Champion DDP, Sid Vicious and Sting (a fatal four way until Randy Savage left the company--again--after a backstage fight with Russo that came milliseconds from Russo eating his teeth for breakfast), featured a virtual buffet of WWF clichŽs: an unnecessary (and unannounced until bell-time) pair of stipulations being a baseball bat on a pole and pinfalls counted anywhere, not one or two but four ref bumps, run-ins by no less then seven other wrestlers, a false finish/restart spot when Sid pinned DDP with his feet in the ropes (which defied logic, as the rules of the match effectively negated the ropes as an advantage) and a screwy finish that Russo recycled from a storyline in the WWF only a year prior, with Sid and Sting pinning DDP at the same time. This coming from a man who, in an AOL chat, said that every meeting of the WCW creative team started and ended with the group saying the word "logic". The resulting storyline would see the WCW Title, at this point booked so badly, the NWA Title from which it spun off of was higher valued, vacated, with a sprawling, and largely incoherent, 64-person tournament to fill the vacancy. Note "person", as Russo, in a flash of ... well, something, but certainly not mistakable as brilliance ... decided to have four women--Kimberly Page, Daffney, Torrie Wilson and Madusa Miceli--in the tournament. When Mrs. Page was informed of her opportunity to capture the WCW Championship, and that her first round opponent would be the volatile and three-times-her-size Scott Steiner, she refused to participate. Russo insisted; Kimberly quit the company. Management was not happy.

And neither were they happy with the heart attacks that Russo's scripts were inducing amongst Standards and Practices. Not a single show went by that Russo's script wasn't rejected, not for questionable storyline direction, but for gross violation of content restrictions. The result of which made WCW look like a pale imitation of the WWF, which pleased neither the Attitude-loving WWF fans who might cross over, or WCW loyalists who liked their wrestling promotion to be based around, well, wrestling.

In the WWF, the spate of injuries and the departures of Jeff Jarrett and Vince Russo had a profound effect backstage; for the roster, it meant a bunch of people who normally would be mired in the midcard suddenly found themselves in marquee matches by sheer necessity. Val Venis enjoyed a two month run against Mick Foley, as did Al Snow; Ken Shamrock found himself sniffing the main event again, and Test, working a hot angle as he romanced the angelic Stephanie McMahon, seemed poised to hit the big time. The problem, though, was that the angles were all things put in motion by Vince Russo, and with his departure, the endings of the angles went with him. Suddenly, the angle that was guaranteed to turn Test into the next big thing got spun around into putting heat on Triple H; Val Venis' push, which had serious steam, was all but abandoned. Al Snow's tenure in the upper echelon ended so quickly that he went through two turns--face to heel to face--and two theme songs in the span of a month.

But to the folks watching at home and buying live event tickets, the scramble to shore up the dam wasn't doing anything to keep their dollars in their wallets or making their remotes switch to other product. Despite the product's increasingly erratic tendencies, despite mounting questions about content and a lingering unease after the Owen Hart tragedy, the numbers spoke of continued success; buyrates were astounding, live gates continued to shatter records, and Raw's ratings were pulling away from Nitro's like an Indy car racing a riding lawn mower. It was, by dint of comparison to their Monday night rival, that WWF looked so damn good, because, to the critical eye, the show was a confusing, confounding mess. Fortunately, most of the still-growing fanbase wasn't of the critical nature. The only problem was over on Thursdays, where ECW nipped at their heels.

November's battery of PPVs turned out to be pivotal for all three companies. In the WWF, Survivor Series was headlined by a triple threat with WWF Champion Triple H, The Rock and Steve Austin ... only for Austin to be written out on the PPV when he was "hit" by someone driving a Lincoln. The rest of the PPV was built up around who would replace Austin; the lucky stiff would prove to be a perplexing choice, given all the other upper-mid-card talent they'd been working with for months. Defeating Triple H that night for the title would be The Big Show, a virtual main event non-entity for months and mired in a tasteless feud with Big Bossman which had Bossman invading the funeral of Big Show's dead and towing the coffin away on a chain. The controversial PPV--with an ending no one was quite happy with, and a bait-and-switch tactic that left many calling foul--impressed few, but laid the groundwork for what seemed to be a change in the air that the WWF needed thanks to their depleted roster.

In WCW, the annual three-ring train wreck known as World War 3 was retired in favor of a generic event called Mayhem, which was built around the seemingly endless, absolutely horrid WCW World Heavyweight Championship 64-Person Tournament (and capitalized as such whenever mentioned, which was every 11 seconds). The tourney, designed to push some new talent and restore some luster to the belt, managed to make the title seem even less valuable; people who lost got reinserted into later brackets, matches randomly had stipulations that were regularly not adhered to in the decision, the announced brackets got switched up on a nearly weekly basis (for instance, by the time the final match of the first round rolled around, Crowbar's slated opponent had changed three times), and screwjobs, screwjobs, screwjobs! By the time Mayhem, which held the quarters, semis and finals, rolled around, the two most common jokes around message boards were that either A) the tournament would be extended to Starrcade out of spite, or B) it didn't matter who advanced because someone was bound to be replaced anyway. Scarily enough, B would turn out correct, as Roddy Piper, who somehow made it all the way to the quarter-finals, was pulled and put into the main event as a referee, while Bam Bam Bigelow, who had lost twice in the tournament (once, inexplicably, by count-out in a pinfalls count anywhere match), found himself back in the tournament. So did Disco Inferno, who found himself taking Scott Steiner's slot in the semi-finals, when Scott Steiner left the arena after being told he would job to Chris Benoit; yes, Disco Inferno was inserted into the semi-finals. The only thing that made a lick of sense and gave those brave (foolish?) enough to buy the PPV was a promo, which promised the return of Bret Hart on Nitro. Many people wondered why they waited until PPV to broadcast this, as opposed to on Nitro or Thunder earlier in the week; Russo would only say that "it made sense" to promo it on Mayhem. The show ended with Chris Benoit capturing the WCW Championship, defeating DDP as Goldberg (who had lost by DQ to DDP in the semis, a compromise to jobbing to Benoit outright in the finals, the second person that night to pitch that particular temper tantrum about the loyal workhorse) watched on from the ramp. What Benoit enthusiasts were left in WCW's rapidly dwindling audience were no doubt thrilled, but the tedious tournament had done enough collateral damage to everyone and everything associated with it that Benoit's career moment was met with an apathetic golf clap.

By contrast, ECW's PPV, November To Remember, provided both cohesive storylines and taut in-ring action, headlined by a killer new stipulation match: the "Devil's Den" match, which was a pseudo-WarGames match but had all participants in the ring, and was fought under elimination rules. Squaring off in the weapons-filled cage was the extreme lifetsyle loyalists Tommy Dreamer, The Sandman, Raven and Rob Van Dam against the old-school champions, Steve Corino, Jeff Jarrett, new recruit Rhino and Taz. The team captained by Rob Van Dam would go on to win, and in a most stunning fashion, as ECW World Champion Taz suffered the third elimination for his team, getting pinned clean as a sheet, and Rhino taking the brunt of a two-on-one mugging with chairs and a Singapore cane from RVD and Tommy Dreamer before finally being rendered unconscious. As the crowd cheered and the cage lifted, Taz came back, cleared the ring of everyone save RVD, and declared he'd prove who the superior champion was by putting the title on the line right then and there; as soon as the bell rang, Taz swiped the forgotten Singapore cane, bludgeoned RVD until he was bloody, then choked RVD into unconsciousness. Before leaving the ring, Taz vowed that RVD had blown his shot, and had just killed any value he had in any other promotion. Smart wrestling fans knew that "never get another shot" was code for "next person pushed to the title" ... but even the smart fans had no idea what to make of the tease for Unleashed that promised an announcement on a special live edition (which was a trial run for a possible switch to live broadcast) of Unleashed that would stun everyone. A second show? A time slot change? Another big name jumping to ECW? Speculation ran rampant, but the one thing nobody could do was pin it down; for once, ECW managed to close ranks and keep the lid on the surprise.

Vince Russo, however, wasn't happy being in the dark, and took steps to counter Heyman's big surprise. First, he circulated a false rumor on the 'net that "sources" had revealed that ECW's surprise was the debut of Ken Shamrock. For the first time in months, ECW and WWF found themselves on the same page, denying Shamrock's departure and questioning the validity of "the source", who sounded from the description in the rumors as Jeff Jarrett. Jarrett, a friend of Shamrock, denied floating the rumors and lashed out at Russo for dragging him needlessly in Russo's petty grudge against Vince McMahon and the WWF. Russo brushed that off, however, because his second step, he was convinced, would give WCW a nice shot in the arm; Monday Nitro would have Bret deliver a promo that would hype an Owen Hart Tribute Match, facing off against WCW Champion Chris Benoit ... on Thunder.

For once, Russo's break-neck programming tendencies were reigned in for Thunder, as the Bret/Benoit non-title match got 25 minutes to showcase two technical masters in all their glory. Bret's request to put Benoit over was declined, leading to the WCW Champion tapping out the challenger. Management was not happy at the idea of the WCW Champion tapping clean to a guy who was only coming back for a one-shot, regardless of the warm-fuzzies from it being a tribute match. When they found out that Bret was actually coming back, and that this match would be the launch point for a renewed Bret push, they absolutely flipped their wigs; it was a resurrection of everything they had hired Vince Russo to clean up. In the minds of management, the bloom was off the Russo rose only one month in. It didn't help that, despite Russo's promises on the internet radio show WCW Live!, Nitro's ratings had not climbed a full point. In fact, excluding one-week spikes on the night after Halloween Havoc and the Nitro with Bret's comeback announcement, ratings had remained flat at best, and fallen in several cases, while Raw's continued to climb towards a regular string of 7.0's.

"The suits didn't want Bret on top again," said Shane Douglas in a shoot interview taped for RF Video. "And they resented the hell outta Russo for putting Bret back into the main event. They believed that, since Bret had never, you know, paid off in any way for them, he was a bad investment. And that's so fucked up, when you think about it ... who booked the guy into oblivion and killed his character before it got anywhere? Just like how they took me, a hot former world champ in another company and said 'oh, that shit you did, you did that somewhere else. Here, you're just another guy', they did that to Bret Hart. And they blame him for not drawing dick for ratings."

The Bret/Benoit match ended up scoring Thunder its highest ratings since the debut episode ... still behind Smackdown and Unleashed, but the gap was narrowed, running counter to WCW executives' beliefs that Bret Hart equalled a bad investment. Still, word of ECW's major announcement helped siphon viewers away from the pre-taped Smackdown, giving Unleashed a jaw-dropping victory in the rating's war over both their competitors. And since, under Eric Bischoff, WCW had been cultivated with a black-and-white atittude towards success and failure, Thunder's ratings growth that week meant nothing, since they'd failed to beat Unleashed and Smackdown. Ergo, Bret was still ratings poison.

And when it came to the Earth-shattering announcement, while it wasn't as immediately as impactful or as sexy as a new wrestler or a new TV show, it was certainly impactful: on December 26th, ECW would present End Of Days, a new PPV on the ECW schedule. The PPV was priced at five dollars lower then normal as a "holiday present". And, as if presenting a new PPV at a discount wasn't enough (and with the red-hot Taz/RVD program, expectations for some kind of twist in their storyline at End Of Days was high), the final piece of the surprise would be the venue at which End Of Days would hold court.

The Mecca of the World Wrestling Federation since the promotion had three W's in their initials, Madison Square Garden.

Shake-ups: Winter '99/'00:

An old proverb says necessity is the mother of invention. As autumn became winter and the new millennium rolled on, all three federations found themselves faced with the need to restructure and reinvent something about themselves to compensate for the changes wrought by the past year.

To the casual viewer, the hardest hit looked to be the WWF; the losses suffered through injury and abdication had left the company in a precarious position, with all their money players on the shelf, a gaggle of untested and unproven wrestlers treading water, and a writing staff struggling to imitate the formula that Vince Russo had used to draw the company from the edge of insolvency. Without Stone Cold or Undertaker on TV to sell t-shirts by the kajillions and draw in the fans, the company looked exactly as it had been not three years ago: a promotion without a go-to performer.

Two events proved key to helping bring some stability to the company during this period: thanks to the (illogical) turn of Stephanie McMahon to a heel and pairing up with her on-screen husband Triple H, the pair's corporate Bonnie & Clyde routine managed to finally generate the right kind of heel heat for Triple H and vaulted him into a credible main event heel. Stephanie, who had made a sweet (if cloying) virginal girl-next-door, underwent an astonishing transformation and embraced the role of spoiled bitch princess with aplomb, giving Triple H breathing room for his character to gain the traction they'd been looking for.

The second twist of fate came courtesy of Mick Foley. A lifetime of Japanese deathmatches, hardcore wrestling, and the horrific litany of injuries gotten just from his infamous Hell In A Cell match had taken their toll and pushed him towards retirement. But the honorable performer decided to stay his self-termination a few months as a favor to the fed when both Austin and Undertaker went down. Despite his hardcore roots, his character had somehow morphed into a loveable loser of sorts ... the kind of underdog that could play well as Triple H & Stephanie's kickdog. As soon as Triple H dispatched with Vince McMahon in a street fight at December's PPV, he and his wife assumed control of the company and, with the help of a reformed D-X as his heel stormtroopers, ran roughshod over everyone, particularly bullying Foley all the way up to a storyline firing. While no one could say that the WWF was hurting at the time (not with record profits and ratings every day), the storyline helped provide some cohesion. And, with Foley helping give Triple H a boost in credibility by taking on his Cactus Jack persona to wage war against the "McMahon-Helmsley Regime", it gave the other programs beneath it a rub by association. In addition to that, WCW imports Chris Jericho and Big Show were given notable pushes to get them to fill gaps even quicker then before and catching on, while the heavily hyped gold medal Olympian Kurt Angle was already pissing off fans left and right (the right way) with his bizarre mix of smug superiority and dorky cluelessness. It wasn't a perfect show by any means, by any means, but it was miles from the rebuilding years of the mid-90's.

The only problem that the WWF encountered that they couldn't fight was the "invasion" of ECW into Madison Square Garden. Despite pleas and threats to the property management of MSG, they fell back on ECW's divine right to rent the open date to whomever ponied up the dough. Most in the WWF, per backstage reports, were against Vince fighting ECW's rental of the venue, pointing out that fighting ECW only made the company look like the big bully to ECW's scrappy underdog who'd managed to punch the big bully in the nuts. Everyone, even his own wife and kids, were unanimous in being against Vince going directly to Heyman to try and convince him to abandon MSG; supposedly, Vince even offered to re-visit their old partnership and do more cross-promotion if Heyman gave up the venue. Vince denies such an offer ever took place, but reports from others on the scene say that Heyman cut Vince a check to pay back past monies owed, pointed him at the door and told him never to set foot in ECW territory again. To his credit, he didn't ... but Vince didn't take the rebuffing lying down, either.

ECW's fights were mostly borne of their continuing growth, for which the company was ill-prepared to cope with. Part of the company's identity was how the group of core ECW wrestlers had banded together and helped keep the promotion afloat by pitching in on odd jobs. But as ECW's size and reach matched their reputation, the tight-knit group of men and women found that they could no longer juggle wrestling with making travel arrangements, managing merchandise distribution or booking venues. And without those duties--and as more new wrestlers came in who weren't there during the lean days--the locker room lost that special brotherhood that had defined the promotion. And with the promotion going into larger and larger venues--including the risk of running MSG, by far the largest venue yet for the promotion--the intimacy the promotion enjoyed from venues like the ECW Arena also slowly vanished. Many questioned whether sacrificing the promotion's underground, cult-like atmosphere was a worthy trade-off for running step-for-step, and often outpacing, WCW.

Another issue, which, depending on the person was both a positive and a negative, was that the promotion's steamrolling success allowed the performers to not have to worry about working through injuries just to keep the lights on at home. The upside was a potentially well-rested roster; the downside was that many people were working injured, such as Tommy Dreamer, who had injuries to several discs in his back. Heyman would rely on the solutions that had always gotten him through when faced with holes in the roster: creative booking, and a generous employment of local indy wrestlers.

Tommy would hold on through the End Of Days PPV, as part of a huge double-main event, getting a crack at Taz's ECW World Title in a first-time-ever one-on-one meeting. Tommy would end up "injured", but Taz's celebration wouldn't last, as his old nemesis Sabu would make a shocking return to ECW after a lengthy absence (due to a contract dispute that started a bidding war he largely ignored) and challenge Taz for Guilty As Charged. Meanwhile, the second half of the PPV's main event was borne of a unique set-up; RVD's loss to Taz created doubt as to his claim for a title shot, but Paul Heyman reminded Taz he did not choose contenders. As a result of Taz winning a match, and thus a bet with Paul Heyman, RVD was forced to endure one of two arduous paths to get a title shot: he either had to compete in a three-on-one handicap match and win by pinfall or submission, or he had to get two partners and face Taz's stablemates in a three-man elimination tag with the special stipulation that only Rob Van Dam could score a winning pinfall or submission. At End Of Days, RVD made his choice and, with the help of Raven and The Sandman, scored pinfalls over Jeff Jarrett and Steve Corino ... only to draw an inexplicable DQ victory over Rhino, thanks to RVD's manager, Bill Alfonso, subbing for the downed ref and turning on RVD. Taz came out to remind/taunt RVD that he had to win by pinfall or submission only, but soon found himself cornered and taking an ass-kicking from his ever-growing collective of enemies. While the outcome itself angered many who felt RVD's nearly two-year reign as TV Champion was destined to culminate with the World Title, the storyline possibilities of a lengthy RVD chase and Taz fending off ECW's biggest names all but guaranteed big ratings, big gates and big buyrates.

But another incident at the PPV, which carried over to the next Unleashed, drew negative attention for the fed; as hot women and catfights were a staple of ECW, a couple of girls had been tossed into the main event storyline as adjuncts. Miss Congeniality had sided with Taz's group, while the woman often dubbed "The Queen Of Extreme", Francine, had fallen in against the old school fanatics. Catfights, ripped hair and, in an incident that had already set Fox's censors on notice, where Francine had been knocked out and Miss Congeniality had used lipstick to write "whore" on Francine's forehead, led to an Extreme Catfight at End Of Days. The match had ended when Miss Congeniality decided to fight extreme fire with fire, and slashed at Francine in the face with a metal spike. That week