The History Of Wrestling’s Television Wars

A journey through the history of wrestling wars on TV wouldn’t be complete without the most famous example of all; the Monday Night Wars. After all, the head-to-head battle between “WWE NXT” and “AEW Dynamite” took its name from the iconic six year fight for dominance between “WWE Raw” and “WCW Monday Nitro.”

In 1995, WCW Executive Vice-President Eric Bischoff was asked by Ted Turner how WCW could compete with WWE. Bischoff said that the company needed a show on prime time TV every week, and much to the surprise of Bischoff, Turner gave him a one hour timeslot on Monday nights to go directly against “Raw” which aired on the USA Network. 

On September 4, 1995, “Monday Nitro” aired on TNT for the first time, and while fans might not have known it at the time, this would be the beginning of arguably the biggest boom period wrestling had ever seen outside of potentially the peak of “Hulkamania.” WWE was in a bad spot at this time, and was dangerously close to going out of business entirely due to losing money, the aftermath of the Vince’s steroid trial, and the fact that there was another company on TV that seemed to have bottomless pockets of cash to throw around.

The two shows would trade ratings victories until June 1996 when the debut of Scott Hall and Kevin Nash caused “Nitro” to be unmissable, and with Hulk Hogan joining them to form the New World Order shortly after, “Nitro” went on its now legendary 83-week run atop of the wrestling world, beating “Raw” in the ratings every single week. However, WWE knuckled down and focused on building itself back up, and through the feud between Vince McMahon and Steve Austin, the popularity of D-Generation X, and the rise of stars like the Rock, WWE would fight its way back into the war, winning its first ratings battle in nearly two years in April 1998.

From there, it was all downhill for WCW. It would get its final victory of the war on October 26, 1998, the night after the infamous Halloween Havoc…