Line #17 Wrestling/WCWMondayNitro


1	[[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wcw_nitro_6329.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:220:Logo used from September 4, 1995 to March 29, 1999.]]
3	[[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/WCW-Nitro_6329.png]]
4	[[caption-width-right:220:Logo used from April 5, 1999 to March 26, 2001.]]
5
6	->''"Three letters say it all: Wrestling/{{WCW}}! Where the Big Boys Play presents... Monday Nitro!"''
7	-->-- '''Wrestling/TonySchiavone'''
8
9	...And we're '''LIVE''' from [city name here]!
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11	In 1995, [[Wrestling/{{WCW}} World Championship Wrestling]] was looking for a way to compete with the [[Wrestling/{{WWE}} World Wrestling Federation]]. The method they went with was to start a weekly show on Creator/{{TNT}}[[note]]then just a male-skewing entertainment network, as opposed to its' start as a proto-[[Creator/TurnerClassicMovies TCM]], or its current drama-heavy lineup[[/note]] [[DuelingWorks designed to go head to head]] with [[Wrestling/WWERaw their rival's flagship program]]. Thus, on September 4, 1995, ''WCW Monday Nitro'' aired its first episode from the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.
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13	''Nitro'' was highly unconventional from day one: A majority of episodes opened with a match, making it much different than ''Raw''--but in a good way, since the undercard matches had all the cruiserweights. Each one was on a level of quality that their competitors typically for reserved for pay-per-views. Plot twists were common, and since ''Raw'' was pre-taped at the time and ''Nitro'' was live, commentary on the latter would frequently leak results from the former's matches. Their uniqueness was furthered by the Wrestling/NewWorldOrder angle, as it [[WorkedShoot blurred the line]] between {{kayfabe}} and reality.
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15	All of this made for a winning formula for success. As famously and frequently stated by Eric Bischoff, ''Nitro'' beat ''Raw'' in the ratings for 84 weeks straight, and at one point was the most watched show on cable in the United States.
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17	However, it wouldn't last. The nWo angle ran well beyond its welcome, and the [[FingerpokeOfDoom Fingerpoke of Doom]] served to remove any sense of prestige from the title belts. Affecting WCW as a whole, the PPV-quality matches were able to draw ratings but left nothing notable to save for PPV. The last few years were a shadow of what the show once was. Bizarre twists, [[{{Padding}} time-wasting filler]], and a {{heel face revolving door}} that just wouldn't stop made for an almost [[{{Camp}} Ed Woodian]] show.
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19	Eventually, the WWF bought WCW. The last episode of ''Nitro'' aired on March 26, 2001, and the end of that episode served as a lead-in for Wrestling/TheInvasionAngle.
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21	After ''Nitro'' ended, TNT wouldn't air any form of professional wrestling for over 18 years until Wrestling/AllEliteWrestling announced it would air its weekly prime-time television program on TNT in 2019. The weekly show, airing on Wednesday nights and titled ''[[MythologyGag Dynamite]]'', premiered on October 2, 2019.
22	----
23	!!This show contains examples of the following:
24	* TheBadGuyWins: Part of the reason the nWo angle ran out of steam was because the bookers forgot that the {{heel}}s are eventually supposed to lose. The nWo, on the other hand, kept dominating without anyone to stop them. The closest thing to a victory was Sting pounding the stuffing out of Hogan in 1997, culminating with Sting beating Hogan for the world title at ''Starrcade 1997'', and even then, the nWo kept splintering and re-forming.
25	* {{Bookends}}: The first and last ''Nitro'' both had Flair vs. Sting.
26	* TheCameo:
27	** After Bischoff pulled up stakes and moved to Orlando, several WCW wrestlers were given roles on ''Series/{{Baywatch}}'': Hogan, Flair, and Wrestling/{{Vader}} starred in the same episode, and Wrestling/ScottSteiner appeared in the last TV movie, ''White Thunder at Glacier Bay''.
28	** Series/{{Arliss}} was once a guest-commentator, newly-arrived in Orlando to hype the wrestling debut of Dennis Rodman. No, ''not'' Robert Wuhl, the actor who played Arliss, representing Rodman. It was Arliss. He spent the show trashing actual wrestlers and hyping Rodman as the [[InformedAbility biggest thing]] in wrestling. (He actually fell asleep on a turnbuckle and later sued the promotion.)
29	--->'''''Website/{{WrestleCrap}}'':''' I'm more curious if WCW made the check out to [[invoked]] "[[IAmNotSpock Arliss.]]" Because I could totally see this company doing that.
30	** This also likely served as ProductPlacement- at the time Turner and Time Warner had just completed their merger, meaning TNT and Creator/{{HBO}} were sister networks now and Time Warner likely wanted synergy between them.
31	* ConspicuousConsumption: Rewatching ''Nitros'' in the present day is a wistful, and slightly surreal, experience. '''So many limousines''' and pyros they could afford on every broadcast. Especially interesting is how WCW went overboard with the pyro for wrestlers' entrances. Pyro was a rare event in the WWF, even during the Monday Night Wars. (Wrestling/{{Kane}}, for example.) But in WCW, even midcarders like Buff Bagwell and the Misfits in Action had pyro. Talk about excess! Of course, it helped that Ted Turner (and then Time Warner) was bankrolling the whole thing...
32	* ContinuityReboot: A rare in-universe (well, in-company) example of this took place in April 2000, complete with vacating all the titles. There was a concerted effort to try and shake off the badness that had accumulated in the last few angles. It didn't work.
33	-->'''[[Wrestling/TheWrestlingObserverNewsletter Dave Meltzer]]:''' The changes in ''Nitro'' remind me of putting a nice, fresh coat of paint on a house that had just been hit by a tornado.
34	* CoolVersusAwesome: Many a main event match was like this.
35	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first episode lacked the familiar red and black color-scheme, pyro and large diamond-plated WCW letters. Though the show was held at the Mall of America, which wouldn't have accommodated the latter two.
36	* EpicFail: The January 4, 1999 episode of ''Nitro'' was the one where WCW arguably made ''two'' of their biggest-ever mistakes literally back-to-back. First, Eric Bischoff told Tony Schiavone to spoil the fact that Wrestling/MickFoley was about to win the WWF Championship over on ''Raw'', believing this would discourage viewers from changing the channel, only to ''completely'' misjudge Foley's popularity[[note]]As well as forgetting that it's not exactly an every-week occurrence to crown a new champion.[[/note]] and send over 600,000 viewers across to his rivals instead (it sure [[{{Irony}} "put some butts in seats"]]). Then after that, any viewers who switched back to ''Nitro'' after seeing Foley's win got the "privilege" of seeing... '''The {{Fingerpoke of Doom}}!''' And WCW would never recover.
37	* FakeBand:
38	** The West Texas Rednecks (which included Minnesota native, Wrestling/CurtHennig). Despite being pushed as {{heel}}s against Master P's No Limit Soldiers, they were cheered anyways and actually received airtime on Southern radio stations.
39	** 3 Count, a parody of the {{boy band}} phenomenon.
40	* {{Fanservice}}: Once the competition started making waves with the Divas and their sexy antics, WCW countered with the voluptuous Major Gunns, short-skirted [[LegFocus Miss Hancock]], and hardbodied[[AmazonianBeauty Asya]] to varying degrees of success.
41	* {{Fingerpoke of Doom}}: Kevin Nash laid down for Hulk Hogan after receiving a gentle poke in the chest, effectively making Hogan the World Heavyweight Champion again, as well as mocking the audience.
42	* HoistByHisOwnPetard: Bischoff's obsession with tearing down the WWF backfired on him with the "That's gonna put some butts in the seats!" spoiler. Much earlier, Bischoff had foiled Vince by spoiling pre-taped WWF matches at his own live events. Where he miscalculated on January 4, 1999 was that [[Wrestling/MickFoley Mankind]] was no Wrestling/ShawnMichaels. To put it another way, Mankind was the underdog garbage wrestler, the long-shot contender. Fans were '''less''' likely to tune into ''Raw'' before Tony's comments. Even Russo, crazy and meta as he is, probably would have warned Bischoff not to do this.
43	* HostileShowTakeover: The nWo existed to take over WCW and make it their own playground. They had some amount of success at this; they took over ''Nitro'' on two separate occasions, and put on their own pay-per-view event once.
44	* InsistentTerminology
45	** Bischoff insisted on the term "Cruiserweight" instead of "Light Heavyweight" because he felt the latter made the smaller wrestlers seem less important.
46	** After obtaining a memo from Turner, presumably intended for CNN, instructing them to [[PoliticalOvercorrectness use the word "international" instead of "foreign" on-air]], WCW followed suit by referring to foreign objects as "international objects."
47	* NothingIsTheSameAnymore: When Hulk Hogan joined the nWo. It is one of the most memorable and well done turns in wrestling.
48	* {{Pun}}: ''Monday Nitro'' is pronounced almost exactly like ''Monday Night Raw''.
49	* RememberTheNewGuy: Related to the enforced method acting during the late 1990s and 2000s, WCW would sometimes debut new wrestlers or teams with no debut vignettes or promos, just as though they expected everyone to already know who they were and what they were about. Even Creator/DavidArquette was introduced while feuding with Wrestling/JeffJarrett, whom he had never met. Later, Jeff explained that Arquette offended him by not inviting him to star in the movie -- despite Jeff joining WCW well ''after'' it was filmed.
50	* SpitefulSpoiler: This trope backfired in a spectacular way for Wrestling/{{WCW}}. [[Wrestling/{{WWE}} Its competition's]] [[Wrestling/WWERaw own show]] was pre-taped, and aired a few weeks later[[note]]When ''Nitro'' began airing in 1995 ''Raw'' was taped in 4 week blocks, with the first hour of that taping being shown live on TV and the rest of it taped for the next 3 weeks of shows. When ''Raw'' expanded to two hours they went to two week blocks, every other week ''Raw'' would be live and after it went off the air the following week's show would be taped, Foley's win was one of the taped weeks[[/note]]. Meanwhile, ''Nitro'', also running on Mondays, was a live show, which meant they could spoil any outcome of any fight of their opponent so their audience would pick them instead. The first ''NITRO'' of 1999 ran live from the Georgia Dome in Atlanta a week after the tapings for WWE's first ''Raw'' of the year (December 29, 1998), in front of over 40.000 people. At the end of the first hour, the show's host, Wrestling/TonySchiavone, was ordered to state to the camera that ''"(...) if you're even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, do not, because we understand that Wrestling/MickFoley (...) is going to win their world title. Ha! [[TemptingFate That's gonna put some butts in the seats, heh]]."''. What happened was that half a million watchers of ''Nitro'' instantly switched to ''Raw'' in order to see Foley, a beloved babyface, winning the big one. Meanwhile, what ''Nitro'' had to offer was... the FingerpokeOfDoom. WCW would never recover from this series of events, and the rest is history.
51	* SquashMatch: ''Averted''. The great appeal in ''Nitro'''s early years when compared to the product being put out on ''Raw'' was that, with the notable exception of matches featuring Wrestling/{{Goldberg}}, there were almost no squash matches. Nearly every match on the card was set as being between two more-or-less equal sides that were seen as having a respectable chance of winning. Compare this to the cards being put out on ''Raw'' circa 1995, where almost all matches except the main event featured dedicated {{jobber}}s to some degree.
52	* StealthPun: Nitro, which is often an abbreviation of nitroglycerin, aired on a network named TNT. (TNT themselves had [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhO1Mc7btLc used such a pun back in 1990 when their coverage of the NFL began.]]) The next wrestling program to air on TNT would follow the pun by naming itself ''[[Wrestling/AllEliteWrestling Dynamite]]''.
53	* StrictlyFormula: In [=WCW's=] later years, the creative staff went back to the well a half dozen too many times by reviving the nWo seemingly every six months and booking matches and feuds between the same groups of wrestlers over and over again. As ''Literature/TheDeathOfWCW'' put it, as great a match as Wrestling/ReyMysterioJr and Juventud Guerrera could be, you can only watch so many variations week after week before it gets old. One of the main reasons why WCW fell in the ratings was because the bookers were dead set on running with a pat hand, keeping entire segments of the roster firmly segregated from each other in competition and not giving them the chance to compete against different opponents.
54	* SureLetsGoWithThat: Bischoff was put on the spot when asked what WCW needed to turn the tide by Turner. After some nervous stammering, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind: [[Wrestling/MondayNightWars a Monday night time slot to compete head-to-head with Raw]].
55	* TakeThat: Nearly every episode would have at least one directed at the WWF.

Context Wrestling / WCWMondayNitro