WCW

World Championship Wrestling, also known as WCW, was an American professional wrestling promotion, which in its proper form, existed from 1988 to 2001. Although the name of "World Championship Wrestling" has been used as a brand and television show name by various National Wrestling Alliance-based promotions (most notably Georgia Championship Wrestling and Jim Crockett Promotions) since 1983, it wasn't until 1988, five years later, that it was an actual NWA-affiliated promotion called World Championship Wrestling appeared on the national professional wrestling scene, under the ownership of Atlanta, Georgia-based media mogul, Ted Turner. During all its time as a separate promotion, WCW was the chief rival of theWorld Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) (then called the World Wrestling Federation (WWF)), and een the owners of its NWA-affiliated forerunner promotions regarded the WWE as their major competitor. At the outset of WCW's existence, as well as the promotions that came before it, the company was strongly identified with the Southern-style of professional wrestling (or rasslin'), which emphasized athletic in-ring competition over the showmanship and cartoonish characters of the WWE. This identification persisted into the 1990s, even as the company signed former WWE superstars such as Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. WCW dominated professional wrestling television ratings from 1996 to 1998, mainly due to its incredible popular New World Order (nWo) storyline, but thereafter began to lose heavy ground to the WWE, which had recovered greatly due to its new "Attitude" branding. The promotion began losing large amounts of money, leading to parent company of AOL Time Warner selling the company to the rival WWE for roughly $7 million in 2001.

Monday Night Wars
The Monday Night Wars was an ongoing feud for ratings supremacy between WWE and WCW that lost from the mid 1990s until WCW's demise in 2001. WCW would win 84 straight weeks in the ratings battle agains the WWE thanks in part of the nWo storyline. Eric Bischoff, the Executive Producer and the man in charge of WCW's bookings, creative direction, and decisions, would use more realistic characters over the cartoonish and over-the-top characters from the WWE that Vince McMahon, whom is the WWE's Chairman and current Chief Executive Officer (CEO), would be using. The WWE would then take a more edgier approach in their programming, which is where the Attitude Era would come into play and eventually beat the WCW for the first time in 84 weeks in the ratings.

During the Attitude Era, WWE would use half naked women, sexual characters, such as Goldust, Mark Henry, and Val Venis, and controversial storylines that included superstars, such as Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H, Undertaker, and, of course, the Chairman himself, Mr. McMahon. Eventually, WWE would put WCW out of business and would buy them out, which lead to the huge Invasion storyline which featured superstars from WCW, as well as ECW invading the WWE and putting them out of business.