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Not sure how many people follow professional wrestling, but the infamous "Monday Night Wars" was, at least partly, lost on WCW giving away spoilers thanks to Tony Schiavone mentioning "That'll put a lot of butts in seats".

iamasadlittleboy wrote:Not sure how many people follow professional wrestling, but the infamous "Monday Night Wars" was, at least partly, lost on WCW giving away spoilers thanks to Tony Schiavone mentioning "That'll put a lot of butts in seats".

That was really stupid by WCW, and lost them some viewers that night but it didn't lose them the Monday Night wars. (nitro still beat Raw that night)


The horrific booking from 1998 to 2001 is what did it.

iamasadlittleboy wrote:Not sure how many people follow professional wrestling, but the infamous "Monday Night Wars" was, at least partly, lost on WCW giving away spoilers thanks to Tony Schiavone mentioning "That'll put a lot of butts in seats".

This contributed nothing at all on the grand scale of things. Fans just wanted to see Foley win the strap because he was a loyal servant to the industry.

Schiavone was also under instructions from Eric Bischoff to release this spoiler.

iamasadlittleboy wrote:Not sure how many people follow professional wrestling, but the infamous "Monday Night Wars" was, at least partly, lost on WCW giving away spoilers thanks to Tony Schiavone mentioning "That'll put a lot of butts in seats".

RAW was taped at the time and WCW would read out the results of the RAW show at the beginning of their own live event. They thought this would stop people from channel hopping between the 2 shows, keeping the audience with their live broadcast. Why change channels if you know the ending of all of WWE's fights? When Schiavone revealed Foley would win the world title 600,000 reportedly switched channels from Nitro to RAW. It has often been suggested this was the beginning of the end of WCW's dominance of the Monday Night Wars.

I don't watch wrestling now but was a big fan from 1989 to around 2002. 1994 to 2001 where great years. I caught WCW by chance on the TNT channel one Friday night and was hooked. I couldn't believe their roster. Guys like Hogan, Savage, Piper, Mr. Perfect, Hall, Nash, Sting, Lugar, Jericho, The Giant, Benoit etc..... Great days, well apart from when the Ultimate Warrior turned up in WCW and stunk the place out.

Khaosai-Galaxy wrote:

iamasadlittleboy wrote:Not sure how many people follow professional wrestling, but the infamous "Monday Night Wars" was, at least partly, lost on WCW giving away spoilers thanks to Tony Schiavone mentioning "That'll put a lot of butts in seats".

That was really stupid by WCW, and lost them some viewers that night but it didn't lose them the Monday Night wars. (nitro still beat Raw that night)


The horrific booking from 1998 to 2001 is what did it.

Nitro apparently never broke a 5.0 afterwards, so it certainly was a turning point, and thus "partly" responsible, the poor booking, general back stage chaos, Steve Austin and DX etc all contributed to the swing afterwards.

iamasadlittleboy wrote:

Khaosai-Galaxy wrote:

iamasadlittleboy wrote:Not sure how many people follow professional wrestling, but the infamous "Monday Night Wars" was, at least partly, lost on WCW giving away spoilers thanks to Tony Schiavone mentioning "That'll put a lot of butts in seats".

That was really stupid by WCW, and lost them some viewers that night but it didn't lose them the Monday Night wars. (nitro still beat Raw that night)


The horrific booking from 1998 to 2001 is what did it.

Nitro apparently never broke a 5.0 afterwards, so it certainly was a turning point, and thus "partly" responsible, the poor booking, general back stage chaos, Steve Austin and DX etc all contributed to the swing afterwards.

I don't agree at all, they had been giving Raw spoilers on Nitro for years before that, with no great affect.
The fingerpoke of doom (same show) is another massively overstated "turning point" it was nothing of the sort.
The reason WCW really started to lose its way after that show is not because of the spoilers or the fingerpoke, it was because Bill Goldberg went and put his hand through a car window on the next show and was out injured for 6 months.