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(Disalin oleh TurboScribe. Tingkatkan ke Tanpa Batas untuk menghapus pesan ini.) In the early 2000s, an era in sports entertainment was introduced to the world.

Today marks the beginning of a new era.

An era from which greatness was born.

The next big thing.

An era that would go down in WWE history.

What the hell?

The ring just imploded.

Nobody is gonna stop me.

God almighty.

Time to shake up Raw.

Time to shake up SmackDown.

The champ is here.

An era defined in two words.

Ruthless aggression.

The Monday Night Wars as it pertains to the wrestling business was it was WWE,

Monday Night Raw.

And it was the dominant wrestling television show in the industry on USA.

Well, Ted Turner bought himself a wrestling company, and Turner wanted to

compete.

In front of the capacity crowd, we welcome you to Monday Night Raw.

And Turner had hired Eric Bischoff, and they provided us with an awful lot of

great competition.

Everyone standing.

We got a new champion.

That kicked our ass for 83 weeks.

Right now, WCW is hotter than ever.

We are the champions.

We are the champions.

Now someone was coming at us.

Get the camera out of here.

And it makes you dig a little deeper to be more creative and to do something

different and new.

The Rock is gonna do to you exactly what he does best, and that's lay the

SmackDown on your candy ass.

After being nearly down for the count, WWE reinvented itself with an edgy

attitude.

And the Monday Night Wars were officially on.

My gosh.

Turns out the war rejuvenated WWE.

But despite the dynamic provocative shift in creative, Raw was still struggling

to regain the audience it lost to Nitro over those 80 plus weeks.

Then one incident permanently shifted the balance of power.

If you don't understand what I'm saying, I always got a little bit of sign

language, so here's to you.

Led by

Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, The Undertaker, and D-Generation X.

The shock and awe of the Attitude Era ultimately spelled doom for WCW.

In March of 2001, the war that started between two billionaires finally ended

with one billionaire still standing.

You see, it was just a matter of time before I, Vince McMahon, bought my

competition.

That's right, I own WCW.

On the screen and behind the scenes, it was the greatest victory in sports

entertainment history.

WCW was out of business, Vince had bought the company, and WWE had their hand

raised in victory.

They were the single wrestling company that dominated the whole world.

It's kind of like the joy that I can only imagine of a country.

And they've won the war and it's over.

And you have this jubilation because you won.

Woo-hoo, we won the war.

All right, we bought our competition.

And then it quickly became, what's next?

What do we do now?

It's great we're on the cover of Entertainment Weekly and Time and Newsweek and

TV Guide and all that kind of stuff.

But that was last week.

What are we doing next week?

How are we gonna keep this going?

There was always a buzz of this competition between these promotions.

So now that that was gone, and you're the only game in town, how do you create

that buzz?

How do you do it on your own?

That was a concern.

Competition is healthy and it's good, but when it's gone, it can't be replaced.

So this is a critical period right now because what's gonna happen?

Is the audience gonna stay?

Are they going to completely leave?

Is the wrestling phenomenon over?

Vince McMahon's resounding victory resulted in a hostile takeover of his

competition.

And Mr. McMahon was gleefully reveling in the opportunity to bury his rival

once and for all.

After all, Revenge is a dish best served live on national television during a

simulcast of Raw and the final Monday Nitro.

Shane McMahon is on Nitro.

What in the hell is he doing?

The deal is finalized with WCW.

And the name on the contract does say McMahon.

However, the contract reads Shane McMahon.

I now own WCW.

And then WCW kicked your ass in the past, and it will again.

Like to give a special shout out to some of the young stars of WCW.

What's up, boys?

The plan was for Shane to lead a WCW invasion against his father's army of

superstars.

The invasion was the most anticipated angle, I think, in WWE history.

WCW's here.

You're gonna see the top stars of WCW, who you've never seen interact with WWE

talents before, clash.

I got super excited about it.

That's WCW's Hugh Morris.

I'd seen all these people come in, and I wanted to know more about them.

It was discovering a whole new well of talent.

Wait a minute, what the hell?

W Champion activation is

on, and WCW has made one hell of an impact.

I was a fan of both brands.

So having them collide at the same time, and they're all just coming together,

and what's gonna happen?

I was excited for it.

Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute, and Booker T assaulting the owner of the

WWF.

Shane McMahon has led the invasion.

This McMahon, a legacy, has been trampled.

The immediate results of WWE versus WCW round two were electrifying.

In the audience's mind, you could finally see Goldberg versus Stone Cold.

The Outsiders versus Undertaker and Kane.

Expectations were probably the highest it could possibly ever be.

But what they got didn't match those expectations, to put it incredibly mildly.

When you're not gonna have Hogan, Hall, Nash, Flair, Bischoff, Mysterio,

Goldberg, Steiner, all those people.

Those guys had contracts that were guaranteed by AOL and Time Warner.

We didn't acquire those contracts because in our viewpoint, they were

unreasonable.

They were not something that we wanted to pick up, especially at the time.

But the perception to the outside world was, we bought WCW, so we bought all

that talent.

That wasn't the case.

John O'Hara, Chuck Palumbo, John Stasiak, Chris Kenyon, Mark Jenrack.

The best that WCW can put up.

The WCW talent that we got that came over initially, they really wanted to

succeed.

These were young talent, hungry, that just wanted an opportunity.

Here comes WCW, and the fight is on.

The locker rooms have emptied.

But they were years away from ever being ready.

We're young guys, so we're just kind of getting our feet wet in the business.

We didn't feel comfortable because a lot of us weren't ready.

We didn't know the culture, how they worked, how they did things.

The only thing we knew was what was done in WCW, and obviously that didn't

work, or we wouldn't have been bought by Mr. Vince.

So just a lot of uncertainty, confusion.

It was overwhelming, almost.

The guys who came in, realistically, were not believable to take out Stone Cold

and The Undertaker and Triple H and The Gang.

The Hurricane not faring too well with a big show.

You're trying to create an invasion with people that the audience doesn't know.

Well, here comes Stasiak, running like a wild man down here, and what an idiot.

And they didn't pose any kind of threat to us whatsoever, because our audience

didn't know who they were, and or care.

On the WWE side of things, there's a little bit of uncertainty too.

TV time is essentially currency in WWE.

Certain talents are thinking, I'm struggling to get on the show in general.

Now we're gonna be bringing in 30 new talents, how's that gonna affect me?

There's only so many spots on the show every weekend when now you have an

influx of new superstars that obviously you want to introduce and you want to

get them time to kind of push some other people back down.

And you can kind of feel that there was a little bit of hostility in the room

from that.

Like, man, I thought I was gonna get an opportunity here, now it seems further

than ever.

So we would create a different show with the WCW talent.

I never thought I'd say this, we're about ready to turn the show over to WCW,

Paul.

So whatever happens from here on out, don't blame me, don't blame him, and

don't blame the WWF, cuz in just a few seconds, this show becomes WCW.

But within minutes of the Buff versus Booker match, that was dead.

I've never seen a crowd react so adversely to something we were trying to get

over like that.

I wasn't a WCW guy at all.

Like, I certainly didn't care when Buff Bagwell showed up, no offense to him or

any of him, but I just, I didn't know him, I didn't really care, you know?

The stars in WCW, they were stars in WCW, but like, they weren't up to the part

in terms of WWE.

This is bigger than DD, it's bigger than the moon landing.

Garn was saying it was gonna be bigger than the moon landing, you know, all

that kind of stuff.

And it was not bigger than the moon landing.

The moon landing was significantly bigger than Buff versus Booker T that night

in Tacoma.

Without enough star power, the WCW invasion was flawed from the get-go.

By November 2001, WCW was laid to rest, for the last time.

All of a sudden, the WWE is the only major league game in town.

Where can you get the next generation of talent from?

Where are we gonna get our future stars from?

The only way you can learn how to work is in front of people, experience, night

after night, repetition, different opponents.

What about if we instituted a developmental program in Louisville, at Ohio

Valley Wrestling?

The attempt was to elevate new stars and elevate some younger talent.

And I'll use John Cena as an example.

Prototype has burst onto the scene in OVW.

A tremendously well put together young athlete.

Same time, here's Randy Orton coming along.

I'm the future of OVW.

Brock Lesnar.

Brock Lesnar on the top rope.

My God.

Batista.

Your soul belongs to me.

It was crazy.

It was like all these stud athletes, man, and they just kept coming and coming.

Look at the agility from this Shelton Benjamin.

I think we felt like we were the next era.

Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, the Leviathan has defeated two men

in record time.

The list goes on and on of young talent that just wasn't quite ready yet.

You knew they were gonna be stars, but you have to invest time and it takes

time from an audience standpoint to get attached to that star.

While WWE patiently developed future stars, the WCW superstars who are locked

into contracts during the ill-fated invasion are finally free agents.

What?

There's the Nature Boy.

JR, he's got no business here, he's a party crasher.

This is my ring and you're standing in it and I want an explanation.

Do you know that when Shane and Stephanie sold their stock to that consortium,

that consortium was me and now you and I are limousine riding, jet flying, can

stealing, we're the dealers.

You know why?

Because we're partners.

My God.

It was surreal seeing the WCW talent that nearly toppled Vince McMahon's empire

now appearing on Raw and SmackDown.

Hollywood Hogan, Paul and Nash, the three men who built the old WCW, are now

members of the World Wrestling Federation.

Hey, yo.

You gotta be kidding me.

The NWO just branded the Texas Rattlesnake.

Fantasy matchups fans wanted to see could finally happen.

You talked about headlining, main eventing, WrestleMania after WrestleMania

after WrestleMania.

Well, Hulk Hogan, The Rock says, How do you feel about headlining one more

WrestleMania with The Rock?

My God, The Rock is, it's Taliesin Hogan.

He's Taliesin Hogan from WrestleMania.

My gosh.

The WCW legends provided a short term shot of adrenaline.

But it was a handful of WWE stalwarts who actually carried the company torch.

Careful, trying to tie down the pedigree.

Look at it, the pedigree, the pedigree, yes.

The undisputed

champions.

Anytime a company is undergoing transition, you really rely on those bedrock

performers.

And in our case, it was Triple H and Undertaker who had been great Attitude Era

stars.

When business is good, everybody wants to be on top.

When business is bad, that's when they call people like The Undertaker or

Triple H and say, we need you to carry the business.

Most people didn't want to do that because that was a huge burden and an

obligation.

And people would blame you for business being bad.

But the guys that had to carry the title and carry the company in bad times,

those are your real workhorses.

Undertaker's the leader of the group and he deserves to be that.

He's been around for a long time.

He's earned a lot of respect.

He's had some incredible matches.

Kurt Angle trying to- I do it, I do it.

The Undertaker's ankle could snap at any moment here.

Kurt Angle stepped up in the biggest way possible, become one of the greatest

superstars of all time.

It's the Angle Slam right from the top.

Kurt Angle, score with the Angle Slam.

As WWE entered into the new millennium, the WWE attitude born out of necessity

was suddenly feeling outdated and forced.

Nick, what the hell are you doing here?

Things were almost on autopilot and there wasn't that same hunger and there

wasn't that same drive to be the best.

I love my testicles.

You have a reputation to uphold as the crazy edgy kind of show that's live

every Monday, anything can happen in WWE.

It wasn't easy to transition out of that.

Hey cowboy, you wanna dance?

With who?

With me.

We went through a phase of trying to keep our edge for as long as we possibly

could.

We were purposely trying to be edgy and it wasn't like organically edgy.

Vince was still looking for that shock factor.

Kiss my ass.

Are they gonna do it?

They're gonna do it.

A lot of the force feeding, if you will, is what led to maybe a little bit more

rapid decline in interest.

Are you gonna be kidding me?

As WWE came to grips with creative issues, it took a step towards fixing

another lingering problem.

We had a large assembly of talent with a lot of young guys.

How are these guys ever going to get better?

How are they ever gonna be able to break through if they don't have an

opportunity?

So if we split the roster, it's gonna force us creatively and force the talent

to step up if you have two separate rosters and completely separate television

shows.

A brand split in which half the talent would go to Raw and the other half to

SmackDown was drastic.

But in theory, it would provide tremendous opportunities for the entire roster.

As a fan, I was excited.

This is something new, something different that WWE has never done before.

And so if WWE is gonna have no competition, we'll compete within ourselves.

This new direction represented an investment in WWE's future, but came with

unavoidable short-term risk.

The ratings are going to go down.

There's no question they're gonna go down.

As a viewer, you're gonna tune in and wait, where's Jericho?

Where's Kurt Angle?

Where's Trish?

But it was kind of like seen as this is necessary for survival.

Because if we don't, the audience is gonna get burnt out.

That was the mindset going into it.

There was a sense of rebuilding.

We knew we were at a point in the company and in creative.

We might have to take two or three steps back to move ahead three to four or

five steps.

There you see the podium that will be utilized tonight for our draft.

The WWF brand extension into two exclusive rosters.

The draft created anxiety throughout the entire roster.

No one knew what to expect.

Ric Flair selected for Raw and Mr. McMahon for SmackDown.

The initial draft, I don't know that any talents other than maybe one or two

top talent had any clue where they were going on the drafts.

I start with Bubba Ray Dudley.

Guess what, Rick?

My next choice on SmackDown, I choose D-Von Dudley.

What?

D-Von?

That means D-Von and Bubba are going to- Aah!

Different shows.

Aah!

The Dudley boys were always synonymous with tag team wrestling.

Nobody wanted to see Bubba wrestle by himself.

Nobody wanted to see D-Von wrestle by himself.

We took the Dudleys away from the WWE Universe, because Vince wanted to shake

things up.

I think Vince liked that dynamic backstage of everybody on their toes as far

as, what you hear, what's going on, what's going, you know, what's happening?

Were you on that show?

Were you on that show?

I know a lot of the talents were extremely pissed off about this.

To a lot of people, this is just like their life and their livelihood, and they

spend more time with these people than they do with a lot of their families.

I pick Lita.

Lita!

I just picked you.

And how much is my routine going to change?

Is my role that I am currently doing on television, is it going to be

compromised?

Is it going to be lessened?

You know, over here on the other show, am I going to be able to get the same

opportunities that I would be getting here?

You know, so all those questions weigh in, and they can weigh heavily.

I was curious to see how it was going to go, and curious about the concept of

creating your own competition, but I was skeptical about how much of actual

competition it would be, because in the end, it's still the same company.

As if the draft wasn't unsettling enough, the unthinkable was about to happen.

At that point, Rock is transitioning into Hollywood.

The Scorpion King was the number one movie at the box office this weekend, the

highest grossing April opening in motion picture history.

Our congratulations to The Rock.

He knew his time was going to be limited, and selfishly, it's a bad thing.

Certainly for me, as a fan, I remember being incredibly worried.

For the longest time, I watched this guy religiously.

When you talk about the pillars of your company, you think about The Rock.

And you think about, like, the shoes that you have to fill.

Those are probably two of the biggest shoes to try and fill.

Losing The Rock to Hollywood, that was a big hit.

Losing Stone Cold Steve Austin, in general, was a major hit.

You read on the internet now, it says, Stone Cold Steve Austin's not happy with

things.

Steve, lay it all on the line here.

Give us the bottom line.

What's your mindset, and how you feeling about everything that's going on with

the raw brand?

Bottom line is, everything sucks.

I'm not happy with the direction Stone Cold Steve Austin's going.

I ain't happy with the direction the whole company's going.

I think the writing has been pretty substandard.

I've got one better than that.

It's been piss poor.

Steve Austin is the greatest.

Biggest star in the company.

That's why we're all here and not out of business at WCW, because in part, it

was what Steve himself accomplished.

So Vince would ask one question in these writers' meetings.

How is Stone Cold raising hell this week?

He'd call Steve and let him know what the plans were.

They would be very short, terse conversations.

We'd be told, yeah, Steve didn't like it.

So we got to think about a different way for him to raise hell this week.

And the dynamic was getting very frustrating for Steve and getting frustrating

for us.

Like, from Steve's perspective, it's like, it's the same old bullsh** every

single week.

A little bit of frustration was starting to set in, and the wheels were

starting to fall off.

I was running hard.

I was making all my shots.

I was beat to shreds.

And I was drinking a lot.

And just a lot of elements going on there.

And the train was about to go off the track.

Can I even have you what I've been doing before WrestleMania or after

WrestleMania as we speak presently?

Well, do you feel like there are movements, that there's progress, like things

are going to change?

Who knows?

While Austin's frustration continued to escalate, a newcomer from OVW was

making an immediate impact.

That's just, that's just scary.

Oh, man.

I don't know if there's another human being alive that could execute that move

on Rikishi.

Brock Lesnar's powerful presence sparked a radical idea from Raw's creative

team.

In a writers meeting with Vince, we said, well, how about we do Brock Lesnar

versus Stone Cold Steve Austin?

Vince thought about it and was like, well, by the time we do it three years

later at a WrestleMania and actually make money off of it, nobody's going to

remember this.

Yeah, let's do that.

No build up, no nothing.

It was king of the ring elimination match.

And then Brock, young guy, new guy, the next big thing, man, he goes over

Steve.

No one was going to call that.

And it was a bold, creative decision.

Vince went for it.

Vince liked it.

I got a call from Jim Ross, who was going to buzz creative by me.

Vince would like to see Brock Lesnar go over on me in a king of the ring

qualifier match.

And I said, really?

You guys want to beat me in a qualifier match unannounced?

You're not going to do a one or two or three week build for this match and get

a number out of it?

Man, I don't have a big head, but guys like me are pretty damn hard to find.

That didn't make any business sense to me.

I'm always about being business.

I'll do business with anybody.

Getting beat doesn't mean a damn thing to me.

I told Jim, I said, really?

That's what we're going to do?

And he goes, yep.

And when I said, really, that's what we're going to do?

I mean, like, really?

That's what we're going to do?

Because if we are, I ain't coming.

Then as soon as we arrived at the building, we were informed that Austin had

called and booked he and his wife, Debra, on a flight back to San Antonio.

It's her.