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- This article is about the WWF storyline. For the Doctor Who serial, see The Invasion (Doctor Who).
The idea of a supercard featuring the two top promotions of the Monday Night Wars was considered to be a "dream match" scenario in the eyes of many fans, as it would allow the fans to see which promotion (at least in kayfabe) would be superior. However, despite the lucrative possibilities, the storyline is considered to have been poorly executed in the eyes of many fans.
History
The Monday Night Wars had both the WWF and WCW, the two top North American wrestling promotions, vying for ratings. Through developments such as the nWo and the Montreal Screwjob, fans continually compared the two promotions, and the Internet Wrestling Community was full of debate as to which of the two was superior.
However, among other factors, mismanagement within WCW (such as allowing wrestlers themselves to book matches) eventually led WCW to a downward spiral from which it would never recover. The Monday Night Wars came to an end on March 23, 2001, when the WWF bought WCW for what was considered to be a bargain price.
The final WCW Monday Nitro aired the next Monday on March 26, 2001, and storylines were wrapped up for good as WCW wrestlers contemplated their fate now that the large majority of them were now employees of what was once their company's biggest rival. As the final moments on Nitro neared (and rival WWF RAW entered its second hour), Vince McMahon appeared at the RAW ring, in a segment simulcast on both RAW and Nitro. McMahon talked about the buyout of WCW and how he fully intended to fire all WCW personnel, to the cheers of the RAW crowd and the jeers of the Nitro crowd. However, in a shocking twist, Shane McMahon appeared on Nitro, and announced (in kayfabe) that he had purchased WCW out from under his father's nose, planting the seed for what was considered a most lucrative future storyline opportunity. The Invasion did not begin immediately afterwards, as the WWF was preparing for WrestleMania X-Seven, the year's largest show, mere days away.
The goal of the Invasion was that, because the WWF had acquired WCW, the WWF had effectively doubled the size of its roster and as a result, there was no way screentime could be given to everyone. By eventually carrying out what was known as a brand extension, the WWF could effectively revive WCW under its own auspices and effectively run two separate promotions, each with one of the WWF's two existing televised shows RAW and SmackDown! As part of its plans, Lance Storm became the first WCW wrestler to appear on WWF programming, by running in during a match on the May 28 episode of RAW. The WWF eventually began to recognize WCW, and tested the idea of a brand extension by giving WCW the final twenty minutes of RAW (for this, the entire RAW set was changed), with Scott Hudson and Arn Anderson doing announcing duties in place of Jim Ross and Paul Heyman, and during which WWF wrestlers interfered in retaliation in a match between Buff Bagwell and Booker T for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship by beating both men up.
On July 22, the Invasion PPV occurred with the Inaugural Brawl main event featuring team WWF facing team WCW/ECW. Team WWF featured Stone Cold Steve Austin, Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho, The Undertaker, and Kane. Representing Team WCW/ECW was Booker T, The Dudley Boyz, Rhyno, and Diamond Dallas Page. During the match, Austin executed his famous finishing move, the Stone Cold Stunner, on Kurt Angle to betray the WWF and to give the WCW/ECW Alliance a victory. The next night, Austin claimed he joined the Alliance because they appreciated him, unlike the WWF.
The WWF gained momentum on the July 26 edition of SmackDown! when Angle beat Booker T for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. Angle's title run would prove to be short-lived, as Booker T won the WCW Title back on the July 30 episode of RAW. On that same RAW, The Rock returned to the WWF from a long period of absence since WrestleMania X-Seven. This return would lead to a WCW Title match between The Rock and Booker T at SummerSlam 2001 where The Rock won the WCW Title. At that same PPV, Austin retained his WWF Title against Angle. After the Invasion PPV, WWF TV was increasingly composed of matches pitting Alliance superstars against WWF superstars for each other's titles. All this led to a "Winner Take All" match at Survivor Series 2001, which pitted a WWF team of The Rock, Chris Jericho, The Undertaker, Kane and The Big Show against The Alliance's team of Steve Austin, Kurt Angle, Booker T, Rob Van Dam and Shane McMahon. The WWF's team prevailed, with The Rock pinning Steve Austin, thus finishing the storyline.
Aftermath
WCW
After The Alliance was disbanded, the WCW Championship was renamed the "World Championship" and unified with the WWF Championship to form the WWF Undisputed Championship. A title created a year later, the World Heavyweight Championship, has a disputed lineage to the former WCW belt. Another WCW championship, the WCW Cruiserweight Championship, was rebranded as a WWF title and replaced the WWF Light Heavyweight Championship. Additionally, the WCW United States Championship was revived in 2003 as a SmackDown! title.The Brand Extension that split RAW and SmackDown! into two separate brands was originally intended to split the roster into WWF and WCW. When the Invasion failed and was prematurely ended, the WWF opted to instead split the roster between the two shows.
ECW
Although the WCW brand effectively died once and for all following the end of this storyline, ECW was temporarily revived by WWE in 2005 for the purposes of a special "reunion" show, ECW One Night Stand, held on June 12, 2005. Many fans felt the build-up to this one-shot event, which featured former ECW talent putting over the virtues of the brand versus the WWE product and appearances by several former ECW wrestlers not under contract to WWE, was everything the Invasion storyline should have been. In 2006, it was announced that WWE would be reviving ECW as its third "brand" (to compliment RAW and SmackDown!). There was a second One Night Stand on June 11, 2006. ECW is now televised weekly on the Sci Fi Channel on Tuesdays.Criticisms
Many consider this storyline a huge failure and one of the biggest missed opportunities in pro wrestling history. The following reasons are frequently attributed:
- Many of WCW's top talent had contracts with AOL Time Warner, WCW's parent company, and were willing to sit at home rather than wrestle for less money. Thus, many of WCW's top stars were absent from the storyline, forcing the WCW faction to be treated as standard heel stable (ironically, much of the talent later joined WWE after the storyline flopped). The only major WCW talents willing to wrestle for less money were Diamond Dallas Page (who was put into an unpopular storyline with The Undertaker that irked many of his longtime fans) and Booker T (who more or less retained his previous gimmick and remains with WWE to this day).
- Throughout the storylines, many "inter-promotional" matches (i.e. matches between WWF and WCW talent) had the WWF wrestlers winning over the WCW wrestlers. The only notable exception was that the WWF Light Heavyweight Championship was silently being retired in favor of its WCW counterpart, the WCW Cruiserweight Championship (although the belt would not be fully unified until long after, when the last WWF Light Heavyweight Champion X-Pac, appeared without the belt). Therefore, although the WWF and WCW were supposedly on equal standing, those marked as WCW wrestlers inevitably jobbed to WWF wrestlers, and having a WWF title was considered to be superior over having its WCW counterpart (as evidenced by Booker T having been hailed as a five-time WCW Champion but effectively being treated as a midcarder). Some theorize that this may have been engineered by Vince McMahon himself, to drill home the superiority of his promotion over its largest rival.
- Behind the WWF vs. WCW storyline was a McMahon family feud storyline, which involved Vince McMahon heading the WWF forces against WCW owner Shane McMahon (who had acquired WCW out from under Vince in the final WCW Monday Nitro show) and ECW owner Stephanie McMahon (Linda McMahon remained neutral in the process). The McMahon feud had already been reused and recycled so much in previous years that fans were not enthusiastic about its revival in yet another form.
- To bolster the ranks of WCW (in lieu of big-name WCW stars), talents whose fame came from improving the WWF product such as Stone Cold Steve Austin, "defected" and joined WCW. The most extreme example, Kurt Angle, had never wrestled in WCW (although he had a single appearance in ECW in October 1996), but had defected and become a "WCW wrestler" partway through the storyline. The WWF talents who defected to WCW were often used to represent the promotion, while actual WCW wrestlers became little more than afterthoughts.
- The WCW championship belts were retained, while those of the ECW were not (the WWF would not gain the ECW copyrights until months after the Invasion storyline was finished, and therefore did not legally have the right to use ECW material at the time). Almost all of the WCW titles brought were continuously held and feuded for by bona-fide WWF wrestlers, although at one point the WCW United States Championship was given to ECW stars Tajiri and Rhyno. At the end of the storyline, the WCW titles were either merged with the WWF equivalent (e.g. the WWF Intercontinental Championship and the WCW United States Championship), or quietly became WWF titles (the WWE Cruiserweight Championship). The major exception was the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, which was simply renamed the "World Championship" (it was later merged, although some claim that the present-day World Heavyweight Championship, revived by Eric Bischoff during his tenure as RAW General Manager, is a continuation of the WCW World Championship, as its title holders were referred to simply as the "World Champion"). Notably, the WCW United States Championship was also later brought back (in 2003) as the midcarder belt for the SmackDown! brand, rebranded as the WWE United States Championship.
Most of the WCW talent not brought in for this storyline were eventually contracted by WWE, most notably Goldberg, Scott Steiner, Hogan, Scott Hall, and Nash. The latter three were brought back as the nWo, WCW's most successful stable, although Hogan would suddenly turn face in a match against The Rock at WrestleMania X8, which effectively saw the end of the nWo as Hogan reverted to his 80s "red and yellow" Hulkamania persona (the inclusion of Shawn Michaels and X-Pac may also have been a contributing factor, which made the nWo simply the new version of The Clique or D-Generation X). Steiner and Goldberg were brought in as main-event contenders for the World Heavyweight Championship, but failed to get over with fans for any significant amount of time (though Goldberg did win the championship). Some place the blame on how they were booked more than on the men themselves, citing WWE's backstage politics and Triple H's alleged influence on storylines. In Steiner's case, at least, his inability to get over was probably caused by his poor ring performance. His first title match against Triple H saw Steiner botch moves repeatedly (including the infamous Stumble Bomb '03) and wear himself out after only 5 minutes.
However, of all the former WCW main-event talent that were introduced after the Invasion storyline, Ric Flair may have been the most influential. Flair actually returned to the WWF on RAW the night following Survivor Series (the conclusion of the Invasion), when he was introduced as the half-owner of the WWF after Shane McMahon and Stephanie McMahon had (kayfabe) sold their WWF assets to him, and putting him at odds with Vince McMahon. This storyline would later be the driving force behind the brand extension, with Flair as owner of RAW and McMahon as the owner of SmackDown! Months after, McMahon reasserted his complete ownership of both brands, and appointed general managers of each brand (with the idea that each brand effectively was their own promotion, organized as if it was a sports team). Eric Bischoff was announced as the RAW general manager to the shock of the audience (ironic as through Nitro, he had tried to run RAW off the air), while Stephanie McMahon was introduced as Bischoff's SmackDown! counterpart (ECW promoter Paul Heyman would later also have a tenure as SmackDown!
Trivia
- On the May 23, 2005 edition of RAW, Vince McMahon, Eric Bischoff, and Paul Heyman, participated in a live promo for ECW One Night Stand, marking the first time that the "Big Three" wrestling promoters have ever shared the ring together.
See also
World Championship Wrestling | World Wrestling Entertainment | Extreme Championship Wrestling | 2001 in sports | Sports-related flops
"The Invasion"