During the mid 90's wrestling organisations were struggling to maintain their audiences. Viewers of the 80's clean cut style of wrestling were growing tired of regurgitated story lines and lacklustre characters, and began turning away from wrestling. During this time Ted Turner (a billionaire media mogul) purchased a struggling wrestling promotion (known at the time as Jim Crockett Promotions) and rebranded it as World Championship Wrestling (WCW). Ted wanted to bring WCW into the forefront of the wrestling world and hired a man by the name of Eric Bischoff, who through questionable business practice and a great vision for where to take the brand, brought WCW into direct competition with the industry leader WWF (now known as WWE). Due to the increased competition, and changing fan base, both organisations began introducing more realistic characters, instead of the grandly exaggerated ones of the earlier eras. With the heightened sense of realism came a more hardcore style of wrestling (with heavy use of weapons and stunts) as well as more adult themes. The change in style drove viewership to never before seen heights, which I believe is partially due to the competition driving each organisation to think outside the box, and create matches and story lines that really hit home with their viewers. Where as WCW focused on stealing away WWE's established and older wrestlers, the WWE focused on promoting their younger upstart wrestlers, showcasing new talent. WCW ended up losing the war and was bought out by Vince McMahon in 2001, but not before they had brought a new thinking to the business, as well as showcasing many high flyers (which WWF struggled to hire and show correctly).
If this sounds interesting to you the made a tv show about it:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4009520/episodes
It's good definitely worth watching!
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