So in 2021, we were on the cusp of something us nerd fans had been dreaming about four years, and I mean that literally, sometimes I would go to bed and I would dream about these things because I have a problem. But due to a merger between Ted Turner and A. O'DL and a bunch of other mad things, all of a sudden WCW was no more. They wanted to sell the company and who popped in to buy it? It was none other than Vincent Kennedy McMahon. Honestly, he basically bought it for the price of a candy. Now, of course, the reason for this is because WGW was in such a mess in 2000 and 2001. But in 2000, the rumor was always been, they lost upwards of $60 million. And let's say some people are pushing that for effect. So it's what? $45 million? It's absolutely nuts. I mean, the company had been such a financial powerhouse a couple of years before. Nobody ever thought we would have got to this point. When yes, we do have to jump into the booking, which especially in the year 2000 and kind of 19992 was really, really, really, really bad. That just meant that the hardcore fans that were happy to watch

all of a sudden turned off their TVs,

because this is what they wanted from World Championship Wrestling. When a brand new head executive known as Jamie Kelner came in, and he went, I don't like wrestling, I don't want wrestling. Plus, yes, it's ruining us financially. Let's get rid of it, and let's get rid of it right now. Because it's so damn funny because if this had been 18 months earlier, everyone had looked at Jamie and gone,

yeah, we're not going to do that because once again it is a cash cow and that is how Vince McMahon was able to buy it for, shouldn't have done that? $4.2 million. This was a company that at one point had been valued, I think, of upwards of 100, something like that, it was crazy Now, the reason I'm talking about this is because it does tie in, because this money was for the

trademarks, the tape library and other licenses, but it was not due to the strange contract

situation between AOL and Turner and some other companies as well for the talent contract,

which meant the WW wanted to get a certain person on their show, they were going to have to negotiate with them separately. So it just meant what did the likes of Kevin Nash, Gotthole, Hulk Hogan, Sting, Goldberg, Rickfellow and a bunch of others decide to do? They went home and they rested up because of course they did. No shade on those guys, but some of them were being paid upwards of $3 million a year. There was no way all of a sudden they were going to jump across to the WWE, especially because one, they had no idea how they were going to be used up north, especially given the fact we were coming off the Monday Night Wars, and two, who the hell is going to turn down millions and millions of dollars after putting your body through such pain, where you can take some time, you can take a deep breath and actually figure out what you want to do next while earning an absolute fortune. I mean, the rumor always

was that Goldberg was on $2.5 million in a year, and in his last year of his deal, he was going to earn $3.5 million. That's a cent to the best vacation ever. So I want to make it clear. This is not on the talent. So we do get into the evasion of 2001. I can't imagine anybody would have actually

have gone the other way to all this, Even if you thought a massive spot was going to be available to you in WWE, because that was probably going to be the same in 12 months or 24 months, so you could take your time and smell it out. Which doesn't indeed bring us to WWE or the WWF at the time, and I promise you this is true, there's been too many books about it. Vincent Mann at one point actually wanted to make his Monday night time slot WCW Nitro, and whenever a Smackdown was at that time, that was going to be where you were going to see your WWE television. Then of course, over the weeks, the months, the years, however long he thought to see fit, you would start getting the competition, you would start getting the war, And all those dream matches we have wanted to see for the last five years were going to become true. We then had that Buff Bagwell Booker T match in July, believe it was, of 2001. And this was received so badly, Vince McMahon ripped up his entire playbook and decided, you know what, we're not going to do it. This is where, after you watch this video, go watch Booker T versus Buff Bagelow. Certainly not good, but it's certainly not terrible. And the real issue here is that you have WWE fans go, boo, boo, because they had been told for the last three years, WCW sucks and WW rules. Let's not pretend that tribalism didn't exist back then. Of course it did. So they were like we We refused to accept it because we had been preconditioned not to accept it. There was nothing that anybody could have done here. That's how real this was. Do not forget as well that you also had a lot of powerful people in Vince Man's ear saying, you can't have WCW guys look better than WWE guys because otherwise we're going to change this perception. And yes, you're allowed to face palm and wonder what the flood was going on there, because it was quite clear. And any WWE fan had the best argument to this anyway, the company known as World Wrestling Federation, had bought the company known as World Championship Wrestling. So you couldn't say that WCW is better, because WCW is literally dead, and if it wasn't

for the WWF, it wouldn't have been resuscitated.

So the right thing, as far as I'm concerned, would have just to have hit pause on the whole situation. There was no rush here. It wasn't like another company that all of a son was going to usurp all of this, and also I think that people were willing to wait. Of course you wanted the Goldbergs and the NWOs and the Stings.

If that meant waiting until 2002,

where you could still introduce some other wrestlers to the program, which is what we were going to do anyway, when all of a sudden here came the big guns. And that could have meant that the invasion storyline, let's say it did start in the summer of 2001, could have rolled on for two years. Instead, W.W. was done with it in less than six months. There's evidence to this as well, because do you remember when the New World Order came back at No Way Out 2002? Nobody was going on, this is far too late now. It was the complete opposite. People just got super excited. And admittedly, the way that WW used them wasn't exactly the right way. But in terms of the anticipation and the excitement in your tum-tum, everybody was down. So once again it does underline that this whole thing was rushed, but actually it tied into business metrics too. Because ratings were heading in the wrong direction, that's why all of a sudden we started throwing stuff at the wall. It's like what people like WCW, at least they did, maybe we can draw those fans over. So rather than actually sit down and and make sure this did go on for years and years, everybody just said, well, we better do it right now. Because again, look at this, the graph is going in the wrong direction and we don't like it. And this was coming off the attitude era, where for at least two years, all the graphs have gone up. Now he did kick off on May 28, 2001, when it was Lance Storm that ran in. But just listen to the match that he did interfere with and all of a sudden you're going to be like well i didn't even know that existed because it was Lance Storm that ran in, but just listen to the match that he did interfere with, and all of a sudden you're going to be like, well, I didn't even know that existed. Because it was Steve Blackman and Tristratus, taking on Terry Reynolds and Perry Saturn. Listen, I have all the respect in the world for all four of those people, and they did make it to the tippity top, that doesn't happen by accident. And Lance Storm did get a massive reaction running running in which ties into everything we were talking about,

but it also told you this was a bunch of midcard guys, so we're going to treat the WCW dudes as midcard guys. You can figure it out. The best line when Lance does that as well is Jim Ross shouting, he's still in his ring gear, because for some reason good old JR was very worried about Lance Storm's dress sense. It's never really explained why Steve Blackman did use us to pin Perry Saturn.

Perry had taken the super kick to the face and Steve had gone, well, listen, he may be a WCW guy, but I really just want the win. Before long, Bucatier was attacking Steve Austin and DDP was revealing himself as the Undertaker's wife stalker and go and watch DDP's debut on Raw right now. When he does remove the hood, everybody goes crazy, when after a few minutes you're like, oh my gosh, Diamond Dallas Pays, the ultimate baby-faced to WCW is going to be the Undertaker's Wife WSstalker. Once again, it was just taking square picks and sticking him in round holes. Also, nobody wanted to boo DP, especially because he was a WCW guy coming in

and he was one of the few that did buy himself out of his WCW contract because he wanted to test himself in the WWE. This was not the position he should have put him in. Now, Buketitin did a little bit better, but again, it took absolutely yonks before he was able to establish himself because once again, WCW guy

And never forget that show

When Sarah, who was the Undertaker's wife at the time,

Pinned DDP. Never since we came out the other side, I don't actually ever think he found himself again. Now let's jump forward and start talking about specific matches, or at least the way that W.W. approach them, because you can basically pick any timeline within the invasion, watch what they're doing, and even though it's meant to be WCW guy versus WWE guy, Vince McMahon over and over again, it always found a way to take a WWE guy and put them on the WSDBW side, so that just water this all this doubt. I mean, who was the leader of the alliance, the ECW and WCW coming together? It was Stone Cold Steve Austin. And of course it was a way to try and make him a mega heel after he had turned band guy at WrestleMania 17, but nobody wanted to see it again. Remember when he came back as the old Stone Cold? It's one of the best pops ever. Even people like RVD, we missed the mark on because he should have been pushed to call outsider. He should have joined up with anybody because he was getting massive pops and even the WW fans were into him because again he was so cool but we just ignored that and he soon became

a faceless wonder. So if you were a super ECW hardcore fan, understandably you started to get

frustrated. This brings us to July 22nd, 2001 which was the invasion pay-per-view and it goes to

show how much we were desperate to love this because the numbers't lie, and an insane amount of people tuned into this. It does have one of the most terrifying pay-per-view posters you could ever hope to see with your eyes, but it drew in around about 750,000 buys. That was WrestleMania levels. And let's not forget, WrestleMania was only a few months before this, so everybody was happy and willing to spend their cash they needed to see it. And yes, it was before this pay-per-view when Stone Cold had come back on the episode Roy as the old Stone Cold. I do not understand why we didn't run with it. Like, if we are using the audience as our direction status signs, whatever that means, you could see how desperate people were to chill the rat snake once again, and we threw that out the window, because at the end of that paper, what happened? Steve Austin joined Team Double W and went make a heel. Also, he was already technically a heel given what he had done with Vince Meta WrestleMania 17. We talked about this with Dominic Mysterio. He never go double heat. The main event itself too did see Steve Austin, The Undertaker Kane, Chris Jericho and Kurt Angle take on DDP, Booker T, Rino and the Dudley Boys. And the Dudley Boys are a great example of all of this, because this was in 2001. I'm sure they had been a part of ECW, but do you know when they debuted in the WWF? 1999. Ryan had also come back at WrestleMania 17 to help out Edging Christian so he didn't care

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