The Invasion (professional wrestling)

This article is about the storyline. For the Pay-per-view, see WWF InVasion

The Invasion was a professional wrestling storyline in the World Wrestling Federation that began shortly after the WWF's purchase of World Championship Wrestling. It involved the WCW wrestlers "invading" WWF TV in an attempt to "take over" the WWF.

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 would be kayfabe superior.

History

Monday Night Wars

Main article: Monday Night Wars

The Monday Night Wars had both the WWF and WCW, the two top North American wrestling promotions, competing 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 never recovered. 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 night of the Monday Night Wars occurred on March 26 2001: RAW primarily focused on the major storylines heading into WrestleMania X-Seven, while Nitro held their final episode with a Night Of Champions. Vince McMahon opened up Nitro and announced a simulcast later that night to address the future of WCW. Throughout RAW, McMahon publicly named several WCW wrestlers who would not be retained. After Sting defeated Ric Flair in WCW's final match, the simulcast began. 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. McMahon then announced that he would sign the contract and make the purchase official at WrestleMania. However, Shane McMahon appeared on Nitro and announced (in kayfabe) that he had signed the contract and purchased WCW out from under his father's nose, planting the seed for what was considered a 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 Invasion

Because the WWF had acquired WCW, the WWF had effectively doubled the size of its roster and as a result, there was not enough screentime for everyone. The original plan was to find a timeslot on TNN to continue running WCW as a separate entity. Polls were even put up on WWF.com and WCW.com to decide the name of the new show. These plans fell through when the McMahons could not secure a timeslot that would attract the target wrestling demographic. 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. At King of the Ring 2001 on June 24, then-WCW's Booker T interfered during the Triple Threat Main Event match for the WWF Championship and almost cost Stone Cold Steve Austin the title. Additionally, Austin suffered fractured bones in his hand from the side slam he took from Booker into an announce table. The next night, there was confrontation between WCW Owner Shane McMahon and WWF Owner Vince McMahon, and Booker T came from behind to deliver his trademark move 'The Scissor Kick' on Vince. This incident triggered The Invasion storyline as up and running for good, to which RAW announcer Jim Ross replied, "The battle lines have been drawn!"

The WWF eventually began to recognize WCW and tested the idea of a brand extension by giving WCW the final twenty minutes of RAW with Scott Hudson and Arn Anderson doing announcing duties in place of Jim Ross and Paul Heyman. During a match between Buff Bagwell and Booker T for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, WWF wrestlers Kurt Angle and WWF Champion Stone Cold Steve Austin interfered in retaliation by beating both men up.

Up until this point, the WCW contingent were being built up to being malcontent faces rising up against the heel Vince McMahon, because of Vince's bluster during the final Nitro broadcast and Shane's usurping of the WCW ownership. Originally, WCW talents' were meant to attack strictly heel WWF wrestlers. However, the strongly negative reaction of the core WWF viewership to the WCW product and talent, coupled with the reality that a WCW wrestling program to appeal to their fans would not come to fruition, led to the entire WCW contingent to abruptly turn heel. One example would be the heel gimmick of then WCW Alliance Member, Diamond Dallas Page engaging in a feud against the babyface gimmick of The Undertaker.

The addition of ECW

Main article: The Alliance

On July 9, ECW was also brought into the Invasion. Subsequently, ECW merged with WCW to form The Alliance. At Invasion, the Inaugural Brawl took place, with Team WCW/ECW defeating Team WWF when Austin turned on the WWF. 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 for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. Angle's title run proved to be short-lived, as Booker T won it back on the July 30 episode of RAW. On that same RAW, The Rock returned to the WWF for the first time since his (kayfabe) suspension on the April 2 edition of RAW. His return would lead to a WCW Title match between The Rock and Booker T at SummerSlam 2001, which The Rock won. At that same pay-per-view, Austin retained his WWF Championship against Angle after Angle won by disqualification. After Invasion, WWF TV was increasingly composed of matches pitting Alliance superstars against WWF superstars for each other's titles. Later there were rumors of someone joining the Alliance and it turned out to be Angle who attacked Kane, The Undertaker and The Rock with a steel chair. The reason for this was because he was tired of caring for the WWF.

All of this led to a "Winner Take All" match at Survivor Series 2001, which pitted the WWF team (The Rock, Chris Jericho, The Undertaker, Kane, and The Big Show) against The Alliance's team (Steve Austin, Kurt Angle, Booker T, Rob Van Dam, and Shane McMahon). Team WWF prevailed, with The Rock pinning Steve Austin (due to Angle's last-minute turn on Austin), thus ending the storyline.

Aftermath

WCW

After The Alliance was disbanded, the WCW World Heavyweight Championship was unified with the WWF Championship to form the WWF Undisputed Championship. Another WCW championship, the WCW Cruiserweight Championship, was rebranded as a WWE title and replaced the WWF Light Heavyweight Championship as the WWE Cruiserweight Championship. Additionally, the WCW United States Championship was revived in 2003 as a SmackDown!-exclusive title, thus becoming the WWE United States Championship.

ECW

Main article: Extreme Championship Wrestling (WWE)

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. The build-up to this one-shot event 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. In 2006, it was announced that WWE would be reviving ECW as its third "brand" (to complement RAW and SmackDown!). The second One Night Stand, held on June 11 2006, led to the official debut of the new ECW the following Tuesday.

Criticism

Although a potentially huge storyline, the Invasion storyline has come under vast critiques by wrestling fans and wrestling media such as PWI and the Wrestling Observer. A few of the main reasons for the storyline's lack of success include:

• WWF failed to sign enough WCW talent: Many of WCW's top talent had contracts with AOL Time Warner, WCW's parent company, and were wiling to sit at home rather than wrestle for less money. Ric Flair was not signed until the end of the Invasion, as well as Rey Mysterio, because they were tied to their contracts. Other WCW main eventers such as Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Goldberg were not signed until well after the storyline finished. Scott Steiner was recovering from an injury.
• Throughout the storyline, many "inter-promotional" matches (i.e. matches between WWF wrestlers and WCW/ECW wrestlers) had the WWF wrestlers winning over the WCW/ECW wrestlers. Another gripe over the Invasion was the booking throughout the storyline. When a WWF wrestler won, the majority of the time he won clean. However, the Alliance members won the majority of their matches using interference or by disqualification. For example, it took Tazz assisting Raven at WWF Invasion for Raven to beat William Regal, and it took Stone Cold's betrayal at WWF Invasion to allow the Alliance to be victorious over the WWF. However, The Rock won cleanly at Summerslam 2001, despite Shane McMahon's helping Booker T.
• The Invasion storyline was presented with a backdrop of a McMahon feud. In storyline, WWF was owned by Vince McMahon, WCW was owned by Shane McMahon, and ECW was owned by Stephanie McMahon. Although the feud did not center completely around the McMahon's, the family feud storyline had been done many times before, and many fans had grown tired of it and saw it as a stale concept.
• To bolster the ranks of WCW (in lieu of big WCW names), talents whose fame came from improving the WWF product such as Stone Cold Steve Austin, "defected" and joined the Alliance. Although both WWF and WCW featured talents who had worked for both companies, wrestlers such as Stone Cold had their greatest success in WWF and were seen by fans as WWF guys. Kurt Angle had never wrestled a match for either WCW or ECW, but was a main player for the Alliance towards the end of the storyline. However, wrestlers such as Chris Jericho, who had worked for both WCW and ECW, and Yoshihiro Tajiri, a prominent ECW wrestler, were presented as WWF wrestlers despite the prominence both men had reached while with both companies.

See also

• The Alliance
• WWF Invasion

External links

• SLAM! Wrestling: Reliving the InVasion, two years later by Jon Waldman
• The Flop of the Invasion by Bruce Chen
• In My Opinion the reasons why Pro Wrestling took a fall in the early part of this century by Darrell Mays