As the Death of WCW panel at Starrcast approaches, it’s important to consider what actually killed WCW.
Was it poor booking?
Low ratings and buyrates caused by the poor booking?
Huge financial losses caused by reckless spending and the low ratings and buyrates, caused by the poor booking?
Or was it something as simple and totally unrelated as AOL Time Warner taking over Turner Broadcasting…
…selling WCW off due to its huge financial losses…
…and abruptly cancelling the shows due to their low ratings…
…making the company practically worthless because no network in its right mind would air such an expensive, low-rated show? The world may never know.
But one thing we know didn’t kill WCW was D-Generation X’s “invasion” in the spring of 1998.
Of course, WWE folklore has so exaggerated the events of April 27th, 1998 that newer fans can be forgiven for thinking DX literally fired shots and defeated WCW in an actual military conflict.
In reality, the whole thing was just a silly stunt that served as an excuse for DX to make a lot of dick jokes. But that was like Shakespeare compared to what DX would have in store in the weeks to come (setting aside that Shakespeare also included a lot of dick jokes to begin with).
The degenerates kicked off their “invasion” by firing this not-too-convincing shot from the missile launcher, courtesy of an obvious camera cut-away and about half a cigarette’s worth of smoke.
If anything, the pitiful discharge from DX’s phallic cannon suggested that Triple H was impotent.
After hanging out with the fans waiting around hours before Nitro (and, free tickets or not, that takes a pretty dedicated fan base)…
…and confusing the Norfolk Scope event staff…
….DX tried rolling into the arena’s parking garage. Incredibly, one of their friends from the rival promotion came out for a photo op with the faction, leading to his prompt dismissal by that stuffy, repressive organization.
No, sorry, that’s what happened when the Bullet Club showed up outside of a WWE show last year.
Back in 1998 at the Norfolk Scope, WCW security simply closed the gates.
In the absence of an actual invasion of WCW, DX did the next best thing by standing around like chumps…
…and pretending to talk to the wrestling personalities on the other side…
(not unlike the various psychic mediums profiled on this site over the years).
It’s a good thing they never got into the arena, too, as DX was far outnumbered with only five members compared to WCW’s massive roster, which they flew out to every Nitro…
…and which, more importantly, included Meng.
Getting shut out of WCW’s arena meant DX could declare a hollow “victory,” but it also meant that the segment was left without a climax, as Triple H shockingly did not mention in all his talk of “cocking” guns and “blowing” WCW out of the water.
Far from representing the WWF in the Monday Night Wars, DX made it clear that they were representing only their faction, invading WCW in an effort to “free” their Kliq buddies Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, who weren’t having fun anymore after making boatloads of money at the top of the promotion. Hence the “POWCW” armbands.
That way, if the invasion backfired and DX got beaten up or otherwise embarrassed, WWF could spin it as if that was what was supposed to happen to those silly heels.
It’s sort of like when they booked LT to beat Bam Bam Bigelow while insisting that Bigelow represented Ted DiBiase’s Corporation and certainly not the WWF. In this case, rather than the Corporation vs. the NFL, it was DX (and not the WWF) vs. “Dubya-C-Dubya”, as Triple H made a point of pronouncing it. This, despite Jim Ross being the only announcer in either promotion who pronounced it anything like that.
Speaking of Jim Ross, he and Michael Cole were definitely not impressed with DX’s antics…
…writing the stunt off as just the kind of self-indulgent waste of time you’d expect from a bunch of jack-offs who spent entire segments calling each other jack-offs.
The WWF felt DX had so much momentum from the stunt that they jobbed them out to the Harris Twins that very night.
So no, DX riding a tank to a WCW event was not a turning point in the Monday Night Wars, any more than DX’s tank was a tank.
Tanks tend not to have four wheels, tires, or look exactly like a Jeep.
At least WCW could tell the difference.
Anyway, it’s fair to say that DX’s assault on WCW is definitely an overrated moment in the Attitude Era. “But this isn’t WrestleOverrated.com,” you might protest. “This is WrestleCrap.”
Indeed it is, and if you wanted to see some bona fide crap, you would just have to keep tuning in to Raw over the coming weeks. As you know, the Norfolk Scope incident was just the first salvo, and there were more, much stupider incidents to come.
Oh, you didn’t know?
Two weeks after their first strike on WCW, DX was at it again to show how lame the competition was. (They would have done it the very next week, but Raw was taped)
This time, the boys in neon green went down to Atlanta, straight to WCW’s offices, where they encountered one security guard trying to do his job…
…and one guy shooting his own footage, which never saw the light of day.
The stunt ended abruptly when, we were told, the folks in the WCW office called the police, claiming they were under attack by a militia.
Well, DX did have that *tank*, after all.
No footage of this incident was ever shown, so we have to take the participants’ word for it. “I’m not kidding, 100 cop cars came with riot squads”, said Triple H, whose buddy Shawn Michaels was once beaten up by nine thugs outside a Syracuse night club.
Eager to raise some more heck, DX went over to the CNN Tower in hopes of getting a meeting with Ted Turner. This venture went nowhere, probably because no one at CNN was aware that Ted Turner owned a wrestling company.
All in all, DX posed with some more fans in the food court…
…shook hands with some security guards, and met precisely zero people affiliated with WCW.
They then declared yet another victory via the wonders of computer graphics. Not only did they pretend-spray-paint a slogan on the building…
…they ultimately blew the whole thing up with a missile, presumably killing all the friendly DX fans and security guards they had just met. Jeez, no wonder they were still heels.
Surprisingly, President Trump has yet to retweet the footage of his Small Business Administrator’s son-in-law blowing up Fake News headquarters.
If you ever had the misconception that DX was edgy, have a look at their hijinks from two weeks later. For DX to defeat WCW once and for all, they would need to take the fight to the skies. To that end, they gathered at a small airport, from which Triple H embarked on a mission that was absolutely top secret – either because it was really important or because it was unbelievably dumb.
Cut to stock footage of a fighter pilot, supposedly Triple H, doing barrel-rolls, all while Hunter cleverly mused about his “joystick” (meaning penis) and how he’s in the “cockpit” (meaning penis… pit) like the coolest MF’er in the biz.
An airsick HHH smoothly transitioned from dick jokes to puke jokes, wondering where the barf bag was. But then he no-sold vomiting!
Then it was time to do some sky-writing!
Sky-writing in a jet fighter!
Sky-writing in a jet fighter that took off from a small, private airport!
The naughty DX leader wrote a whole slew of rude slogans for everyone in whatever city WCW Nitro was being held in that week.
Cut to an out-of-context shot of some people pointing!
Man, WCW must have felt like such a dork right then!
In one final act of domination, HHH used a missile to finish off “Dubya-C-Dubya”, as Vince insisted it be pronounced every single time because he hates the fact that he was born and raised in the South.
Well, Hunter wouldn’t blast WCW as a whole, or even that night’s Nitro, but rather some unnamed, unseen “WCW officials”.
Locking onto these invisible targets, Trips claimed to launch a 500 megaton bomb, over 33,000 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima. My, that sounds devastating! What kind of bomb was it?
Napalm?
Uranium?
Hydrogen?
No, poop! It was a poop bomb!
“WCW officials… are now covered in s***”, Triple H explains. “Or maybe they’re just full of it!” Killer play on words there! The only thing that would have made it better was if, you know, there ever actually were WCW officials covered in poop.
Whoa! Maybe DX really did kill WCW!