Ten Years Ago - The Invasion!

(Or The Art Of Salvaging As Much As Possible After A Buy-Out...!)


Well, it was truly the staged invasion, granted; but it was still a joy to watch and an infinitesimal tiny bit of revenge for the thinking man wrestling fan as the party that should have won but wound up being swollen up instead almost, almost exacted revenge upon the bigger corporate gargantuan that won out - bigger within the rasslin business, anyhow, but not in any other imaginable way that can be thought of, no way!

No way, did I just say (or type, really) "no way" - as in No Way Out, perhaps? Well someone said that there was no other way to go, indeed, than the "nWo" (his exact words at the time were "the nWo is the only way to go" - maybe with a "yo" at the end of that, I am not sure anymore - maybe that was the other guy saying it then; y'know who... the outsider! But that is pointless now, really...)

A little glimpse now at what it was all about, in a nutshell, may be required and so, here is your refresher course right here, wweeeeee willing:



Oopsy-do. The long arm of the corporate copyright law got us there - again! Oh well - maybe it is for the best, for this whole thing, deal, and business overall consistently falls short of expectations year in, year out; day in, day out!

This "invasion" was no exception at all, au contraire, it was the worse such example yet, back then! It fell short on so many levels that one knows not where to start, in truth... (No R-Truth reference there whatsoever - really, none.)

The Invasion storyline was flawed from the very beginning - for, as joyful as it was to see Booker T demolish Vince McMahon on Day One, all it truly evoked was the slaves' uprising against the white man. And that is never a good thing to evoke in this form of alleged "art". As good as he was (a "five-time, five-time, five-time, five-time, five-time WCW World Heavyweight champion" as he said himself much more than, er, five times - countless times!) Booker T was not the biggest draw in WCW when it was kicking the rear end of WWF/WWE: he was just the man with the distinction of being the last guy who got the "big push" before WCW went under. The likes of Sting, Hogan, Hall, Nash, Goldberg, Rey Mysterio Jr and, of course, Ric Flair were all missing from this "invasion" scenario; and that incapacitated it more than just slightly, right off the bat! To see Stone Cold Steve Austin act so outraged about seeing a WCW guy calling him out was also extremely ridiculous - WCW being his old stomping grounds and where he first became a star too! He should have joined the WCW gang right away - as he eventually did, later on, after someone, somewhere in McMahon's ridiculous organization realized it was the most logical thing to do: but it wasn't properly executed at all by then... Others who had been in WCW and were found to be in the WWE already at the time of this infamous "invasion" should have defected pronto, back to their roots, if they were, at all, any kind of men of honor, that is - but they did not (these others being dudes such as Chris Jericho, The Giant/Big Show, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, Dean Malenko and... well, Chris Benoit but, for the life of me, I cannot seem to recall what Benoit did then and where Benoit was at all, at the time...?!? Maybe he was off nursing an injury - to the head, likely... Concussions are nasty tenacious buggers, y'know... He was out buying and sampling steroids? Or he was seeking shamanic treatment for the latest spell Kevin Sullivan had cast upon him! Either way, he wasn't around - and it doesn't really matter either; not anymore, it doesn't... One thing I must assure you of, though, is that my not remembering him has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that McMahon, acting all Pharaoh-like, declared that the name of Benoit be erased from all WWE records, memorabilia, crap by any other name... HA. He is no Pharaoh -Maivia was, in that inane Scorpion King film, and it wasn't believable one iota either; but that is another story- and even if Vinnie Mac was some sort of a king, I would not obey any of his decrees! CHRIS BENOIT, one of the greatest members of the Four Horsemen ever, WAS A HUGE COMPETITOR AND PERFORMER, one who made so much money FOR VINCE McMAHON'S LOUSY WWF-WWE; and that Vinnie Mac cannot deny! Though he may try... But enough digressing already! Let's get back to the Invasion fiasco right now...)

For the life of me, I can't remember where were some of the blasted WWE "defenders" either - since guys like HBK and Triple H have become so identified with that brand, they had to be there, as the first line of defense, no? I guess they were in the back, chilling out, DX style... because I simply cannot recall their roles, if any, in this thing!

The first concrete sign of trouble, though, was most certainly the new logo and "alarm-sounding" theme that the overall purchased company-entity then still known as WCW (and, then, still a separate, distinctive thing too, supposedly) was branded with and identified with throughout the tortuous storyline... watch this, now... and cover your ears!




The invasion got further ruined by the late arrival and, then, appalling misuse of important components of the deal (the transaction that saw WWF purchase WCW in March 2001 - remember?) those being, namely, Stacy Keibler and, most of all, the haughty/bitchy Torrie Wilson! Sure, they had tons more class than the top two bimbos (Trish Stratus and, ugh, Lita!) McMahon had in his circus at the time (and nowadays, it's gotten to be even worse than that!) but it was all pretty much white trash whichever way you looked at it...! It was even worse with the guys, of course: between the WWF's reigning Intercontinental champion (Albert - would you believe!) ECW's Rhyno and WCW's Shawn Stasiak, it truly didn't get any WORSE than THIS... They had to make do with what they had, I guess; and try to generate some drama with that. The big idea was then "not to remain statically restrained to the original affiliations" of wrestlers - and play with those a little bit. That may have been the most creative that they got to be, there, for close to two decades! Still, it made no sense that Kurt Angle would defect from the WWF to the WCW-ECW alliance; then again, he has since defected for real and left the WWE to sign up with TNA, so maybe *he belonged* after all, eh?

Crappy fiction often influences reality - haven't you noticed yet?
As long as reality is not crappier than fiction...

Here's the recap of the true high point night of this invasion thing:



All in all, the best thing about the clashes between the two brands was to be found with the REF SQUADS! Most bizarrely of all, it was indeed with the referees most identified with each company that one would truly have a feeling of this being an "invasion" of any kind...! Earl Hebner being such a WWF-WWE nerd and such a "faithful" company man and employee of McMahon's (he, too, has since left to join TNA, incidentally...!) while of the four last remaining WCW referees (still-employed by McMahon after the WCW acquisition - there is a fifth one though; read on) three were so well-recognized and a part of everyday and PPV (pay-per-view) WCW action (especially Charles Robinson who was under Ric Flair's tutelage for a time and known as "Little Naitch" for the duration; then there was my true favorite, Nick Patrick, seen in action NEXT...) that McMahon simply had to use them too... badly, as usual. Have a dreaded look again:



Here you can see, in what became the "post-WCW new WCW on the WB that would soon become the CW" (!) for a short period of time, the fifth WCW referee officiating an abuse session in which another talent-find from McMahon's circus mistreats Charles Robinson of all people... (Yes - this is the reason why they kept former WCW employees on the payroll - to abuse them. A little and a lot sort of post-event retribution for the years of losing in the ratings war versus WCW... How petty of McMahon and company.)






The other WCW referees have since escaped this poor treatment - either through resignation, dismissal or... death.

Many of the protagonists of the "invasion" tale are indeed completely out of this cruel business now - or six feet under too.

Only a very finite number of guys from those days (and either roster, really: the invading WCW and the invaded WWE) REMAIN WITH THE DAMN COMPANY TODAY!

None will be remembered for this plotline - mercifully.
Well, I hope that this commemorative posting on the SASAOA blog will not change that now...! The intent here was to give a true spin to the tenth anniversary of that distasteful "invasion" - one that balances out all the milking that the WWE is attempting right now as they reactivated WCW on their website! "The WCW legacy revisited" they now say - HA. Bunch of hypocrites. All they care to say about are two or three things: first off, remind everyone that it is dead. Second, underline the fact that the vast majority of the WCW stars were, at some point in their careers, also WWE talent - and that, now they're either inactive or dead. And third, the wwe creeps want you to realize that their product nowadays is so much more "avant-garde" - HA. To that last inane and vain hope that Titan Sports holds on to so desperately, we can only deliver one final, fatal blow to it by showcasing the final piece of videographical evidence: evidence that shows without a shadow of a doubt that the clods wearing tights these days make more mistakes leading to injuries than any of the old dogs in the glory days of the NWA/WCW...!



The damn WWE never cared about the well-being of their wrestlers: whether they were doped or not. It began to test their people only to avoid further scandals as the whole Superstar Billy Graham affair...! And then what did they do: ban a gent like Tully Blanchard, who was not even all ballooned up like the true "roid monsters" McMahon used to give the preference to? And now MacClown there wants to put Blanchard in his silly little hall of fame, along with the other Horsemen, this despite the fact that he fired Blanchard under the falsest of false-face premises *and* Flair is still active, with rival TNA...?!? McMahon is so full of himself he insists to indict into his hall of fame a wrestler who is helping out a competitor - a competitor that McMahon still underestimates, quite visibly!

At least TNA never had a steroid scandal yet - or murderers among their roster!
Take that, McMahons!