When Kevin Nash made the statement this past Monday night on RAW that he and Scott Hall ignited the Monday Night Wars, he was absolutely right . . . sort of. While the appearances of Hall and Nash on WCW television certainly kicked Vince and his company straight in the spauldings en route to capturing the market share of the wrestling audience, before we can give the “Outsiders” their due, we first have to rewind and look at the man who may have indeed ignited his own downfall by underestimating the two superstars who were on his roster at the time – Vince McMahon.
At the time of this monumental shift in the business, I can remember having dinner with Bruce Prichard. He told me that the contracts of both Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were up, and that they were asking for more money than Vince was willing to pay. Bruce basically knew at that time that both Scott and Kevin were going to walk.
Looking back, the precedent WWE had set over the years was that, at that time, the “Fed” was the place to be. If you wanted to have a successful career in wrestling you could only do it one way – under Vince McMahon’s thumb. To Vince and WWE, the WCW was what they’d call a “southern promotion”. It was never any kind of a threat to them, being that Ted Turner wasn’t a wrestling guy, and just hired a group of “good ol’ boys” to run his company.
Unfortunately, Vince McMahon would soon find out that Eric Bischoff was no “good ol’ boy” at all. As a matter of fact, Eric may have been even more shrewd and calculating than Vince – who, by the way, made a living by putting smaller wrestling territories out of business years prior.
There are many that refuse to give EB the credit for the idea of the NWO, stating that he stole it from a Japanese wrestling promotion who was doing something similar at the time. And, even though I think that is absolute rubbish, the fire that the NWO set had to be first fueled by both Eric’s savvy business sense and the potential he saw in signing the top two free agents from his competitor.
There is no question in my mind, that even though Vince didn’t want Kevin and Scott to leave his company, he was sure that they would drop squarely on their chin without him. He was wrong. The boss was DEAD WRONG.
