Professional wrestling legend and WWE Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett who is a former four times WCW World Heavyweight champion recently pointed out the differences between his WCW run in 1996 and 1999. He talked about the changes in the promotion in these three years.
Jeff Jarrett had two different runs in WCW. One of them took place in 1996 which was a pretty short run and the other one started in 1999 and lasted till the death of the promotion. We need to talk about the differences between these time periods of WCW first.
Jeff Jarrett Points Out The Difference Of His WCW Run In 1996 & 1999
In 1996, WCW was the ultimate king of the professional wrestling world. They did not have any such competition whatsoever. All the big names of professional wrestling was working in WCW. WCW Monday Nitro was reaching the limit of the sky in ratings. There was no competition of it at all.
The closest Rival of WCW was WWE lost almost all of their big names to WCW. The only big name they had was the Hitman Bret Hart, whom eventually they lost too in 1997. It looked like WCW did not have any competition at all since they had all the big names, and especially nWo. WWE had to start everything from the beginning.
They took a new technique, creating their own stars. And they were very much successful in it. From 1996 to the end of WCW, WWE created so many big names including the likes of Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Mick Foley, Kane and many other who were the biggest attractions of WWE back in the time.
The only star WCW was able to create in that time was Goldberg whom also at the end WCW failed to book properly. Eventually, The Mighty WCW had to fall. They could not compete with the policy of WWE. The stars WWE created back in the time are considered as the legends of professional wrestling today.
By 1999 WCW completely lost the rating war. During an episode of Monday Night RAW in January, Mankind defeated the Rock to win the WWE championship. From that night, WWE never went down in ratings. The ratings of WCW started to drain and by 2001 the promotion died and it was purchased by none other than WWE.
Jeff Jarrett who is a former four times WCW World Heavyweight champion recently spoke on his My World podcast where he pointed out the differences between his WCW run in 1996 and 1999. He said;
“When I got there in ‘96, the vibe of, which had never been done, the team that produced WrestleMania every year was number 2. That was revolutionary. That was groundbreaking. There was the NWO, Hulk, Savage, Hall, and Nash. Fast forward to October ‘99, chaos. From the day I got there, I knew, felt, and observed, that ok, unorganized is a nice way of saying it.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription