The Monday Night War - WWE Raw vs. WCW Nitro
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DVD details
Actor: Eric Bischoff, Vince McMahonDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 180 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-02-10
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: World Wrestling
DVD Reviews of The Monday Night War - WWE Raw vs. WCW Nitro
DVD Review: Almost complete B.S.
Summary: 2 Stars
Almost complete revisionist B.S. perpetrated by Vince Mcmahon. If you're dumb enough to believe a lot of what's said on this DVD set- you deserve to own it. DVD Review: WWE product therefor fabricated.
Summary: 1 Stars
WCW was the greatest wrestling ever. This package does not show the WCW beatings of WWF at all and is way to self absorbed in the WWE side. The fact that Vicne has WCW rights is BS.....Ted Turner killed WCW not Bishoff, Bishoff came up with the greatest wrestling story angle in history that has still never been bested. This is a WWE product so this wont reflect WCW very much or their accomplishments. HAIL WCW 95-98 the greatest wrestling ever filmed.DVD Review: A little too self-congratulatory...
Summary: 3 Stars
Yes I know this is a WWE product and therefore things will be a bit biased on their side, but cmon guys... Pretty much they gloss over the 84 weeks that WCW was beating the WWF in the ratings and instead focus on the rising star of Steve Austin. Yes he was instrumental in helping the WWF during that time but to shift the focus away from what was really happening is pretty lame.
Interestingly enough, of all the promos and clips they show...one thing they do NOT show are the promos that say the WWF has gone to the US government to look into why WCW was running their show on the same night as RAW and making wrestling fans choose a side to be on. I remember seeing those promos and thinking...Vince...you are whining like a baby.
I'd give this a cautious thumbs up, but keep in mind that things are pretty biased here.
T
DVD Review: The Monday Night Lies
Summary: 3 Stars
The Monday Night War is a pretty good documentary between the war. People who get talk on here is Eric Bischoff, Vince Mcmahon, Jim Ross, Eddie Guerrero, Gerald Brisco, Mick Foley, Chris Benoit, Big Show, Chris Jericho
Rey Mysterio, Jim Cornette, Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels, gene okerlund. They show some clips before the monday night war started. It talks about when first Raw started and Eric Bischoff talks about how he became executive producer and started nitro. It has a lot to talk about the formation of the NWO, well anyways I would like to explain more. In my opinion, I would rather read information on the internet, cause this dvd is basically a one-minded story. The WWF makes it to sound like WCW is nothing but pure evil
DVD Review: There's some neat things here, but it really shows how history truly is written by the winners.
Summary: 3 Stars
Ah, the Monday Night War. I'm a child of this era, a wrestling fan who grew up on the head-to-head programs of WCW Nitro and WWF (now WWE) Raw. Make no mistake about it: this was truly THE best time to be a wrestling fan. Both companies were pushed to dish out the best they could offer and put on the best damn wrestling shows they could come up with to entertain their fans and stand alone and triumphant in the wrestling business. The tale of the Ted Turner-owned WCW's spectacular rise and equally jaw-dropping fall in particular remains one of the most talked-about elements of wrestling history. Therefore, I was really looking forward to a DVD that would allow me to both relive this era and explain the workings behind the crucial events within it. Was it successful? Did I learn anything?
Well, I did learn one thing for sure. And that's the truth behind a quote from Sir Winston Churchill: "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."
Basically, it's the tale of the history of WCW vs. the WWE, written in hindsight by the WWE. Granted, Eric Bischoff is given a good amount of interview time to discuss his rise to power in WCW and the incredible innovations he made that nearly did the impossible and drove Vince McMahon out of business. A lot of his segments were quite informative about how things were working on WCW's end during the era. Of course, that could be because he's pretty much the only guy in the DVD who's defending WCW, but hey.
But mainly, the documantary's bias shines through, as expected. With a few exceptions in which the WWE's mistakes along the way are, in fact, acknowledged (the Billionare Ted skits come to mind), a lot of it is devoted to painting WCW in a negative light both when they were on top (basically talking about how horrible Bischoff was for trying to put them out of business) and when they were struggling (highlighting just how big of incompetent doofs they were. Although, to be fair, there's really no defending the outright idiocy of 1999-2001 era WCW, so this part is pretty much true and acceptable). Some of it is understandable; guys like Big Show, Chris Jericho, the late Eddie Guerrerro, and Rey Mysterio, for example, all give justifiably negative comments, given how they all struggled under the weight of WCW's political machine.
But some of the bias is just re-freakin'-diculous. I'm thinking here of Gerald "The biggest lesson of the Monday Night Wars was 'don't mess with Vince McMahon!'" Briscoe. His relentless towing of the company line was the funny kind of ridiculous: I couldn't help but laugh every time he came up in the DVD and shamelessly buried his nose further down McMahon's kiester.
But some of the ridiculousness is just infuriating. Here, I'm thinking of a comment by Vince himself during the section about Bischoff's going head to head with the WWF on Monday night: "My philosophy of business is 'help yourself, don't hurt the other guy.' And I daresay that Ted...has a different philosophy. I think his philosophy is 'win any way you can. If you can hurt the other guy, great. That's good.'"
"Help yourself, not hurt the other guy," Vince? Just like you "didn't hurt" all the territorial NWA promotors by signing away all their talent and stealing away their TV time? Or Jim Crockett, when you drove him out of business when the WWE was already the top mainstream promotion? Or Paul Heyman, when both you and WCW raided the roster of ECW and ripped off of Heyman's creative innovations? Don't get me wrong: there's a good reason why Vince is the most successful promotor in history, due to his effective and downright ruthless business decisions. But for him to cry and moan when somebody else pulls the same tricks on him, and claim himself to be some benevolent, non-competitive saint is a new low in hypocracy. At least Gerald Briscoe made me laugh: this sort of B.S. makes my blood boil.
The pro-WWE bias aside, there's also problems with omission of certain events. Most of the big turning points in the war, like the formation of the nWo, the Montreal Screwjob, and the start of Austin/McMahon, are present. But some other things either aren't addressed in much depth (Vince Russo's reign of terror. God, no words can describe how terrible that was), or aren't even addressed altogether (ex: The Fingerpoke of Doom. I watched that incident live, and the sheer anger and scorn that it provoked among fans, as well as its representation of everything wrong with WCW's backstage structure, cannot be underscored). For the most part, it's an okay overview of the era, but it's incomplete.
Yet for some reason, I still enjoyed this DVD, in the end. It's a decent overview of some of the key events of that era. And there's some pretty decent extras. My favorites are two of WCW's biggest (and last) true mark-out moments: Goldberg's title win, and Ric Flair's return in Greenville. And there's also a good 1997 Raw tag match featuring Stone Cold and HBK vs. the British Bulldog and Owen Hart, that really reminded me just what a great talent Owen was and made me miss him all over again. However, the extras still aren't as rich as in other WWE DVD's.
I'm giving this DVD half-a-star off for Gerald Briscoe's shameless cheerleading, one full star off for Vince having the gall to play the victim when it comes to ruthless business practices, and another half off for its omissions in both the presentation and extras. It's not too bad a DVD, but there are better. It's definitely a nice, basic walk through memory lane of a classic era in pro wrestling. But if you're looking for a more definitive examination of the historic events of wrestling from 1995-2001, particularly from WCW's side, I'd recommend Bryan Alvarez and R.D. Reynolds's excellent book "The Death of WCW."
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