Gimmick Some Lovin': No Disqualification Match

Putting Butts in Seats

If you have cable or satellite television service, go ahead and try to set your DVR to record WCW Monday Nitro. Notice something off?

There are a lot of reasons why you can't do that right now, and January 4, 1999, is one of the biggest. Dozens of weeks of WCW dominance over Monday night basic cable ratings began to erode in the spring and summer of 1998, with D-Generation X riding a tank and singlehandedly saving the wrestling industry as we know it gaining steam as off-color babyfaces and crowds nearly blowing the roof off arenas across America when the glass shattered at the start of Austin's entrance theme.

WCW, meanwhile, proved that innovation was still its MO, and gave fans such never-before-seen main events as Hogan vs. Randy Savage, Lex Luger vs. Savage, and Hogan vs. The [Legally Unable to be Ultimate] Warrior, not to mention never-before-wanted PPV clashes like Diamond Dallas Page and Jay Leno vs. Hogan and Bischoff or Page and NBA star Karl Malone vs. Hogan and Dennis Rodman (there seems to be a pattern here, but I can't quite put my finger on it).

What was once a weekly slam dunk for Atlanta became a weekly toss-up, and by the dawn of 1999, the World Wrestling Federation was winning more often than losing.

Desperate to "move the needle", Bischoff tried the one-two punch of WCW tricks to pop a big rating: giving away a marquee title change on free television and spoiling the WWF's pre-taped programming to disable remotes nationwide.

Multiple times throughout the broadcast, Bischoff had announcer Tony Schiavone make the comment that Mick Foley, formerly Cactus Jack in WCW, would be winning the World Wrestling Federation Championship, a move which he caustically noted: "will put a lot of butts in seats."

Bischoff and Schiavone wildly underestimated how many butts this face could put in seats.

Ninety-nine times out of 100, spoiling a major main event in that way would have kept viewers away from the competing show, but this was no ordinary spoiler. Schiavone promised viewers that, if they changed the channel, they would see a grizzled veteran win his first singles championship in the World Wrestling Federation in a cathartic victory over the evil heels who had been tormenting Federation babyfaces for months (while Schiavone's own show would be presenting an old man with mobility issues and poor cardio taking on an even older man with more mobility issues and worse cardio).

Pictured: whatever Eric Bischoff THINKS puts butts in seats.

Literally, hundreds of thousands of fans (nearly two-thirds of a million) changed the channel and did not change back, after the first announcement, and subsequent announcements (including the start of the main event slot) had similar effects on WCW's dwindling audience. Often, rating graphs for the two shows at the time showed corresponding peaks and valleys depending on what was being presented head-to-head; Raw's ratings were mostly growing peaks as the night wore on.