25 years later: WWF's purchase of WCW turned out to be the gamechanger that wasn't

The general view — at least at the time — was that Vince McMahon's purchase of his biggest rival was going to be a total game-changer. Not only were the Monday Night Wars now officially over, but the entire pro-wrestling landscape would be brought together under one roof for the first time. The whole thing at least started well enough.

Three days after the $4. 3 million deal was inked, Vince McMahon kicked off "Raw" with a scene-stealing announcement that he had acquired Ted Turner's former empire . As the Ohio crowd watched in awe, McMahon was upended by his own son, Shane, who appeared on video link from a WCW show in Florida.

The younger McMahon had a bombshell announcement of his own: He'd managed to get his name on the purchase, in lieu of his father's, thus executing an act of corporate skulduggery that wouldn't have been out of place in an episode of "Dallas. " Even with two and a half decades in the rear-view mirror, you can see what a massive deal all of this was at the time. For modern fans, just imagine all the "what if" energy of that John Cena heel turn segment from 2025's Elimination Chamber combined with the backstage drama of the whole Triple H succession plan from a few years ago — and then dial the intrigue up an extra 20%.

And here it was playing out on live television. If you were a teenage fan like me at the time, you felt like you'd been preparing for this moment for years — quite literally. Many of us had already booked crossover matches on classic wrestling games — "WWF No Mercy" for me, using the create-a-wrestler mode to create WCW names like Sting and Kevin Nash.