He continued using the 1 – 2 – 3 Kid name until his departure for World Championship Wrestling ( WCW ) in 1996.

Psaltis continued to manage Storm until he left ECW for World Championship Wrestling ( WCW ) in May 2000.

Upon leaving, Flair was stripped of the WCW World title causing the separation of the WCW and NWA titles, but continued to be recognized as the NWA World champion until his arrival in the WWF a few months later when he was officially stripped of the NWA World title as well.

He and Randy Savage renewed hostilities when Savage arrived in WCW late in 1994, and their feud continued off and on for almost two years with each wrestler winning the WCW World Championship from each other at different times.

Throughout the year, the Hardy Boyz continued to win as a tag team, winning the WWF Tag Team Titles two more times, and the WCW Tag Team Championship during the Invasion.

Per this ruling, the title belt dropped the recognition as being the NWA World Heavyweight title but continued to be billed as the World Heavyweight Championship by WCW.

The new championship was not initially represented by its own title belt, and WCW continued to use the NWA World Heavyweight Championship title belt.

Meanwhile American promotion WWF continued on Sky television while its chief rival WCW made the jump from late-night ITV to British Wrestling's old Saturday afternoon ITV timeslot.

WCW continued to promote their events in the arena during the subsequent years, with their last appearance being a live taping of Thunder on February 16, 2000.

Sabu continued to wrestle some of the cruiserweights in WCW in the early days of the division, including a match against Mr. J. L.

Now with WCW, Awesome continued to be a major factor with the New Blood for the next month, teaming with Billy Kidman occasionally to aide him in his feud with Hulk Hogan.

The two continued to battle over the Television Title and fought a series of matches that led to them being offered a WCW contract.

In September 1995, Malenko and Benoit joined World Championship Wrestling ( WCW ), where he continued to be a villain.

Ross continued to hone his skills as Jim Crockett Promotions became NWA World Championship Wrestling ( WCW ).

Although Luger was the WCW World Champion, the NWA continued to recognize Flair as its champion until September, when he was stripped of it for signing with the WWF.

The joke continued later in WCW when Jones changed his name again, this time to Shane, the same as Vince's son's, Shane McMahon.

This continued on SmackDown !, where Gregory Helms lost the WCW Cruiserweight Championship against Billy Kidman and Booker defended the WCW Championship against Diamond Dallas Page.

When Raven quit WCW and went back to ECW a month after the group's inception, Vampiro and ICP stayed together under the moniker the Dark Carnival and continued without him.

The feud with Hogan continued for much of the remainder of the year and saw the group add Jimmy Hart as its manager, after he turned on Hogan in October 1995 and cost him the WCW World Heavyweight Championship in a match with the Giant.

Following WCW's closure, Steiner continued to wrestle in local venues and made several appearances with former fellow WCW superstar Buff Bagwell around the southeast United States and in Japan for Pro Wrestling Noah.

The stable disbanded immediately thereafter as WCW was purchased by the World Wrestling Federation ( although Storm and Awesome continued to team upon joining the WWF ).

Brown celebrated his status as an icon by appearing in a variety of entertainment and sports events, including an appearance on the WCW pay-per-view event, SuperBrawl X, where he danced alongside wrestler Ernest " The Cat " Miller, who based his character on Brown, during his in-ring skit with The Maestro.

When the WWE purchased both WCW and ECW in 2001, they also obtained the entire past video libraries of both productions and have released many past matches online and on home video.

In an effort to promote them and other young talent as the new superstars of the ring, the WWF began to play on the age restrictions which former WWF wrestlers such as Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage ( who by now were working for WCW ) now faced.

The creative changes made by the WWF creative board saw wrestling take on a " street fighting ", " bad attitude " approach ; however, despite the revolutionary changes in sports-entertainment that the WWF founded, 1997 remains the lowest of the WWF's financial income and a heavy loss in fan interest to rival WCW.

Many wrestlers such as Chris Jericho and The Radicalz ( Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, Dean Malenko ) were drafted from WCW, all publicly claiming on both companies ' TV broadcasts that they were extremely unhappy at the storylines and backstage chaos at WCW, and were further intrigued and happier with the structural running of the WWF.

Notably, Mick Foley's WWF Championship win over The Rock on Monday Night Raw saw WCW lose millions of viewers when Eric Bischoff instructed announcer Tony Schiavone to give away the result minutes before both main events started, which led to Raw drawing eleven million viewers.

Starting in 1995, TNT was also the home of WCW Monday Nitro, the flagship show of the now defunct World Championship Wrestling, once regularly the highest rated weekly program on cable.

European, Australian, Latin American, Spanish and Asian versions of TNT were launched in the 1990s but were exclusively dedicated to movies, mainly from the MGM and Warner Brothers archives ( The UK and Scandinavian TNT did show WCW Monday Nitro on Friday nights just four days after its US broadcast, and the Latin American version aired a children's block called " Magic Box ").

He wrestled there under the ring names 1 – 2 – 3 Kid and X-Pac off and on from 1993 – 2002, World Championship Wrestling ( WCW ) under the ring name Syxx, and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling ( TNA ) under the ring name Syxx-Pac and also under his real name.

Waltman appeared, sitting at ringside, during a live episode of WCW Monday Nitro on September 16, 1996.

Waltman returned to WWF programming on March 30, 1998, the night after WrestleMania XIV and days after being released from WCW.

and immediately attacked Hogan, claiming he had been waiting four years to do so, stemming from shoot comments from Hogan on WCW Thunder in 1998 after he was fired that he could not " cut the mustard ".

Once Bischoff was relieved of his duties in 1999, Vince Russo, a former writer for World Wrestling Federation, came on board to become the lead writer of WCW.

As a result, WCW programming was canceled on both TBS and TNT, leaving Vince McMahon's company, which at the time had an exclusive deal with Viacom, free to acquire the trademarks, video libraries and a few contracts.

Even though WCW folded in 2001, its legacy lived on in the WWF.

One memorable episode of Nitro took place on October 19, 1998, where local sport legends John Randle and Kirby Puckett alongside Minnesota native Ric Flair chased WCW president Eric Bischoff out of the building.

Rey Mysterio, Jr. made his World Championship Wrestling ( WCW ) debut on June 16, 1996 at The Great American Bash, challenging Dean Malenko for the WCW Cruiserweight Championship, which Malenko retained by cheating to win.

The next night, on the July 8 episode of WCW Monday Nitro, he defeated Malenko to win his first Cruiserweight Championship.

It also hosted a live edition of WCW Monday Nitro on October 28, 1996 following WCW Halloween Havoc, a taped Smackdown / ECW on August 25, 2009, and on March 29, 2010, a live episode of RAW that saw Shawn Michaels give his farewell speech to the WWE the night after losing to The Undertaker in a Streak vs Career match at WrestleMania XXVI, and the July 1, 2011 edition of Friday Night SmackDown taped on the June 28, 2011 live episode of WWE NXT.

It also featured the established Monday Night Wars, where both WCW and the WWF had Monday night shows that competed against each other in the ratings, and saw the WWF finally beat WCW for the first time in 84 weeks when McMahon made his in-ring debut against Austin.

The WCW World Heavyweight Championship was soon established when the recognition was awarded to then-NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair in 1991.

It was established in 1993 to honor wrestlers who began their careers long before the 1990s, mostly alumni of the National Wrestling Alliance ( NWA ) and Jim Crockett Promotions ( JCP ), the predecessors of WCW.

The WCW Hall of Fame was the second hall of fame established to honor professional wrestlers, after the creation of the World Wrestling Federation ( WWF ) Hall of Fame in February 1993.

This established a practice WCW used throughout 1998, as all of its pay-per-view events that year were co-branded.

In 1988, Crockett sold JCP to Ted Turner, who established WCW as its successor ; however, the title continued to be defended under the NWA name until January 1991, when WCW withdrew as a subsidiary to the NWA.

When the group first came together, as faces, it was with the idea that they were a group of younger wrestlers who had felt slighted by WCW management, never giving them the chance to be stars, while always giving older, more established wrestlers the top spots.

The Mamalukes were formed in late 1999 when Big Vito arrived in WCW and established a team with Johnny the Bull.