Welcome to the History of WCW

World Championship Wrestling (WCW) was an American professional wrestling promotion which, in its proper form, existed from 1988 to 2001. Although the name "World Championship Wrestling" had been used as a brand and television show name by various National Wrestling Alliance (NWA)-affiliated promotions (most notably Georgia Championship Wrestling and Jim Crockett Promotions) since 1983, it was not until five years later that an actual NWA-affiliated promotion called World Championship Wrestling appeared on the national scene, under the ownership of Atlanta, Georgia-based media mogul Ted Turner.

For the entirety of its existence as a separate promotion, WCW was the chief rival of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), and even the owners of its NWA-affiliated forerunner promotions regarded the WWF as their major competitor. At the outset of WCW's existence, as well as with the promotions that came before it, the company was strongly identified with the Southern style of professional wrestling (or rasslin'), which emphasized athletic in-ring competition over the showmanship and cartoonish characters of the WWF. This identification persisted into the 1990s, even as the company signed former WWF stars such as Hulk Hogan and "Macho Man" Randy Savage. WCW dominated pro wrestling's television ratings from 1996 to 1998, mainly due to its incredibly popular New World Order (nWo) storyline, but thereafter began to lose heavy ground to the WWF, which had recovered greatly due to its new WWF "Attitude" branding. The promotion began losing large amounts of money, leading to parent company AOL Time Warner selling the company to the WWF for roughly $7 million in 2001.