5 Events that led to WWE winning the Monday Night War

#4 The Austin/McMahon match that never was (April 13, 1998)

Stone Cold and Vince McMahon square off ahead of their "match" on April 13, 1998, Raw

83 weeks. That's how long the uninterrupted winning streak of WCW Nitro over WWE Raw was. For 83 straight weeks, Nitro won the wrestling war. However, that all changed on April 13, 1998. Fresh off his world title victory over Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XIV, Stone Cold Steve Austin was embroiled in a war of words with the owner of WWE, Vince McMahon.

The discord between owner and champion escalated in the opening segment of Raw which saw Stone Cold challenge his boss to a match with the WWE title on the line. It played into a showlong storyline in which McMahon first did some soul searching before accepting Austin's challenge, then did some rudimentary wrestling training with his corporate team of Gerald Brisco and Pat Patterson. All of that led to the eventual title match in the main event slot where Austin and McMahon were interrupted by Dude Love, who would lay Stone Cold out to end the show.

The effect of this sole rating victory for WWE had a far greater effect on WCW than it should have done. The ratings loss spooked WCW boss Eric Bischoff, who threw much of WCW's long-term booking into the waste bin and instead became obsessed with short-term booking gains to reverse the (slight) rating decline.

Case in point, the July 6, 1998 episode of Nitro where, with just one week's worth of promotion, WCW rushed to book their white-hot superstar, Goldberg, into a WCW World title match with Hollywood Hulk Hogan. That first time ever bout would have earned millions in revenue and pay-per-view buys. WCW threw it onto free television merely to win a one-week ratings battle. It was successful, but at what cost to WCW's future financial viability?

Goldberg continued his momentum unabated but had few worthwhile opponents lined up as most of WCW's main event crew were tied up in other programs. Making matters worse, Hogan still dominated the headline positions in non-title scenarios. The biggest problem was that Goldberg's rush job was not a solitary quick fix.

Bischoff threw money around like it was growing on trees and paid millions of dollars to put rock bands on Nitro such as Kiss and Megadeth, which proved to be a rating killer. Titles also started changing hands with increasing regularity in a doomed attempt to boost intrigue, losing meaning each and every time. Bischoff's genius entered terminal decline, all because of one week's ratings defeat. Think about that for a moment.