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What’s the story?
With the revival of War Games, Starrcade, and other intellectual properties of WCW through the WWE, many fans have questioned why the company has chosen to use so many past WCW properties.
Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter believes the successful returns of former WCW superstars in recent years could’ve led to WWE taking more risk with WCW properties.
In case you didn’t know...
When WWE bought the WCW library and roster, they briefly considered making WCW a separate show to replace on Monday Night Raw, but the plans were scrapped before Monday Nitro could be revived as a program.
The WWE have been no strangers to using some of WCW’s history for their own and cited the history of the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, The Great American Bash and Clash of Champions for pay-per-views, and their tape library is readily available on the WWE Network.
The heart of the matter
There have been rumours of WWE bringing back War Games for years, but it wasn’t until the latest episode of NXT that those rumours turned into reality. And it is now rumoured to be partially due to the success of Sting and Goldberg’s run.
Both men were former WCW wrestlers who had significant and successful runs during their tenure as performers.
Sting made his Raw debut on the Jan. 19, 2015 episode and averaged 4.1 million viewers; up nearly 200,000 viewers from the previous week.
After his WrestleMania match, Sting continued to appear on Monday Night Raw from the post-SummerSlam show to the Raw before Night of Champions. The shows did see a decline of approximately 500,000 but that could also be contributed to the absence of Brock Lesnar and The Undertaker, who were engaged in their final feud at the time.
Goldberg returned to the WWE on the Oct. 17, 2016 episode of Raw which averaged 3.130 million viewers; up nearly 375,000 viewers from the previous week’s show.
Goldberg's appearances on the go-home show for Survivor Series and the post-Survivor Series Raw received a significant increase in viewership.
His championship reign began at the Fastlane pay-per-view and the post-Fastlane edition of Raw was up 123,000 viewers from the previous week and the viewership would increase heading into WrestleMania 33.
What’s next?
War Games was one of the most successful and fondly remembered aspects of WCW’s history and many fans are ecstatic to see the match return to a professional wrestling ring.
NXT has been criticised by some for being a tad lacklustre, but there’s nothing lacklustre about the late Dusty Rhodes’ creation.
Author’s Take
NXT reviving War Games is considered by many to be the most exciting thing occurring for WWE this year.
Many fans can’t wait to see the match return, and neither can I!
