Rants

WCW Thunder

By Scott Keith on 16 February 2019


Was WCW Thunder a request/idea from Turner, a WCW concept, or some combo of both? I was just going back from that time frame, and it's really weird; Thunder debuted in early January of 1998, yet Nitro "officially" went to 3 hours every week at the end of that month.

It was a request in the sense that TBS went to WCW and said "We want two hours of content on Thursday night, make it happen" and that was the end of the discussion. The original concept was for the nWo to "win" Nitro, which is why they had the prototype nWo Saturday Night shows and the disastrous nWo Souled Out and nWo Nitro. Once Nitro was rebranded, the WCW crew would then "split" off to Thunder, because apparently retreating like a bunch of losers is exactly what would make people watch. At any rate, the nWo focused shows were such a flop that they killed the whole plan and just made Thunder a complete B-show.