WCW Invasion for those watching at the time

["Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay]

So, the InVasion gets shat on an awful lot in hindsight. Justifiably! It should have been the greatest angle of all time, and it was f***ing atrocious.

However...

I was 12 at the time, and for me... the early phase of the InVasion was actually f***ing awesome.

Shane McMahon buying WCW is one of the main issues with the whole angle, and people say that the McMahon family feuds were played out even at the time, but Shane got a big pop from the crowds on both shows when he said it.

And speaking of big pops, while the first shots fired in the InVasion were by ridiculous midcarders... am I the only one that marked out like a boss at that shit?

I was an ECW and WCW viewer until the bitter end for both promotions and so these midcarders were my boys. Lance Storm showing up made me mark out. And Mike Awesome winning the hardcore title? I practically shat myself with excitement.

The big stars would never show, the angle would die, it would all go off the rails, but I was actually a pretty big fan of the WCW midcarders (and outright scrubs) that showed up when this angle happened originally.

Those watching at the time... how did you feel about it all?

[Tea & Crumpets]

I didn't get to see it til like,late 2002 early 2003 via vcr tapes but I loved it while I watched it. Storm Awesome DDP and Kanyon were four of my main men. If Goldberg and Steiner and Nash and Sting had shown up it'd have been fine.

[Ben Wyatt]

Jan 9, 2018 7:32:46 GMT -5 "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay said:

So, the InVasion gets shat on an awful lot in hindsight. Justifiably! It should have been the greatest angle of all time, and it was f***ing atrocious.

However...

I was 12 at the time, and for me... the early phase of the InVasion was actually f***ing awesome.

Shane McMahon buying WCW is one of the main issues with the whole angle, and people say that the McMahon family feuds were played out even at the time, but Shane got a big pop from the crowds on both shows when he said it.

And speaking of big pops, while the first shots fired in the InVasion were by ridiculous midcarders... am I the only one that marked out like a boss at that shit?

I was an ECW and WCW viewer until the bitter end for both promotions and so these midcarders were my boys. Lance Storm showing up made me mark out. And Mike Awesome winning the hardcore title? I practically shat myself with excitement.

The big stars would never show, the angle would die, it would all go off the rails, but I was actually a pretty big fan of the WCW midcarders (and outright scrubs) that showed up when this angle happened originally.

Those watching at the time... how did you feel about it all?

I was alright with it...right until Austin's turn which made absolutely no sense whatsoever.  That was when you knew it was going downhill fast

[Lt. Palumbo]

Velocity and Heat were genuinely must watch at the time.

[Oh Cry Me a Screwball]

I feel like the Invasion ended up starting prematurely because the WWF was setting up Austin vs. Triple H with the heel/face roles swapped as the main summer feud, but then Hunter tore his quad, and they moved forward before they were ready.

If they could have delayed the angle for a few months, while securing a timeslot for the WCW midcard so they could get over with the WWF audience and awaited some of the main event talent contracts to expire, we might have had a chance at getting an Invasion that at least seemed worthy of the hype.

[King Devitt: What Plants Crave]

They wouldn't pony up the money to hire anyone that would have made it actually interesting and enthralling.

They ended up hiring people that would have done both within the next two years or so after.

The only thing I marked for was DDP, and then that was shot, buried, dug up, Vince took a big shit on it, and buried it again.

I f***ing hated the Invasion storyline.

Between that and HHH's reign of terror soon after, the WWE is lucky they kept any fans. Myself included.

Altho we did have Smackdown at the time...

[Natural Born Farmer]

Except perhaps for Goldberg, everyone sitting at home waiting out their contracts was definitely going to get in the ring again. By rushing the angle before they had the biggest stars on their roster WWE essentially killed it. Delay of a few months would have worked wonders.

[cassonova]

I was excited up until the point where WCW became the Alliance. At that point, I knew this had nothing to do with an invasion and was going to be about the McMahons and their daddy issues. That being said, I was all for the "B" shows, as that's where the interesting matches were.

[Toilet Paper Roll]

I was in my late teens and was more excited for this than anything.

I was also more disappointed than anything. It was atrocious. The WCW guys were fodder for a McMahon storyline that nobody asked for. It was exciting when WCW and ECW teamed up.... and then it just lead right to even more McMahon crap...

[sunnytaker]

I remember being very hyped for the reveal of team ECW as a wild card third faction that neither wwe or wcw could really trust- then by the end of the show steph was revealed to the mastermind, and she joined with shane and I was done. yes I realize they did it because they didn't have the top wcw guys other than Booker T and had to make the alliance look like an actual threat to wwe and all but I was really looking forward to a three way war.

[Deleted]

I was pretty young when this happened and oddly enough, being barely familiar with wcw/ecw made the beginning of the invasion a big deal to me.

I knew the names, not how important or otherwise they were, so everyone came off as probably a bigger deal than they were in actuality

[Gerard Gerard]

It was thrilling. Lance Storm and Mike Awesome's run-ins were fantastic tasters for what was expected to be an all-out war of the worlds. On reflection, however, I realize a lot of my excitement at the time was based on potential directions. The fan sites are the time were buzzing with hopes/dreams/prayers of big-name appearances and shocking set-pieces, all of which was underpinned by a sense of "oh, this can't possibly be it...."

It is further irritating that a lot of the big-names that sat out their contract ended up WWE-bound within the next 12-16 months anyways.

[Feargus McReddit]

Funny thing, I’m pretty sure the InVasion Angle turned me into a “smark”.

So when I was watching it, I didn’t think much of the storyline. It was cool to see new people or people I only heard about briefly and I at least enjoyed parts of the storyline.

Then there was the interview segment with Kurt Angle which had Shawn Stasiak run into the steel grating to try and attack him and, for reasons I only knew at the time, something clicked in my brain that made me realise that this whole thing was a farce, the WCW guys were deliberately made to look like crap and it was nowhere near as fun as it should have been.

So yes, Shawn Stasiak turned a 13 year old boy into a guy who’d be more cynical about WWE storylines from then on.

[Cry Me a Wiggle]

I was a WCW fan who was actually THRILLED when McMahon bought the company, as I believed everything he said about building up WCW as a viable brand again.

Needless to say, the InVasion extinguished my need to watch wrestling on a weekly basis.

[Joe Neglia]

It's hard to say in hindsight now, given what's happened since, but when Hugh Morrus hit the ring as the 2nd run-in, I marked like hell. At the time, one of my favorite workers in the business.

[thecrusherwi]

I was 14 at the time and I hated it at first. I had stopped watching WCW in mid 2000 when all the stars I knew had left and the booking got stupid. Once they teased that WCW guys would be showing up, I was worried that it was going to ruin the WWF product that was still hot at the time (albeit it cooled off after Mania). It sorta grew on me towards the end, but it drastically changed the company really quickly. Within a year, we had the brand split and the name change and it felt sorta like all three companies from the boom were gone.

[BrodietheSlayer]

I like to call it the costliest come shot in wrestling/sports entertainment history. Millions of dollars flushed down the toilet just to state the obvious ("WWF WINS!!!"), and I would say that this was the angle that pretty much killed the wrestling boom of the late 90's/early 2000's, as the ratings would never return to the levels they had been before that angle started (and they lost a lot of fans that NEVER came back).


Now it doesn't look as horrible in retrospect, but the only way I could describe it for today's fan would be this; it would be like if WWE ended up buying out ROH and NJPW, and then bringing a good chunk of those companies' rosters in to make complete goofs out of them. Kenny Omega getting beat easily by perennial lower/mid carders like Heath Slater and Bo Dallas, for example, and all of them forced to cower in front of Stephanie McMahon (well, I guess that wouldn't be too different from what we get now, but I will say that the "Invasion" storyline is what started that, as I think Steph got a real charge out of making the WCW/ECW wrestlers look like complete chumps in her presence, and decided, "Hey, wouldn't it be great to just have ALL the roster react like that to me.").

[Big Poppa Pumpkin]

I enjoyed this period at the time, 10 year old me was real pissed off when William Regal screwed Kurt Angle out of the belt. Only like a handful of the WCW dudes didn't look like complete clowns to me. In hindsight the problems were obvious and it was a big waste of an opportunity

[psychokiller]

I stopped watching during this time for about 6 months outside of a few things here & there. I was really insulted as a fan to see what they did to the WCW & ECW guys. It was horrible. They had a second chance at reviving ECW in 2006 too & they blew it thanks to Vince’s out of control ego.

[TGM]

I was 14 and I loved it.