Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23576 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-04-05
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 181 minutes

Special Features

• Additional footage (80 mins)

DVD Technical Information:

• Running Time: 181 mins
  
• Region Code: 2
  
• Aspect Ratio: Fullscreen 4:3
  
• Language: English

Synopsis
Charting the head-to-head battle of WWE and WCW on Monday nights in the 1990s as the two wrestling organisations compete for supremacy. A three hour wrestling ride through the background to the greatest contact sports series, including the early days, the Birth of Nitro and New World Order. Featuring the superstars of the ring Stone Cold Steve Austin and Ric Flair.

Customer Reviews

Monday nights were never the same.
It was a beutiful time to be a wrestling fan. WCWs Monday Nitro and WWFs Raw is War head to head to see who was the dominent company in professional wrestling and sports entertainment. It was one low blow after another, neither of them were afraid to break the rules. Once upon a time, Raw was a pre-taped show and Nitro was live, Eric Bischoff would check up on the results of his rivals show and appear on Nitro to tell the viewers what would happen on Raw 3 minutes before it startred! And how can we forget Rick Rude appearing on Nitro absoulutely lambasting Vince McMahon for screwing Bret 'The Hitman' Hart out the WWF championship. O! And of coarse, there was the time when WCW signed Yolanda Blaze from WWF while she was the Womens Champion, brought the belt into Nitro with her, went live on air, and dumped the belt in a bin! The WWF had a few dirty tricks up their sleeve aswell, one time when Raw and Nitro were setting up in the same town, Vince McMahon sent along D-Generation-X (WWFs answer to the NWO) to set-up a demenstration outside the the arena WCW were using and waging war on Ted Turners promotion and held Nitro up for ten minutes! (They even took an unloaded tank with them!) WWF also took the absoulute mickey out of the then dominent WCW champion Goldberg by having this little skinny guy called 'Gillberg' hilarioly mimic Goldberg in everyway. They also stole many superstars from eachother, WWF signed The Big Show, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero from right under WCWs nose. WCW snatched Jeff Jarret, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall from WWFs clutches.
Yes those were days. But of coarse times change, WCW's now out of business and WWF is now called WWE and there's no real rival in their way. Eric Bischoff now works in WWE! Who would've seen that 4 years ago? And many WCW superstars including Goldberg, Booker T, Scott Steiner and Rey Mysterio are now making their living in The McMahon empire now.
The DVD includes interviews with Vince McMahon, Eric Bischoff, Gerald Brisco, Shawn Michaels, Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Eddie Guerrero (A man who seen the good and the bad from the war) and various others. I'm not sure what the special features are yet but I do know that it contains 4 matches (2 from Raw, 2 from Nitro) which is a little dissapointing you'd think it would show more, but this is the sort of DVD that wrestling fans of any type should enjoy especially the ones old enough to remember the glory days of McMahon Vs Bischoff. The memories should just flood back in.
Of coarse we brits knew it as the Friday night war since those were the nights Sky and TCM showed them.

WWF Vs WCW
This being a WWE production you would come to expect another piece of WWE propaganda, but in all fairness to WWE they do call it truthfully to a certain extent. Basically the production tries to set the tone of- the WWF are the good guys and WCW are the bad, but with that out of the way and the fact that the WWE don't tell the whole story on few occasions, this DVD is highly entertaining.

There are two things I find funny about this DVD, the first being when Vince McMahon talks about the Montreal screwjob incedent saying he was trying to be the biggest heel he could ever be. The truth is he did what he did because Bret Hart could NOT go to World Championship Wrestling with the World Wrestling Federation title belt.Why he didn't say this is a mystery. The second being the WWE's sour grapes towards Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara. The two are absolutly buried.

Between 1996 and the start of 2001 it was a great time to be a wrestling fan, with the Monday night wars in full swing, kayfabe being broken through the internet and sheets, on screen characters becoming alot more complex and cutting edge storylines that thought outside of the professinal wrestling world. Its no wonder why the industries popularity exploded at this time, it trully was the renaisance of professional wrestling.

With the purchase of WCW in 2001 by the the WWF the quality of the then WWF programing was poor. The WWF had an opportunity to do something classic, but with no competition the storyline of WWF verses WCW/ECW was a major flop. This DVD shows how the two companies needed each other more than they didn't need each other.

The Battle Line Has Been Drawn... (4.5 stars)
While I don't really pay attention to wrestling like I did in the past, I started getting into WWE (back then known as the WWF) right when the Monday Night Wars were at their most intense peak. This was when Stone Cold was the most popular WWE superstar and his rivalry with Vince McMahon was getting out of control each week. This was also when The Rock was a heel that quickly grew on you, as the crowd would always repeat all of his sayings when he'd try to talk. Bash the crowd, he would, but that wouldn't stop the crowd from "singing along" with him. I admit that I didn't really pay attention to the WCW, but I knew of the battle between the two corporations.

"The Monday Night War" finally reveals to you the complete (or as complete as it's going to get) story about the rivalry between the two giants, the WWE and the WCW. Here, you get all of the dirt and the low-down tricks that were implemented by each group. In one corner there's Vince McMahon, who takes his Monday night programming to new and subtle heights. In the other corner is Eric Bishoff, who manages Ted Turner's WCW company. Determined to bring new blood and a new flavor to the game, Bishoff takes it up a notch by offering unpredictable wrestling programming that would endanger Vince's empire. The changes would force Vince to change the face of wrestling entertainment as we now know it. The fight between the two was brutal, vicious, and threatened the careers of hundreds upon hundreds of wrestlers on both sides.

This DVD was really interesting to watch, as I had no idea how close the WWE was to going out of business, and I had no idea of the impact that Bischoff had on the WWE. Now that the two corporations are joined into one, both are able to reveal their stories and candid commentary without restraint. You hear comments from McMahon, Bishoff, wrestlers, and other former employees of the two giants. The program proves to be very honest and straight to business. And, as intense as the battle was between the two, no matter how vicious or brutal it was, it definitely had a positive impact on Vince's corporation. In a way, I wished the two were still going at it today as opposed to being all lumped into one organization. If that were the case, maybe I'd still be intrigued to watch today.

The DVD has some cool things to offer, other than the original program that runs about over an hour and a half. Extras include about 86 minutes of bonus footage that includes matches, events, and other benchmarks that intensified that Monday Night Wars between the two organizations. It would've been cool to have some more extra footage, as there were TONS of things that could be included in the wars between the two giants, but 3 hours of programming isn't too shabby.

"The Monday Night War" is a thought-provoking and energized look into the wrestling industry like never before. Learn about the betrayals, the back stabbings, the fear of losing jobs, and much more on this very entertaining DVD. Former and recent wrestling fans will want to include this in their collection. A great feature that isn't a waste of time by any means. -Michael Crane