WWE, formerly known as WWF (World Wrestling Federation), was founded by American professional sports legend "Vince McMahon" in 1982 as his father "Vince McMahon". The "WWWF (World Wide Wrestling Federation)" founded by Vincen McMahon Sr. in the 1960s bought it and changed its name to WWF. However, in October 1999, due to losing a patent lawsuit against another WWF (World Wildlife Federation) English abbreviation, the company reluctantly gave up the time-honored name that had been used for more than 20 years and changed its name to WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). In 2002, it acquired two other major wrestling groups, WCW (World Champion Wrestling) and ECW (Extreme Champion Wrestling), and merged them into the current huge WWE.
The style of the previous WWWF is completely different from the current WWF, and great changes have taken place in 40 years. Before the 1980s, WWF was a serious competition like boxing. The most famous event in the 1980s was Hogan (Hogan, who once participated in the highly rated American TV series "Beachkeeper"). This drama was broadcast in China) defeated former Olympic champion iron Shiek to win the championship. Hogan held the championship belt for quite some time, and due to his influence, the WWF gradually became one of the most popular sports programs in the United States.
In 1982, Vincent McMahon bought the WWF from his father. Since then, the WWF has changed a lot. Now the WWF is a very performance-oriented competition with many different roles. Of course, There are people who are both good and bad and ugly at the end. The Rock and Stone Cold are very popular heroes, while HHH and Kurt Angle are villains. However, these roles are not fixed. Sometimes heroes will turn into villains. Characters, villains can also be transformed into heroes. But it is precisely because of its ups and downs and bloody battles that are more ups and downs than TV dramas that WWF has become more and more popular. Its games have begun to be broadcast all over the world. Now WWF has nearly 500 million viewers every week.
WWF reached its peak from 1985 to 1995, when Vince McMahon discovered wrestling stars Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. , Mr.Perfect (Mr. Perfect), Bret Hart (Bret Hart)...it can be said that everyone knew about them at the time. They even beat WCW and ECW in ratings and box office. In order to reverse the decline, WCW poached Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage and others to WCW with high salaries. This poaching caused an unprecedented crisis in WWF (at first WCW even poached WWF's screenwriters and announcers), but this also made Vincen McMahon began to reuse and mold new players, giving the well-known The Rock, Triple H, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker and others the opportunity to show off their talents. The newcomers are also surprisingly popular with the public, especially the 1998 incident in which boxing champion Mike Tyson and Stone Cold Steve Austin fought in the ring. Ledao.
Vincen McMahon has also introduced many new competition types, such as Hard Core Match, Steel Cage Match and women's wrestling, etc., which can use weapons, which makes weapon competitions more popular. The old home ECW and WCW were severely affected again. WCW saw that WWF was so popular and began to learn the WWF model, adding beauty cards and group battles or conflicts between players and bosses. However, faced with the fact that they could not afford the salaries of many big-name wrestlers, as well as internal financial operation problems and the suspension of television broadcasts, WCW and ECW gradually declined.
Before the merger, Vince McMahon and the writers cleverly used the "group confrontation" plot to shape the ownership of WCW and ECW to Vince McMahon's children Shane & Stephanie McMahon (Shane & Stephanie McMahon) All in all, the plot led many players to seize the ownership of WWF. During that period, players from different alliances took turns to fight with WWE players in the ring, which also made Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock, Triple H... waited for the contestants who usually had troubles to unite, and then led the other second-tier contestants to jointly resist the invasion of WCW and ECW, and even held a competition called "Invasion". That game ( The Rock, Undertaker, Kane, Y2J, Big Show VS.Stone Cold Steve Austin, Kurt Angel, Shane McMahon, RVD, Booker T) realized the dream of many wrestling fans, watching the champions of different alliances compete on the same stage, this competition It can be called the most important match in the history of American professional wrestling.
After this merger and name change, Vince McMahon decided to give WWE a new start, abandoning the long-established "Commissioner" system and introducing a "General Manager" Manager)" management system, dividing all its players into two camps "Raw" (former WCW CEO Eric Bischoff is the GM) and "SmackDown!" (referred to as SD!, with Vince McMahon's daughter Stephanie McMahon as the GM, later After many changes, the current GM of SD! is Theodore Long).
WWE currently has several programs including Raw is War, Smackdown!, Velocity, Sunday Night Heat and House Show (House Show is not broadcast on TV). In addition, WWE also holds regular special competitions every month - PPV (PAY-PER-ViEW). PAY-PER-ViEW means that every time the TV station broadcasts a PPV program, it must purchase its broadcast rights. That is to say, if you want to broadcast PPV, you have to buy the broadcasting rights from WWE every time, and the price of each PPV is different. The most popular PPV-WrestleMania in March, the broadcasting rights are much higher every time. Stunning!
PPV programs are sometimes adjusted, and there will be 15 PPVs in 2005.
They are:
January 9th: ※New Year Revolution (RAW held separately) New Year Revolution
January 30th: Royal Rumble (RAW and SD! *** Same as Hosted) Royal Rumble
February 20: No Way Out (SmackDown! held separately) No Way Out
April 3: Wrestlemania XXI (***Same as) Wrestling Mania 21st
May 1st: Backlash (RAW) Explosive Shock
May 22nd: Judgment Day (SmackDown!) Judgment Day
6 June 12th: ECW PPV
June 26th: Vengeance (RAW) Fatal Revenge
August 21st: SummerSlam (***Same) Summer Impact
September 18th: Unforgiven (SmackDown!) Unforgiven
October 9th: No Mercy (RAW) No Mercy
October 30th: ※SmackDown! Exclusive PPV name undecided
November 27th: Survivor Series (***Same) Survival of the Strong
December 18th: Armageddon (RAW) End of the World
< p>WWF now has many wrestlers, but only a few can compete regularly. This mainly depends on the strength and popularity of the players and the storyline arrangement of WWF. The competition venue adopts a touring method, and the competition will be played wherever there are many spectators, and PPV (PAY-PER-ViEW) also adopts this method. In March 2002, WWF held a tour competition in three cities in Asia, namely Tokyo, Japan, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Singapore. It caused a sensation in the local areas wherever it went. At the end of 2003, one of the branches of another professional wrestling league, NWA-TNA, A MACW logs into Guangzhou.WWE has entered the mainstream society in the United States. Superstar THE ROCK has entered Hollywood and has starred in many movies such as "The Scorpion King", "Jungle Troopers", and "Megabyte". It is said that he is currently working on Making a movie adapted from the famous game DOOM is known as the second Schwarzenegger. The current governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, was once the WWF heavyweight champion. His success represents society's affirmation of professional wrestling. In addition, the official WWE website has more than 6 million visitors per month, making it one of the top 10 most popular websites in the United States. The program's ratings are 3~6% in North America (equivalent to 40~50% in Taiwan). It can be said that WWF has now reached the highest peak of world sports entertainment. WWE also has a certain relationship with China. It is said that WWE's belts and merchandise are produced in China.
Attached are some other relevant information:
World Champion Wrestling (WCW-World Champion Wrestling, referred to as WCW) was founded in 1991. Its predecessor was the most powerful wrestling organization in the world at the time. Yamato's most famous NWA (National Wrestling Alliance) National Wrestling Alliance, such as "Nature Boy" Ric Flair and Sting, superstars who later became household names in WCW, were all NWA wrestlers before the establishment of WCW.
Some friends who have only started watching wrestling in recent years may not believe that WCW was originally so popular and popular that WWF could not match it! In the early days of WCW's establishment, due to the participation of NWA's big stars "The Scorpion" Sting and Ric Flair, the initial operation was not as difficult as other newly established alliances, and more and more viewers fell in love with it. After WCW, WCW's audience attendance and ratings have also been rising. At that time, another wrestling league that once belonged to the NWA, the WWF, which became popular because of the presence of Hulk Hogan, was also actively operating, hoping to take over the NWA's position as the world's number one wrestling league.
Just when the WWF was at its most successful, their superstar Hulk Hogan announced that he would not renew his contract with the WWF. It turned out that HOGAN had actually switched to the arms of the WWF's biggest competitor, WCW. After that, a group of WWF superstars including Lex Luger and Randy Savage left WWF one after another to join WCW. People clearly realized that the era of WCW was coming!
And all this is not over. From 1995 to 1996, WWF's leading superstar Bret Hart and the rookies Diesel (Kevin Nash) and Razor Ramon (Scott Hall) who were fully cultivated by WWF also switched to WWF because they were dissatisfied with the top management of WWF. WCW, this became WWF's second big star departure! Because these two exodus incidents severely damaged the vitality of the WWF, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, who switched to WCW, and Hulk Hogan formed the NWO (New World Order, New World Alliance), the most popular wrestling alliance to date. The golden age of WCW has arrived!
However, WCW began to decline from the end of 1998, and this should all be blamed on WCW's senior management and story writers! People began to feel that WCW's characters were becoming more and more old-fashioned and the plots were becoming more and more monotonous. It even blatantly plagiarized the plot of WWF. The plot of WWF at this time was very contagious, and the image of the wrestlers also had distinctive personalities. In order to win the audience, WWF even started the first time for wrestlers to beat the boss! All this should be attributed to WWF boss Vince McMahon. Obviously WWF's move was very effective. At this time, WCW executives not only failed to correct their mistakes, but copied WWF's plot into WCW's plot. The effect was of course counterproductive. WCW's audience became smaller and smaller, and then Sting, Hulk Hogan, and Bret Hart announced their retirements one after another.
In 2001, WCW was already struggling to operate, but WCW executives continued to waste resources. Time Warner, the holding company of WCW, announced that it would auction WCW, but no one expected that the final bid for WCW would be the long-standing rival WWF. After successfully acquiring WCW, WWF boss Vince McMahon said that the old WCW would fold in the near future, and WWF would officially take over WCW after it folds. In the final show of WCW, Booker T won the double championship and WCW officially ended.
2.ECW Introduction:
Extreme Championship Wreisting (ECW) was founded in Philadelphia in 1992. Its predecessor was the Eastern Wrestling Alliance.
At that time in the United States, the nature of wrestling competitions had changed a lot. Entertainment had replaced everything. WWF, which was famous for its entertainment, stood in the world of wrestling, but people could hardly see real wrestling. During the match, the plot takes up most of the time, and the wrestlers compete in a show-off manner. But many wrestling fans want to see real fierce fights and competitions, and ECW fulfills their wishes. In fact, ECW means Extreme Championship Wrestling. In this alliance, people really see what extreme means. ECW is most famous for its death matches and hardcore matches. In these brutal matches, wrestlers can use any weapon. , and the competition has no rules! The Hardcore Match and STREET Fight in WWF were learned in ECW.
ECW has gradually developed its own unique and loyal wrestling fans, who will shout E-C-DUB (ECW), E-C-DUB every critical moment of the game. ECW was also the first American Wrestling Alliance to communicate with the Japanese Wrestling Alliance. Tajiri in the current WWE was invited by ECW from the Japanese NWA Alliance.
However, a game like ECW that does not pay attention to the plot and is brutal and cruel is still difficult to be accepted by most people. Coupled with the management mistakes of ECW's top management, ECW finally declared bankruptcy due to insufficient income! Now ECW has been acquired by WWF, and one of the bosses of ECW, Paul Heyman, has also invested in WWF. Many former ECW superstars are also active in WWF, such as 3D, RHYNO, RAVEN, TAZZ, and even the iconic figure of ECW "MR. MONDAY" NiGHT” Rob Vam Dam! Although ECW was acquired by WWF, these stars are still continuing their E-C-DUB spirit in WWF!