20 years ago, Scott Hall invaded WCW and launched wrestling's Monday Night Wars

The late '90s were a good time to be a wrestling fan.

Both WCW and WWE (nee WWF, of course) were at the heights of their powers, as the Monday Night Wars raged. Officially, the war between the two biggest wrestling promotions in the world started on Sept. 4, 1995, when WCW Monday Nitro debuted its inaugural episode. Multiple title matches gave that initial broadcast a sense of importance, but it was the appearance of Lex Luger, a WWF mainstay who'd jumped ship overnight to Atlanta-based WCW, that indicated the scope of what was to come.

Unofficially, however, the Monday Night Wars truly began 20 years ago on May 27. In the middle of a completely irrelevant midcard match, a figure dressed all in denim and chomping on a toothpick made his way through the crowd. Wrestling fans knew him as Razor Ramon, a former Intercontinental champion in WWF who was one of the company's biggest stars. Yet here he was on a rival show, interrupting the proceedings to deliver a warning: An invasion was coming.

Later in that same broadcast, the invader appeared once again with another bombshell -- he wasn't alone. Scott Hall, as Ramon would be known in WCW, teased that he was part of a larger "we."

A much larger "we," it would turn out.

Two weeks after Hall's debut, he introduced the WCW audience to Kevin Nash, formerly "Diesel" in WWF. Nash cut another war-styled promo, in which he famously referred to the word "play" as an adjective:

Together, Nash and Hall would be known as the Outsiders, but they weren't finished there. They demanded a six-man tag match at the next WCW Pay-Per-View, Bash at the Beach -- yet they refused to reveal their third partner.

After some internal strife, team WCW gathered Luger, Sting and Randy Savage to take on the invaders. As the match began that fateful Sunday, the third member of the Outsiders was still nowhere to be found. Eventually, though, wrestling fans' worst fears came true. Hulk Hogan made his way to the ring, seemingly to support his friend Savage and the rest of the WCW squad. Instead, he hit Macho Man with multiple leg drops, embraced the Outsiders, and launched into one of the greatest wrestling promos ever:

"New world organization," "New world order," -- either way, the nWo was born. And WCW leaped to the front of the Monday night ratings war, beating out Raw for 84 consecutive weeks at the height of Nitro's popularity. nWo embraced some of our baser instincts, doing whatever they wanted (both publicly and behind the scenes). They were the ultimate antiheroes, bad guys we couldn't help but love.

Unfortunately for "Billionaire Ted" and his company, however, WWF responded in kind with the formation of D-Generation X. The stable built around Triple H and Shawn Michaels was the earliest indication of WWF's shift into the Attitude Era, when the likes of Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Rock would re-establish the superiority of Vince McMahon's promotion.

WCW's fall from grace was a long and tortured process, but one moment sticks out above all others. The DX crew launched an invasion of its own, blurring the lines between scripted wrestling and reality with a brash display of ... bravado, let's say:

As WWF's popularity rebounded, WCW panicked. The company was stretched thin by the introduction of a second live weekly broadcast, finances were adversely affected by large contracts for the likes of Hogan and the arrival of Bret Hart, and the creative team started to lose its touch. A few awful attempts to fix things later -- including famously giving the world championship to actor David Arquette -- WCW was done.

WWF/WWE absorbed the remainder, and the rest was history. McMahon & Co. have never had a real competitor since. There was a botched attempt at a WCW invasion angle, but it became clear that the wrestlers from the "other" promotion didn't stand a chance of being placed on equal footing with the homegrown, loyal talent who'd always been with WWF. The "brand extension" followed, and WWF has been trying to claw back since.

The product has suffered due in part to the monopoly WWE created for itself -- because when both WCW and WWF were at the top of their games, they pushed each other to be more entertaining every week. Maybe the recently announced roster split can generate some of that competition artificially. Either way, it's hard to see wrestling rebounding to the dizzying heights of the Monday Nights Wars. 

But we can dream.