WCW Monday Nitro, also known as WCW Nitro or simply Nitro, is an American professional wrestling television program that was produced by World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and broadcast weekly every Monday night on TNT in the United States from September 4, 1995 to March 26, 2001. Created by then WCW owner Ted Turner and Vice President Eric Bischoff, it was the flagship weekly show produced by the company.
Nitro featured wrestlers contracted to WCW. Besides broadcasting from various arenas and locations across the United States and Canada, such as Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota (from which the first episode was broadcast), Nitro also organized special broadcasts from the Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando in 1996; aired annual Spring Break-Out episodes from Panama City Beach, Florida or South Padre Island, Texas starting in March 1997; and filmed some episodes in Australia and the United Kingdom during the Fall of 2000.
At its peak, Nitro was the highest-rated show on primetime cable TV. Its premiere was notable for sparking a period of television known as the "Monday Night War": for the entirety of the show's run, Nitro went head-to-head in the ratings with the World Wrestling Federation's (WWF; now WWE) Monday Night Raw. Nitro began to dominate in ratings in 1996, based largely on the strength of the WCW's New World Order (nWo) kayfabe rebellious group. Raw began to overtake Nitro in the ratings in 1998 due to the WWF's revamped Attitude Era programming. In March 2001, TNT canceled the show.
The rights to WCW Monday Nitro now belong to WWE, who purchased WCW properties in 2001. The WWE has released three Best of WCW Monday Nitro DVD sets and all episodes are available for streaming on the WWE Network. In 2025, WWE started uploading episodes to a WCW YouTube channel.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
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