Revisiting The Multiple Times DX Tried To Invade WCW During The Attitude Era

WWE versus WCW was more than just conventional competition. The rivalry was a no holds barred deathmatch between two juggernauts of professional wrestling and the individuals at the very top, Vince McMahon and Ted Turner legitimately detested one another.

The two had done business before but unfortunately, the proposed arraignment devolved into a financial massacre, igniting hated that was very much mutual and likely persists in some form even today. The rivalry between Turner and McMahon predated the inception of both RAW and Nitro and their past dealing served as a catalyst for the eventual Monday Night Wars.

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The Monday Night Wars was pretty much the continuation of the personal rivalry between the two and while the primary objective was to put the other promotion out of business, WWE and WCW took the conflict several steps ahead.

Ted Turner and Vince McMahon Genuinely Disliked Each Other

WWE presented skits belittling their rival for relying on older professional wrestling and they also took aim at Ted Turner by introducing a parody character by the name of Billionaire Ted. On the other hand, WCW mocked the company in Stanford for employing WCW rejects such as Stone Cold and Undertaker and Ed Ferrara parodied Jim Ross through a character by the name of Oklahoma.

WWE had never acknowledged another promotion, but WCW was the one true exception. And while Vince McMahon presented sketches, his rivals in Atlanta demanded an actual war. Bischoff took it upon himself to mention the “other company” on almost every episode of Nitro.

WCW talked and talked and eventually, McMahon and his corporation responded. WWE was going through a burst of Attitude around that time and the company prided itself for being unpredictable and McMahon proved so by calling their bluff and sending a group over to invade WCW. The date, April 27th, 1998, is forever embellished in wrestling lore as the first invasion of WCW orchestrated by Degeneration X.

The spring of 1998 saw the momentum shift in the Monday Night Wars. WWE had finally scored an upset in the ongoing ratings dominance, snapping the 83 weeks long streak of WCW, and two weeks later, with WCW just down the road in Norfolk Virginia, the resident misfits of WWE, DX came knocking on the door.

Triple H and his team-mates, dressed in military attire, rode towards WCW on a tank (read: a jeep with cannon mounted on top) and demanded that Bischoff release Kevin Nash and Scott Hall. WCW management quickly closed the doors down and backed away from a confrontation they had been craving for months. WCW had blinked and Vince McMahon had gotten the better of them but that was hardly the end of the DX invasion saga.

The angle continued in the following weeks and DX paid a visit to the headquarters of WCW in Atlanta and according to Triple H, the WCW management called the police, and over a hundred police vehicles, along with riot squads came along to quell the disturbance.

The next target was CNN Tower and after snapping photos and hanging out with the fans in the building, the faction, using the wonders of CGI and computer software, spray-painted about WCW sucking and presented a doctored video of CNN headquarters exploding in a missile blast, with Ted Turner inside.

A week after the destruction of CNN, on the 19th of May 1998, Triple H rallied his troops at an airfield, and in an obvious parody of war movies, Triple H stressed that the mission was top-secret and he alone would go forward to put an end to WCW. In the end, Triple H asked for prayers and then walked off into the distance to take care of business.

The scene then cut back to RAW where a very confused duo of Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler wondered what the hell had happened. The show continued but towards the end of the night, the feed transitioned into stock footage of a pilot flying around in the fighter jet. Triple H’s voice surfaced a few seconds later and after dropping a few crude jokes regarding cockpits and joysticks, Triple H said he would take it to WCW.

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Triple H preceded to “sky-write” a bunch of phrases, mocking and threatening to bomb WCW but he also piped in an advertisement for his match against the Rock on RAW on the same night.

Triple H Was WWE's Greatest Soldier

Finally and somewhat mercifully, WWE’s greatest soldier fired off a 500 megaton bomb of “poop” and then joyously declared that WCW officials were covered in excrement. Triple H, victorious from the final assault on WCW, returned to wrestle The Rock in the penultimate match of the show.

That recaps the multiple invasions carried out by DX on WCW. The first segment was iconic while the subsequent events were comedic spoofs, with the usual DX comedy fans had grown accustomed to. WWE emerged victorious during the first scuffle and they did not let up an inch and ran with the idea in the following segments, demonstrating that the bad blood between Turner and McMahon ran way too deep and outside the bounds of simple competition.

Of course, this continued well after WCW was brought as Triple H buried every WCW star he shared the ring with. The King of Kings was indeed the apocalypse of WCW.