By: Mike Tedesco and Roy Nemer
Thirty years ago today, WCW Monday Nitro made its debut inside the Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It wasn’t just the launch of a new wrestling program. It was the spark that ignited what would become one of the most influential, chaotic, and groundbreaking eras in professional wrestling history, the Monday Night War.
For the next six years, WWF Monday Night Raw and WCW Monday Nitro would go head-to-head nearly every week, trading shots in the ring, on commentary, and behind the scenes. It was a battle that reshaped the industry, created household names, and produced some of the most iconic (and infamous) moments ever seen on television.
Why We’re Doing This
Wrestleview has been covering wrestling for nearly as long as it has been since the Monday Night War started. Starting in 1997, we’ve covered the present-day wrestling world for more than two decades. Sadly, much of the archive from the late 1990s to the very early 2000s has been lost. As this date approached, we kept coming back to the thought: what if we relived the Monday Night War as it unfolded, week by week, match by match, rating by rating?
That’s what this project is all about.
- Roy Nemer will recap every episode of WCW Monday Nitro, beginning today with the September 4, 1995, debut episode.
- Mike Tedesco will recap every episode of WWF Monday Night Raw, starting with the first true head-to-head battle on September 11, 1995.
Together, we’ll track the shows as they aired, the ratings as they came in, and the chaos as it unfolded in real time.
What to Expect
These aren’t just straight match reports. Our goal is to bring the era back to life with:
- Full match-by-match recaps in the classic Wrestleview style you’ve come to expect.
- Behind-the-scenes context from newsletters, interviews, and hindsight.
- “History Corner” features that dive deep into the infamous angles, backstage drama, and the people who defined the era.
- Weekly scoreboards showing who won the ratings battle each Monday night.
We’ll follow the storylines, but also the bigger story: how two companies pushed each other to new heights and eventually, sadly, to breaking points.
Where it Starts
- Today (September 4, 2025): Roy’s recap of the first Nitro, a show that ran unopposed but fired the first shot.
- Next Thursday (September 11, 2025): Mike’s recap comes in, and we’ll have Raw vs. Nitro, Week 1, the first true clash of the war.
We’re excited to invite you to relive it all with us. Whether you watched it live 30 years ago or you’ve only heard the legends, this project will take you inside one of wrestling’s wildest rides, one Monday at a time.