WWE or WCW, who actually won the Monday Night Wars when you look back at it now

[ShadowKernel]

The Monday Night Wars between WWE's Raw and WCW's Nitro throughout the mid to late 1990s remains one of the most closely followed rivalries in the history of American television, let alone professional wrestling specifically, and the question of who actually came out on top depends heavily on which measure you actually choose to focus on. WCW dominated the ratings battle for an extraordinary 83 consecutive weeks during the height of the New World Order storyline, a period during which Nitro consistently drew bigger audiences than Raw and WCW briefly became the more commercially successful and culturally relevant of the two promotions.

WWE, however, eventually turned the tide decisively through the Attitude Era, leaning into edgier storylines built around Stone Cold Steve Austin, D-Generation X and a genuinely improved overall product that gradually clawed back and then surpassed WCW's audience, a shift that accelerated until WCW's business situation deteriorated to the point where the promotion was eventually purchased outright by WWE in 2001 for a reported figure in the low single digit millions, a strikingly small sum for what had briefly been wrestling's dominant company only a few years earlier.

So who actually won this war in the end, the company that dominated the ratings for the better part of two years at the height of the nWo, or the company that ultimately survived, adapted and eventually bought its own former rival outright?