The Main Event:

Before Vince MacMahon bought it out and folded it into WWE, the WCW was, for a glorious though very brief period of time, the true home of the superstars. Experienced 'name brand' wrestlers like Hulk Hogan, Bret 'The Hitman' Hart, Randy 'Macho Man' Savage and Ric Flair made it their home for a while and the league would soon prove a fertile breeding ground for fresh young talent as well what with the likes of Sting and Rey Mysterio Jr., to name only a few, making their names. The leagues showcase was Monday Nitro, a weekly wrestling extravaganza that helped pave the way for the weekly shows fans now tune in to like Smackdown and RAW, and now that the WWE owns the WCW back catalogue, evidently it's time to pay tribute to that late, lamented high point in nationally syndicated sports entertainment.

There's no plot to discuss here, though the one and only Diamond Dallas Page shows up a few times as each disc plays out to share some memories of his time in the league and put what we're about to watch into context. As such, we get a bit of a minor history lesson in what WCW was, why it was important, and why it mattered to fans. Page makes for an amiable host and his enthusiasm for the material makes him the right guy for the job.

The content in this set, and there's quite a lot of it, is spread out over the three discs in the set in chronological order as follows:

Disc One:

WCW History Lesson
Flyin' Brian Pillman vs. Jushin Thunder Liger, 4th September, 1995
Hulk Hogan vs. Big Bubba Rogers, 4th September, 1995
Macho Man Randy Savage & Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair & Arn Anderson, 8th January, 1996
Rome wasn't built in a day
WCW World Tag Team Championship Match, Sting and Lex Luger vs. The Road Warriors from 5th February, 1996
Parking Lot Brawl with Lord Steven Regal vs. Belfast Bruiser, 29th April, 1996
Eddie Guerrero vs. Ric Flair, 20th May, 1996
Scott Hall Nitro Debut, 27th May, 1996
Kevin Nash Nitro Debut, 10th June, 1996
Migrating to Hot'Lanta
WCW World Tag Team Championship Triangle Match, Sting & Lex Luger vs. The Steiner Brother vs. Harlem Heat from 24th June, 1996
nWo is Taking Over, 8th July, 1996
nWo Awoke a Sleeping Giant
The Outsiders attack WCW Superstars, 29th July, 1996
Sting & Lex Luger vs. The Outsiders Scott Hall & Kevin Nash, 12th August, 1996
nWo takes Over, 26th August, 1996
Sting attacks Lex Luger, 9th September, 1996
The Enigmatic Sting
Sting walks out on Nitro, 16th September, 1996
Rowdy Roddy Piper confronts Eric Bischoff, 18th November, 1996
Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Dean Malenko, 30th December, 1996

Disc Two:

Badda Bang!
Diamond Dallas Page vs. Mark Starr, 13th January, 1997
Harvey Schiller suspends Eric Bischoff, 3rd March, 1997
Sting attacks the nWo, 17th March, 1997
The High- Flying Cruiserweights
WCW Cruiserweight Championship Match, Syxx vs. Rey Mysterio Jr. from 21st April, 1997
WCW World Heavyweight Championship Match, Hollywood Hulk Hogan vs. Lex Luger from 4th August, 1997
Disregard for Tradition & Authority
nWo mocks the Four Horsemen, 1st September, 1997
Diamond Dallas Page vs. Buff Bagwell, 29th September, 1997
Sting Saves DDP from the now, 27th October, 1997
Sting vs. "Macho Man" Randy Savage, 2nd February, 1998
Jericho's 1004 Holds, 30th March, 1998
Who's Next?
WCW World Heavyweight Championship Match, Hollywood Hulk Hogan vs. Goldberg from 6th July, 1998
WCW World Tag Team Championship Match, Kevin Nash & Sting vs. Scott Hall & The Giant from 20th July, 1998
Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Chris Jericho, 3rd August, 1998
WCW Cruiserweight Championship Match, Juventud Guerrera vs. Billy Kidman, 14th September, 1998
Tradition Returns!
Ric Flair Returns to the Four Horsemen, 14th September, 1998
WCW United States Championship Match, Bret "The Hitman" Hart vs. Diamond Dallas Page from 26th October, 1998
Ric Flair vs. Eric Bischoff, 28th December, 1998

Disc Three:

Cracks in the Armor
WCW World Heavyweight Championship Match, Kevin Nash vs. Hollywood Hulk Hogan from 4th January, 1999
Goldberg Spears The Hitman, 29th March, 1999
WCW World Heavyweight Championship Match, Sting vs. Diamond Dallas Page, 26th April, 1999
Solidifying a Legacy
Eddie Guerrero vs. Juventud Guerrera, 21st June, 1999
Hulk Hogan & Goldberg & Sting vs. Kevin Nash & Sid Vicious & Rick Steiner, 9th August, 1999
Billy Kidman vs. Diamond Dallas Page, 16th August, 1999
WCW World Heavyweight Championship Match, Bret "The Hitman" Hart vs. Goldberg from 20th December, 1999
WCW World Heavyweight Championship Match, Kevin Nash vs. Sid Vicious, 24th January, 2000
Last Ditch Effort
The Bischoff & Russo Era Begins, 10th April, 2000
Steel Cage Match for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship Match, Jeff Jarrett vs. Diamond Dallas Page from 24th April, 2000
Tag Team Ladder Match, 3 Count vs. Jung Dragons, 18th July, 2000
WCW World Heavyweight Championship Match, Booker T. vs. Lance Storm, 7th August, 2000
Triple Cage War Games Match for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship from 4th September, 2000
Vince McMahon Buys WCW, 26th March, 2001
Sting vs. Ric Flair, 26th March, 2001
Celebrating WCW

So with the fine folks at WWE Home Video tasked with putting six years worth of content into six hours on DVD, how does it all shape up? Rather well, though the set is not without issues. First off - there's a lot of great nWo footage here and a lot of great Ric Flair footage here. Macho Man and Bret Hart get their due as well, and hey, Roddy Piper shows up - that always counts for something. The 'big name' WWF refugees who took solace in this league during its prime are well represented and for that reason alone, fans will want to check this set out.

Unfortunately, there are some rather questionable omissions - Chris Jericho is barely represented here and given his importance later on in the league, that's going to be a big 'uh oh' for his rabid fans. Additionally, WCW Monday Nitro was, at one point, going the hardcore route and none of those matches are here at all - this was a big part of the show's history and it's not touched on at all. It's also a shame that those lovely Nitro Girls who were popular when the series was still going strong don't show up, and while Page is a great host, we don't get retrospective comments from anybody else, which is a bit of a missed opportunity when you think about it considering how many great names are represented here. There's no mention of the Raven's Flock, no mention of Chris Benoit (say what you will about the man but he was important to WCW and omitting him from the set is akin to writing him out of the history books) and no mention of the Wolfpac and a lot of the more popular wrestlers who were famous on the series just don't get the attention they deserve - it's almost like those who put the set together wanted it to play as a promo spot for WWE entertainers rather than WCW entertainers.

The good outweighs the bad here to be sure, but this set could and should have been a whole lot more - here's hoping the WWE will give the WCW its due the way they've given individual wrestlers and their own franchises their due, by creating a proper, feature length documentary and making some of the content fans want that didn't make it to this set available in a future release.

The DVD

Video:

The 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen presentation, though interlaced, looks pretty decent. Some of the earlier matches are on the soft side and aren't quite as clean and colorful looking as the later day content is but this is generally quite a respectable looking presentation. The material that was shot fullframe (which is most of it) is presented that way, with mattes on the sides, so there are no issues with stretching the footage, thankfully. There are times where the lights over the ring make skin tones look a bit off but this isn't a fault of the transfer or the authoring, it's simply the way the material has always looked. Nothing here really looks worse than when it was broadcast on television, and to some eyes it might even look a little bit better.