The Friday Night Wars – By Wrestle G

Hello NoDQ.com fans and readers it’s your boy Wrestle G back once again to throw some opinions and share some views with you all.

Thank you all for your opinions on War Games in my last column, the War Games and indeed Blood and Guts format are going to be in the spotlight in the next month or so as both companies put on their shows. I guess I’ll do a little review of each right here for you all and we’ll assess what the future holds for the match across both companies.

Elsewhere across the wrestling world everything seems a little quiet which is no bad thing. Crown Jewel has been moved to a different venue in Riyadh and hopefully the middle east conflict with the Houthi Rebels remains stable for now. There’s a Zuffa boxing event this weekend as well, this may hopefully give some more peace of mind over events taking place in the region. I still hold it should be postponed at the very least.

An interesting little tidbit popped up this week from Conrad Thompson stating there had been preliminary talks between Vince Russo and the WWE relating to Vince coming back to the creative team. Now there seems to be a bit of confusion over who it is that initiated these talks. But It does speak to a wider wrestling problem that it seems isn’t just confined to the action in the ring, wrestling overall has a real problem with leaning on past successes. Wrestling should be taking chances on the next Vince Russo’s the next Bruce Prichards, the next Pat Pattersons. But yet we seem to want to be going back to the well each time to see if its run completely dry. I’d be shocked if anything came of the Russo talks, but Wrestling creative teams are screaming out for fresh new voices I just hope the Tony Khans and the HHH’s can find them.

Anyway, let’s roll on to the main portion of this week’s column, it’s a little bit of a different one this week……

Reliving the UK Friday night Wars

It was announced this week that the Simpsons will be leaving the TV channel Sky One in November 2026. This may sound like a pretty small inconsequential piece of news, but for a certain generation this seems like a day that would never come. Sunday 6PM was new Simpsons episode day in the UK for the vast majority of the 1990’s as the satellite company SKY looked to make a dent in the Free to air stranglehold of the BBC, ITV and channel 4 in Britain. Now I know what your thinking, why am I boring you with Simpsons lore on the best pro wrestling news and opinion website NoDQ.com? Well, it’s because as well as the Simpsons, Sky’s major push for subscribers was based on sport, primarily the premier league football. But the other Jewel in the crown for Sky was of course:

WWE

From its launch in the late 80s/early 90’s Sky Television promoted WWE hard and had it over a lot of their marketing and advertisements. Indeed, I don’t believe SummerSlam 1992 has a shot at happening at Wembley with the success it did without Sky television. So off of the back of thinking about the Simpsons end of an era it really struck me how much my wrestling fandom was shaped by WWE on Sky and how the ‘Monday Night Wars’ happened in a very different way in the UK.

In the original offering on TV Sky got Wrestling Challenge and Superstars, these were shown across both the sports channels and the entertainment channel Sky 1 at varying times across the weekend and weekdays. When Raw first started the UK audience had no way to watch, it simply wasn’t carried, you would be at the mercy of watching Challenge, Superstars, All American Wrestling or Mania to piece together the matches shown on that week’s episode of Raw. It’s crazy to think now with Raw fully accessible on Netflix and the money that deal generated that there was a time where you yearned to watch a full episode of Raw. But that’s exactly what it was like to be a UK wrestling fan in 93 and 94.

So, what changed? Why did Raw suddenly get carried on Sky television in 1995? Enter WCW on UK Television. Nitro not only launched on TNT it the USA it also immediately put its flagship Monday show on TNT in the UK. On Friday evening when Cartoon Network shut down at around 6PM. While the narrative around the launch of Nitro is that WWE were not initially concerned, I don’t find it a coincidence that Raw finally found its way to UK screens the exact same month as Nitro launched here as well. Raw also positioned itself on a Friday evening. Initially when Nitro started there was not a clash between the shows, Nitro was only 1 hour and when that finished it bled into Raw, a 90’s wrestling fans dream. However, once Nitro went to two hours it did then have a second hour clash with Raw. Being the loyal lieutenant that I was, it was always a switch over to Raw for me, I just couldn’t get enough Aldo Montoya matches I guess.

It must be said that the ‘war’ in the UK wasn’t nearly as fiercely fought as the one across the pond. WWE kept a strong hold in the UK generally, in a big part that they saturated their content (sound familiar?) across Sky and crucially ensured PPV’s remained free in the UK right up until the 2002 Royal Rumble. WCW’s coverage was cannibalised a little bit in the UK with the introduction of sky digital, this took TNT off of people’s planners whereas it remained on analogue sky offers. As WCW became more and more mismanaged their UK rights did return for a short time on Bravo and Channel 5, but it was poor advertised and the product wasn’t nearly as watchable as it had been. ECW also made its debut on Bravo for their ECW on TNN show. This also aired on Friday nights!

WWE and Sky maintained a great relationship for decades, as the WWE grew more risqué in the late 90’s through the attitude era Sky happily put them on later at night on Friday and even for a short term rebranded the show in the listings as ‘Late night Raw’ to try and emphasise exactly the vibe the show was producing at the time. Sky also sold merchandise for UK fans through its monthly catalogues. Even through these Friday night wars you could see just how much more effort WWE put into everything, their videos were everywhere on store shelves. WCW had a chance to try and at least squeeze out some market share, but you were more likely to find an ECW DVD in 2000 than a WCW one.

These days Netflix is the stronghold of WWE in the UK and ITV through John Williams has shown a lot of support to AEW on being on free to air TV. Wrestling endures on screens all these decades later for people of all ages to watch their favourite performers.

But that Simpsons announcement transported me right back to a time where my Wrestling TV watching was the highlight of my week. Missing an episode meant missing out on the conversation in the playground the next day. I hope you’ve enjoyed this small potted history of the Friday night Wars. Shame that this Friday there will be no Nitro and Raw to watch…. but as the old saying goes it was better to have loved and lost than never loved at all!

What was your wrestling schedule like back in the day? Did any other countries have WCW and WWE on at the same time? What does it look like now for you? Let me know down in the comments below or you can find me on X over at @Wrestle_G or TikTok on @wrestleg

Until Next time,

Cheers,

G