It’s hard to believe that nearly 30 years ago in 1991, what was left of the NWA and Jim Crockett Promotions folded and was bought by Ted Turner, becoming WCW. Several years later, the Monday Night War began when Nitro debuted on TNT, live on Monday nights in 1995. Less than a year later, the nWo became the hottest thing in wrestling and WCW started trouncing WWE in the ratings, for 83 weeks in a row (in case fans were wondering why Bischoff’s podcast has that title).

With no legends to turn to, Vince and the WWE got younger and hungrier. Steve Austin caught fire, was turned face at WrestleMania 13, then won the WWE Championship at WrestleMania XIV. Eight days after WrestleMania XIV, WWE broke the 83-week streak WCW had accumulated.

While there was still a back and forth in the ratings war, more and more it became apparent that WWE was the superior product and the wheels had come off on the WCW train, which was now racing on an unfinished track. This was what Tony Schiavone would refer to as a coffin on roller skates. Just about every fan and everyone in the business has their ideas and opinions on the hows and whys of WCW's demise. Many attribute the difference in the backstage culture of the two promotions as a key reason.

Here are 20 such reasons WWE succeeded where WCW failed, all based around the locker rooms of both promotions. What was happening backstage in WWE and WCW during the Monday Night War? Let's take a look at some of the key differences between both locker rooms.

20 Vince Runs The Show, Period.

There is a reason there’s a "period" on that entry title. That's because there is no debating it. The WWE is Vince McMahon’s show. He might borrow, alter, and outright take other people’s ideas and make them his own. He might entertain other people’s descending opinions. But once his foot is down, either get behind Vince’s decision or get the heck out of his way and "stand back," as he once sang so infamously.

While Bischoff was the boss in WCW, according to some, he never commanded the kind of respect that Vince had, and plenty of people found ways to circumvent Easy E whenever they felt the need to do.

19 Bischoff Had A Boss

While Eric Bischoff was the head honcho (executive producer) of WCW for several years, he was just a cog in the wheel that was Turner. He was very passionate and still about his position, WCW, and the business in general. However, he had to answer to higher-ups in the wheel of grossly overpaid Turner, and then Turner-AOL execs, some of which, by Eric’s admission, didn’t know what day Monday Nitro aired.

It was enough to drive a guy bananas, which might have been one of the reasons Eric was sent home in 1999. Too bad when that, happened, WCW really started to nosedive.

18 Booked By Committee

In case some fans didn’t know, all of the storylines for any promotion go right through a booker. For a time, Vince was sitting around his pool, booking the territory with Pat Patterson and Bruce Prichard. Then it was Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara. Nowadays, it’s a whole room of writers. But the buck always stops with the head booker, Vince McMahon.

Not so down south, Bischoff mapped out a lot of the nWo story and others, but throughout the company’s run, there was a booking committee that featured the likes of longtime Russo ally Disco Inferno, and many others. Everyone knows that too many cooks in the kitchen doesn't work. Apparently, no one explained that to the hordes of bookers that came through WCW.

17 No Filter, Bro

Vince Russo concocted a great story that was akin to The Usual Suspects when Survivor Series 1998 happened. He also did his best to make sure that everyone on the roster had some sort of storyline going on for themselves. He gets bagged on a lot nowadays, but for two years, Vinny Ru was McMahon’s best-kept secret.

When WCW scooped him up, they must’ve thought they landed a really big fish. But it was soon realized that without a governor placed on, and without the filter of Vince McMahon on him, his "crash TV" concept became a 53-car pileup. It became apparent that the key to Russo’s success, at the very least, was having McMahon around to refine his good ideas and filter out the bad ones. Once he had carte blanche, WCW became a house of cards.

16 WCW Had To Answer To Standards And Practices

Kevin Nash has told this story several times, most notably on the Monday Night War documentary. WCW had to answer to 'Standards and Practices'. WWE might have had to deal with occasional restrictions from USA Network, but when a performer is allowed to tell their opponent how much they hate them and want to take them out, it just sounds better for the drama. On the other channel, they couldn't say 'hate', it was intensely dislike, “I intensely dislike you.” That has a lot of oomph, doesn’t it? There's no doubt WWE had a more cooperative broadcast partner, despite Ted Turner, Time Warner's head honcho, being WCW's biggest fan.

15 WWE Had A Team Atmosphere

Ask any wrestler who worked in WCW, and they’ll say that they were in shark-infested waters. But those sharks were fat and lazy and barely swam out for any chum. In other words, the top guys only looked out for themselves. With so many top guys, the up-and-comers had no place to go but over to the competition. (See: Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, etc.)

That wasn't the case in WWE. There, everyone was still a shark, but they were all striving to get more chum. No one phoned in anything and there was a team atmosphere, even when top guys were trying to hold on to their spot. That just meant that Stone Cold had to work extra hard when The Rock and Triple H were nipping at his heels. And everyone across the board got to reap the benefits.

14 Pay Scales

There hasn’t been a lot that HASN’T been discussed about the pay structures of both companies. The disparities in pay, though, are what bred contempt and complacency in the WCW locker room and had bred a desire for more work and more money in WWE.

Ask yourself the question – if you’re making guaranteed money whether you put in the effort or not, are you going to work any harder than the next guy? But what if the more you work, the more you get paid? Anyone under that structure would be busting their hump every single night, which is what the WWE got from its roster.

13 Locker Room Morale

The WWE was a team atmosphere and the big guns of WCW were seemingly only out for themselves; that’s established. But imagine what that does to a lot of the hungry lions and workhorses underneath on the card. Guys like Eddie Guerrero, Chris Jericho, and Booker T were all primed and ready to crack through the glass ceiling and take WCW to new heights, but all of the legends of yesteryear were still there working.

It is understandable from a business sense to keep pushing proven commodities like Randy Savage instead of trying new untested guys in the top position. But that doesn’t mean that the undercard is going to like it one bit. In WWE, whoever got over, got pushed. In WCW, whoever was established, stayed on top.

12 Creative Control

In WWE, the buck stops with Vinny Mac. Even when guys like Bret Hart try to pull a creative control card on Vince, whether justified or not, things like Montreal can happen. Vince will not sacrifice his vision or what he believes is right for his company for one of his worker's harebrained ideas, even if coming from a top guy like Bret.

Meanwhile, Hulk Hogan not only had creative control in his contract, but he was also firmly in Bischoff’s ear. So even if he never pulled out his creative control card (which he did do several times, e.g. Starrcade ’97), Easy E would still try to work with Hulk, instead of push against the grain.

11 WCW Stars Collected Paychecks For No Reason

There are plenty of reasons for the “ATM Eric” reputation that Bischoff had. But getting checks for no reason would have to be at the top of the list. He doled out more money to guys like Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, thanks to their “favored nations” clauses. But the big “money for nothing” offense in WCW was Easy E handing off a bunch of cash to Lanny Poffo, to essentially placate The Macho Man.

Macho had suggested that Lanny take over the Gorgeous George gimmick that he had purchased. But that would wind up going to a woman (Stephanie Bellars) instead, which meant Lanny Poffo actually got a paycheck for four years just for being the Macho Man’s brother.

10 WCW Stars Getting Flown In, Without Being On The Show

Thanks to the storytellers flip-flopping around and shifting focuses at a whiplash pace, it was hard sometimes to decipher which superstars would be used or not. Several documentaries have revealed that oftentimes, WCW didn't even have a script or outline in place until minutes before airtime.

That also meant that oftentimes, the boys would spend the expenses to get themselves to the arenas to the show, then sit around and not even be used.

Remember, in WCW that didn’t mean a whole lot since stars would get paid anyway. But in WWE, it'd be a waste of money for wrestlers to show up to an arena if they weren't on the card.

9 WWE Agents

In both companies, there were backstage agents to help the boys put together their matches. However, the level of talent in both locker rooms is one more notch on WWE’s belt. During the Monday Night War, guys like Bruce Prichard, Gerald Brisco, Michael Hayes, Pat Patterson and Sgt. Slaughter – all legends – were agenting matches.

WCW’s team was not as stellar – guys like Mike Graham, Greg Gagne, David Crockett, and Terry Taylor. Basically, that's three sons of promoters who went down with their respective fathers' sinking ships, and the Red Rooster. It really got to show in main events, as WWE typically had far superior main events, and endings, to that of WCW.

8 Power Plant vs. Territories

Before the WWE’s expansion, there were territories all over the country that wrestlers could go to work and hone their craft. After they became the biggest wrestling company ever, some of the territories went away, while others not only stayed, they worked with WWE as developmental territories for talent.

WCW however, relied on having a proto-Performance Center, the WCW Power Plant. The place was a one-stop-shop for guys like Goldberg and DDP. But most importantly, a certain WWE executive spent parts of his early career there and no doubt imbued some of the Power Plant concepts into the WWE Performance Center.

7 Ted Turner’s Check Book Allowed For Less Dates

Like it or not, Easy E steered the ship, but Ted Turner was the one paying for the whole fleet. It was the single biggest reason guys were jumping from WWE to WCW. It’s why Hall and Nash left, and just about everyone else. Remember in WWE, wrestlers had to work to get paid. But in WCW, they not only got paid every single week working or not, they got paid for fewer dates. Less dates allowed for a better home life (or worse, depending on the superstar).

The hungrier wrestlers such as a young Triple H, Big Show and Chris Jericho, would go to WWE, as they saw more working dates as more opportunities.

6 Revenue Streams

Even when the business was down in the mid-90s, WWE was getting a bunch of revenue from ad sales and rights fees. They were nowhere near what they are today - but the concepts were the same. Factor in all kinds of toys and other products, and you get a company that was very adept at staying afloat even with the changing perceptions of the product.

WCW was nothing more than a budget point for Turner. They had no products and no ad sales. Once Bischoff took over, the story, as he tells it, was that his initial goal was to make a profit of one dollar. Thankfully, they made a little more than that under Bischoff. But according to the former WCW boss, the company had to actually claw its way-out debt before that dollar could be made.

5 WWE Made New Stars, WCW Remade Old Stars

WCW was actually considered a regional promotion for a long time, a remnant of the companies that it was birthed from. It actually wasn’t until they signed Hulk Hogan that they started being seen as more legit. Bischoff took that ball and ran with it. WCW became a place were former WWE megastars went and helped make WCW worth watching.

But with all of those top stars gone, plenty of WCW’s undercard headed up north and smashed down those doors too. It’s part of the reason that WWE won the war. The aging talent sat back, so to speak, and the young lions like The Rock and Steve Austin started to emerge after breaking away from their forgettable initial gimmicks (Rocky Maivia and The Ringmaster).

4 Pat Patterson

Perhaps the single greatest backstage talent in all of wrestling during the Monday Night War was Pat Patterson. As a lifetime member of the WWE, he never headed to WCW and simply had a knack for creating finishes and inventing match concepts. While WCW was driveling around with nonsense like World War 3, he had created the Royal Rumble.

The endings he’d come up with for matches were always better than the non-finishes that haunted Nitro every Monday and occasionally, on PPV. Even Bischoff has stated if he had a Pat Patterson type of guy, then WCW might have won the war.

3 It’s Vince’s Life / It’s Eric’s Job

Let’s put on our hindsight goggles for a moment. There really was “no chance in hell” that Vince was ever going to lose the Monday Night War. How could he? Imagine a world where he did? When AOL/Time Warner merges, WCW eventually falls by the wayside and then poof - no more wrestling in North America and no more footage to mine for profit.

While he was passionate about his job, running WCW was just a job for Eric Bischoff. He wasn’t a third-generation promoter whose very family lineage was on the line. Considering a world without WWE would mean a world without mainstream wrestling...no matter how much people want to complain about today's product, we’re much better for WWE winning the Monday Night War.

2 Bischoff Delegated / Vince Oversaw

Eric Bischoff had the right idea for running a business - create a stellar business plan and hire all kinds of people to delegate jobs to. That’s for a day-to-day office type of environment business, though. The wrestling industry is far from a normal business.

Vince, more likely than not, delegates plenty of jobs too, but he also oversees every single aspect of his business, even as a man who's now in his early 70s. There is barely anything going on that he doesn’t know about. He might be trusting a lot more of the company to his family these days, but back when their livelihoods were at stake, there was just no way he allowed anyone to make a footstep he wasn’t aware of.

1 Multiple Head Bookers Before Eric Bischoff

A bajillion WWE writers report to Vince, who is, was, and until he chooses to expire, the head booker of the WWE. For nearly 40 years, everything that has happened has been his vision.

Consequently, and one of the biggest reasons WCW is no longer here was the constant revolving door of head bookers. There were some who knew the business, like Dusty Rhodes and Kevin Sullivan. There were some who knew the business but were out of touch with it, like Bill Watts. Then there were guys like Jim Herd, who knew a lot about pizza but nothing about the wrestling industry, hence goofy ideas like The Ding Dongs and Ric Flair's planned Spartacus gimmick. Basically, Bischoff had a lot of work to do just to grab the company from the abyss…there was just no way the company could have been saved long-term.