World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE)

The company was previously known as Titan Sports, Inc. before changing to World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc., and most recently becoming World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is the company's main business module, which is the basis of the running of the organization. It is a professional wrestling promotion, currently the largest in North America. It has previously existed as the Capitol Wrestling Corporation, preceded by the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF), then the World Wrestling Federation (WWF).

WWE's revenue in the last twelve months was approximately $400 million (US), with a net profit of approximately $52 million. As of May 2006, the company's market capitalization is over $1 billion (US). Its stock is traded on the NYSE as WWE. The owner and chairman Vince McMahon is once again a billionaire.

ECW was founded in 1992, under the name Eastern Championship Wrestling as a member of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). After owner Tod Gordon had a falling out with head booker "Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert, Gordon chose Gilbert's friend and WCW alumnus Paul Heyman to replace him. Heyman's first show with the promotion was Ultra Clash '93 on September 18, 1993 at Viking Hall (which would eventually be dubbed The ECW Arena) in Philadelphia. Some people have accused Heyman of stabbing Eddie Gilbert in the back and taking his job. The popular belief is that Eddie's drug use and unstable behavior was the real reason for his departure from ECW.

Paul Heyman felt that mainstream professional wrestling had become like rock and roll hair bands. When ECW was branching out, professional wrestlers had far more cartoonish gimmicks. The product was marketed more towards children than the 18-35 male demographic that ECW was aiming towards. There were also far more taboos such as blood-letting and women getting regularly beaten up by the male wrestlers. Heyman saw ECW as the professional wrestling equivalent to Nirvana.

In 1994, Jim Crockett's non-compete agreement with Ted Turner, who purchased World Championship Wrestling (WCW) from Crockett in 1988, was up and he decided to start promoting with the NWA again. Crockett went to Tod Gordon and asked him to hold a tournament for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship at the ECW Arena on August 27, 1994. NWA President Dennis Coralluzzo thought that Crockett and Gordon were going to try to monopolize the title (much like Crockett did in the 1980s) and told them they didn't have the NWA board's approval so he took control over the tournament. Gordon was upset at Coralluzzo for his power plays so Gordon and Shane Douglas, who was booked to win the title against 2 Cold Scorpio, planned to have Douglas throw the title down after he won it and break ECW from the NWA. In a now classic post-match speech, Shane Douglas said that he didn't want to be a part of an organization that "died" seven years earlier presumably when Jim Crockett Promotions itself broke away from the NWA to become WCW.

After ECW withdrew from the NWA and officially changed its name from Eastern Championship Wrestling to Extreme Championship Wrestling, it became an underground sensation. The group would showcase many different styles of professional wrestling, popularizing bloody hardcore wrestling matches and the 3-Way Dance. ECW was always intended to be counter-culture and a grittier alternative to multi-million dollar organizations such as World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and WCW. In addition to their hardcore match types, they provided an alternative to North American wrestling with technical wrestling that was common overseas. International stars such as Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko anchored a solid technical wrestling core in ECW. Rey Mysterio, Jr., Psicosis, Konnan and Juventud Guerrera brought a lucha libre style rarely seen in the national wrestling promotions.

Wrestlers such as Shane Douglas, Tommy Dreamer, The Sandman, Cactus Jack, Terry Funk, Sabu, Public Enemy and The Tazmaniac also helped launch the new ECW at this time. One the promotion's marquee feuds was the long-standing feud between Tommy Dreamer vs. Raven, which involved the "crucifixion" of The Sandman, one of the most controversial angles in wrestling history.

The bulk of ECW's shows remained at the ECW Arena, a rundown bingo hall secluded under a section of Interstate 95. Seating comprised of simple folding chairs and four sets of portable bleachers, and the whole sort of unconventional set up reflected the gritty style of the wrestling itself. Shows were actually broadcast on a local cable sports station (SportsChannel America's local affiliate) on Tuesday evenings and an independent broadcast station (WGTW 48) in Philadelphia on either Friday or Saturday night at 1 or 2 a.m. Due to the obscurity of the stations and ECW itself, many times expletives and violence were not edited out of these showings, helping to get ECW noticed.

After noticing ECW's growing popularity, the "Big Two" (World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and the WWF) started adopting their ideas and hiring away their talent. Paul Heyman believes that ECW was the first victim of the "Monday Night Wars" between WCW Monday Nitro and Monday Night RAW. While the WWF had somewhat of a working relationship with ECW (going as far as allowing cross-promotional angle), WCW refused to even mention ECW by name, calling it "barbed wire city" and "a major independent promotion" that wrestled in bingo halls.

Vince McMahon claimed that he put Paul Heyman on the WWF's payroll as compensation for the talent (namely Tazz, Steve Austin, Mick Foley, and The Dudleys) leaving ECW for the WWF. On the other hand, Heyman believed that Eric Bischoff never compensated him for ECW bred talent such as Mikey Whipwreck, Raven, Sandman, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, Steven Richards, Public Enemy (Johnny Grunge and Rocco Rock) and Chris Jericho leaving to go to WCW.

WWE RAW is the Monday night professional wrestling show for World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It airs live on USA Network in the United States every Monday night, as well as in Canada on TSN, and in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland on Sky Sports. It broadcasts on tape delay in Pakistan and India on Ten Sports, in Portugal on SIC Radical, in Finland on SubTV, in Australia on FOX8, in New Zealand on SKY 1, and in Chile on Chilevisión. RAW is generally seen as WWE's flagship program over its sister program, Friday Night SmackDown!, due to its longer history and its preference over SmackDown! in major pay-per-views such as WrestleMania.

The program is usually two hours long. Beginning in 1997, the two hours of RAW had different names for television ratings purposes, so the then-World Wrestling Federation (WWF) could demand higher advertising charges for the more-watched second hour. Prior to the September 11, 2001, the two hours were known as RAW is WAR and The War Zone, as WAR is the reverse of RAW. References to WAR were eliminated after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Then the World Wrestling Federation began calling the first hour simply WWF RAW and the second hour as The RAW Zone. When the change was made, the entire program was just referred to as WWF RAW (and later WWE RAW) on-camera.

Original format

Beginning as WWF Monday Night RAW, the program first aired on January 11, 1993 on the USA Network for one hour. The original RAW broke new ground in televised professional wrestling. Traditionally, wrestling shows were taped on sound stages with small audiences or at large arena shows. The RAW formula was very different than that of its predecessor, Prime Time Wrestling: instead of canned matches, with studio voice overs and canned chat, RAW was a show shot to a live audience, with angles as they happened.

RAW originated from the Manhattan Center (now Hammerstein Ballroom), a small New York Citytheater and aired live each week. The combination of an intimate venue and live action proved highly successful. However, the weekly live schedule proved to be a financial drain on the WWF, and taped shows began airing every other week. From early 1994 to September 1999 RAW was shown live on one Monday and then the next day (Tuesday) next Monday's RAW was taped. This meant that RAW was live one week taped the next.

The storylines and characters during the early years of RAW still had a healthy dose of the old Federation cartoon style. For instance, there were moments such as Irwin R. Schyster tearing up Tatanka's headdress, the various "Undertaker sightings"; or in characters like Duke "The Dumpster" Droese, Doink the Clown, or Thurman "Sparky" Plugg.

But RAW was also one of a kind, in which they covered the unexpected, exciting moments, a prelude to the ATTITUDE era, in which it coined RAW as "Uncut, Uncooked, Uncensored". Some of those moments include Razor Ramon losing a match unexpectedly to the 1-2-3 Kid who was later known as X-Pac, Marty Jannetty beating Shawn Michaels to win the WWE Intercontinental Title, and RAW was the first WWE Program of any kind to show footage of Lex Luger bodyslamming Yokozuna at the U.S.S. Interpid.

The original hosts of RAW were Vince McMahon, "Macho Man" Randy Savage, and Rob Bartlett. Sean Mooney conducted the interviews and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan also helped contribute. Later in 1993, Rob Bartlett was dropped from the broadcasting team and was replaced by Bobby Heenan. Then on December 6, 1993, Gorilla Monsoon "kicked Bobby Heenan out of the WWF forever." In reality, this was a storyline between Monsoon and his close friend Heenan, who decided to leave the World Wrestling Federation in order to lighten his travel schedule and because he didn't want to take a 50% paycut. After about a year, RAW moved out of the Manhattan Center and traveled to various regular Federation venues in the United States.

WWF SmackDown! (as it was originally known) was set up to compete against WCW's Thursday night show, Thunder. In the spirit of the WWF's Attitude Era, the show was originally planned to be two hours of WWF Divas in primetime TV. However, this did not work out, and instead SmackDown! became a complementary show to RAW is WAR.

SmackDown! first appeared on April 29, 1999 using the RAW is WAR set as a single television special. On August 26, 1999, SmackDown! officially debuted on UPN. Like WCW Thunder, SmackDown! was recorded on Tuesdays and then broadcast on Thursdays. The new WWF show was so popular that WCW moved Thunder on Wednesdays in the hope of holding on to fans rather than losing them to the WWF. SmackDown!, like Thunder, made heavy use of the color blue, earning it the nickname "The Blue Show" amongst wrestling fans.

The original SmackDown! theme was not performed by a band like the RAW is WAR theme; instead, the WWF created a fast-paced theme that was a mixture of techno and rock. The first SmackDown! set was also unique as it featured an oval-shaped TitanTron (which was dubbed the "OvalTron"), entrance and stage which made it stand out from the RAW set and its rectangular TitanTrons. An added feature to the original set was the ability for the OvalTron to be moved to either the left or right of the stage. Throughout the show's early existence, top WWF superstar The Rock routinely called SmackDown! "his" show, in reference to the fact that the name was derived from one of his catchphrases "Layeth the smacketh down." In August 2001, as part of celebrating SmackDown!'s 2nd anniversary, the show received its current logo and set. SmackDown! also had new theme song, The Beautiful People, performed by Marilyn Manson and the song was used from mid-2001 to mid-2003. The last SmackDown! to use the previous television set saw Alliance member Rhyno deliver the Gore to WWF member Chris Jericho through the OvalTron destroying part of the set.

The September 11, 2001 event was cancelled due to the terrorist attacks. On September 13, 2001, SmackDown! was broadcast live from Houston (with Jim Ross and Paul Heyman filling in as hosts Michael Cole and Tazz were absent) as the first major and televised event since the attacks as thousands were in attendance. The ring ropes are usually blue for the SmackDown! shows but were red, white and blue for this night; these colors were commonly used during the 1980s and through the 1990s. They would remain that way, with an American Flag on the mini-tron, for two weeks.

Following the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise, SmackDown! was renamed Friday Night SmackDown! and moved into Enterprise's former timeslot in the United States. WWE promoted this move with the tagline "TV that's changing Friday nights." Friday Night SmackDown! made its series/season premiere on September 9, 2005. The program still airs on Thursdays in Canada on The Score. In the United Kingdom and Australia, their respective stations Sky Sports and FOX8 air SmackDown! on Fridays before the United States due to the time difference, and on Saturdays in Hawaii due to other programs. This is the first time a major weekly WWE show airs internationally before it hits screens in the US.

The events of Hurricane Katrina affected the first edition of Friday Night SmackDown! in the US. Due to a special fundrasing concert to help those affected airing on UPN along with other major US networks at the same time the first edition would have been broadcast, only the second hour of the show was shown on UPN. The first hour was instead streamed from WWE's website. Other countries, including Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and the Philippines received the full two-hour show. WWOR-TV (UPN 9, New York, New York) also aired both hours of the show on tape delay on Saturday, due to a previous commitment to broadcast the New York Yankees on Friday nights.

Friday Night SmackDown! stars had some exposure at WWE Homecoming, RAW's return to USA Network on October 3, 2005.

On October 15, 2005, it was announced that a new Juniors Division was formed and to be exclusive to Friday Night SmackDown! The Juniors division consisted of wrestlers that are at or below 5 feet (152 cm) tall. [9] The Juniors division had been mainly used for comedy matches. However, no Juniors matches had been seen since November 11, 2005, leading some to believe the WWE abandoned the division. Though the Juniors were seen periodically since then, the division was released from World Wrestling Entertainment on March 9, 2006.

The SmackDown! brand earned a major victory at Survivor Series 2005 after their 5 man tag team consisting of Rey Mysterio, Bobby Lashley, Batista, Randy Orton, and JBL defeated Team RAW consisting of Kane, Big Show, Shawn Michaels, Carlito, and Chris Masters. Also SmackDown! General Manager Theodore Long defeated RAW General Manager Eric Bischoff with the help of The Boogeyman.

At the SmackDown! taping on January 10, 2006, Batista had to forfeit the World Heavyweight Title because of a triceps injury. Theodore Long made a Battle Royal for the vacant Title. The winner was former RAW and now current ECW superstar Kurt Angle. In a break from their traditional role of acting as if SmackDown! isn't pre-recorded, WWE.com had a photograph of Angle holding his new title on the main page.

On the April 7, 2006 edition of SmackDown!, general manager Theodore Long announced that the King of the Ring tournament will return after a four year hiatus as a SmackDown!-exclusive tournament. The tournament ended at Judgment Day 2006 with Booker T as the winner.