Content area
Full Text
Two years of bad blood between the nation's largest pro wrestling promotors has boiled over in a Hartford, Conn., federal court, as the Stamford, Conn.,-based owner of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) is being sued for at least $2 million.
World Championship Wrestling (WCW), the wholly owned subsidiary of entertainment/media giant Time Warner Inc., is accusing TitanSports Inc. and its WWF of engaging in unfair trade by mocking WCW and its veteran wrestlers on television shows dating back to 1996. Titan and the WWF are also accused of deceiving wrestling fans over the past two years by mentioning the names and airing old matches of several WCW wrestlers who were once part of the WWF.
The lawsuit is the latest escalation of a feud between the two promotors that started when Ted Turner created WCW in 1988 after buying the old Jim Crockett Promotions. The feud intensified in 1995, when WCW launched its "Monday Nitro" TV show on the TNT cable network -- also owned by Time Warner -- and scheduled it opposite a WWF program.
In recent weeks, WCW and WWF have stepped up their televised insults. On April 27, the WWF aired skits on its "Raw Is War" TV show in which some of its wrestlers declared "war" on WCW. Two weeks later, a WWF skit showed its D-Generation-X team of wrestlers trying to "invade" WCW's offices in Smyrna, Ga. Days later, WCW president Eric Bischoff publicly challenged WWF chief executive officer Vincent K. McMahon to a match on May 17. McMahon ignored that challenge.
"The campaign by the WWF constitutes a course of unfair competition directed against WCW by Titan," WCW stated in its lawsuit, filed May 18 by attorneys James T. Shearin and Sheila A. Denton of...