It's now been three months since the WWF bought its competition, the WCW. In the past few weeks, they've brought the WCW back in a storyline that has the WCW "invading" the WWF.
The storyline hasn't proved too popular with viewers, since WWF fans have been conditioned to hate the WCW for so long. WCW searches haven?t really rebounded since the organization was reintroduced as part of WWF programming. Searches for individual WCW wrestlers have been non-existent, with one exception: Stacy Keibler.
We've always known that the women of wrestling get a lot of searches (not to mention a lot of plastic surgery), but Keibler didn't register in the top ten back when we rated the top wrestling babes in December. No, her search rise is all due to the reintroduction of WCW. Last week, for example, Keibler received more searches than actresses Elizabeth Hurley and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Keibler was a Baltimore Ravens cheerleader and college student who entered a competition when WCW was looking for a new Nitro Girl (their house cheerleaders). She won and after joining the Nitro Girls became popular enough to become an actual character.
She played Miss Hancock, manager of the tag team Standards and Practices, who would come out and censor wrestlers they didn't like. The tag team wasn't popular but Keibler's skimpy business suits were so they kept her around, eventually going back to her real name
Keibler was only required to dance and look pretty in the old WCW, but the WWF makes its women get in the ring and deliver actual fake punches to each other. Keibler will be making her in-ring debut on the next pay-per-view special, teaming with fellow WCW babe Torrie Wilson.
The two of them will take on the popular WWF stars Trish and Lita in what's being called a "bra-and-panties match." In case you were wondering why the WWF was so popular, this is one of the reasons. This is also probably a reason not to let your eight year-olds watch.
Of course, the whole wrestling scene got much more interesting last night. With the WCW invasion proving unpopular with viewers (and Lycos searchers), last night the WWF resurrected ECW. ECW, or Extreme Championship Wrestling, was the "third" wrestling league for a long time, and was fairly popular before it ran out of money last year. We even covered it in our first-ever Lycos 50 report, though unlike WCW it never made the Lycos 50.
With the ECW wrestlers now joining the WCW wrestlers to take on the WWF wrestlers, we're betting that searches will start to heat up. We're expecting a lot of ECW searches next week, since the league has no official website anymore (after all, it is technically bankrupt) and a number of casual WWF fans will want to know more about this new group that is "invading" WWF.
One more wrestling note: one-time Lycos 50 denizen Chyna did not have her contract renewed by the WWF, meaning her time as a wrestler seems to be finished. She'll try to make it in Hollywood -- without the Chyna name, which is owned by the WWF. Instead she'll be just Joanie Laurer, and she looks destined to join Rena Mero (a.k.a. Sable) in the Lycos 50 "Where Are They Now" file.
