The Monday Night Wars: The Complete History of Wrestling's Greatest Battle

Before the War: WWF and WCW in the Early 1990s

To understand the Monday Night Wars, you have to understand the landscape of professional wrestling in the early 1990s. The World Wrestling Federation, led by Vince McMahon, had dominated the 1980s with Hulk Hogan, WrestleMania, and the "Rock 'n Wrestling" connection. But by 1992, the WWF was in serious trouble. The federal steroid trial against McMahon cast a shadow over the company. Hulk Hogan had departed. Draw after draw from the golden era — the Ultimate Warrior, Randy Savage as a top babyface, the British Bulldog — either left or were cycled into lesser roles.

McMahon pushed new, smaller stars: Bret "The Hitman" Hart became WWF Champion in 1992, ushering in an era of technical, workrate-focused main events. Shawn Michaels emerged as one of the most talented performers ever to step into a ring. But culturally, the WWF still operated under its family-friendly, cartoon-character model. Doink the Clown. The Repo Man. Mantaur. The product felt stale, and the audience was shrinking.

Meanwhile, World Championship Wrestling — owned by Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting System — was the clear number two promotion. WCW had inherited the legacy of Jim Crockett Promotions and the NWA's southeastern territory, featuring legends like Ric Flair, Sting, and the Four Horsemen. But WCW had its own problems: chaotic backstage politics, revolving-door bookers, and an inability to consistently draw strong television ratings. Stars like Flair, Vader, and Cactus Jack kept the in-ring product respectable, but WCW lacked the mainstream cultural reach that the WWF had built in the 1980s.

Both companies were profitable but not thriving. Wrestling felt like it had peaked. The conventional wisdom was that the business had entered a permanent downturn after the Hogan-era boom. Nobody predicted what was about to happen.

Monday Night Raw and the Birth of Weekly Wrestling Wars

On January 11, 1993, the World Wrestling Federation debuted Monday Night Raw on the USA Network. The show was revolutionary in concept — a live (or near-live), weekly wrestling program broadcast from the Manhattan Center in New York City. Before Raw, most wrestling television was syndicated and pre-taped weeks in advance. Raw felt immediate, unpredictable, and dangerous. Anything could happen on live TV.

The early Raw episodes featured a mix of squash matches, interview segments, and occasional marquee bouts. Vince McMahon, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan, and later Jerry "The King" Lawler provided commentary. The show built its identity around the idea that Monday night was must-see wrestling television. Matches like Shawn Michaels vs. Marty Jannetty and Bret Hart vs. Fatu showed that Raw could deliver in-ring quality alongside entertainment.

For over two years, Monday Night Raw ran virtually unopposed on Monday nights. WCW had its Saturday Night show on TBS and various syndicated programs, but nothing that competed head-to-head with Raw. That would change dramatically on September 4, 1995, when Eric Bischoff convinced Turner executives to give WCW a live Monday night show on TNT — WCW Monday Nitro. The war had officially begun.

Nitro Launches: Eric Bischoff's Masterstroke

Eric Bischoff was not a wrestler. He was not a traditional booker. He was a businessman and broadcaster who understood television in ways that traditional wrestling minds did not. When he took over as executive vice president of WCW in 1994, he inherited a company with Turner's deep pockets but no clear creative direction. Bischoff's genius was recognizing that wrestling's competition wasn't just in the ring — it was on the remote control.

The first episode of Monday Nitro aired live from the Mall of America in Minneapolis on September 4, 1995. It was a statement of intent. Lex Luger — who had appeared on WWF programming just weeks earlier — showed up on Nitro, shocking the wrestling world. The message was clear: WCW was coming for the WWF's talent, audience, and dominance.

Bischoff deployed several key strategies in Nitro's early days. First, he signed established WWF stars — Hulk Hogan had already arrived in 1994, followed by Randy Savage. Second, he made Nitro feel like an event every week, broadcasting from different arenas with pyrotechnics and a big-show atmosphere. Third, and most controversially, he began spoiling Raw's pre-taped results on live Nitro broadcasts. Since Raw was not yet live every week, Bischoff would tell viewers what was going to happen on the competing show, encouraging them to stay on TNT.

The WWF was caught flat-footed. McMahon had never faced a real head-to-head competitor on Monday nights, and the early ratings showed WCW's strategy working. But the real game-changer was still months away.

The NWO: The Angle That Changed Everything

On May 27, 1996, Scott Hall — formerly Razor Ramon in the WWF — appeared on Monday Nitro, walking through the crowd as if he were an outsider invading WCW. The next week, Kevin Nash — formerly Diesel — joined him. The storyline was simple but brilliant: two "invaders" from the rival promotion were coming to take over WCW. The lines between fiction and reality blurred in a way wrestling had never achieved on such a large scale.

The angle built to Bash at the Beach on July 7, 1996. Hall and Nash faced WCW loyalists Sting, Lex Luger, and Randy Savage in a six-man tag match, with a mystery partner to be revealed. When Hulk Hogan walked down the aisle and dropped the leg on Randy Savage — turning heel for the first time in over a decade — the wrestling world exploded. Fans threw trash into the ring. The commentators sold it as a genuine betrayal. The New World Order was born.

The NWO angle worked on multiple levels. It was the first major wrestling storyline to treat the audience as smart — acknowledging that Scott Hall had been Razor Ramon, that these were real wrestlers from a competing company, and that corporate warfare existed. The NWO wore black and white, spray-painted their logo on everything, and operated as a rogue faction trying to destroy WCW from within. It was counterculture cool in a way wrestling had never been.

Hogan's heel turn was the single most impactful character change in wrestling history. For a decade, he had been the all-American hero, the red-and-yellow vitamins-and-prayers good guy. As "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan, he was arrogant, conniving, and — most importantly — relevant again. His promos dripped with real-life resentment toward the fans and the business. NWO merchandise became the best-selling wrestling merchandise of all time to that point, and WCW's ratings began to climb past Raw's every week.

The NWO angle also elevated Sting into a new character. When WCW's roster questioned Sting's loyalty, he adopted a dark, silent persona inspired by "The Crow" — descending from the rafters, carrying a baseball bat, and refusing to speak. For over a year, Sting lurked in the shadows while the NWO ran roughshod over WCW. The anticipation for Sting vs. Hogan became the biggest storyline in wrestling.

The WWF Fights Back: Austin, Attitude, and a New Philosophy

While WCW was winning the ratings war, the WWF was quietly building the foundation for the greatest creative period in its history. The catalyst was a bald Texan named Steve Austin.

Austin had been released by WCW in 1995 — Eric Bischoff famously told him he wasn't marketable. After a brief stint in ECW where he honed his anti-authority persona, Austin arrived in the WWF and began his ascent. His "Austin 3:16" speech after defeating Jake Roberts at the 1996 King of the Ring — "Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass!" — became the most quoted wrestling promo of all time and the foundation for a merchandise empire.

What made Stone Cold Steve Austin different from every star before him was his relationship with authority. In the kayfabe world, he despised his boss, Vince McMahon. He stunned him. He sprayed him with beer. He drove a Zamboni to the ring to get at him. In an era when working-class frustration with corporate America was reaching a fever pitch, Austin became the avatar for everyone who wanted to tell their boss to go to hell. The Austin vs. McMahon rivalry was not just the hottest feud in wrestling — it was a cultural phenomenon.

McMahon, to his credit, recognized that the family-friendly product could not compete with the NWO's edginess. The WWF underwent a radical transformation that became known as the "Attitude Era." Content became more adult: more profanity, more sexual innuendo, more violence, more controversy. D-Generation X — led by Shawn Michaels and later Triple H — brought juvenile rebellion and fourth-wall-breaking humor. Mick Foley, as Mankind, delivered brutally physical performances that pushed the boundaries of what audiences expected from wrestling.

The Rock emerged during this period as one of the most naturally charismatic performers in entertainment history. His promos were electric, his catchphrases were everywhere, and his ability to connect with an audience was unmatched. Together, Austin, The Rock, Mankind, Triple H, The Undertaker, and Kane formed a main event scene so loaded with star power that any combination of matches felt like a pay-per-view main event.

The Turning Point: Mankind Wins the Title

The single night most historians point to as the turning point of the Monday Night Wars is January 4, 1999. On that evening, both Raw and Nitro aired live, and what happened on each show cemented the WWF's dominance and accelerated WCW's decline.

On Raw, Mankind (Mick Foley) defeated The Rock to win the WWF Championship for the first time. It was a feel-good moment — a beloved underdog finally reaching the top of the mountain. The crowd in Worcester, Massachusetts erupted. Commentary sold it as one of the greatest moments in Raw history, and it was.

But here's where Eric Bischoff made a fatal error. Knowing that Raw was taped (the match had been recorded earlier), Bischoff instructed announcer Tony Schiavone to spoil the result on live Nitro: "Fans, if you're even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, do not, because we understand that Mick Foley — who wrestled here as Cactus Jack — is going to win their world title. Ha! That'll certainly put some butts in the seats."

The sarcasm backfired catastrophically. An estimated 600,000 viewers immediately switched from Nitro to Raw to watch Foley win the title. The audience didn't think Foley winning was a joke — they thought it was must-see television. That quarter-hour rating swing was the largest in the history of the war, and it marked the moment when WCW lost the audience's trust and the WWF gained it permanently.

The Fingerpoke of Doom

On that same January 4, 1999 Nitro — the same night Bischoff spoiled Foley's title win — WCW delivered its own main event that would live in infamy. Hulk Hogan faced Kevin Nash for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. Nash had recently ended Goldberg's legendary 173-match winning streak (with help from a taser wielded by Scott Hall). The rematch seemed like a major event.

Instead, Hogan poked Nash in the chest with one finger, Nash laid down, and Hogan pinned him. The NWO reformed. The live crowd was furious. The television audience was insulted. The "Fingerpoke of Doom," as it became known, symbolized everything wrong with WCW's creative direction — the veterans protecting their positions, storylines that went nowhere, and utter contempt for the audience's intelligence.

To put this in perspective: while WCW was running an angle designed to be a clever swerve for insiders, the WWF was creating a genuine emotional moment with Foley's title victory. One company was playing to smarks; the other was making moments. The contrast could not have been starker. After that night, WCW never won the weekly ratings battle again for any sustained period.

The Montreal Screwjob: Real Life Eclipses Fiction

No account of the Monday Night Wars is complete without the Montreal Screwjob, even though it occurred at a pay-per-view rather than on Monday night television. On November 9, 1997, at Survivor Series in Montreal, Bret Hart was scheduled to defend the WWF Championship against Shawn Michaels. Hart was leaving for WCW and had refused to drop the title to Michaels in his home country of Canada.

McMahon, fearing Hart would take the WWF Championship belt to WCW on live television (as had happened in the past with other promotions), devised a plan. During the match, referee Earl Hebner called for the bell when Michaels applied Hart's own finishing move, the Sharpshooter — even though Hart had not submitted. Michaels was awarded the championship. Hart, realizing he had been double-crossed, spat in McMahon's face and destroyed television equipment backstage. He famously punched McMahon in the locker room.

The Montreal Screwjob was wrestling's loss of innocence. It shattered the last illusions about the business and became the subject of the landmark documentary "Wrestling with Shadows." But it also had an unintended creative benefit for the WWF: it established Vince McMahon as a genuine villain in the eyes of the audience. When McMahon appeared on Raw the next night and uttered the infamous line, "Bret screwed Bret," he became "Mr. McMahon" — the evil boss character that would serve as Stone Cold Steve Austin's perfect foil. The most profitable rivalry in wrestling history was built on a real-life betrayal.

The Ratings War: A Week-by-Week Battle

The Monday Night Wars were tracked obsessively through Nielsen ratings. For wrestling fans and industry observers, the weekly ratings became a scoreboard. Here are the key phases of the battle:

WCW's Decline: What Went Wrong

WCW's collapse is one of the most studied failures in entertainment history. A company backed by a billionaire, with a roster of the biggest names in wrestling, went from winning the ratings war to losing over $60 million per year in just three years. Multiple factors contributed:

• Guaranteed contracts with creative control. Hogan, Nash, and other top stars had contractual creative control clauses, meaning they could refuse to lose matches or veto storyline directions. This made long-term booking nearly impossible. Young talent who could have become the next generation of stars — Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko — were held down while aging veterans dominated the main event scene.
• The NWO angle never ended. What began as a tight three-man faction ballooned into a sprawling group with dozens of members. The NWO split into NWO Hollywood and NWO Wolfpac. They reformed. They split again. By 1999, the angle that had revolutionized wrestling felt played out. WCW had no clear exit strategy and kept returning to the NWO well long after it had run dry.
• Starrcade 1997 was botched. The biggest match in WCW history — Sting vs. Hollywood Hogan for the WCW Championship at Starrcade 1997, built up over 18 months — was undermined by a confusing finish. Hogan politicked for a clean pin before a "fast count" restart, but the referee counted at normal speed, making the whole angle nonsensical. The moment that should have been WCW's WrestleMania III instead left fans confused and disappointed.
• Booking chaos. WCW cycled through bookers at a dizzying pace — Kevin Sullivan, Vince Russo (brought over from the WWF), Kevin Nash booking himself, committee booking. Storylines were started and abandoned weekly. David Arquette won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship in a publicity stunt. Vince Russo put the title on himself. Jeff Jarrett laid down for Hogan in another worked-shoot disaster. The audience couldn't invest in stories because nothing had consequences.
• Talent exodus. As WCW's creative declined, its best performers jumped to the WWF. Chris Jericho made his legendary debut interrupting The Rock in August 1999. The Radicalz — Benoit, Guerrero, Malenko, and Perry Saturn — walked out in January 2000. The Big Show (Paul Wight) had already left. Each departure weakened WCW's roster and strengthened the competition.
• The AOL-Time Warner merger. When AOL merged with Time Warner in 2000, the new corporate leadership had no interest in professional wrestling. WCW was seen as low-brow content that damaged the company's brand. Even if WCW had reversed its creative decline, the new management was looking for any excuse to cancel the programming.

Goldberg's Rise and Fall: A Microcosm of WCW

Bill Goldberg's story perfectly encapsulates WCW's strengths and weaknesses. A former NFL player with legitimate toughness and explosive charisma, Goldberg was booked on an undefeated streak starting in September 1997. For nearly a year, he steamrolled through the roster with his devastating spear and jackhammer finisher, building genuine excitement with a character who felt unstoppable.

His WCW Championship victory over Hollywood Hulk Hogan on the July 6, 1998 episode of Nitro — given away free on television — drew a 5.7 rating, one of the highest in the history of cable wrestling. The Georgia Dome crowd of over 40,000 was electric. It was the peak of WCW's ratings dominance and one of the greatest moments in television wrestling history.

But WCW ended the streak at Starrcade 1998, having Kevin Nash defeat Goldberg with help from Scott Hall's taser — a finish that felt cheap for ending such a monumental run. Then the Fingerpoke of Doom transferred the title from Nash back to Hogan, rendering Goldberg's loss meaningless. WCW had built the hottest act in wrestling and then systematically destroyed him to serve the interests of the backstage political establishment.

ECW: The Third Party That Changed Both Sides

No history of the Monday Night Wars is complete without acknowledging Extreme Championship Wrestling. Paul Heyman's Philadelphia-based promotion never had the resources to compete nationally, but its influence on both WCW and the WWF was enormous. ECW pioneered the edgy, adult-oriented content that the Attitude Era would popularize. Hardcore wrestling, explicit promos, anti-establishment attitudes — ECW did it all first, on a shoestring budget, in a bingo hall.

Many of the performers who defined the Monday Night Wars honed their craft in ECW: Steve Austin developed his anti-hero persona there. Mick Foley pushed the boundaries of hardcore wrestling. The Dudley Boyz, Taz, Rob Van Dam, and Rey Mysterio all spent formative years in ECW before moving to larger promotions. The WWF even aired ECW segments on Raw and ran a brief talent-sharing agreement, recognizing that ECW's audience was the demographic both major companies wanted.

ECW finally folded in April 2001, unable to secure a television deal that could sustain the company financially. But its DNA lived on in both WWF and WCW programming, and Paul Heyman's creative genius would continue to shape the industry for decades.

The Final Nitro: March 26, 2001

By 2001, WCW was hemorrhaging money and the AOL-Time Warner leadership wanted it gone. Turner Networks cancelled all WCW programming, and the company was put up for sale. Eric Bischoff — the man who had launched Nitro and nearly destroyed the WWF — assembled a group of investors to purchase WCW, but the deal fell through when no television network would agree to air the programming.

That left one buyer: Vince McMahon. The man who had been WCW's greatest rival purchased the company's intellectual property — including its tape library, trademarks, and select contracts — for approximately $2.5 million. To put that in perspective, WCW had been valued at over $500 million at its peak. It was one of the most lopsided acquisitions in entertainment history.

The final episode of Monday Nitro aired on March 26, 2001. In a surreal simulcast, Vince McMahon appeared on both Raw and Nitro, gloating about his victory. The show featured a final WCW Championship match between Booker T and Scott Steiner, as well as emotional moments from WCW's history. Sting, Ric Flair, and other WCW legends were conspicuously absent — many felt the final show was more of a WWF victory lap than a genuine celebration of WCW's legacy.

The simulcast ended with Shane McMahon appearing on Nitro to announce that he, not his father, had purchased WCW — setting up the Invasion angle that would dominate the WWF for the rest of 2001. The Monday Night Wars were officially over. The WWF had won.

The Invasion That Wasn't

The Invasion angle should have been the biggest storyline in wrestling history. WWF vs. WCW — dream matches that fans had fantasized about for years. Goldberg vs. Austin. Sting vs. Undertaker. The Rock vs. Hogan (which wouldn't happen until WrestleMania X-8 in 2002). But the reality fell far short of the dream.

The problem was that WCW's top stars — Hogan, Nash, Hall, Goldberg, Flair, Sting — all had guaranteed contracts with AOL-Time Warner that were far more lucrative than anything the WWF would offer. They chose to sit at home and collect their WCW paychecks rather than work for McMahon at reduced rates. The "WCW Invasion" was led by Booker T and Diamond Dallas Page — talented performers, but not the marquee names fans expected.

McMahon compounded the problem by booking WCW's invaders as clearly inferior to his WWF roster. WCW and ECW talent were merged into "The Alliance," lost most of their major matches, and were ultimately defeated at Survivor Series 2001. The angle that could have sustained years of programming was wrapped up in months, and many WCW stars were released or depushed shortly after.

The Legacy of the Monday Night Wars

The Monday Night Wars fundamentally changed professional wrestling in ways that are still felt today:

• Competition breeds excellence. Both companies produced their best creative work while trying to outdo each other. Raw and Nitro pushed each other to innovate, take risks, and create genuinely compelling television. The period from 1996-2000 is universally regarded as the greatest era in American wrestling history.
• Wrestlers gained leverage. For the first time, performers could negotiate between two major companies. Salaries skyrocketed. Mid-card wrestlers in the Monday Night Wars era earned more than main eventers had in the 1980s. This established the precedent for wrestlers being treated as valuable intellectual property rather than interchangeable parts.
• Wrestling entered mainstream culture. The Attitude Era made wrestling a genuine cultural phenomenon. Austin and The Rock crossed over into mainstream media. Raw consistently drew 5-8 million viewers. Wrestling was covered by Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, and the New York Times. The industry had not been this culturally relevant since the 1980s boom, and arguably has not reached those heights since.
• The tape library became invaluable. When McMahon purchased WCW, he acquired decades of footage that would eventually form the backbone of the WWE Network (now available on Peacock). The NWA, WCW, and ECW libraries — combined with WWE's own — created the most comprehensive archive of professional wrestling in existence.
• Monopoly followed competition. The WWF's victory created a near-monopoly that lasted almost two decades. Without meaningful competition, WWE's creative became more conservative and less urgent. Many fans and critics argue that the product suffered directly because of the lack of a rival pushing McMahon to be better.

Key Figures Who Shaped the War

Beyond the headline names, several figures played crucial roles in the outcome of the Monday Night Wars:

AEW vs. WWE: The Modern Parallel

When All Elite Wrestling launched in 2019 and debuted Dynamite on TNT — the same network that had aired Nitro — comparisons to the Monday Night Wars were inevitable. Tony Khan's company featured former WWE stars (Chris Jericho, Jon Moxley, Cody Rhodes), indie darlings (Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks), and a commitment to presenting wrestling as a sport. The parallels were obvious.

But the modern competition is fundamentally different from the 1990s war. AEW and WWE air on different nights (Dynamite on Wednesdays or Saturdays, Raw now on Netflix as of 2025). They compete for talent and mindshare but rarely go head-to-head in time slots. The streaming era has fragmented audiences in ways that make direct ratings comparisons less meaningful. A 1.0 rating today represents a much smaller share of the potential audience than a 4.0 did in 1998.

The biggest difference is financial. WCW had Ted Turner's billions behind it; AEW has Tony Khan's family fortune. WWE secured a massive deal with Netflix worth over $5 billion. The financial disparity between WWE and AEW is arguably larger than the gap between WCW and WWF ever was. AEW is a viable alternative for wrestlers and fans, but it has not recreated the existential threat that WCW posed to the WWF.

That said, AEW's existence has demonstrably improved the wrestling landscape. WWE's creative improved notably after AEW's launch, with Triple H's takeover of creative in 2022 producing some of the best WWE television in years. Wrestler salaries across the industry have increased. Performers have options. The lesson of the Monday Night Wars — that competition makes everyone better — is being proven again, even if the scale is different.

For a deeper look at where all the major promotions stand today, check out our promotions explained guide.

Could It Happen Again?

Wrestling fans frequently ask whether we could ever see another Monday Night Wars. The honest answer is: probably not in the same form. The media landscape has changed too dramatically. In the 1990s, there were only a handful of cable channels competing for viewers on any given night. Wrestling was one of the biggest draws on cable television. Today, audiences are split across streaming platforms, social media, gaming, and hundreds of channels. The concentrated viewership that made the ratings war so dramatic simply doesn't exist anymore.

But the spirit of competition lives on. AEW gives wrestlers and fans an alternative to WWE. International promotions like NJPW, STARDOM, and CMLL continue to produce world-class wrestling. TNA has experienced a notable resurgence in 2026. The wrestling ecosystem is healthier than it has been since the Monday Night Wars era, even if no single rivalry matches the intensity of WWF vs. WCW.

Essential Viewing: The Definitive Monday Night Wars Watch List

If you want to experience the Monday Night Wars for yourself, here are the episodes and events that capture the essence of the era:

• Nitro, September 4, 1995: The debut. Lex Luger shocks the world.
• Nitro, May 27, 1996: Scott Hall appears. The Outsiders angle begins.
• Bash at the Beach, July 7, 1996: Hogan turns heel. The NWO is born.
• Raw, June 23, 1996: Austin 3:16 at King of the Ring.
• Survivor Series, November 9, 1997: The Montreal Screwjob.
• Raw, March 30, 1998: Austin wins the WWF Championship at WrestleMania XIV.
• Nitro, July 6, 1998: Goldberg defeats Hogan. WCW's peak.
• Raw/Nitro, January 4, 1999: Foley wins the title. The Fingerpoke of Doom.
• Raw, January 25, 1999: The Rock's "Rock Bottom" interview. Attitude Era perfection.
• Nitro, March 26, 2001: The final Nitro. End of an era.

Most of these are available on Peacock (WWE content) or through various streaming platforms. The WWE-produced "Monday Night War" documentary series on Peacock provides excellent context, though it naturally tells the story from WWE's perspective.

Final Thoughts

The Monday Night Wars were lightning in a bottle — a perfect storm of creative genius, corporate rivalry, cultural timing, and larger-than-life personalities. They produced the highest-rated wrestling television in history, launched mainstream careers (The Rock went from wrestling to Hollywood's biggest box office draw), destroyed a billion-dollar company, and fundamentally altered how professional wrestling is produced and consumed.

For those of us who lived through it, Monday nights from 1995 to 2001 were an event. You flipped between channels. You debated with friends about which show was better. You stayed up for the overrun. Every week felt like it mattered, because both companies were genuinely trying to outdo each other. That urgency, that sense that anything could happen, is what made the era special.

The Monday Night Wars taught the wrestling industry its most important lesson: competition makes everyone better. When WCW pushed the WWF, we got the Attitude Era. When AEW pushed WWE, we got the Triple H creative renaissance. The audience always wins when promotions have to fight for their attention. And that, more than any single match or angle, is the lasting legacy of wrestling's greatest battle.

Want to understand the championships that were at the center of these battles? Read our complete history of world championship titles. And for more context on the biggest show in wrestling, explore our best WrestleMania matches of all time.