WCW Thunder was a professional wrestling show produced by World Championship Wrestling which aired on TBS from January 8, 1998 until March 21, 2001.
On an April 2000 edition of Thunder, David Arquette became the first non-wrestler to win the WCW World Heavyweight title when he pinned Eric Bischoff in a tag team match (his partner was Diamond Dallas Page; Bischoff's partner was champion Jeff Jarrett). The title win was in reality a publicity stunt for Arquette's WCW parody "Ready to Rumble."
Was originally taped apart from Monday Nitro. When WCW's popularity began to drop, they had trouble selling enough tickets for Thunder to fill a stadium, so Thunder was taped immediatly after the live Nitro broadcast.
Was WCW's "secondary" show. Prior to it's debut, WCW Saturday Night had served this purpose.
The last episode of Thunder was billed as the "season finale." This was possibly because the World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment), which had just bought WCW, was not yet sure what it was going to do with the company.
Originally aired on Thursdays. After the more popular WWF introduced their own Thursday show SmackDown!, WCW was forced to move their program to Wednesdays.
