January 4th, 1999 - 22 years ago today, with one sentence, WCW commentator Tony Schiavone shot himself in the foot, and the WWF won the biggest victory in the entirety of the Monday Night Wars
During the live WCW show, Schiavone spoiled the result of the taped WWF Raw's main event ()which was being screened on a different channel at the same time) by saying that Mick Foley, who wrestled in WCW as Cactus Jack, would win the WWF World Title, sarcastically remarking '
That's gonna put some butts in the seats'
Almost immediately after Schiavone spoiled Foley's title win, 600,000 households switched from Nitro to Raw, to watch Foley win the title. This was enough to give the WWF the ratings win for the night, with a 5.7 final rating to Nitro's 5.0. WCW's ratings never saw more than a 5.0 going head-to-head with Raw again and Nitro's rating sank below 5.0 and by the end of the year was struggling to stay above 3.0