On this date in history: War Games at Fall Brawl 1996 -- WCW vs. nWo

The New World Order (nWo) started its attempted takeover of World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in May of 1996 when Scott Hall first showed up on Monday Nitro as an invading force from up north. He was joined two weeks later by Kevin Nash, who would collectively come to be known as “The Outsiders.” They promised a third man and when they delivered on that promise it changed the industry — Hulk Hogan turned heel to join the crew and coined the nWo name at Bash at the Beach in July.

The war was on.

The first major battle to take place between the two sides went down on this date in history (Sept. 15, 1996) when four members of the nWo (Hogan, Hall, Nash, Sting) took on four members of WCW (Arn Anderson, Ric Flair, Lex Luger, Sting) in a War Games match at the Fall Brawl pay-per-view (PPV) in Winston Salem, North Carolina.

Wait ... what?

Yes, this was the start of the dramatic character change for Sting, who went from a charismatic California surfer type to a much darker, more mysterious presence known as "The Crow," named as such after the movie of the same name that was the obvious inspiration for the character.

It started when the nWo debuted a fake Sting (played by Jeff Farmer) and fooled everyone into thinking the real Sting had defected, including those he called friends, most notably Lex Luger. It came to a head in the match itself when the fake Sting came out in favor of the nWo but was revealed to be an imposter when the real Sting was the final member to hit the ring for WCW.

Sting cleaned house, running wild over everyone. When he was done silencing the doubters, the Stinger looked at Luger and said, "Is that good enough for you?!?" He bailed right after, leaving his team to lose to the nWo.

The match itself wasn’t exactly a classic but the crowd was unbelievably hot for it as the storyline was really taking off and fans were as invested as ever.

Go watch it on the WWE Network.