The Alliance

The Alliance, also known as Team WCW/ECW and The Coalition, was a villainous professional wrestling stable in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) and the Heartland Wrestling Association (HWA) that existed during the Invasion storyline from May to November 2001. The stable came about as a result of the WWF's purchase of World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in March 2001. The Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) name was brought in later to help boost the presence of WCW after the original ECW promotion closed in April 2001. History The original plan for The Invasion storyline was WCW being a babyface group, led by Shane McMahon (who was the owner of WCW during the angle) to go against the heel owner of the WWF, Mr. McMahon. During May and June 2001, wrestlers identified as being "under contract to WCW" (such as Lance Storm and Mike Awesome) "invaded" WWF programming, by performing several run-ins during matches. The ultimate goal, reportedly, was for WCW to "take over" WWF's flagship show Raw Is War and rebrand it as its own television program, while the WWF would retain control of SmackDown! as their own show. To test the waters for this, the final twenty minutes of the July 2 edition of Raw Is War was given over to WCW, which (in kayfabe) brought in its own commentators (Scott Hudson and Arn Anderson), ring announcer (Stacy Keibler), referee (Nick Patrick), ring apron, and Chyron graphics, to present a match between Booker T and Buff Bagwell for Booker's WCW Championship (which he had won on the final episode of Nitro). This continued later that week on SmackDown!, where Gregory Helms lost the WCW Cruiserweight Championship to Billy Kidman and Booker defended the WCW Championship against Diamond Dallas Page.