By James Caldwell, PWTorch assistant editor

As WWE approaches 1,000 episodes of Raw, WWE CEO VInce McMahon talked about the history of Raw and competition with WCW Nitro in a rare interview with WWE's website. Specifically, McMahon offered his view of whether WWE ran WCW out of business or whether WCW ran themselves out of business.

"I don’t think we drove WCW out of business. That was certainly never our intent. That was the mindset of Ted Turner and WCW, but not WWE," McMahon said. "See, if you spend all of your energy trying to kill the other guy, your product suffers. If you don’t kill the other guy, then he’s going to come back at you, and when he comes back, you won’t have done anything to make your house better. It’s no different than being in a fight and knowing that, if the other guy keeps on hitting you, that son of a bitch is going to wear himself out pretty fast."

McMahon also talked about competition, in general. "Generally speaking, good competition is great for a product. It keeps you on your toes, and forces you to adapt," McMahon said.

Asked about the origins of the Raw name, McMahon said, "The name 'Raw' came out of my head. I was trying to come up with a word that would embody everything we wanted the program to be. It had to be gritty. It had to be cutting edge. It had to be confrontational. Raw fit perfectly."

Link: Interview at WWE.com .

[Torch art credit Grant Gould (c) PWTorch.com]

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