After being teased in late May and into early June with appetizers such as Lance Storm, Hugh Morrus, and Stacey Keibler, the Fed finally served up a main course in late June. Diamond Dallas Page and Booker T both debuted on WWF TV, despite not being among the original "WCW 24" (mostly young, cheap talents that the WWF was willing to retain upon taking the company over). Page was a proven main eventer going back years, while Booker was the current WCW Champ AND US Champ.

Finally, some star power for the flagging Invasion, whose highlight up to that point was the underwhelming prospect of Test defecting to join his pal Shane McMahon in WCW!

Page debuted first -- on the 6/18 RAW -- as the mystery man who had been stalking the Undertaker's wife, Sara. He got a huge pop upon unmasking, though his labored explanation for his stalking of another man's wife eventually left the crowd apathetic.

Booker followed, interfering in the King of the Ring PPV main event on 6/24. He attacked heel WWF Champ Steve Austin, making his agenda immediately clear: as WCW Champ, he was targeting the WWF top dog. Booker got a fairly solid response, though events would conspire to turn him heel in July.

With those two big names established, the flood gates were open, and the Invasion was truly on: on the 6/25 RAW, WCW was present in full force, making a nuisance of themselves at Madison Square Garden, a building perceived of as a WWF stronghold. Mike Awesome even came out of nowhere to steal the WWF's Hardcore Title, beating Rhyno as per the 24/7 rules.

Things weren't just picking up in terms of the creative; backstage and in the front office, things were looking good for WCW, too. In a conference call with WWF shareholders, Linda McMahon named October as the target date for the first WCW PPV. She also confirmed that SmackDown! would be live every Thursday starting in August, which was perfectly in line with word that the WWF would be splitting the WCW and WWF rosters, with one performing on RAW and the other on SD!

The news wasn't all rosy, though, as another injury rocked the WWF. Chris Benoit -- after delivering on a couple more tremendous free TV main events during the week of 6/11 -- had to be written out of WWF storylines after a debilitating neck condition was diagnosed. The injury came just as Benoit finally broke through into his first PPV main event (at KotR). Benoit's neck surgery was handled by Dr. Youngblood, the same doctor who operated on Steve Austin in 2000; his recovery time was estimated to be 6-8 months.

Also sad in June: "WrestleManiacs" basically ceased to exist, as our original 2-year contract with SportsLine to create "WrestleLine" expired. Mike had already been reduced to a sporadic contributor, but CRZ took the opportunity to fly the coup after some acrimonious exchanges with SportsLine. Other Maniacs (including myself) worked out individual deals to say affiliated with WL, but without CRZ (and Mike) it just wasn't the same.

As the month began, Booker T, Dallas Page, and Buff Bagwell were the main guys rumored to be closest to be bigger-name talents ready to eschew Time Warner deals to sign on with the WWF... Rob Van Dam was the top free agent being wooed by the WWF...

Nebulous rumors took shape in July, as word that Jimmy Hart and Hulk Hogan were conspiring to start a new national wrestling promotion gained momentum; Reno Mero quickly emerged as another name associated with the group, and rumors persisted that mainstream celebs like Shaquille O'Neal and Jay Leno would lend their clout to the project, as well...

A sixteen-man field was set up for the King of the Ring tournament, with the first two rounds taking place on free TV leading up to the PPV... Kurt Angle made waves by announcing that he wanted in the field to successfully "defend his crown" from the previous year, despite already being committed to wrestling Shane McMahon on the same PPV card...

Triple H made the decision to just set up camp and completely re-locate to Birmingham, AL, for the first few months of his rehab; this allowed him a proximity to expert doctors that would otherwise have been impossible, though it also isolated him from the WWF's backstage developments...

Eddie Guerrero was suspended by the WWF after arriving at TV tapings on 6/4 in no condition to work; it was widely believed that Eddie had developed an addiction to pain killers, and the WWF wanted him to seek professional help before returning to their active roster...

Dale Torborg -- the "KISS Demon" of WCW (in)fame(y) -- made the sportswire in June when he was named to the Montreal Expos training staff at the behest of his father, new Expos manager Jeff Torborg...

Tajiri debuted on WWF TV as a "house boy" for Commissioner Regal; he also worked a few house show/dark match dates to work the kinks out before finally wrestling on TV...

Steve Austin, as a heel, got more in touch with his emotions in July; the perception was that he had "snapped" when he started eating vegetables with and hugging Vince McMahon, leading up to his transformation into a folk-guitar-playing sensitive new age guy before all was said and done...

Vampiro, finally healthy after a head injury and finally determined to pursue wrestling instead of music, made his first wrestling appearance in ages at an EMLL show in Mexico City in July... he suffered a knee injury within his first two weeks back, which kept him on the shelf for much of the rest of 2001...

Billy Kidman, Chris Kanyon, and Torrie Wilson all agreed to join the original "WCW 24" and signed contracts with the WWF, according to insider reports...

Val Venis, already playing a diminished role due to the demise of the RTC, recovered from minor surgery only to be re-assigned to the WWF developmental territories...

"Tough Enough" debuted on MTV in July, and immediately began scoring some of the network's highest ratings...

Bret Hart won a "King of Kings" poll on WWF.com, which put all eight previous Kings of the Ring into a mock tournament voted on by fans; Hart beat Triple H in the finals...

Kurt Angle bruised his tailbone in his Match of the Year candidate performance against Shane McMahon at the KotR PPV, and sat out the remainder of the month of June...

Chyna, only sporadically active in the previous month, was rumored to be on the outs with the WWF; in the middle of a contract renegotiation, neither side was even close to what the other was willing to consider, and Chyna was pulled off TV despite her status as Women's Champion... she would remain off TV, and her contract quietly expired in December...

"But what's been the best part of the last four TV shows? That's right: the blow-away main events." -- OO simplifies the "how to create quality TV shows" equation, 06/01/01

"In ECW, Paul Heyman was forced, by necessity, to overpush new stars when his established one left him. Rhyno's definitely an example of that. I know I'm not the only one who hates the feeling of having somebody being shoved down my throat... When Rhyno was announced as one of the guys jumping from ECW to the WWF, I intentionally lost him in the shuffle to sing the praises of Tajiri and Jerry Lynn instead, all because I was STILL holding the year-old "too much, too fast" thing against him. Now, Rhyno's WWF push is much more organic, and it the result should be a much more stable, long-lasting run at the top than what Rhyno experienced in ECW... which also means I owe a belated "I'm sorry" to everybody for misguiding you months before: it looks like Rhyno will, indeed, be the star of the ECW foursome who signed with the Fed back in February and March." -- OO has to eat its own words with regard to Rhyno, who quickly broke out as a potential top star within a few months of his WWF debut, 06/01/01

"Some might lynch me for saying this, but I think at this point that I'm pretty damned happy that this is the case. Not only is Heyman's slightly more serious tone more in tune with what I appreciate from a commentator trying to tell a story, but when he does try to be funny, it's always with the old school Heenan-esque heel routine that never fails to slay me." -- OO goes out on a limb by declaring that Paul Heyman has firmly established himself as a superior-to-Jerry-Lawler color commentator, 06/04/01

"I know CRZ didn't make a big scene on his way out, and I respect that... oh, wait, you mean he DID make a big scene and WrestleLine just sanitized it for our protection? Well, it still wasn't much of a scene at all, but it apparently wasn't anything WL wanted to see the light of day.... in the name of this also NOT being that big a scene, I just want my last words on the issue to be a simple public "Thank you" to Chris, who got dragged out of semi-retirement three-and-a-half years ago to help out with that new-fangled "WrestleManiacs" site. And even though he wasn't necessarily legally obligated to, he stuck with us for the full two years that we -- as a group -- pledged to SportsLine/WrestleLine." -- OO says its farewells to CRZ, not knowing we'd be back on the same site before the end of the calendar year, 06/08/01

"As for the rest of us old school WrestleManiacs? Well, I gather the entire rest of the crew is sticking around ... at least, to paraphrase the immortal Troy McClure, we'll stick around until the point at which WrestleLine becomes unprofitable." -- OO has never made a prophetic statement that it wishes had actually turned out dead-wrong, 06/04/01

"All I can get at my end is the same old, 'DDP wants to be in the new WCW, but still hasn't finalized his release from AOL/Time Warner' story.... the story that WrestlingObserver.com now says is just a 'work the smarts' campaign. So I guess I'm still being worked?" -- OO knows enough to admit that it could, very possibly, be getting bum information from its sources, 06/11/01

"You know what I think? I think all Austin will need to mellow out is to get back on the sauce. A few beers to take the edge off, and then -- BAM -- instant face turn. But hopefully not for a long time to come!" -- OO is right about a return to boozing signalling an Austin face turn, but wrong about it being in the distant future, 06/13/01

"KJP, eh? Who's next, John Petrie? Or Michael Jenkinson? Don Becker? And what's with all this pointless name-dropping?" -- OO also wonders what's with REPEATING the pointless name-dropping six months after the fact, 06/13/01

"Shoot me, but I think I'm finally starting to believe the hype about Albert..." -- Shoot OO again, because Albert quickly returned to being an easily-forgotten sideshow within a few weeks, 06/15/01...

"DDP was more over in the 30 seconds after he removed his hood than he was once he started talking. Then the segment seemed to run too long and without any real direction." -- OO is among the first to see chinks in the DDP-as-the-Stalker armor, 06/20/01

"Let me counter with some WrestleLine-sanitized French of my own: you're a fricking moron if you thought KotR 2001 was a Thumbs Down. How's that for taking a stand and growing some balls?" -- OO takes as ballsy a stand as is possible on the family-friendly WrestleLine in confronting readers who thought "Thumbs in the Middle" was too generous an assessment of the KotR PPV, 06/25/01

"Mike Awesome -- while under contract to WCW -- won the WWF Hardcore Title on Monday night. Mike Awesome -- while under contract to WCW -- held the ECW World Title for several days (after he signed with WCW, but before he could drop the strap in the middle of the ring). Mike Awesome -- while under contract to WCW -- has NEVER won a WCW Title." -- OO on an odd trivial distinction held by Mike Awesome, 06/27/01

WWF King of the Ring (6/24) -- Steve Austin retained the WWF Title by defeating both Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit in the main event. Edge emerged as the 2001 King of the Ring, beating Kurt Angle in the finals; later in the show, Angle would have the Match of the Night, beating Shane McMahon in a wild brawl. Other match results: Kurt Angle advanced to the KotR Finals with a win over Christian... Edge also advanced to the Finals with a win over Rhyno... the Dudley Boyz beat Spike Dudley and Kane to retain the WWF Tag Team Titles... Jeff Hardy successfully defended his WWF Light Heavyweight Title with a win over X-Pac...

Jeff Hardy beat Jerry Lynn to take the WWF Light Heavyweight Title (6/05)... The Dudley Boyz beat Chris Benoit/Chris Jericho to win the WWF Tag Team Titles (6/19)... X-Pac beat Jeff Hardy to win the WWF Light Heavyweight Title (6/25)... Albert beat Kane to win the WWF IC Title (6/26).