The WWF guys didn't even know about WCW.

I would talk to WWF guys in town in the late 80s and most had no idea that the Midnight Express, Tully & Arn or Rock & Roll Express were any good. Unless you were in the territory with the guy most didn't know unless it was Flair or Dusty or the Road Warriors. They were traveling every day and not watching any wrestling on TV and very few studied tapes.

I was with a bunch of WWF guys once in Oakland and Owen Hart was the only one who even knew the Midnight Express was a good team and it was funny watching him back me up when I said they were the best team in North America and everyone acting like we were both geeks. The rest had the attitude "If they were any good why aren't they here." Seriously. Then again, Owen Hart learned wrestling studying tapes from Japan and came from Bruce Hart's influence where New Japan was the real major league, so he'd have the attitude that "If they were any good why aren't they here" was ridiculous.

When Kojima held the Triple Crown & IWGP title, he met HHH and there was a hilarious exchange. Kojima greeted Flair & HHH and was real nice. Flair kind of knew who Kojima was from working New Japan but didn't know how big he was at the time. HHH had no idea and made some joke about who is this guy. Kojima knew English and knew HHH was acting like he didn't know who he was and said in Japanese to the reporters, "Any of you know the guy in the big nose who is Ric Flair's security guard?" and they all cracked up.

Yeah he posted this in a topic about if North American wrestlers ever talked about being influenced by Japanese wrestlers.