Although mired in the cool-to-spite world of professional wrestling, Monday proved a first in cable television history, both to the drooling joy and bitter disappointment of the entire wrestling community.

To the casual channel-flipper, the event probably flew underneath the radar. But at the exact same time on two separately owned networks, the same images and sounds were broadcast, spotlighting WWF owner Vince McMahon for millions of television viewers.

On TNN’s “Monday Night Raw” and TNT’s “Monday Nitro,” we saw the visual representation of a corporate buyout. But beyond all the history and money matters, dreams both have been dashed and created in the whirling business of providing sports entertainment.

Last Friday, McMahon announced that he would purchase the struggling and despondent WCW, the second-largest wrestling organization in America. Now, for the first time since the modern boom in professional wrestling, there only will be one major wrestling promotion in the United States.

Given the dreamy, fanboy nature of most wrestling fans, the first reactions would be ones involving drooling.

“Oooh, Goldberg versus Stone Cold in a Best of the Bald-Headed Beasts Match! Or even Chris ‘Y2J’ Jericho against Lance Storm in a steel cage. Dig it!”

The mixing and matching of wrestling superstars offers the dream matches that have dominated my family conversations for the past three years.

The brothers Brockett know the outcomes are predetermined, but how would the stories progress or the athletes perform? Now, I’m a little bit saddened to know that those speculative conversations now can be proven with a special pay-per-view match and not the persuasive skills of a wrestling fanatic.

Since 1996, the battlefield for wrestling fans was located in the calendar square “Monday.” With Raw and Nitro head-to-head as the premiere cable programs on television, true fans concentrated both on the angles and the Nielsen rankings. But now that’s all changed.

After a week of announcements that Nitro was cancelled and WCW neared Doomsday, we find ourselves not knowing where WCW or its superstars will end up. It would be great to equate the situation to others in television, but nothing suffices. Maybe if “The Mole” would have sabotaged the “Survivor” clan we could make a parallel, but even that’s lacking.

The escapist entertainment, then, has become much more realistic. With all the wrestlers we know and love (and hate) under one owner, any score could be settled and any story possible.

All, that is, except for that special television moment. WCW probably will move to TNN, out of the grasps of AOL-Time Warner and into the family-owned WWF Entertainment.

Now, I sit and ponder the significant use of satellites on Monday. And the sounds of piledrivers aren’t in my head because they are drowned out by the

hummable, family-friendly “Rainbow Connection.”

No, it’s not because the classic Kermit the Frog-croaked song appears in a new commercial. And no, it’s not because “The Muppet Movie” found itself in my VCR or DVD player.

Instead, the song remains thematically linked to the current state of professional wrestling.

Yes, that unique form of entertainment involving acronyms like WWF, WCW and ECW can be equated to a banjo-plucking, starry-eyed ode to dreams. Because for many in the pro-wrestling fandom, dreams suddenly have come true.

The question then, for lovers and dreamers and wrestling fans, is … what now?

Stay tuned.