Abstract. The paper deals with local existence, blow-up and global existence for the solutions of a wave equation with an internal nonlinear source and a nonlinear boundary damping. The typical problem studied is; 1Þ Â À 1 ; uð0; xÞ ¼ u 0 ðxÞ; u t ð0; xÞ ¼ u 1 ðxÞ on ;where & R n (n ! 1) is a regular and bounded domain,1 Þ, ! 0, and the initial data are in the energy space. The results proved extend the potential well theory, which is well known when the nonlinear damping acts in the interior of , to this problem.