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WCW Monday Nitro Omnibus Thread


Zakk_Sabbath

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Just now watching the first Nitro from Feb 1996. The show starts off with a World Title match: Randy Savage vs. Christ Benoit. Elizabeth and Woman at ringside. How depressing.

 

Post-match schmozz, Hogan is cutting a promo, facing the corner camera, and Mean Gene is warning him to turn around (Ric Flair Pearl Harbor's him with brass knucks)...he says, "I'm talking, brother!" Hulkster really is an intolerable A-hole babyface during this time period. He doesn't even listen to his friends.

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I can't help but wonder what would have happened with the booking of Hogan if the NWO never happened.  Part of me feels like he would have faded out eventually, because he was largely MIA for the first half of 96 anyway.  He would pop up here and there, but I remember him being gone for several weeks in the spring/summer leading to Bash at the Beach.  The reason I think he would have faded out, is that WCW probably would have just kept trying to push him as a face even with the sour reactions from the fans.

 

If the NWO never happens, then neither does WCW becoming a juggernaut from 1996-1999, and we don't get the WWF taking as many chances and rolling the dice on Austin, anti-USA Bret, Foley, Shawn/HHH together as DX, The Rock's heel turn, amongst a host of other things. No Montreal, no Mr. McMahon... I mean, we could really go crazy with the Butterfly Effect type stuff here (which might actually be a really fun thread to make at some point). So with that in mind, I think it certainly wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility to say that Hogan may have gone back to the WWF after the needle stops moving, and the heat from the steroid trial dies down.

 

Had Hogan stayed in WCW without the NWO happening, then I think we would have gotten booking that looked like a hybrid of pre-NWO era Nitro, and like, summer of 1999 where you have babyface Hogan teaming with Sting and Goldberg against Flair, Sid and Steiner, and of course that crappy Nash feud (that, really, could have and should have been so, so much more).

 

 

Mind you, I think Hogan was absolutely god awful in the nWo once the initial shock of "Oh, Hulk's bad?" wore off. His dumb evil laugh, painted on beard, etc.

 

I hope this doesn't offend you, but I want to ask: how old are you? I'm like 27 now, so at the time, my friends and I (who, to that point, were total WWF New Generation kids) thought that Razor and Diesel (the guys from "our team" were the babyfaces, and thus, Hogan's "cool" factor really, really shot up with us. Watching it in retrospect, it's easy to see how corny and, as Nash said in a shoot, how "wrestling" it is, but we loved it.

 

 

I'm 36. I was in college when the nWo debuted. I started my (ugh) online fandom via Prodigy when I was a teenager and went to ECW in person so I was at my most smarky at the time period. I liked the first stuff with Hall and Nash doing bat attacks and spray paint but Hogan got so stale so fast, with his awful evil laugh and the like. The nWo were supposed to be the coolest guys in the room and here's Hogan with his dumb look and trunks with lightning bolts on them talking about his nWo-ites bowing at his feet and the like really didn't fit.

Mind you, I wasn't a Hulkamaniac even in grade school and always leaned towards rooting for heels. I also liked NWA/WCW more (despite living outside NYC), so Hogan coming in and seeing Flair and Arn and those guys get pushed aside and Hogan and the Booty Man and the awful Dungeon of Doom nonsense was really sickening to me.

 

So, I never liked Hogan. I never will. He's always bored me to tears and/or aggravated me.

 

 

I gotcha. Outside of what we rented from Blockbuster after we got into WCW (once The Outsiders showed up and other kids at school started talking about it) I didn't see a whole ton of pre-NWO WCW-- and you're about ten years older than me, so that definitely colors our respective perspectives (possible band name). My family also didn't get Internet until about late '97, and I wouldn't say I got smartened up until about mid-'98 when I saw ECW on MSG for the first time, and accidentally got linked to 1wrestling through a banner ad on their site.  Before that, the only wrestling site I knew was AOL Keyword: WWF.

 

So, as a '90s college guy, let me ask you this: were Nitro parties ever at any point an actual thing?

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December: Jimmy Hart making Pittman take his shirt off just so he can basically say "I would never manage someone as flabby as you" and Pittman just kinda walking off was a bit :/

Luger boasting "I'm the uncrowned world champion - that's the way it is and that's the way it's gonna stay" was lol

It's a shame that the Pittman story just went nowhere, and he just picked Teddy Long on one of the weekend shows.  I thought it was an interesting story with him getting desperate and asking Mongo.

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Is it just me, or is Craig Pittman a really fun wrestler? He builds his matches around getting the Code Red on his opponent, and it's a formula that really works for him. It's a shame that he ended up getting paired with Teddy Long and going nowhere. 

 

I just watched him vs. Eddy, he had a funny style of attack. It was a nice quick match.

 

Few things.

 

1. Episode 88 of Nitro: Mongo dressed Pepe up like Kuishimbo Kamen

 

2. Episode 89: Flair going OFF in the back. The lights shut off, but when they are turned back on, you see Regal and Bobby Eaton sipping on some tea. That was random

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I'm watching Eddie and Dean tear shit up at Starrcade 97 and the announcers have spent the entire time talking about the NWO. At Starrcade.

 

What a weird show that was. Heels went over in every match (Goldberg was technically still a heel at that point) except the DDP/Hennig, Larry Z/Bischoff (and Larry needed help from Bret to win) matches and Hogan basically squashed Sting until the "fast" count and restart. Bagwell got a win (albeit very cheaply) over Luger in a match that looked like it was supposed to elevate him but then he jobbed to Luger cleanly the next night.

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The stuff with Hogan has gotten a lot better now that most of the Dungeon of Doom stuff has taken a backseat to it really just being The Giant. Just finished the Nitro where Hogan goes crazy with the chair, it's weird to see REFEREES taking practically unprotected headshots with the chair! The stuff with Savage, Hogan, Sting, Luger, The Giant, all of that, it's actually a pretty decent little storyline. Maybe it's just because I love Savage's crazy 'that doesn't make sense, but it makes sense' promos.

 

HE'S GONNA SELL A CHAIR FOR MEMORABILIA!

 

I think that one of the people who's been somewhat of a revelation for me watching this is Sgt. Pitbull Pittman. Pretty much everyone else I'd seen at some point, but I hadn't seen a lot of him, and he's actually pretty entertaining. Not the greatest wrestler, but I like his character, although he'd probably benefit from an actual heel turn, because I'm not sure if he's supposed to be one or not.

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Pittman's best moment was ambushing Cobra by rappeling down from the ceiling behind him and making him tapout in one minute. IIRC, Cobra made his entrance, Pittman had some army cadet deliver an envelope to Cobra to distract him and then Pittman rappelled down from the ceiling and jumped him. If that's not pro-wrestling than I don't know what the hell is.

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as Nash said in a shoot, how "wrestling" it is, but we loved it.

 

That was my confirmation that Nash is an idiot. Also explains why WCW went to shit with people like him in charge.

 

 

I may be a little biased given that a lot of my formative years in wrestling were New Generation WWF and NWO-era WCW, but I have to defend Nash here. What he and Hall were trying to do was "reality based" down to selling NWO shirts out of trucks, having a separate 1-800 number for merchandise, a separate NWO website, and giving the idea of NWO being a separate promotion through the "empty arena" Saturday Night shows. When he says that Hulk's promos were too "wrestling" and too "Memphis" I have to grudgingly agree. They can't sell the NWO as "real" with the biggest star in the history of the business (to that point) doing the same "Well ya know something, brother" promos that he'd already been doing since 1984. Whoever edited those NWO promos (Want to say it was Craig Leathers but I may be wrong) deserves a ton of credit for adding months, if not years, to the shelf life of that deal

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Watching random Nitros....

 

 

Do you think Hogan was aware that Sting was ALWAYS. ALWAYS. ALWAYS. more over in WCW than him? Sting is US champ.... more beloved than Red n Yellow Hogan. Sting is involved in the "Is Luger A Face or Heel?" bit? Still more over as a face than the Hulkster. It warmed my heart then and now. 

 

 

They really missed the boat not doing a tag run and then a faceoff of Red n Yellow vs Surfer Sting.

 

Just remembered that 11/20/95 match after a few others did.

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Badd/Guerrero on the 11/13/95 episode of Nitro is really fun. There's some really quick, fun counter-wrestling to begin before both guys just say "fuck it" and start throwing bombs, interspersed with some counter-wrestling in between for awhile. Then, they basically just get frustrated with one another by the end and start throwing punches, hitting tombstones and tornado DDTs, and stuff like that. I don't know if it makes a whole lot of sense structurally from a narrative standpoint, but it's just really great to watch as a "two guys trying to get a quick pinfall and then getting really irritated with each other" sort of thing. 

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Watching 12/23/96...

Benoit/Guerrero was pretty damn awesome. Loved the finish, especially Randy Anderson's perfectly timed dive to make the count.

Also, Benoit forcing Mongo to "talk to the hand" right afterwards was great too.

---

So, Mysterio comes over to the announce position, defending Sting, repeatedly asking that they show the video of Rey diving on Sting where he doesn't fight back. Eventually, they find the tape as they go to commercial. Was it the one five second clip he wanted? No, just a lame ass music video, not at all showing what he was talking about. Typical WCW.

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Man, was the first Sting/Hogan matchup given away on that November 20, 1995 Nitro? If so, I can only imagine how much money they gave away - I split the price of a TNA PPV with someone in 2011 to watch old Sting and broken down Hogan wrestle each other. I would have gladly scraped together my weekly allowance to see them wrestle in 1995. 

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Man, was the first Sting/Hogan matchup given away on that November 20, 1995 Nitro? If so, I can only imagine how much money they gave away - I split the price of a TNA PPV with someone in 2011 to watch old Sting and broken down Hogan wrestle each other. I would have gladly scraped together my weekly allowance to see them wrestle in 1995.

it was a TV Ratings war, especially then. WCW was gonna give you this one off Sting vs Hogan match that was just a TV deal to make people go ,"I'm watching that, fuck RAW".
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Man, was the first Sting/Hogan matchup given away on that November 20, 1995 Nitro? If so, I can only imagine how much money they gave away - I split the price of a TNA PPV with someone in 2011 to watch old Sting and broken down Hogan wrestle each other. I would have gladly scraped together my weekly allowance to see them wrestle in 1995.

it was a TV Ratings war, especially then. WCW was gonna give you this one off Sting vs Hogan match that was just a TV deal to make people go ,"I'm watching that, fuck RAW".

 

 

Yes, I'm aware of Bischoff's propensity for counter-programming during the MNW and why he did it. I do think that he did it at the expense of making PPV money off of matchups, though in this case it didn't come back to bite him because he could sell Sting/Hogan with Hogan as a heel two years later (plus it looked like the end of the "nWo taking over" narrative. 

 

1995 RAW is not very good; just teasing that matchup for WW3 with a confrontation of some sort would have worked just as well, but in the end, I suppose that it doesn't matter so much. 

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Yeah, I'm taking a break from Nitro (just because I don't wanna burn through them too quick, and football started) but those 1995 Raws are fucking abysmal. The most entertaining thing about them is tracking the progress the Kliq makes on growing their mullets out.

 

Nash is killin' it, but I think X-Pac is catching up

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