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WCW Monday Nitro Omnibus Thread


Zakk_Sabbath

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John Tenta and Sting had really good chemistry. I liked their opening tangle in War Games '95, and they had a surprisingly fun two-minute Nitro match on one of those early Nitros. 

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Watching it for the first time, I actually enjoyed Sting/Hogan from 11/20/95 quite a bit, until the Hulk Up. This may sound weird, but it was like watching two Cena's against one another.

 

Still remember the MASSIVE rage-on that crowd had for Hogan... and he knew it, even walking out while Sting's music was still playing to deflect some of the heat.

 

 

I hope someone in WCW realized that sneaking through the crowd was a total heel move. Of course, it's WCW so I'm pretty sure no one realized that they were accidentally booking Hogan as a heel.

 

keeping in mind that WCW also booked Hogan/Sting v. Flair/Arn in Charlotte in December 1995, and that went as you'd expect.

 

Although the backlash to Hogan really did lay a sensible foundation for Hogan going heel.

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I loved the promo he did after Hall, Nash and Hogan attacked him in the back.

"You see we are the original and most vicious gang out there. You forgot the most important rule of gang fighting; they send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue!" I know he stole that line from Sean Connery in The Untouchables but it was awesome.

Here is that Arn Anderson promo in its entirety.

"Intense pain is a wonderful thing Gene Okerlund. Your life flashes before your eyes. Things that are the most important to you become crystal clear. You start to begin to learn the meaning of life. Last week when they stuffed me in that ambulance and I looked across and I saw Flair, Sting, Woman, Bagwell, and myself; I realized that we were people brought together. Not by philosophy, but by necessity.

I started to think. New World Order, New World Order, where have I heard that? I remembered in the Good Book it says when the New World Order is put into place it signals the beginning of the end of time. Well, WCW is our world. It's where we live and breathe. If you want to destroy it Hogan and The Outsiders, you have already made a mistake that jumps off the page. (If) you're going to take a baseball bat to a Horseman, finish the job because there is one rule of gang fighting. See, we are the original gang and we are the most vicious in all of professional wrestling history. They send one of yours to the hospital... You send one of theirs to the morgue."

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Second ep, like the first, was a breeze to watch. Norton-Savage was a shockingly great match - a definite underrated gem, and Savage gave Norton a ton of offense. Finish sucked, but gave Norton a valid out to lose. Luger-Hogan was a good TV match - they gave you enough to not feel cheated by doing finishers and then delivered a finish that set up a PPV main event fairly well. Thank God Sting and Luger had the past history together and in WCW, history actually mattered. I also liked the babyfaces having friends to help.

 

http://jayreviewsthings.blogspot.com/2014/09/wcw-nitro-9-11-95-episode-2.html

 

Screens -

 

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http://www.imagebam.com/gallery/s8zza9cg0mlse3ld4f0rhs45gi58y8lr

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John Tenta and Sting had really good chemistry. I liked their opening tangle in War Games '95, and they had a surprisingly fun two-minute Nitro match on one of those early Nitros. 

 

John Tenta is one of those guys who I didn't care for when I was young, and the Shark gimmick which led to the half shaved beard thing, etc, led me to just not want to watch him at that time.....but years later looking back I love watching his stuff.  Just such a fun big man worker. 

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Savage getting roughed up like crazy by Norton and Kurosawa was strange to see again, after 19 years (Ugh.) especially. The ending to his match with the latter is so incredibly lame. It's like letting a younger relative beat you up in one of the classic N64 games, before you hit like, a Burning Hammer or something to end it and shut the system off. Because honestly, you have better things to do than school ham and eggers at a get-together.

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It's been almost two months since he held the title, there have been two different champions, and they still have yet to take Hulk Hogan's nameplate off the belt.

 

It's because his was literally bolted on whereas you could slide the previous champions' names on and off of the belt. Kept waiting for someone to bring that up in an angle.

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In a way that I'm certain was unintentional, Hogan was a very legitimate representation of America. Run around thumping your chest about your ideals and how you're here to do the right thing, but in the end, integrity is optional if the ends justify the means. Kinda brilliant except that it wasn't intentional. I think. Maybe it was. Maybe VKM really is the genius he's rated to be....

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Hogan was may more pronounced of an a-hole in his WCW face run.

I think this is largely because of Sting. The WCW's audience got to see Sting serve as its moral guidepost of what was right and what was wrong, the true purpose of every good babyface. Sure, he had his issues -- he was too trustworthy, but he tried to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, which is a pretty admirable trait.

In comes Hogan, who does so many dickish things that nobody (aside from Bobby Heenan) said anything about. This also sort of makes sense from Sting's character -- he's trustworthy and doesn't have much of an ego in terms of the spotlight. He has an ego when it comes time to win matches, but the movie stuff and the like from Hogan wasn't anything too important to him.

 

Hogan didn't do anything different from what he did in the WWE, but HE was the moral guidepost under Vince for most of his run. He didn't have someone virtuous like Sting to get compared to.

 

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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.

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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. 

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was never a Pittman fan.

 

until i found out he did some early MMA. Including a win by submission. then i immediately recognized his "Code Red" as having some actual history and legitimacy.*

then i watched said fight and he won by a triangle or something, so he was cast back into the land of the forgotten.

 

 

*yes, i know the straight armbar is a real submission move and many matches have been won with it. But Pittman's never once looked anywhere near painful and his setup took forever so i didn't buy it.

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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.

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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.

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