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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: The Vigilante Sting™ continued to use a series of THREAT-WHISPERS to inspire The Giant in his face-turn against the New World Order, and his quest to actually get the World War 3 title shot he earned against Hollywood Hogan. Also on the show, Glacier wrestled Bobby Eaton. That’s your spectrum of public interest. Oh, and nWo SOULED OUT is coming soon. That’s going to be great, probably!

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network, and here to watch the pay-per-view before it. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year old WCW jokes on the reg, your half of the deal is hitting these share buttons. Let people know how much you like the column!

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for January 13, 1997.

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Best: This Crowd

That looks like the sickest German suplex ever, doesn’t it? Spoiler: it’s a jumping asshole to the face.

This week’s Nitro takes place in New Orleans at the Silverdome, brother, and the fans there are so ready to see wrestling. Let me put it to you this way: the opener is Chavo Guerrero Jr. vs. Mr. JL, and the crowd treats it like it’s Cedric Alexander vs. Kota Ibushi. Trust me, it’s not that exciting.

If you get a chance to watch the episode, watch the end when Chavo climbs the ropes for the moonsault. The crowd stands up in unison and ROARS, and it’s so distracting that the cameraman instinctively pulls away, looking for Sting or somebody from the nWo or whatever wandering through the crowd. That’s generally what that reaction means. But nope, they are just AMPED AS F*CK for Freddie Prinze Guerrero doing some mild high-flying onto a living Visionaries action figure. Hey, cool, that’s how it’s supposed to go.

Wait until Lex Luger shows up later and does the Torture Rack taunt. That sh*t feels like Beatlemania.

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Worst: Flag Waving Ass Jim Duggan

That crowd reaction is a little too positive, so here’s Jim Duggan.

Duggan gives a short interview with Mean Gene that involves him (1) announcing that he’s replaced the United States flag with the purple and gold of WCW, because this cross-eyed Ogre with his tongue hanging out isn’t the leader we want, but the leader we deserve, and (2) telling Sting to “be a man” and pick a side. Duggan’s music starts playing before he’s done, which is hilarious in an Oscar “go home” kind of way, but it’s not the only time it happens on the night. There’s some hero production assistant cutting these live promos in half by hitting the music at the wrong time, and I want to travel time just to shake his hand.

Duggan is supposed to wrestle Super Calo (!!), but as soon as he gets into the ring, Sting shows up and drops him with one move.

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The announce team, of course, says this definitely means Sting is in the nWo. Because what other reason would he have to jump this flag-bearing Le Incompétent that just called him out? Tony Schiavone is like, “we should look for a PATTERN in Sting’s victims,” and I want to shake my TV screen and scream THE PATTERN IS PEOPLE WHO CALLED HIM OUT ON THE MICROPHONE OR JUMPED ON HIS BACK, IDIOTS, EVERYONE ELSE HE’S GIVEN BASEBALL BATS TO HELP FIGHT THE NWO, THIS IS WHY HE TURNED HIS BACK ON Y’ALL IN THE FIRST PLACE. But asking Larry Zbyszko to pay attention to trends is like asking a toddler to do calculus.

Honestly, the only heel move by Sting here is preventing us from seeing Hacksaw Jim Duggan vs. Super Calo.

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Best: Ouch, My Pitbull Face

WCW scrambles to find a substitute match to replace Duggan vs. Calo — a small touch on a live show that I always, always appreciate — and it ends up being Chris Jericho vs. Sgt. Craig ‘Pitbull’ Pittman. Remember a few episodes ago when Masahiro Chono joined the nWo and wrestled Jericho, and just ate up all his offense and made him look terrible? This is Jericho getting that win back.

Pittman looks especially lost in here, selling clotheslines and spinning heel kicks by just kinda falling over and crawling. About a minute into the match, Jericho goes up top, missile dropkicks the ever-loving sh*t out of him in his face, and pins him. Pittman “kicks out” after the three, but everyone involved is like, “yeah, nope, match is over, bye.” Seriously, look at that screenshot of him being dropkicked in the face.

Drink it in, Pittman.

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Best: Don’t Worry, Super Calo Gets His

Calo ends up wrestling after all, stepping into the ring with Konann. That’s him getting Steiner Screwdrivered from a clothesline. Remember how it looked the last time they wrestled? Here’s a reminder:

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Konnan is so weird. When he’s wrestling WCW guys like Big Bubba or M. Wallstreet, he’s often slow, lazy and ineffectual. But when he wrestles luchadors, he gets this sense of proprietary rage about him and just f*cks them up. In this match he repeatedly dumps Super Calo on his head, no-sells a crossbody and just lets Calo bounce off him and fall like an idiot, and ends him figuratively and also possibly literally with a Fisherman’s DDT. It’s like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is Jekyll had mono and Hyde desperately wanted to paralyze a bunch of Mexicans.

Worst: High Voltage, But
Best: Harlem Heat Kinda Win A Normal Match

The ruthless hammering of enhancement talent continues with Harlem Heat dropkicking the guts out of Kenny Kaos, one half of Steiner Brother chew toys High Voltage. It’s not much of a match, but I’m giving it points for having the most cohesive Harlem Heat finish I’ve seen in months.

The match breaks down and referee Mark Curtis gets super into chiding Robbie Rage, forcing him out onto the apron and then standing in front of him and telling him to go stand on the apron while he’s there. This gives Harlem Heat time to double team Kaos and hit him with the Heat Seeker, a Doomsday Device dropkick. If you didn’t know this was Harlem Heat’s tandem finish, don’t worry, they win or lose most of their matches via a French-Canadian Legionnaire plantation owner and his on-again/off-again girlfriend hitting each other with flags, purses and thrown clouds of dust.

Best: Diamond Dallas Page Becomes A Star

Okay, this is a big moment we’ve been waiting for for a while.

Over the past eight months or so, Diamond Dallas Page has transformed himself from an aging, lowercard jerk with no real visible upside into one of the hottest acts on the card, thanks to a combination of hard work, solid matches and American wrestling fans loving the hell out of cutters. They do, man. Sometimes I wonder if Stone Cold Steve Austin would’ve been half as popular if he’d kept the Million Dollar Dream and never grabbed someone’s head and fallen down with it.

Here, Page wrestles Mark Starr, who has the least appropriate wrestling name ever. Calling this dude “Starr” would be like naming Big Show “Tiny.” He can’t even take the Diamond Cutter correctly, jumping forward into it so Page has to Diamond Cut his torso:

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Page grumpily pins him and we instantly forget it because here comes Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, making their what, fifth attempt to get DDP to join the nWo? This time, though, he AGREES, and puts on the shirt. The crowd’s kinda deflated by it because they want to love this guy and don’t want him to be D. Wallstreet or whatever, but then OH SH*T, HE TURNS SCOTT HALL’S HANDSHAKE INTO A DIAMOND CUTTER. That gets Kevin Nash to turn around, so Page dodges an attack and sends him clumsily falling to the outside in one of the worst table bumps ever. Nash just kinda grazes the table as he goes over, grabs it with one of his hands and flings it over him slash into the face of a lady in the front row.

But the point is that DDP is now the cool, not-Jim-Duggan anti-hero WCW’s been desperately searching for, and unlike Sting, he’s actually in the field fighting the battle. Welcome to the best years of your life, DDP.

I’m sure the Four Horsemen are around to help you!

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Worst: The Four Horsemen Are The Dirt Worst

The bicker-fighting between this disassociated gaggle of shouting morons continues with a one-on-one match between Jeff Jarrett and Chris Benoit, to see who the real most Horseman is. It ends when Mongo tries to hit Jarrett with his metal Tesseract briefcase and Debra stops him, causing him to actually hit Benoit instead. OH NO.

You see, the story is that Debra wants Jarrett in the Horsemen but nobody else does — well, Ric Flair kinda does, but he’s transformed into a drunken, senile college dad and is too busy dancing to pay attention — and is trying to manipulate Chris Benoit and Woman’s rivalry with Kevin Sullivan to make room for him. I think? The highlight of the match is Mongo hitting Benoit so hard with the briefcase that it opens for the first time since its debut, and we see that it’s empty. That might’ve been fine if Debra didn’t pick it up, show it to the camera and say, “it’s empty.” Some beauty queens just want to watch the world burn.

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That’s followed by another (another) interview where they yell at each other about who’s f*cking who and why, and where whoever isn’t there this week is. Benoit once again wins the week by defending Woman in a promo that I’m 99% sure was written by Tommy Wiseau.

“As for you, you wanna bad mouth the Horsemen, that’s fine because that’s just your style. You wanna badmouth me, I could care less! You wanna badmouth Woman … you don’t even wanna go there. Woman … WOMAN is 100% woman from head to toe. And I talk from experience! There’s no plastic, no wax, zero silicone, she is alllll womannnn.”

Good to know her boobs aren’t made out of wax, I guess?

A few segments later, Arn Anderson wrestles Rick Steiner. He’s having trouble and keeps trying to get the other Horsemen at ringside, presumably to help him win via empty briefcase, but they don’t show up. The announce team “gets word” that the Horsemen are “locked in the dressing room” having a shouting match, which is still EXTREMELY INTERESTING after SEVERAL MONTHS and ALREADY SEEING IT ONCE TONIGHT, so Arn just angrily waves off the match and loses via count-out.

Honestly, Jim Duggan’s not looking like that bad of a leader.

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I’ll give a supplemental Best to the post-match interview with the Steiners, though, because Scotty is about three-fourths of the way through his transformation into Big Poppa Pump. If you’re keeping score, that’s a Spencer’s Gifts belt, a backwards leather Kangol hat and an EXTREME CASUALS tank top. Also, he’s screaming about how he’s going to tear out someone’s “goozle” at Souled Out. I can’t wait for the hair dye to go in and the glory that is White Thunder to be born.

Best/Worst: Eddie Guerrero vs. Dean MalenAh Who Cares Here’s The nWo

Syxx is back at it with his ladder shenanigans this week, improving upon last week’s plan by taunting Eddie Guerrero from the top of a ladder too far away for him to get caught.

Eddie wrestles Dean Malenko. It’s pretty good at times, as you’d expect, but the crowd has sat through an hour and change of 3-minute jobber muderings and allegiance changes so they don’t know what to make of a bunch of cool wristlocks. When they get restless, Syxx shows up, and everyone just kinda looks at Syxx until they’re done wrestling. Plus, it’s a non-title match with a distraction finish — Guerrero gets up on the ropes to taunt at Syxx and gets powerbombed off by Malenko — so the 2016 WWE reviewer in me can’t really handle it. Let’s just move on.

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Best: He Is Reportedly The Stuff

Scotty Riggs was the Roman Reigns of the American Males. When he and Marcus Alexander Bagwell broke up, Bagwell joined the nWo, got a new persona and upgraded his tag team partner. Riggs kept the American Males gear, kept the American Males entrance theme, kept doing the dumb/wonderful American Males clap and even started doing Bagwell’s finisher, hilariously named the “AmeriPlex.” It’s not until Raven comes along that dude truly decides to be his own man. Which is a pirate.

But anyway, Riggs wrestles pre-Crisis Billy Kidman until Bagwell interrupts, extremely happy to show off his now slightly improved physique and brag about how “buff” he is. AW HERE IT GOES. He calls Riggs fat from the entrance until Riggs wins, and … well, that’s pretty much it, but that airbrushed top hat is coming soon, and we’re gonna find out how many words rhyme with “buff.”

Spoiler alert: three, if you count “buff” as one of them.

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Best: People Love Lex Luger

Luger continues his winning streak here against … who is that, Braun Strowman? Mike Knox?

Oh, wait, that’s RICK FULLER, regular eventual Goldberg victim and stalwart Thunder jobber who somehow managed to make it into multiple WCW video games despite his highest-profile victory being against Lash LeRoux on Worldwide. This is Fuller’s WCW debut, and it’s in front of a crowd that CATCHES THE SPIRIT when Lex Luger makes his Torture Rack flappy bird arms. Like, I was in that building when Daniel Bryan won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 30, and I think Lex Luger Torture Racking Rick Fuller in the middle of this Nitro got a bigger pop.

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Worst: PLEASE WATCH THE NEW ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD

This is going to take some explanation, so stay with me.

The episode actually opens with the Nitro opening cutting off early and The Giant barging into the nWo locker room, calling Hulk Hogan a coward. We come to find out that despite previously agreeing to give Giant his contractually obligated title match, Hogan has backed out, and now won’t be defending the WCW Heavyweight Title against Giant at Souled Out.

Throughout the show, the announce team is OBSESSED with updating us on this situation, revealing that the WCW executive committee has spent most of the night struggling to find a solution to the problem. Their eventual solution: Hollywood Hogan MUST face The Giant on Nitro TONIGHT, in a … uh, non-title match. Because REASONS. Giant’s okay with this, because I think even he knows he’s gonna get the Souled Out match and that it’s gonna end with an nWo run-in.

Anyway, the other important thing you need to know is that after Nitro, TNT is debuting The New Adventures of Robin Hood, their attempt at Xena: Warrior Princess or Herclues: The Legendary Journeys. Cornball medieval shows were cool as hell before Games of Thrones showed up and taught us that characters could curse and kill each other and relentlessly buttf*ck instead of exchanging gentle, sarcastic repartee for a decade.

Hogan shows up to wrestle Giant with only a few minutes left in the show, and tries to stall so it doesn’t happen. WCW’s plan is merciless: they will have the match anyway, and jump back to it during the commercial breaks of The New Adventures of Robin Hood. SO STAY TUNED TO THE NEW ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, FANS, BECAUSE HOLLYWOOD HOGAN IS GETTING BEATEN UP DURING THE COMMERCIAL BREAKS, AND YOU CAN ONLY SEE IT IF YOU WATCH THIS FIRST EPISODE OF THE NEW ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD.

AND DON’T THINK IT HAPPENS ON JUST ONE BREAK, WE’RE STRETCHING THIS OUT TO MULTIPLE BREAKS. SO YOU NEED TO SIT THROUGH AT LEAST 15% OF THIS GARBAGE TO GET TO THE NON-FINISH.

You good? You sure? Watch it twice.

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Giant beats up Hogan in the most house show way imaginable until [trumpet fanfare] the nWo runs in and the match is thrown out. But hey, at least you got to see what a cool show The New Adventures of Robin Hood is. I bet you’ll want to watch that for several years!

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Previously on The Best And Worst Of WCW Monday Nitro: The Giant and Hollywood Hogan fought during the commercial breaks of The New Adventures Of Robin Hood, causing WCW and the WWF to get into a post-wrestling-show hour-long passive-aggressive fuss-fight about that and La Femme Nikita. In actual wrestling news, DDP duped the nWo into thinking he’d joined them only to Diamond Cut Scott Hall and bail, setting up his transformation into one of the biggest stars in the company. But Robin Hood tho.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network, and here to watch the pay-per-view before it. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year old WCW jokes on the reg, your half of the deal is hitting these share buttons. Let people know how much you like the column!

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for January 20, 1997.

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Best/Worst: Macho Man Randy Savage Returns And Saves Us From A Chavo Guerrero Vs. Maxx Match

Remember Halloween Havoc ’96, when Macho Man Randy Savage got revenge on Hollywood Hogan for destroying his place of business and sexually manipulating his ex-wife by comically wearing a toupee, losing a title match and vanishing from the company so Roddy Piper could get all the attention for a few months? Well, HE’S BACK (from unsuccessful contract negotiations) and he’s enacting PEACEFUL PROTEST.

The opening match of this week’s show is supposed to be Chavo Guerrero Jr. vs. Dungeon of Doom member MAXX, known for having maximum muscle, but Savage hijacks the ring and says he’s going to sit in it until he can talk to “somebody with stroke.” So … Jeff Jarrett?

Chavo shows up and tries to talk Savage off the ledge (of his seat), and the whole thing is so boring that Savage standing up and appearing threatening gets a massive pop. Macho eventually punches Chavo in the face and tosses him (to further cheers) and resumes his sit-in. Maxx shows up next and is all, “I wish it was time for Cheers, but it’s not. It’s time for vengeance!” but Savage beats him up and sh*t-cans him, too.

It looks like we’re going to have two straight hours of an emotionally stressful shadow-biker having a mental breakdown from a folding chair until a very important Nitro moment happens:

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The Chicago Bulls win the 1992 NBA Championship!

Actually no, this is the first time that The Vigilante Sting™ rappels from the ceiling — that I can remember … maybe he did it 30 Nitros ago and I got so beaten down with Jim Duggan matches that it slipped my mind — and it’s to have a face-to-face bat-pointing with Hulk Hogan’s fragile frenemy who definitely isn’t going to turn on him. Sting points the bat at Savage, hands it to him and turns his back. Savage tosses the bat back to him, and they leave together.

The best-worst part of this is that Sting’s supposed to be this enlightened creature of the night now or whatever, but he’s still gullible-ass Sting, God bless him. Hope this works out well for you!

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Best: Hollywood, Look Out For BIG BOB PROBERT

We’ll get into how impotent Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen are (again) here in a minute, but check out this promo from Slick Ric and NHL “Bruise Brother” “Big” Bob Probert about how he was going to walk that aisle with the Horsemen and beat up the nWo, but he’s in Buffalo so that won’t be happening. I can’t even make that up.

by vsplanet

I’m going to pretend Hogan was deeply threatened by this, which is why he eventually went out and found Dennis Rodman for backup. Sports guys who fight more than they’re supposed to are the SCARIEST! If Nitro had been on 10 years later, this would’ve been Chicago Cubs relief pitcher Kyle Farnsworth.

If you’re wondering about the payoff here, Probert does eventually show up on Nitro … three-plus years later, jumping the rail to help keep one of the owners of the Blackhawks from getting beaten up by Tank Abbott. The highlight of THAT scene was Tank pulling dude out of the stands into a piledriver position and transferring him into the ring without actually piledriving him. Get excited for that full episode review in three years!

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Worst: The Horsemen, Oh My God You Guys

Okay.

[deep breath] Okay.

Arn Anderson and Steve McMichael team up in what appears to be a randomly-selected Battlebowl tag against Jeff Jarrett and Eddie Guerrero. What transpires is one of the most unbelievably garbage finishes in the history of WCW, and by proxy professional wrestling.

Syxx shows up during the match, luring Eddie Guerrero away and into the back. The only problem there is that we don’t actually SEE Syxx, so Eddie just kinda bolts to the back for no reason without explanation. That leaves Jarrett alone against Arn and Mongo, who double-team him with a Boston crab and some Heavy Boots My Friend. As this is happening, Debra McMichael gets into the ring and begs the Horsemen to stop. When they don’t, she removes her beauty queen sash and hands it to the referee, which constitutes “throwing in the towel” somehow. Let me type that in capital letters so you understand the seriousness of the situation: DEBRA MCMICHAEL THREW IN THE TOWEL FOR THE OTHER TEAM BY HANDING THE REFEREE HER BEAUTY QUEEN SASH.

How can you even do that? Mongo would’ve had a Goldberg-like undefeated streak if Debra had just jumped into the ring and de-sashed in the middle of every match. “Stevie Ray gives up, that’s what throwing in the towel means! No I’m not Stevie Ray’s manager JUST STOP THE MATCH I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE.”

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Yeah, no sh*t. Too bad you couldn’t get Basil McRae to run out here and hit Jarrett with a briefcase.

The “This Is Happening Again Tomorrow Night On Clash Of The Champions So Here’s The Worse Version Of It” Lightning Round

Clash of the Champions XXXIV, the penultimate Clash of the Champions (before WWE takes it over next month), takes place the night after this Nitro. To celebrate, WCW announces two matches for the show and does them on this Nitro too, because dot dot dot question mark question mark question mark.

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The first is Dean Malenko vs. Ultimo Dragon for the Cruiserweight Championship. The match at the Clash is dope and the first time Dean Malenko’s ever SECRET CICLOPE over, and the Nitro match is about half that match’s everything. Half the length, half the quality, half the effort. Everybody knows they’ve gotta go out and do the same match tomorrow, why would they give it their all here?

It’s a fun four minutes — Malenko and Ultimo Dragon standing still near each other nodding politely would be pretty exciting — but it doesn’t have enough time to go anywhere and ends out of nowhere with La Magistral. The announce team spends 4:11 of 4:12 talking about the nWo.

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The other preemptive Clash preview is Kevin Sullivan vs. Chris Benoit, who have combined their Human Game Of Sex Chess with their love of wandering into bathrooms and hurting each other’s brains with sh*t into this series of hardcore matches. It’s about eight minutes of brawling with about two minutes of actual match, featuring the most horrifying Chris Benoit finish ever: a flying headbutt into Kevin Sullivan hitting him in the face with the ring bell. Like, straight up forehead to bell from 12 feet in the air.

The highlight of their Clash rematch is Randy Anderson getting tossed into a urinal.

The “Why Is This Happening” Nothing Match Lightning Round

Also featured at the Clash is a ton of throwaway matches to fill time, because they stopped using the Clash of the Champions as a mini-pay-per-view and started producing it as “extra Nitro.” They hype that by filling THIS Nitro with a bunch of sh*t you wouldn’t watch if someone was paying you in 1-800-COLLECT gift certificates.

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This is Chris Jericho pinning Alex Wright despite Wright’s shoulder being so high off the mat Jericho could stand under it. I guess Randy Anderson couldn’t see that from his obstructed viewpoint of right-the-f*ck-in-front-of-it. Also, I can’t tell if that’s Alex Wright’s thigh or just his massive German member wrapping around the side and into the back of his trunks.

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Up next is Scotty Riggs vs. The Bogus Sting™, which ends in about two minutes when Buff Bagwell shows back up to announce that he’s sexy and Scotty Riggs is less sexy. I’m not sure which side of this feud WCW was expecting southern wrestling audiences in 1997 to cheer for. The extremely in-shape guy in the backwards leather Kangol who won’t stop talking about how wet and sultry he is, or the Color Me Badd-looking dude in suspenders who puts women in “critical condition” if they listen to his unwanted advances.

The finish here is weird, but feels like Flair/Michaels at WrestleMania 24 compared to that Horsemen match. Riggs is politely winning when Buff shows up, so Buff runs to the ring and Riggs bails into the crowd. That’s a DQ, I guess, but don’t worry, this feud will be settled once and for all at nWo Souled Out. Who is the most American? Who is the most male? FIND OUT SOON!

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Later in the show we get Lord Steven Regal vs. Jaques Rougeau, which should be pretty good on paper but in practice is about a minute and a half of two foreign heels mindlessly grappling with each other in Chicago until the sh*tball Legionnaire plantation owner gets involved and ruins everything. I have no idea who put this show together, but if it was a f*cking manatee in a HULK RULES shirt I wouldn’t be surprised.

But yeah, Colonel Parker gets in the ring and tries to hit Regal with his riding crop but WHOOPS, he accidentally hits Jaques and that’s a disqualification. Regal gives Parker the atomic drop INTO Jacques, because suddenly it’s WrestleMania 2 and Lord Steven Regalmania is running wild.

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Squire Dave Taylor shows up to lose to Masahiro Chono and two notable things happen:

1. Dave Taylor is dressed like he’s on safari for some reason, and now all I want is for a DAVE TAYLOR SAFARI PLANET talk show on Nitro. “This is Craig Pittman, he’s a 38-year old pitbull …” “I’M DAVE TAYLOR.”

2. Eric Bischoff is on commentary and won’t stop calling Chono “Masa My Hero Chono.” For real, he calls him that in full like 15 times. He thinks it’s the funniest joke. I firmly believe that he booked himself to take over commentary for this match because he couldn’t trust Tony Schiavone to deliver it with the right timing and inflection.

Speaking of Tony, he spends this episode looking like me dressed like CM Punk:

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Worst: Don’t Worry, Jim Duggan Is On The Show And He’s Cheating His Ass Off

We can’t have an episode of Nitro without the LEADER OF THE WCW, the one and only cheating-ass, trifling-ass, flag-waving-ass Hacksaw Jim Duggan. He’s in action against Pierre Oullet, who might’ve been created by God using one of Jim Duggan’s ribs to create the perfect Jim Duggan opponent. Also in this scenario, Jim Duggan has like 70 ribs because look at him. He’s nothing but ribs from the neck down, at least until that weird Spider-man gland in his crotch that produces athletic tape.

Things are going well (haha) until the Steiner Brother show up. The Steiners are mad at the nWo, so they … uh, help Jim Duggan cheat to beat one of the Amazing French-Canadians. No, seriously.

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In a display of total heel cheating, Rick Steiner attacks Jacques Rogueau and distracts the referee, allowing Scott Steiner to get up on the apron and hammer Pierre in the back of the head. That gives opportunistic shaven American Harambe Jim Duggan a chance to DOUBLE CHEAT, reaching into his tights to whip the wrist-tape of doom around his hand in plain view of the referee and knock him out. Thanks a lot, WCW, you’ve made me hate the Steiner Brothers AND America AND adhesives and now I’m cheering for two French-Canadian guys who don’t know how to believably be French or Canadian.

The “Harlem Heat Is Bad At Winning Matches” Lightning Round

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This week’s main event is a HARLEM HEAT DOUBLE FEATURE, in case an hour-45 of non-finishes featuring go-nowhere midcard tag teams wasn’t enough for you. Note: not to be confused with Biggs and Wedge, who were a go-nowhere Midgard tag team.

Up first, Booker T does pretty well against Scott Hall until everyone remembers Nick Patrick is the referee. You know, the guy in the nWo shirt. Booker goes for a few pins but Patrick counts them super slow, so Booker gets in his face. That distracts him long enough for Hall to club him from behind and hit the SCOTT’S EDGE for the win. Pretty much a squash, with Bobby Heenan dropping timely FOGHAT references throughout.

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Stevie Ray doesn’t fare much better against Lex Luger, who at this point of the year is John Cena plus Roman Reigns plus prime Mark Henry plus the actual Lex Express he used to drive around in. Dude can’t be stopped by ANYTHING. Sherri (who was a babyface like five minutes ago during the Hall/Booker T thing) tries to choke him to death with a scarf, but he powers through it and Racks Stevie to death anyway. I’m honestly shocked Luger didn’t just hoist Sherri onto his shoulders on the floor and hop in place until she was paralyzed.

The weird thing is that nWo referee Nick Patrick gives Luger the win before he can even hop around for anyone to see Stevie Ray’s reaction, which sorta plays as the nWo trying to suck up to Luger to get in his favor, but is dramatically undersold by the announce team.

Speaking of the nWo …

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Worst: Aw Nuts We’re Out Time AW NUTS

The ACTUAL main-event is Hollywood Hogan talking about nothing until Giant runs out to fight him, and sorry everybody, that Safari Dave Taylor match ran a little long so we can’t show you what happens. Join us during the commercial breaks of The New Adventures of Robin Hood for … well, commercials, but we promise Hollywood Hogan and the Giant are fighting SOMEWHERE for SOME REASON!

Next Week: The Clash of the Champions and … oh God, Souled Out. Sorry in advance, everybody.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: We spent last week recapping Clash of the Champions XXXIV and the gloriously awful first nWo Souled Out, so if you missed either of those, go read them first. I had to write them. You owe me.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year old WCW jokes on the reg, your half of the deal is hitting these share buttons. Let people know how much you like the column!

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for Jan. 27, 1997.

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Worst: In Case You Enjoyed That One Feel-Good Moment From Souled Out

In roughly three hours of nWo Souled Out, there was one pro-WCW moment: referee Randy Anderson jumping the rail in street clothes to count the three on Scott Hall and give the Steiner Brothers the WCW Tag Team Championship. Eric Bischoff immediately insisted that the decision would be reversed, and spent the rest of the night openly complaining about it. If you were hoping someone from WCW would step in, validate the title change and take a stand against the nWo … brother, what show are you watching?

This week’s Nitro STARTS with the nWo in the booth, and Bischoff calling out Randy Anderson so he can reverse the decision and publicly fire him. Hall wants to beat the sh*t out of Pee-Wee, but Bischoff turns it into a “payola” scandal, saying Anderson got those Souled Out tickets from someone at WCW as a gift and was thereby violating company policy. Nothing makes a hot title change matter less than dulling it down to corporate minutia! They even reference Anderson’s “rough year,” aka his battle with testicular cancer, before firing him. The more I watch these episodes, the more I see Bischoff doing everything possible to turn the nWo into the most hated organization in wrestling history. He just wasn’t counting on the Internet turning wrestling audiences heel at the same time.

To make matters worse, Bischoff then calls out the Steiner Brothers (who are opening the show with a match, and in theory would like to save face and not look like total helpless goobers before doing so) to strip them of the titles. And hey, there’s nothing they can do! But at least they get to look like the post-apocalyptic Judds while they do it:

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Love can build a bridging German, I guess.

Here’s a fun note we can get mad about again later: The Steiners have to wait eight months to get their revenge for this, and when they do, Kevin Nash is conveniently injured and they have to win the titles back from Scott Hall and Syxx. Randy Anderson comes back in two weeks with one of the most embarrassing segments ever, is forced to fight for his job, fights and wins and is still fired, because EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE ALWAYS.

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Best/Worst: The Faces Of Transitional Fear

As mentioned, the Steiners now have to open the show in a match against the Faces of Fear. You could say this is to make sure they’re the official #1 contenders, but does it even matter now? We’ve shown that the guy in charge of the company runs both WCW and the nWo, meaning he has to sanction all the title shots and can reverse them if he doesn’t like them. So … they’re wrestling for nothing?

Anyway, the Steiners and the Faces of Fear is always pretty good in that way certain matches are, where you can tell nobody involved talked about the match beforehand and decided to just hit each other in the face as hard as possible. The match just sort of ends about five minutes in when Scott tags in and hits a belly-to-belly. Meng is just like, “f*ck that Doomsday DDT, pick me up and put me down and let’s leave.”

The nWo sits in on commentary for the entire thing and Scott Hall does his best to bury everyone in sight, calling referee Scott Dickenson the “time to make the donuts guy” and calling Rick Steiner “Robby,” his actual name. We’ve pretty much nihilistically destroyed this episode in the first quarter hour. Congratulations, everyone.

Any beauty pageant segments coming up?

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Best: ROAD CLOSED

Oh look, a beauty pageant!

Match #2 is Giant vs. one of our very favorite WCW jobbers, The Man They Call Roadblock. From the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro from Oct. 21, 1996:

If you’ve never seen Roadblock, he’s … literally a roadblock. He carries a roadblock to the ring and his gear makes him look like a roadblock. I’m not sure how much more on the nose you can be. He looks like the Mr. Creosote version of Triple H (or one of the Gorgs from Fraggle Rock, take your pick) and he’s spectacularly bad at wrestling. All he’s got going for him is his height and weight. I’m not sure he ever figured out what wrestling was.

This time around, Roadblock has upgraded his singlet from orange Tugboat to an actual warning sign, declaring the ROAD CLOSED. He’s not just blocking it now, he’s rendering the road totally unusable. I love that his pants look like two roads leading to his stomach, which is like, NO MORE ROAD. Next stop: the WCW World Heavyweight Championship! Or a deer crossing, one or the other.

The match is about 90 seconds long, but features Giant throwing a standing dropkick (yo) and putting Roadblock through the “secondary broadcast table” at ringside. One massive chokeslam later, and that’s it. Giant hops on the microphone and says he wants Hogan tonight, which definitely won’t end with an nWo run-in like the last two, we’re sure.

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Worst: In Case You Were Still Worried About Starrcade, Which You Weren’t

The Giant has been screwed out of two, soon to be three WCW Championship matches against Hollywood Hogan. One of them took place during the New Adventures of Robin Hood. He won a title match by winning World War 3, and trying to actually GET that match got him kicked out of the New World Order. Souled Out ended with Giant being stripped to his bare ass and spray-painted, so the story heading into Superbrawl is the ultimate, final showdown between the two with some kind of stipulation to keep the Giant from being f*cked over again, right?

LOL

Early in the show, Tony Schiavone announces that he’s procured a tape of the finish to Starrcade ’96 and will finally prove to us that Rowdy Roddy Piper defeated Hollywood Hogan. I mean, we watched it and anyone who didn’t saw Bischoff get weird about it the next night on Nitro. Also, pretty sure there’s more than that one tape available. My great grandpa used to tape all the pay-per-views, I could’ve called him and gotten one on bootleg VHS.

But yeah, Tony’s pulled some strings and gotten an unedited Starrcade tape to show us. They show the finish to Piper vs. Hogan with Hogan getting put to sleep, but before his hand comes down for three, the tape cuts out. Tony is SHOCKED, demanding to know what happened … and that’s when TAPE MASTER Eric Bischoff shows up, reveals that he stopped Tony’s little tape trading ruse and threatens him if he ever tries it again. He pulls the ribbon out of the cassette for good measure. Now there’s NO RECORD of Starrcade ’96 available. WWE Network’s version just cuts to a still photo of Bischoff frenching Miss nWo.

I wish this had become Bischoff’s actual gimmick, and that Hacksaw Jim Duggan had joined the nWo as TAPE INTEGRITY ENFORCER.

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It turns out we were shown that tape for a very good reason. Tony gets a letter from the WCW Executive Committee delivered by one of the police extras from the 1966 Batman show announcing that due to his behavior as of late (read: since July?), Hollywood Hogan will be forced to defend the WCW Championship at SuperBrawl, and that title shot will go to … Rowdy Roddy Piper. Sorry, Giant! Hope that match goes well for you later!

The highlight of this bit is Tony’s outfit, which looks like someone beat him up before the show to get a Tony Schiavone outfit and he was forced to piece together something TV-ready from the boys department at J. Crew. Dude’s wearing a blue sweatshirt and khaki pants that are way too tight so they bunch up a bunch in the crotch. He looks like 13-year old me.

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Best: The Era Of Billy Pearl Begins (And Ends)

Ultimo Dragon gets a fun and all-too-quick victory over “Billy Pearl,” who looks like Jon Heder’s character from Blades of Glory. You may know him best as WWF jobber “Brian Walsh,” most famous for being on the losing end of Avatar’s terrible debut.

Pearl vs. Dragon is pretty much the 1997 equivalent of the first three minutes of Akira Tozawa vs. Jack Gallagher from the Cruiserweight Classic, only substitute the comedic butthole-punting with Dragon caving in Pearl’s entire torso with a dropkick. Dragon just lights him up the entire time, and Pearl tries to fight back with a bunch of British knucklelocks and hip-riding. It’s great in its own little way.

This is Pearl’s only Nitro appearance, by the way. He gets a pair of matches on WCW Saturday Night, and then it’s back to WWF to lose to the Disciples of the Apocalypse or whatever. Thanks for catching as you could catch, Billy!

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Worst: Ron Powers

The SuperBrawl title shot also doesn’t go to “The Total Package” Lex Luger, who has been absolutely plowing through every large-ish wrestler in the country on the reg for months. This week’s victim is RON POWERS, who I’m pretending is either Rusev’s dad or Jim Powers’ aggressive older brother. They should’ve teamed up Ron Powers and Jim Powers and called them THE POWERS THAT BE.

Luger nukes Ronnie Wrestling almost immediately and Torture Racks him, and that’s good enough for not only the win, but the Valvoline People Who Know Use Valvoline™ Of The Week.

After the match, Voice of Reason Lex Luger says that WCW needs to get its sh*t together, start trusting each other and take out the nWo. He pleads with the Giant to rejoin WCW, noting that the whole “not trusting Sting and thinking a rando in Sting makeup was the real thing because it was raining” was the boner that started the true downfall of the company as a unit anyway. WCW: where the only person with humility is The Narcissist.

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Worst: Arn Anderson’s Career Ends Not With A Bang, But With A Haliburton

And now, Arn Anderson’s final match. He sticks around, arm wrestles with Buff Bagwell on a random Thunder in 2000 and fights David Flair at some point, but this is his last actual pro wrestling match. And bonus: it’s the most WCW thing ever.

Arn teams up with Mongo McMichael to face the Amazing French-Canadians. If you’ve spent the last five minute staring at that photo with your head cocked to the side like a dog, here’s what’s going on in truest “WHAT IS GOING ON WITH ANY COLONEL PARKER MATCH” fashion.

The French-Canadians want to end the match by hitting Mongo with their flag. Parker tosses in the flag, but the referee sees it happen. As he turns away, Mongo grabs his trust metal briefcase of instant death, blasts Jacques Rougeau with it and gets the win. Arn Anderson stands on the apron the entire time. That, my friends, is the last Arn Anderson match. … Hooray?

If you don’t know the story of Arn, he’d been dealing with numbness and trying to fight through the problem, but it kept getting worse. He tried to have surgery a few months after this to fix it, but they couldn’t fix it enough for him to keep wrestling. Later in the year we get his emotional retirement speech, and then a week after that the nWo parodies it and turns it into one of the most embarrassing and humiliating things in company history. Because that totally needed to happen.

Arn is the best wrestler to ever look like one of your dad’s friends, and he deserved a better sendoff than this. So don’t remember Arn as the fourth most important wrestler in an Amazing French-Canadians match … remember him hitting The Undertaker with the sweetest spinebuster of all-time five years later at WrestleMania 18.

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Maybe the worst part of the entire thing is that it’s not even Mongo’s sole briefcase-related finish of the night. He interferes in an Eddie Guerrero vs. Jeff Jarrett match on behalf of his wife Debra, who as you know if you’ve been reading has grown weirdly protective of Jeff Jarrett. It’s the Woman/Chris Benoit/Kevin Sullivan angle with the lowest possible stakes. I guess Debra’d spent so much time hanging out with football players that a Little Lord Fauntleroy-looking motherf*cker in a spread of chest-suspenders did it for her.

Debra begs Mongo to help Jarrett win by hitting Eddie with the Haliburton — she was able to convince him to help Jarrett at Souled Out, after all — but Mongo reconsiders and blasts Jarrett instead. The announce team plays this off as Mongo deciding to “wear the pants” in the relationship, because I guess control of the marriage goes to whomever decides to hit which dude with a briefcase the most often.

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Worst: Extreme Championship Wrestling

WCW advertised a Tag Team Championship match for the night, which turns out to be The Outsiders — remember, officially the champions still but not really — versus “The Extreme,” aka “The Extremists,” Ace Darling and Devon Storm. You can tell Storm and Darling are “extreme” because they wear sunglasses, and dress like they asked the tailor if he’d seen Ciclope from the neck down, and he responded, “say no more fam.”

Long story short, Billy Pearl had more of a shot against Ultimo Dragon.

Hall and Nash kill The Extreme with the same sincerity and enthusiasm they bring to everything else, and I’d need More Than Words to describe it. Storm reconsidered the team after this match, saying to his partner, “Darling, I don’t know why I go to Extremes.”

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Worst: Joe Gomez

Also on this episode, the Taskmaster defeats Desperado Joe Gomez in about 40 seconds, because Joe Gomez is the dysentery of professional wrestlers. He’s a hard one, but I know that he’s got his reasons.

Sting: Can you believe this guy? Out here talking for 10 minutes again. And look, now he’s posing. We should get together and point baseball bats at him, that’d show him.
Macho Man: I’m going to turn on you
Sting: what
Macho Man: nothing

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Worst: Cruiserweight Jerry Flynn

Mom’s new boyfriend is 250 pounds and drunk, and now he wants the Cruiserweight Championship!

Instead of facing his gym class karate soulmate Glacier, Jerry Flynn gets a shot at new Cruiserweight Champion Dean Malenko. Flynn neutralizes about 900 of Malenko’s holds by being too awkward to take any of them, then just kicking him in the chest. That’s the entire match. Like watching Jacques Pepin eat a gordita by himself in his car outside a Taco Bell.

The best moment of the match (and possibly my life) comes near the end, where Malenko gets whipped into the corner and Flynn follows in with a head of steam. Malenko dodges out onto the apron when Flynn still has like five feet of running to do, so Flynn just KEEPS RUNNING and SMASHES HIS FACE INTO THE TOP TURNBUCKLE while SCREAMING for NO REASON WHATSOEVER. Malenko goes up top to hit something, and from the ground, Flynn kicks up and kicks him in the chest. There’s so little timing involved that Malenko can’t even sell it, he just kinda tumbles sideways off the ropes. It’s amazing. Malenko’s response to the entire sequence is to mouth “f*ck you” with his entire body and Cloverleaf Thunderfoot for the win.

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Worst: Marital Infidelity Is No Laughing Matter

Hugh Morrus wrestles a terrible Hugh Morrus match against Chris Benoit and ends up winning the damn thing two nights after being HIT BY A F*CKING MOTORCYCLE thanks to the debut of a mysterious woman. She jumps out of the crowd during the match and starts harassing Woman, which brings out WCW security and distracts everyone long enough for Kevin Sullivan to sneak in and brain Benoit with the dreaded Flimsy Wooden Chair.

After the match, the woman follows Sullivan up the ramp and we get an impossibly awkward interview where he tells Mean Gene to “not worry about” where he knows the woman from, and her basically saying she wants to manage Sullivan instead of Jimmy Hart because she can have sex with him. I think that’s underestimating Jimmy Hart’s skillset, but sure. And hey, there’s nothing strange women like more than the Venice Beach Danny DeVito look.

You may recognize the Mystery Woman as WWE Hall of Famer Jacqueline. If you’re weird, you know her as “Wynonna,” former vignette-only manager of Jeff Jarrett. Maybe you know her as Miss Texas (USWA), Sweet Georgia Brown (World Class) or Breast Impl Ant (Chikara). Incredibly, only one of those names is a joke.

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Worst: Guess What Happens

The first Giant vs. Hollywood Hogan match (not counting the early ones with the monster truck battles and Himalayan ninja ice mummy buttf*ckings) ended with the nWo running in and causing a disqualification. The second Giant vs. Hollywood Hogan match ended with the nWo running in and causing a disqualification. This third Giant vs. Hollywood Hogan match ends with the nWo running in and causing a disqualification. Gotta keep things fresh!

The new wrinkle here (which isn’t new at all) is Eric Bischoff getting physically involved, trying to attack the Giant with the saddest double axe-handles you’ll see this side of Kelly Kelly. Giant threatens to chokeslam him and everyone who just sat through a Hollywood Hogan match is like YES, YES, PLEASE, GOD, PLEASE, GOD, PLEASE. The Outsiders run in and ruin that.

The final moment of the show is Lex Luger running out to make the save, and the announcers for real being like, “WHOSE SIDE IS HE ON,” despite him openly telling the Giant earlier in this same f*cking show that he wants them to start trusting each other and fight the nWo. There’s a reason Sting is still up in the rafters, you guys. Owning a pair of black underwear doesn’t make you Benedict Arnold.

In a totally unrelated story, join us at SuperBrawl for the one guy Sting decided to trust turning on Sting.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Ric Flair pointed out a fat boy in the crowd, and Roadblock wore a shirt that said ROAD CLOSED and shorts that made his legs look like streets, so when he wore them together it was like two roads were leading to an enormous closure sign. Oh also Eric Bischoff fired Randy Anderson and stripped the Steiner Brothers of the tag straps, but that’s less important.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year old WCW jokes and not abandon the column entirely to write about timely sh*t people might actually click on, your half of the deal is hitting these share buttons. Let people know how much you like the column!

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for Feb. 3, 1997.

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Best: Mendoza!

Let’s start off the program with Ray Mendoza Jr., who looks like he kept his forehead underwater until it pruned. You may remember him from like 3 minutes of Lord Steven Regal punching a dude in the face for real from a Nitro back in November. He was “Tony Peña” then. You might also know him as the unmasked Villano IV, or as Kang of the Klingon Empire. Look man, I’ll be straight with you; I miss the glory days of ’70s and ’80s wrestling as much as anybody, but I’m very happy dudes can get in and out of the business now without blading for 20 years and looking like someone stretched a scrotum over their head like a swim cap.

Fun note about the Villanos: Los Villanos are named in honor of their dad, Ray Mendoza, who played a villain in a bunch of old El Santo movies. This is Villano IV, Tomas Mendoza, performing unmasked as “Ray Mendoza Jr.” The actual Ray Mendoza Jr. is Villano V, who formally became Ray Mendoza Jr. when he lost his mask in 2009. So in WCW, Ray Mendoza Jr. is Villano V, but Villano IV is Ray Mendoza Jr. Got it?

This time around, he’s a punching bag for Ultimo Dragon. Dragon has really been into kicking guys as hard as he can lately, and Mendoza’s a veteran so he gives it right back. They do some weird stuff that’s caught between good and terrible, like a counter where Dragon’s supposed to do a forward roll under a leap frog but Mendoza doesn’t jump high enough and gets two boots to the dick. He no-sells that into a pinning predicament. Predickament?

The ending is great, though, with Dragon going for the Dragonrana but not spinning all the way around, so he’s forced to really tighten the grip with his knees and fling Mendoza over for real. Nothing in wrestling looks better than a well-executed rana (or headscissors takedown), and nothing in wrestling looks faker than the bad ones.

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Best: Jerk Glacier

So, the crowd’s starting to turn on Glacier. He shows up and does his normal Georgia gym teacher karate and throws some kicks that miss (pictured), and instead of politely clapping like most crowds, Memphis is not having it. Not even when he goes catch-as-catch-can with Billy Kidman, assuming that by “catch” you mean “kicks and maybe an armdrag.” He licks his finger and makes a tally mark, as though Kidman/Glacier is the new Guerrero/Malenko, and the crowd goes, “weeeehhhhhh.”

Look at this. Look how SASSY this is:

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Hulu

The full filename of that image is, “somebody told Glacier to have a personality and he took that to mean ‘act like you just dunked on somebody but also you can’t stop doing karate'” dot GIF.

And hey, instead of having Dragon murk Villano Intravenous and having Glacier phantom-kick Billy Kidman, why didn’t they just open the show with 10 minutes of Ultimo Dragon vs. Kidman? Does Kidman need his sleeveless undershirt to survive those kicks? Oh, better yet, do ULTIMO DRAGON VS. GLACIER and see if Glacier would get tired of having his ribcage exploded and start landing kicks.

Editor’s Note: I did a little research, and it turns out Dragon and Glacier DID have a match on WCW Pro. It’s super short, but kinda great while it lasts, and ends with Sonny Onoo just kicking Glacier in front of the ref. I love that they were terrified to give Ultimo Dragon vs. Glacier on WCW Pro a clean ending. Come on, guys. One was trained by Bruce Lee. The other was trained by one of those VHS tapes of Ninja Turtles episodes from Burger King.

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Worst: Please Don’t Kill La Parka, Ice Train

Up next on this extremely Brandon-friendly card is Ice Train vs. La Parka, which would be a classic in the WCW Saturday Night style if it didn’t involve strong-ass thick-ass Ice Train being unable to catch a dive. Parka goes for a corkscrew plancha midway through the match and Train “catches” him by sorta putting his forearms on La Parka’s shins. Parka ends up corkscrewing straight into the ground (pictured), somehow bashing his face AND his knee into the floor.

La Parka spends the rest of the match half-concussed, half-tired of having to wrestle Ice Train and it kinda goes to sh*t. That’s not a problem, though, because we miss a huge chunk of it running backstage to see what the nWo are up to. There are only two guesses:

1. localized hotel room cigar and self-congratulation party, or
2. emasculating anyone with momentum in WCW

If you chose #2, congratulations, now you know why most of Nitro is a huge number two.

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Scott Hall and Kevin Nash are backstage (in Lex Luger and The Giant T-shirts, which is a nice touch), holding pipes and standing over a fallen Luger. The announce team is like, WHO IS THAT, WHO IS THAT ON THE FLOOR, IS THAT, IS THAT LEX LUGER?? and I’m sure they’re like five seconds away from deciding it’s actually Sting.

Meanwhile, Ice Train wins a match. You know, looking back, it’s amazing how tone deaf WCW was with La Parka. The guy didn’t do anything in his entire career besides (1) be a fat dancing skeleton and (2) hit people with chairs, yet he was the most over and clapped-about wrestler every time he was in the ring. They could’ve done ANYTHING with him. Hasn’t Lucha Underground taught us how much the wrestling world loves aggro Mexican wrestling skeletons?

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Worst/Best: Woman On Film

With Luger incapacitated, the advertised Lex Luger vs. Jeff Jarrett match is now in jeopardy. This is why Raw wouldn’t shut up about baits-and-switches, right? Vince McMahon had such an epic hate-on for Jeff Jarrett during this period.

Anyway, three of the Four Horsemen show up to announce that the Horsemen are back and totally reunited. Great job, everybody! Mongo volunteers to take Luger’s spot against Jarrett and is like, HEY LOCAL CROWD, I HATE Y’ALL BABY, HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE MAHNGO RASSLE JEFF JARRETT?? The crowd response is somewhere between forced cheering and, “is suicide optional?”

The rest of the promo is your standard catty Horsemen gossip round-up, with both Woman and Debra McMichael going on and on (and on and on) about how much they hate Jacqueline. Debra says that when God was handing out faces, Jacqueline thought they said “cases” and said, “make mine leather.” Woman says Jackie got her leftovers and snaps it out. Seriously, look at this. It tops Friends on the list of Whitest Things That Happened In The ’90s. It’s the Chris Benoit Saying Talk To The Hand of hand gestures.

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Worst: Giving Us What We Didn’t Ask For

The result of that promo is Super Bowl champion cuckold Mongo being forced to take a count-out by his wife so her Martina Navratilova-looking bull with the jock strap on his chest could get the win. Hey, you know what’ll get Jeff Jarrett over with wrestling crowds? Having a condescending, aging beauty queen constantly interject to save him, because the slightest physical confrontation causes him to curl up in the fetal position and completely fall apart. It’s like if Princess Peach had to keep stepping in and making sure Bowser didn’t hurt Luigi.

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Worst: Mike Enos, nWo Magnet

Mike Enos is wrestling a match nobody cares about, and the camera zooms out to catch the crowd going nuts for an nWo member walking out through the crowd and hopping the rail in the corner. Sound familiar? It’s exactly the same shot and scenario as when Scott Hall debuted. Is Mike Enos an nWo sleeper agent? Is he facilitating these run-ins? Did they need a guy who was both rough and ready?

Here, the nWo member in question is Syxx. Syxx is showing up to steal Dean Malenko’s Cruiserweight Championship, which is the second “Syxx steals a championship belt” angle of the month. Eddie Guerrero just got back his United States Championship from Syxx, so now they’re just starting over with Malenko. Sure? Lord Steven Regal should put one of those exploding dye packs on the TV title for when this feud is over.

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Best: The DIAMOND DEATH CUTTER

Diamond Dallas Page squares off against the Renegade, and the challenge is so great (70 seconds into the match) that he’s gotta up his finisher game and go for the DIAMOND DEATH CUTTER, aka a Diamond Cutter off the second rope. Thank God he wasn’t in there with Joe Gomez, he’d have to go from the top to the floor.

After the match, the most threatening characters on the show all converge to stand 50 feet away from DDP. Macho Man Randy Savage appears in the crowd in one corner, Sting shows up in the crowd in another, and the Outsiders (with their Luger-dispatching pipes) show up on the stage. The general idea is that Sting and Savage are looming in the distance to protect Page from the inevitable nWo beatdown he’s got coming, but Page plays it off like everyone’s out to get him.

Renegade does nothing, which he’s great at.

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Best/Worst: The Ballad Of Super Calo, Alex Wright And The World’s Worst Fan

At certain points in the show, there are a row of empty chairs in the front row. When they’re filled, they’re filled by a guy in an all-denim outfit and nondescript tan hat accompanied by, I’m assuming, his family. I don’t know who he is, why he’s there, or where he goes for chunks of the show.

When he’s there, he’s the worst possible fan. When big moves happen he’ll stand up with his arms over his head and sorta woo, then he’ll turn to face the crowd behind them to like, make sure they see him react. It’s like that guy at the strip club who “makes it rain,” but turns looks at the people in the bar instead of the stripper while he does it. DO YOU SEE ME? DO YOU SEE THE THING I’M DOING? WE’RE ALL HERE BUT I SHOULD PROBABLY BE THE POINT.

This wouldn’t be a big deal, but he gets physically involved in the Super Calo/Alex Wright match. This is an extremely important moment in Nitro history, so pay attention.

Super Calo is wrestling Alex Wright, and he’s doing well because he wrestles in sunglasses and is therefore not immediately blinded by the Saul-on-the-Road-to-Damascus divine light of Das Wunderkind’s package. Calo tumbles to the outside at some point and backs into the security railing, right in front of this fan. The fan gets bumped, pauses, then realizes he should “play along” and takes an exaggerated bump. Calo heads back to the ring. As this is happening, the fan stands up and once again turns to the audience with his hands up, making sure everyone saw him do the funny thing. What he doesn’t see is Wright dropkicking Calo off the apron, sending Calo BACK into the security railing and actually knocking the dude down.

The best part is when the guy gets up this time, he’s IRATE. He’s like, leaning in and screaming curse words in Super Calo’s face for touching him. Here’s the entire exchange in GIF form, and it’s amazing:

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At first you’re like, “that guy’s obviously a plant” (or a stunt granny, or whatever), but I don’t think he is. The camera doesn’t focus on him and actually moves away from him at one point, and nobody makes a big deal about it. So is it real?

My theory is that Calo and Wright were watching this guy act the fool all night and decided to f*ck with him. If that’s not the case, it’s a ridiculous coincidence that two undercard wrestlers in the middle of the show would get TWO physical interactions with the same annoying fan without planning it. Did Alex Wright bring his old college roommate to the show and sneak him into the action by dressing him up like Tony Schiavone at a Road Wild?

The world may never know.

Wait, did that guy go to Nitro with TOAD? Was my “Jeff Jarrett is Luigi” thing that accurate?

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Worst: The Dungeon Of Dudes

If you were under the impression that the Four Horsemen were the only heel faction freaking out about having to interact with women, don’t sleep on the DUNGEON OF DOOM, who are currently falling the hell apart because Kevin Sullivan got a new girlfriend.

Remember last week when Jacqueline debuted and said she’d be a better manager for the Taskmaster than Jimmy Hart, because she could “comfort” him in ways Jimmy couldn’t? Jimmy has been pissed about that all week, and confronts Sullivan here with, “women in professional wrestling are trouble, Jacqueline is here for suspicious reasons because women would NEVER go to a wrestling show, I’m gonna get to the bottom of this.” He is the most scorned lover ever. Mean Gene shuts him down with, “You just hate women, Jimmy Hart.” This segment is also every wrestling argument involving a woman in the history of Twitter.

Jacqueline’s contribution to the segment is to say that Debra McMichael is just jealous of her because Debra had plastic surgery and Jacqueline didn’t, which is a lot like Donald Trump saying Hillary Clinton’s jealous of him because she’s got a terrible haircut.

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Later in the night, Jacqueline interrupts a Chris Benoit vs. Konnan match by walking out menacingly with a leather strap and confronting Woman. It’s one of those wrestling segments where a character is suddenly overly concerned with a weapon from a gimmick match, because they’ve got to set up a gimmick match. It’s like a chicken or the egg scenario where the frying pan came first.

The best part is when Benoit shows up to defend Nancy and takes the strap away. Jacqueline starts looking under the ring apron for something that clearly is supposed to be there but isn’t, and spends what feels like an eternity trying to improv something. She pulls out a water bottle and tries to make that work, but R-Truth’s still like 15 years away from making that threatening. Eventually Jimmy runs over and kinda dives at her legs to make it look like he’s “holding her back,” even though she’s stood there doing nothing for like a full minute. So happy Jacqueline’s on the show now!

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Worst: NAUGHTY MACDADDIES

The Steiner Brothers participate in this week’s Harlem Heat Race Against The Clock To Have A Presentable Match Before The Garbage Finish contest, which lasts about five minutes until Public Enemy and the Faces of Fear run in to attack everybody. You’d think the continuity of Meng loving WCW Monday Nitro shirts would be enough to earn the segment a Best, but nope, Public Enemy is wearing shirts that classify them as VIOLENT MACDADDY and NAUGHTY MACDADDY.

Violent Macdaddy, sure, that could make you good at wrestling or whatever. But NAUGHTY Macdaddy? Why do I want to know that Flyboy Rocco Rock is the “naughty” anything?

Via Urban Dictionary, here’s a quick and super unnecessary reminder of where “macdaddy” comes from:

“Mac Daddy” or Mack Daddy, is a term used to describe a man with an unusual power over women, and is derived from the French and later Louisiana Creole patois term “maqereau,” which means “pimp.” Adding “daddy” makes it mean “top pimp.” The ’70’s black-exploitation movie The Mack, a dramatization of the life of a street pimp, furthered the popularity of the term in urban America. This use of “mac” is quite different from the Scottish/Gaelic term “mac” (son of) used to address an unknown man.

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So what you’re saying is that Johnny Grunge is the Macdaddy, but Rowdy Roddy Piper is the daddy, mac?

Worst: Rowdy Roddy Piper Hides Behind A Kid

Hey, I didn’t know Finn Bálor made it onto an episode of Nitro.

No, this is actually Roddy Piper’s son, MMA fighter and sometimes pro wrestler Colt Toombs. Piper’s brought him out here to announce that he’s a man, which means he’s done with wrestling and won’t be accepting Hollywood Hogan’s challenge for tonight or the title shot the WCW executive committee decided on without asking him (apparently) for SuperBrawl.

Hogan, Bischoff and Vincent show up to pretty justifiably give Piper sh*t for bringing out a small child during the main event of a Nitro, using him to prevent another nWo beatdown — remember, last time Piper was here he got taken away on a stretcher — and pretending like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Piper tries to save himself AGAIN by shoot-groveling. “Terry, I’m asking you from the bottom of my heart, man, don’t do nothing. Just let me go home.” I came into the center of the ring at the end of a Nitro and spoke to Mean Gene on a microphone in front of fans to say I don’t want to be on the wrestling show!

Gawker be like:

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Hogan has to dig pretty deep to be the heel here, making Piper admit on the microphone that Hogan beat him at Starrcade, and that Hogan is the “true icon.” WCW guys were always getting so upset about who was or wasn’t the icon. As it turns out, that little kid was the icon, and Shinsuke Nakamura had to fight him on NXT to prove himself.

Hollywood eventually paintbrushes Piper in the back of the head until it drives him past the breaking point. Piper apologizes to Colt and hands him out of the ring, then proceeds to COMICALLY COCO-BUTT Hogan and Bischoff to thunderous applause. The show goes off the air with Piper holding the WCW Championship over his head.

If you’re worried about the legality of this scene, don’t worry: Piper ends up going to jail over it. Not a joke. SEE YOU NEXT WEEK.

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First of all, he looks weird there because he’s snarting.

Previously on the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Rowdy Roddy Piper decided that the best way to announce his retirement was to bring his child to the ring during the main event of Nitro, two hours after Hollywood Hogan stood in the same spot and said, “if Piper is here, I’m going to fight him.” Not his best plan. Also on the show, Glacier got sassy, I got too into explaining the history of Los Villanos, and Ice Train almost paralyzed La Parka.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year old WCW jokes and not abandon the column entirely to write about timely sh*t people might actually click on, your half of the deal is hitting these share buttons. Let people know how much you like the column!

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for February 10, 1997.

Best/Worst: Dean Malenko Vs. Eddie Guerrero Vs. Our Patience

This week, we open the show with a perfect microcosm of WCW Monday Nitro: Dean Malenko wrestling Eddie Guerrero for like four minutes until the nWo runs in and ruins it. Nitro!

So yeah, if you’ve been following along the past few … uh, months, you know that Syxx’s only contribution to the show so far has been “dick-pointing in the background of nWo interview segments” and “trying to steal other people’s championship belts.” He stole Eddie Guerrero’s United States Championship at Starrcade, and Eddie had to fight to get it back at Souled Out. The next night, Syxx randomly stole Dean Malenko’s Cruiserweight Championship. Then he shows up and tries to steal Eddie’s United States Championship AGAIN, which would make it the third instance of the nWo stealing the U.S. title in four months. Remember when Macho Man crushed Ricky Steamboat’s throat with the ring bell? Wouldn’t it have been great if instead of doing that once and having it matter, they’d done it three f*cking times in a row?

Here’s Syxx going ass-up on this thieving attempt:

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Guerrero stops wrestling Malenko mid-Guerrero/Malenko sequence to roll out of the ring and stop Syxx, which gets him counted out. The referee can’t use a little judgment here and let it slide because of obvious unrelated-to-either-guy nWo interference, and just burns through the 10-count. Super disappointing. It gets even worse at SuperBrawl, where Eddie accidentally costs Malenko (and WCW) the cruiserweight title because WCW babyfaces are dumber than a pile of bricks in Jim Duggan’s backyard.

A supplemental Worst to the homie Larry Zbyszko for his Peggy Hill-quality analysis of Dean Malenko. “In my mind, the best cruiserweight in the world, right there!” Tony’s like, “yes, he is the best cruiserweight because he is the Cruiserweight Champion.” IN MY OPINION STEVE MCMICHAEL IS THE BEST FORMER CHICAGO BEARS PLAYER IN THE FOUR HORSEMEN.

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Worst: Konnan Vs. Bobby Eaton

You might never see a worse clash of styles, or a worse 60 seconds of wrestling on Nitro.

Poor Alabama grandma Bobby Eaton and his great-ass punches are like 75 years old here, and he’s asked to have a competitive match against Konnan, an occasionally ultraviolent tumbler who only seems to work hard when there’s a luchador to cripple. This match is entirely Irish whips into the corner, with Bobby trying to throw punches and Konnan just sloppily stepping all over him, rolling forward for no reason and clobbering him in the back of the head. They kept putting Beautiful Bob into these matches with lucha libre guys and he has no idea what to do. He sells everything by kinda turning sideways and flat bumping, even when he’s supposed to be going in the opposite direction. He’s just like, “nope, selling this like a Robert Gibson dropkick, f*ck an El Santo.”

The match ends when Konnan tries the Jimmy Snuka double leapfrog, he gets about three inches of air on the second jump and Bobby hesitates because he assumes the slow-hopping aggro turtle man in the JNCOs has stopped moving entirely. Konnan finishes him off with the Calo Driver ’97.

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Best?: As The Bat Turns

Only reasonable human on the show Diamond Dallas Page shows up in his street clothes with a chair, sits down in the middle of the ring and announces that he’s tired of running. On last week’s show, his match ended with the Outsiders showing up with lead pipes and being headed off at the pass by Sting and Macho Man Randy Savage standing in the crowd with their brows furrowed. Page has no idea what’s going on but he knows it’s headed for a resolution, so he proposes any interested parties come to the ring now and throw hands so they can get it over with.

Savage and Sting show up, and the Threat Pantomiming can begin. Savage taps Page’s chair with a baseball bat and then kicks the chair away. They back him into a corner with some bat-shoves, and Sting raises the bat up like he’s gonna crush Page’s skull with it. Page covers up, and that leads to the standard Sting loyalty questionnaire where he hands someone a bat, turns his back on them and waits to see what happens. Page obviously doesn’t hit them, so they take the bat back and threateningly bail.

You know what would’ve been great? Sting silently building this super team of babyfaces to fight the nWo, getting into a War Games match against them and just brutally dismantling them forever. Sting, Savage, Page, Giant and Luger. Luger can be on the team to redeem himself for not trusting Sting and starting this whole mess in the first place. They destroy everyone but Hogan, and then you build to Starrcade as Hogan vs. Sting, one-on-one for the championship, with Sting’s posse eliminating any threat of Hogan being able to run interference. Sting murders Hogan, WCW is back on top for good, and you move forward with stories other than “…also nWo?” for the next however many years before you go out of business.

Instead, enjoy the next 11 months of silent bat pointing and no wrestling.

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Worst: Casting Aspersions

Lex Luger has a broken bone in his hand, but like an Untouchable trying to become a Shudra, he’s CASTING UP. Mamma mia!

Luger shows up in a cast to have his big-time, main-event-in-any-arena-in-the-country rematch with RON POWERS, but Eric Bischoff cuts him off and tells him he isn’t medically cleared to compete. If he can’t get cleared to compete tonight, he can’t be cleared for SuperBrawl, either. Eric Bischoff cares deeply for the well-being of his employees. Join us later in the show when he berates children to their faces about how much he hates their father.

That leads to Giant showing up and taking Luger’s spot in the match, which is frankly bullsh*t from Ron Powers’ point of view. He was scheduled against Luger and Luger can’t compete, but he showed up in his gear and tried to wrestle, so that’s a forfeit, right? JUSTICE FOR RON POWERS. Anyway, Ron Powers loses in like four seconds.

After the match, Giant gives an interview about how he and Luger are now tag team partners and FOREVER BROS, and how even if he has to face the Outsiders by himself at SuperBrawl, he’ll win the tag titles and give one of them to Lex. Giant, former nWo member, still doesn’t know how the nWo works. If you win the tag titles, you’re gonna hand both of them to Hall and Nash the next night on Nitro. He also brings back Hulk Hogan’s weird tendency of calling him a, “real, live, fire-breathing giant.” When have giants ever breathed fire? Does Hulk Hogan think dragons and giants are the same thing? Hogan strikes me as the kind of guy who’d pick up a book of fairy tales, flip through it to see if there were any mentions of Hulk Hogan in it, then throw it away.

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Best: Bye Voltage

And now, one of my favorite Nitro moments: any time the Steiner Brothers get to wrestle High Voltage. It’s like the tag team version of Konnan vs. Super Calo. We’re always two seconds and a wrong swivel of the hips away from actual human death in the ring.

We don’t get a Steiner Screwdriver this time around, but we DO get a gruesome Doomsday Bulldog. We also get some of our favorite recurring Steiner Brothers spots, such as, “Rick Steiner says f*ck your leapfrog and throws you at the ground,” “Scott Steiner stops you doing whatever you were trying to do and mindlessly suplexes you onto your skull,” and “you tried a springboard but the Steiners don’t know how that works so they’re just gonna drop you.” The crowd goes ape for ALL of it. I can’t help but think of how well High Voltage would’ve done in 2006 WWE (or modern TNA) as a pair of hairless, ripped twinks in electricity onesies who don’t mind getting their sh*t scrambled.

Harlem Heat, The Faces of Fear and Public Enemy wander out to watch the match because they’ve never seen one end clean.

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Ironic Best: Pee-wee’s Big Holiday

If you were watching Nitro in 1997, you remember this segment.

The nWo takes over the broadcast booth because (1) Larry Zbyszko is a putz, and (2) there’s a special guest at the arena tonight who’s requested time to speak to Eric Bischoff. It turns out that guest is recently fired referee Randy Anderson, who has brought a family from a political ad aimed at Christian grandmas to help him beg for his job back. That’s his wife, Kristy, and their children, Chase and Montana. Congratulations on being born in the 90s, “Chase” and “Montana.” Chase is definitely aware that the human head weighs eight pounds.

Bischoff asks their names, and hits one of the most ice cold punchlines ever:

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Montana is all, “please Mr. Bischoff,” and you can barely hear her over the sound of Kevin Nash making Tiny Tim jokes. “God bless us, everyone!” Randy doesn’t seem to have much of a pitch platform beyond, “life is precious, and God, and the Bible,” so Bischoff gets down to brass tacks: if Randy wants his job back so badly, he can show up to Nitro next week and WRESTLE NICK PATRICK FOR IT. Randy’s wife points out that that’s a terrible idea, because he’s in cancer remission — and because maybe she’s watched Nitro before, and knows beating the nWo just results in the decision being reversed and everyone ignoring it — but he accepts anyway.

If I’m booking this, it’s gotta be Randy, Chase and Montana in a Trios match against Nick Patrick, Vincent and 13-year old Garrett Bischoff. End it with Chase and Montana hitting More Bang For Your Buck on Vincent. Man, I don’t know, I don’t know how to book “man dying of cancer begs for his job back and his children are crying and you’re still cheering the nWo because they’re cool and Randy’s kind of a dork,” I don’t know how the ’90s work.

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Worst: Extreme Exposé

That leads directly into a Tag Team Championship match, with Bischoff putting over the Outsiders’ opponents as the “eastern seaboard champions” and “one of the toughest teams on the continent.” Turns out that team is The Extreme, whom you may remember from their match against the Outsiders two weeks ago. What, was that one not an Eastern Seaboard Championship match?

The worst part is the finish, where Hall chokeslams one of the Extreme (Gary Cherone, I guess) and Nash “Torture Racks” the other (Nuno Bettencourt). I put Torture Rack in quotes, because, well, look at it:

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Poor Devon Storm, forced to tap out to a fireman’s carry. Jesus, don’t show John Cena this match, he’ll never lose again.

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Best: This

Yes, that’s a picture of Lord Steven Regal picking a fight with a guy in a foam Macho Man hat in the crowd.

Regal defends the TV title against Rey Mysterio Jr., and God, if there’s a match I want to see redone at a pay-per-view and given 15 minutes, it’s this. It’s the perfect combination of Regal absolutely f*cking up Mysterio’s Christmas with strikes and submissions, and selling all of Mysterio’s offense like a wealthy dowager tripping over herself at the end of a pie fight. Seriously, Regal will get hit with a headscissors and come up in the corner with his dukes up, flopping around and falling down with a look on his face like 30 people just farted in unison.

Worst: The Finish

It’s outstanding, but unfortunately suffers the curse of the Middle of Nitro Bad Finish. TV title matches generally have a 10-minute time limit, and one of the easiest ways to make a crowd want to see a face take a belt off a heel is to have the heel repeatedly retain via time limit draw. He stays champion but never wins, but also never actually LOSES, so he saves face will looking like he can’t get the job done. That’s great, but WCW was real iffy with the timekeeping. Let me see if I can even explain this.

Mysterio catches Regal with a victory roll and gets two, but Regal kicks out. The bell rings once. If it wasn’t obvious enough already, they totally give away that the finish is, “Mysterio’s about to win, but time runs out and Regal is saved.” Tony says it was so close he “almost heard a bell,” which is some Warrior in the mirror sh*t. The next move is Rey catching Regal with a sunset flip. The referee counts one, and the timekeeper is like RING RING RING RING RING RING. Surprise! The time has run out, and Regal has retained. The punchline: this happens at the 6-minute mark.

♫ WCW is great ♫

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Best: Baseball History

On the 1-800-COLLECT road report, this still photo of Lee Marshall says Tampa Bay named their new Major League Baseball team the “Devil Rays” because “Tampa Bay Weasels” was already claimed. Just once I want a 1-800-COLLECT call to end with Bobby Heenan saying “f*ck you, Lee.”

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Best: MAVERICK WILD

Up next, The Taskmaster takes on this Kris Kristofferson-looking motherf*cker with the exceptional wrestling name MAVERICK WILD. I guess GOOSE FERAL wasn’t hard enough. How could Maverick see Taskmaster while he was in the Tree of Woe? Because he was inverted.

The selling point of the match is that Maverick is willing to let Jacqueline beat him up at ringside, which stuns and delights the announce team. Tony Schiavone has apparently never seen a woman throw a clothesline before, and he reacts to it like he just stumbled upon a Double Rainbow. Jump to the 1:45 mark:

“HOLY COW … WE’VE GOTTA SEE THAT LARIAT FROM JACQUELINE AGAIN! THAT WAS AMAZING! THAT WAS INCREDIBLE!” “OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH, SOMEONE GO RAISE HER HAND RIGHT NOW! THE LADIES CHAMPION AKIRA HOKUTA SHOULD BE WATCHING THIS! THIS GIVES A WHOLE NEW MEANING TO VALET OR RING ATTENDANT DOESN’T IT!”

… Tony, she held out her arm and ran at a dude. She didn’t hit the Van Terminator.

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Worst: It’s A Shoot, Brother

After the match, Sullivan gets interviewed about the upcoming strap match with Chris Benoit at SuperBrawl and launches into a bizarre, 5-minute extreme close-up worked shoot I’m not even sure I can explain. The camera gets right up in his face and he tells producers not to cut him off, because he has to tell us about how “Paul E.” called him and told him to do his job. Like, WE know he was booking the show, but aside from Brian Pillman calling him “booker man” that one time it hasn’t been public fact. Especially not in 1997. He goes on and on (and on) about how King Curtis and all his former tag team partners would tell him to do his job, and how when Nancy “stood on the steps of the lighthouse and said I do,” she knew it wasn’t a bed of roses. Basically this promo is a season of LOST, and you’ve gotta go to WCW.com or whatever and f*ck with the URL to decipher the clues.

The worst part is when he decides to explain the difference between Nancy and himself and Jacqueline, which is that Nancy comes from a community, but he and Jacqueline come from a neighborhood. YOU’RE FROM A STREET AND WE’RE FROM A BOULEVARD, NANCY. He can “go back to 2nd and Ridgewood and get anything he wants at any time,” which is TOTALLY relatable to literally anyone else watching. Sullivan explains that she’s never pulled out anybody’s eyeball or bitten off anybody’s nose (a la the Penguin from Batman Returns, who is clearly the most Sullivan-esque member of Batman’s Dungeon of Doom), so she’s not as tough as she acts. Jimmy Hart tries to interrupt him and calls him the Taskmaster, so he’s like, “it’s Kevin right now.” Because PEW PEW, WE’RE SHOOTIN’.

Jacqueline gets on the microphone and says that the difference between Nancy and herself and Kevin is that Nancy comes from a community, and they come from a neighborhood. Where have I heard that before? She’s with Kevin Sullivan because he’s the only person in her neighborhood she thought could beat her up. In the background Jimmy Hart’s like, “ugh, can we go home, I want to airbrush 30 Hugh Morrus jackets tonight.”

Fun note: A week after Sullivan claims Paul E. called him on Nitro, Paul E. actually calls in to Raw.

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Worst: One Of The Great High-Flyers

Hugh Morrus vs. Alex Wright is as nothing and terrible as you’d imagine, but I wanted to share that screengrab. If you can’t tell what’s going on, that’s Tony Schiavone calling Wright “one of the great high-flyers” just as Wright is slipping on the top rope and f*cking up the finish. To his credit, YOU try jumping to the top rope and balancing with that monster hog between your legs.

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Worst: And Now, The Terrible Horseman Portion Of The Show

This week’s main event is Chris Benoit and Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael against Mongo’s bull Jeff Jarrett and Chavo Guerrero Jr. Jarrett spends most of the match getting sh*t-kicked by the Horsemen until making history’s least effective hot tag to Chavo, who pops in and beats up Benoit AND Mongo despite being the size of Mongo’s leg and hitting with the brutal force of 0.5 Deans Ambrose.

While this is going on, Jarrett tumbles to the outside and gets accosted by Debra McMichael. Debra keeps “checking on him” to make sure he’s okay, and it’s so egregious that even Mike Tenay starts ragging on her:

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“She’s inspecting his suspenders” is such a great deadpan call, and it cracks up Tony. Everybody knows this angle and Jarrett’s suspenders are total bullsh*t, and Tenay’s the first one to passive-aggressively admit it on TV. Tony: “Thank you, Mike. Heh heh. Thank you for that, Mike Tenay, I wasn’t sure!”

Chavo gets the living Christ tombstoned out of him by Mongo, Heenan calls him “La Bamba” because WCW loved slurring the Guerreros for no reason, and the Horsemen spend 10 post-match minutes standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the ring, saying nothing.

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Worst: Sorry, This Is The Actual Main Event

Remember the “Piper brings a child to the ring” segment from last week? This week we see that again in its entirety, followed by Piper in the ring tussling his own hair for a quarter-hour and screaming at a video of Hulk Hogan. He says Hogan challenging him, running from him and trying to change reality in real-time is making him “go to a place” Hogan isn’t going to like. Spoiler: that place is AN ABANDONED JAIL, followed by OLD MAN FIGHTING. More on that next week, though, because all you get this week is erratic shouting at a video screen.

Next Week: Nitro becomes MONDAY NITRO MONDAY and responds to the creative success of a Thursday Raw by losing their goddamn minds.

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Previously on the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Disgraced former referee Randy Anderson brought out his wife and children to help him beg for his job back, and ended up getting booked in a referee vs. referee match against Nick Patrick. Also MAVERICK WILD showed up, Alex Wright got called a great high-flyer while he was f*cking up flying high and Kevin Nash revealed he has no idea how a Torture Rack works.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes and not abandon the column entirely to write more 180-word stories about whatever Ryback’s doing, click the share buttons and share the column around! It helps more than you know, and keeps us screen-capping that same shot of Lee Marshall’s 1-800-COLLECT Road Report.

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for Feb. 17, 1997.

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The Mystery Of Who Attacked Big Bubba

This week’s show opens with the nWo arriving to the arena and doing that celebratory walk only a group of men making way too much money to do nothing can do, but something happens: Big Bubba falls behind and gets taken out from behind by a mystery man. Finally, The Vigilante Scotty Riggs gets revenge for getting hit in the face with a stage light that one time!

Investigative reporter slash “guy who actually watches the show” Mean Gene Okerlund is on the case, though, and goes straight for the only suspect still cutting promos:

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Diamond Dallas Page, dressed like a pair of Zubaz pants became a Venom symbiote and tried to bond with Dog the Bounty Hunter, says he just walked in the door and that this is the first he’s hearing about it. Way to try and blow the cover of the only trustworthy WCW guy trying to fight these goons, Scheme Gene.

Page heads to the back, presumably to ask Big Bubba who WWF plans to have raise the briefcase at King of the Ring ’99.

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Best: SUPER CALO DANGEROUSSSS

What you’re looking at there is Super Calo almost killing poor Rey Mysterio Jr. They try to do a flip powerbomb to the outside tease, but Calo is Calo, so instead of just jumping over Rey and getting into position, brother does a full-speed dive to the floor. He overshoots Rey but still manages to grab him and pull him off the apron, and thank God Calo doesn’t skip leg day, because if he hadn’t held Rey up with 100 percent quad strength we’d be writing a sad paragraph.

They manage to recover, and the next goddamn move is Calo jumping from the apron to the middle of the top rope and just jumping backwards straight into the floor with a missile dropkick. You’re basically powerbombing yourself onto your arm from like 15 feet up. Pretty soon after, Calo’s doing his signature OH GOD DON’T SLINGSHOT HEADFIRST INTO THE GROUND senton that tricks me into thinking it ends in tragedy despite being 19 years in the future and knowing it never does.

During the match, we jump to the back to see Big Bubber being loaded into an ambulance, with his hetero life-mate M. Wallstreet joining him for the ride-along. Meanwhile, Super Calo is taking guillotine leg drops like this:

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(It got a 2-count.)

Here it is in GIF form, if you’d like to start off the column with a nice, “Jesus Christ, Super Calo.” He should ditch the rap group and be the mascot for an assisted-living facility.

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Worst: As The Haliburton Turns

God, so much Mongo this week. He hates every city with football except Chicago. And yes, there’s an “everybody in the Horsemen come stand out here and talk for a while” on every single Nitro.

In retrospect, I think Ric Flair getting fired was just to keep these from happening. I don’t think they serve a purpose, unless we’re watching Chris Benoit do real-time NXT game show challenges where they give him a word — “respect,” or “demons,” or just “Sullivan” — and tell him to improv 2 1/2 minutes about it.

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This week’s first of two Haliburton-related Mongo segments is a match against Hugh Morrus. I love how they had so many Haliburton attack ideas they had to start putting more than one on each episode. If you remember the masterpiece that was “Goldberg spears Bret Hart,” you know Mongo’s plan here. He’s gonna hold a piece of metal to his chest, and Hugh’s gonna backflip into it.

This knocks Hugh out and gives Mongo the win, but if it’d happened on Raw, it would have been a different story. See, in the WWE Universe, putting something on someone and jumping onto it hurts THEM, not you. You can put a ladder on somebody’s chest and jump onto it, and being squished under the weight of you plus 50 pounds hurts more than throwing your body off a high place onto the top of a jagged-ass ladder resting uneasily on an unsteady surface. It’s why putting a chair on someone and hitting that chair with a chair hurts more than hitting them with the chair, or why putting a trashcan between somebody’s legs and hitting it with a kendo stick hurts their balls.

I think my favorite moment of ring psychology here is that when Mongo’s setting up the ruse, he scoots inward a little to make sure Morrus’ moonsault will send him face-first into the briefcase and not stomach-first. Also, f*ck you my friend, Mongo knows his ring psychology.

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The second of two incidents comes later, when Jeff Jarrett is about to beat Chris Jericho with a figure-four. Mongo shows up with the briefcase, and the announce team is all, “WHO’S HE GONNA HIT?” And all I can think is, “I don’t know, guys, maybe the guy he’s wrestling in six days? The guy who spent the past month making his life hell and giving his wife a pageant boner?” Starting to wonder if Debra was actually attracted to Jarrett or if she just wanted to turn him into a toddler in a tiara.

Join us at SuperBrawl VII, when a former football player’s actual trophy wife demands a failed country singer in suspenders join their group of rich but personally unfulfilled complainers, and they fight about it with metal briefcases.

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Worst Best: The Liverpool Lads Sh*t The Bed

One of the coolest things about this week’s episode is that it features a cruiserweight match between Dean Malenko and Robbie Brookside, whom you might know as one half of the “Liverpool Lads” and/or as a current NXT coach. He’s the one who looks like Mariel Hemingway dressed up as the Ultimate Warrior for Halloween. Brookside has done and continues to do a lot of really great work in his wrestling career, and this Nitro match with Malenko is absolutely not part of that.

This is honestly one of the worst matches I’ve seen on Nitro, which is really saying something because I’ve watched Jim Duggan wrap his fist in some dick-tape and punch out Mike Rotunda like 65 times. There’s zero chemistry, the crowd hates it, and the most exciting thing either guy does is a snapmare, followed by completely forgetting how to wrestle.

To illustrate, here’s Robbie Brookside executing probably the worst bridging pin in human history:

Stinko Malenko manages to survive the dreaded Cock Headstand and wins with a “Texas Cloverleaf,” which is in quotes in a way it’s never been before. Brookside appears to have no idea what Malenko is doing and keeps his legs rigidly straight, despite this being the finish. So Malenko has to just kinda cross Brookside’s legs at the ankle and sloppily turn him over. He loses control, and Brookside gives up at like step 4 of a 10-step plan to make the move look passable.

Just an absolute pile of sh*t. I hope that when they told Eva Marie to study old Robbie Brookside tapes, she only watched this match.

Brookside’s one Nitro appearance is at least a little better than his one Raw appearance, where he lost a 3-on-1 match to Umaga, Shane McMahon and Vince McMahon in an Oddjob bowler.

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The other Liverpool Lad doesn’t fare much better, but I didn’t GIF him trying to spelunk up Dean Malenko’s ass so we’ll say it’s a little better. The homie DOC DEAN is this week’s James Ellworth to the Twins Braun Strowman that is Taskmaster Kevin Sullivan, getting squashed by a dude built like a California Raisin and beaten up outside the ring by his Neighborhood Mistress. If you’ve never seen the Doctor work, here he is looking like the backdrop-obsessed 10-year-old son of Lord Steven Regal.

Fun/weird/sad note about Doc Dean: He spends most of February getting beaten up on WCW Saturday Night, but in the summer of ’97 he heads to Japan and competes in the Best of the Super Juniors tournament. There, he gets a singles win against JUSHIN THUNDER LIGER. He gets multi-man tag wins over guys like Chris Jericho, Dr. Wagner Jr. (!) and Koji Kanemoto. He comes back to the States in the fall hyped out of his mind and ready to be a top junior heavyweight …. aaaand goes right back to losing to folks on Saturday Night. He jobs on Saturday Night and WCW Pro until early ’98, when he just gives up and retires.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Hart cuts this promo:

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Life is cruel and unfair sometimes.

So, what else happens on this episode? Oh, right, the Steiner Brothers DIE IN A CAR ACCIDENT.

Okay, they don’t actually die, but at the top of the show we hear about the news from Saturday that Rick and Scott had been involved in a car crash. There was speculation that the nWo was to blame, so the Wolfpac harasses the announce team and gives them Tony Schiavone’s favorite thing: a VIDEO TAPE to play that will EXPLAIN EVERYTHING. That’s where Tony’s a Viking! Larry Zbyszko makes timely Kennedy assassination jokes, because he’s a confused grandpa living in a confused dad’s body.

Anyway, the tape shows Hall, Nash and Syxx stalking the Steiners at a gas station, following them in their car and deciding to drive them off the road. Totally not the cause of the crash. Thanks to some black and white footage and the miracle of late-’90s video editing, we see the Steiners drift off the road and flip their car, destroying it. Congratulations on airing a snuff film on Nitro, Tony. Almost as bad as the time you guys aired a German Roddy Piper music video.

Don’t worry, the Steiners aren’t actually dead. Scotty turns into a certifiable crazy person about a year later, though, so I’m not gonna rule out some lasting brain damage.

Best: Also, This Is The Episode Where Roddy Piper GOES TO ALCATRAZ

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That’s right, Cole, Alcatraz is a real rocket buster.

To prepare for his upcoming WCW Championship match against Hollywood Hogan, Rowdy Roddy Piper has flown to San Francisco and locked himself in Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. There, in a prison that in 1997 hadn’t had anything in it but tours in 30 years, Piper will remain by himself … uh, alongside a camera crew … for SIX DAYS of push-ups and worked shoot promos. He’s gonna kick your butt, Terry! He runs his hands through his hair a lot and talks about how when he was younger he was homeless and wanted to die, and how being TOLD HE WAS HIDING BEHIND A KID when he brought an actual child to the ring for his announcement that he didn’t want to wrestle has made him feel HOPELESS again. Is nobody taking care of that kid while you’re in self-imposed fake closed-down wrestling prison?

If you’ve never seen the promo, here you go. Piper quotes Lou Reed, lies around in the floor and promises that he’s “ain’t creating the world,” he’s destroying Hulk Hogan.

Spoiler alert: Piper spends a week in an abandoned prison so he can poke Hogan in the eyes a bunch and do that thing where you clap behind someone’s head.

So far in this episode we’ve seen a tag team get flipped for real in a car, and we’ve seen a grown man check himself into an abandoned prison to defeat a man he’s already defeated. Now it’s time for a REFEREE VS. REFEREE SHOWDOWN.

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Worst: How Do You Think This Ends, Honestly

Over the past several months, Nick Patrick has gone from a possibly shifty referee to full-on heel Kenny Powers, officiating every nWo match and making sure they don’t lose. At Souled Out — please go read about that if you haven’t already — Patrick got bumped during an Outsiders tag title defense against the Steiners, causing WCW official Randy Anderson to hop out of the crowd and count to three to give the Steiners the championship. Eric Bischoff was immediately like, “I’m going to reverse the decision and fire Randy Anderson.” The next night on Nitro, Bischoff reversed the decision and fired Randy Anderson. WCW, where the Big Boys make sure you don’t feel good about anything ever, not even for a second.

Two weeks later, Anderson and his family show up on Nitro to beg for his job back. Bischoff puts himself over an 8-year old girl and says that if Randy wants to be a referee, he has to fight Nick Patrick for it. Randy’s wife is like, “NO RANDY, YOU BATTLED CANCER BUT THERE’S NO WAY YOU CAN BEAT NICK PATRICK,” but Randy has no other way to put food on the table, so he accepts. He couldn’t like, work at a Food Lion?

Anyway, fast forward to THIS week and it’s time for the Match of the Century™.

Referee Jimmy Jett decides to take a stand for WCW during the pat-downs and slip Randy a weapon. It’s WCW’s second most deadly weapon, the Vague Handful Of Tape Or Whatever. It’s not as brutal as the Woman’s Shoe, but it’s close. Arn Anderson’s got a junk drawer full of these things at his house.

Patrick starts off the match throwing big fake jabs and gets his confidence up, but as he’s winding up for a Donkey Kong giant punch, Anderson blasts him on the top of the head with a haymaker and knocks him out. Anderson and Jett count the three, and Anderson has his job back.

… for like a second, until YOU GUESSED IT:

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Jimmy Jett thought it would be fine to slip Randy that weapon in the middle of the ring with the camera filming him winking about it, but I guess he forgot he works in a company where dudes get fired for fairly winning matches against the nWo, much less CHEATING to do so. Bischoff storms to the ring, fires Jett on the spot and tells Randy Anderson he’s still fired. So the story here is that Anderson did his job, got fired for it, got a chance to win the job back, did so successfully, and got fired anyway.

Nick Patrick should be glad he picked a fight with Randy Anderson and not Mark Curtis. King of Strong Style Mark Curtis would’ve popped him with a Kinshasa and choked him out in the middle of the ring.

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Worst: Monday Nitro Monday

On Thursday Raw Thursday, WWF booked a rookie Pacific Islander to shockingly upset and pin their snotty blue-blood secondary champion only a week before their pay-per-view. A few days later on Nitro, WCW responds by booking their rookie Pacific Islander to shockingly upset and pin their snotty blue-blood secondary champion only a week before their pay-per-view. The difference here is that one of these guys was The Rock, and the other was PRINCE IAUKEA.

In February of 1997, though, they were pretty much the same. You may have noticed that I haven’t written about Prince Iaukea in these columns yet, because he (1) hasn’t wrestled on Nitro before, and (2) sucks sh*t. He’s terrible, and here he is not only pinning Lord Steven Regal in THREE MINUTES to win the TV title, but by doing so canceling Regal’s upcoming SuperBrawl title defense … which, you know, is versus Rey Mysterio Jr. On pay-per-view. With an announced “no time limit” stipulation. We could’ve gotten LORD STEVEN REGAL VS. REY MYSTERIO JR. FOR LIKE HALF AN HOUR ON PAY-PER-VIEW, but Yogi Barefoot over here is the only Tongan dude on the roster without a skull and crossbones on his tights so he gets to be fake Rocky Maivia and take that spot. HIP HIP F*CKING HOORAY.

The weirdest part of the match for me is the celebration. First of all, for a company in a life-or-death struggle with the nWo, are WCW’s lowest-level babyfaces seriously celebrating STEVE REGAL losing the TV TITLE? Second of all, you have never seen a sadder crew of celebratory babyfaces than The Public Enemy and Teddy Long. Third of all, Teddy Long shows up first, hugs Iaukea, then just sorta stands with his dick pressed up against him the rest of the time, gently rubbing his hands up and down Iaukea’s torso. Not sure if he wants to manage him or let him go One On One Wit Da Undacarriage, ya feel me?

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Worst: Booyaka Booyaka 69

Speaking of Rey Mysterio and The Public Enemy, here’s Flyboy Rocco Rock doing a TIGER FEINT to avoid going through a table. Sure, why the hell not.

TPE faces the Amazing French-Canadians, which is sorta like the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object of teams that lose because they won’t stop f*cking up. The match ends with the teams trying to comically lose simultaneously, with Public Enemy going for their standard table spot and Colonel Parker trying to get a riding crop to one of his men to prevent it. The Canadians end up stopping the attack — hence the 6-1-9 — but whoops, Jacques accidentally hits Pierre with the crop and knocks him out, causing him to fall back onto the table. Nature takes its course.

Harlem Heat watches from the crowd, and it takes everything in their power to not jump the rail and accidentally hit each other.

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Best: The Special Guest Host

Here is Chris Benoit kicking Road Block right in the goddamn face.

The best part of Benoit vs. Road Block, besides the fact that it’s BENOIT vs. ROAD BLOCK, is that it’s being watched by Nitro’s very special guest host:

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George Steinbrenner, former owner of the New York Yankees! He’s there with one of his grandchildren, who I’m 99 percent sure is the real-life Richie Rich. Tony notes that “the great Brian Boehringer” is also in the crowd, which is kinda like saying “five-tool player Kevin Maas.” I wish WCW had bragged about that more during the Monday Night Wars. Nitro: we’re Boehringer than Raw!

How does George Steinbrenner feel about Benoit matches, you ask?

Benoit wins with the flying headbutt after about two minutes, and Road Block kicking out before three. Like Kevin Sullivan, Road Block was clearly too legit to quit.

Best: Lee Is In San Francisco At “Weaselman’s Wharf”

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GO TO HELL, LEE.

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Best/Worst: Eddie Guerrero Tries To Draw Blood (A Good Wrestling Match) From A Stone (Konnan)

Konnan takes on Eddie Guerrero for the United States Championship. As far as Dungeon of Doom Konnan matches go, it’s better than most — at least it isn’t another strap match — but it’s mostly to set up a post-match attack from the Dungeon and the uneasy alliance between Guerrero and his SuperBrawl opponent Chris Jericho. Not sure why it’s “uneasy,” as they’re both Dudley Do-Right-ass babyfaces at this point, but I get it, you want to build some drama for Sunday and you had to devote the first four weeks of the cycle to Syxx stealing people’s belts.

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Best: TOPP GUNN

Up next is maybe the most important moment of the show: The Giant in a handicap match against future WCW mainstay and Sunday Night Heat star Johnny Swinger, and his tag team partner, the legendary TOPP GUNN. Yes, that’s two Ps, two Ns.

If you’ve never seen Topp Gunn, it’s the Cuban Assassin trying to fit in in the 1990s by wearing a Tinieblas mask and naming himself after a movie from 1986. You may also know the Assassin by any of his other dozen or so characters, from Jim Duggan’s Cuban rival Fidel Sierra, to one half of the “Barrio Boys,” to ESPECIALISTA II in the tag team “Los Especialistas.” They fought the Nasty Boys on a Clash of Champions once.

The match is just Giant obliterating these guys, but I wanted to point at TOPP GUNN for a second and say LOOK, LOOK. Maybe he would’ve done better if he’d wrestled in that compression top he rocked on Saturday Night.

After the match, Lex Luger shows up and announces that he’s got a doctor’s note, and that he’s officially medically cleared to be Giant’s tag team partner at SuperBrawl. Instead of building any drama whatsoever, Eric Bischoff immediately appears and says, “I told you to get medical clearance last week and you got it a week late, so you’re still not wrestling at SuperBrawl.” Because, say it with me everyone, you can’t be happy about something in WCW, not even for a second.

Worst: Hollywood Hogan Doesn’t Care About These Guys, And That’s Not Suspicious At All

The main event (as you might’ve guessed) is Hollywood Hogan taking advantage of his rival’s self-imposed imprisonment by standing in the ring unopposed and complimenting himself for five minutes.

Sting and the Macho Man appear at the top of the ramp and the crowd is like YEAH, HOGAN’S GONNA GET IT, but Hogan completely no-sells it. Sting starts heading to the ring, but Macho Man stops him, and the two leave without incident. If you’re Sting at this point, you’ve gotta be like, “hey, I was gonna beat up Hulk Hogan but was asked not to by my friend, Hogan’s former partner and sometimes rival who was just told by Eric Bischoff that the only way he’d get back into the company would be by joining the nWo. I wonder if I should keep an eye on that guy?” But LOL, if you’re Sting at this point you’re actually like, “this is fine,” while Macho Man runs around setting everyone around you on fire.

Next Week: A super brawl! The seventh one!

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Previously on the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: We tackled SuperBrawl VII, featuring Lex Luger and the Giant definitely winning the Tag Team Championship, Eddie Guerrero costing Dean Malenko the Cruiserweight Championship against Syxx, and Jeff Jarrett became a member of the Four Horsemen. Also on the show, Rowdy Roddy Piper lost to Hollywood Hogan after putting him asleep, but falling victim to sudden but inevitable betrayal by the Macho Man Randy Savage.

Also, Piper stayed in Alcatraz for a week and got sexy on a boat:

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Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes and not abandon the column entirely to write more 180-word stories about Paige and Alberto Del Rio turning into Mickey and Mallory from Natural Born Killers, click the share buttons and spread the word.

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for February 24, 1997.

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Worst: As The Haliburton Turns

Damn, we’re barely five still-frame photos of SuperBrawl VII courtesy of WCW Magazine into Nitro and we’re already to the part where Steve McMichael copes with his wife constantly cucking him on national television by attacking people with an empty metal briefcase.

At SuperBrawl, adorably called “The SuperBrawl” by Mongo, Jarrett used an errant-on-purpose Haliburton toss from Debra to hit Mongo in the face, win the match, and officially become a member of the Four Horsemen. On Nitro, they get paired up against the new #1 contenders to the tag team titles nobody’s allowed to win, the Public Enemy. As you might’ve guessed from that screencap or from reading about the past 60 episodes of Nitro, Mongo decides to hit JARRETT with the Haliburton and cost his team the match.

It was going pretty well, too. The crowd is molten for anything anybody does, popping for bad Public Enemy leapfrog attempts like they just watched them hit a phoenix splash, and Jarrett dips his toes into being a strong-style motherf*cker by like, muscling TPE into hossy powerbombs. Yes, Jeff Jarrett is powerbombing people. The crowd doesn’t even seem to care that they’re watching two thirds of an awkward rich hillbilly MMF fight a couple of pinheads dressed as Los Ice Creams.

After the match, you guessed it, the Horsemen show up en masse to stand shoulder-to-shoulder to talk about how much they suck.

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Arn Anderson points out that since he’s injured, orchestra conductor Ric Flair is hurt and Chris Benoit got put in the hospital last night, it’s important for the only two active Horsemen — Mongo, and now Jarrett — to get on the same page. Mongo’s like, “IT AIN’T NOTHIN’ BUT FIGHTIN’ BETWEEN TWO BROTHERS BABY,” and I’m dying for Flair to be like, “your wife wants to f*ck this guy, Mongo.” Hard on the outside, empty on the inside. Mongo McMichael, the human Haliburton.

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Worst: Galaxy, Hi

Up next is the WCW debut of GALAXY, a Go-Bots version of Abismo Negro who looks like a shrunken down human Megazord. We haven’t seen him before but WCW’s cruiserweight division is popping, so I’m sure he wrestles a high-flying superstar like Rey Mysterio Jr., or a brilliant mat technician like Dean Malenko.

I’m sure they wouldn’t waste this on-

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Oh God dammit.

Galaxy gets slotted in against Hacksaw Jim Duggan, now soft-rocking WCW colors in his player two palette swap. Underpants the Brain-Damaged Giant is at his all-time trifling-ass, cheating-ass worst here, cheating his ass off against a non-threatening newbie luchador who is literally half his size. Look at them. Galaxy could be the Krang in Jim Duggan’s belly.

Duggan wants to send a message to the New World Order, which he does by PULLING UP THE RINGSIDE MATS and BODY-SLAMMING THIS HELPLESS, CHILD-SIZED MEXICAN ONTO THE CONCRETE.

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Galaxy’s entire offense in the match consists of:

1. One (1) kick, no-sold
2. Four (4) punches, no-sold
3. One (1) rake to the eyes, sold for about a second
4. One (1) shoulder to the stomach so no-sold it should be stored in the TNA warehouse

Once Ray Jackson is done beating the sh*t out of Mascarita Sagrada he allows him one (1) moonsault press attempt, then casually walks out of the way of it. That’s followed by the three-point stance that SHOULD’VE ended the match, but nope, Duggan chooses to jam his hand up his ass, pull out the dreaded athletic tape and closed-fist Galaxy in the face in plain sight of the referee. Even Larry Zbyszko is like, “Jesus Christ, ref, he’s CHEATING, STOP LETTING HIM CHEAT JUST BECAUSE HE LIKES WCW.”

After the match, Duggan cuts another shoot promo about “Terry,” and about how the Macho Man betraying WCW at SuperBrawl really “knocked his socks off.” Check out this threat:

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That’s not censored, he really says he could kick Hulk Hogan’s “A.” You S a D, Jim Duggan.

Oh, and speaking of S’ing a D, the remainder of the interview appears to be Duggan trying to get Mean Gene to corpse by getting hyper sexual about Big Bubba. Remember last week when Bubba got attacked in the parking lot and had to be taken to the hospital, and everyone assumed it was Diamond Dallas Page? Duggan says he’s not responsible, because Bubba is … handsome?

“I didn’t do Big Bubba. You can tell, Mean Gene, I didn’t do Big Bubba. He looked too darn good for me to do him! So Hogan, I’m not coming through the back door!”

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I swear to God he says that. Jump to the 7:17 mark in this video.

So to recap, a luchador debuted on Nitro, got in zero offense, got hit in the face with some dick tape and had to lie in the ring unconscious for five minutes while Jim Duggan screamed about the Special Olympics and how Big Bubba is sexually out of his league. Got it. Great wrestling show, everybody.

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Best: Flight Of The Navigator

Hey, Spanish-speaking audiences, did you love watching your guy get emasculated by a sweaty, jingoistic Shrek? Log on to NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR and talk to Pedro Morales about it! Now available in Spanish Japanese.

You can also listen to Lee Marshall simulcast Nitro in WEASEL by logging on to 1800Collect.org.

Throwaway Match Lightning Round

This episode has long stretches of absolutely nothing happening, and since I’m a thousand words in after the first two matches, I’m gonna knock out the ones I don’t have much to say about.

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Don’t you draw the Dungeon of Doom, boy, they’ll beat you if they’re able.

The definition of “I don’t have much to say about this” is Hugh Morrus vs. Desperado Joe Gomez, a match somebody at WCW thought was a great idea despite having seen like two years of Hugh Morrus and Desperado Joe Gomez matches. I can’t believe Gomez was an actual successful pro wrestler sometimes. Slap some black leggings and a Crystal Gayle wig on a husky toddler and you’ve got exactly as good a wrestler as Desperado Joe Gomez.

Anyway, Gomez is losin’ all his highs and lows. Ain’t it humorous how the feeling goes away?

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Attempting to follow that Shoshone Joe classic are Ice Train and La Parka in a rematch from that February 3 affair where Train straight-up dropped La Parka on his face. This is a better and safer (and ultimately more forgettable) match, overshadowed by a bizarre, unexplained picture-in-picture about Teddy Long catching feelings for Jacqueline.

Seriously, Teddy’s like, “Jacqueline, you got beat up for Kevin Sullivan but ask yourself, would he do the same for you?” It’s the ultimate, “hey girl, why are you so sad, tell me what’s wrong, oh your boyfriend sounds like he sucks,” especially in terms of San Francisco death matches where you were strapped to a lady and got sandwiched between a tabled dwarf and a flying headbutt. Poor Teddy finally ran into a black girl in this company and she’s dating satanic Ed Asner.

Ice Train wins thanks to Teddy’s advice, which I’m guessing was, “you are made out of steroids, just stop pretending the stuff the fat skeleton’s doing to you hurts.”

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Finally, we’ve got Somehow Still The Television Champion Prince Iaukea vs. Pat Tanaka in a battle of the stereotypes. Prince won’t stop making Jimmy Snuka “I love you” hands and throwing squatting chops. Pat Tanaka is dressed like he went to the Chinese Guy section of a Halloween Express, and keeps trying to do the E. Honda hundred hand slap. Prince wins after a high crossbody to a completely dead crowd of people who, need I remind you, popped for Flyboy Rocco Rock getting chop-blocked by Mongo.

The best part of the match is Pat Tanaka’s entrance theme, which about eight months from now gets re-purposed for a newcomer named Bill Goldberg. Oh man, I can’t wait until we get to that.

Best: An Underrated Classic

Last September (in 1996), Chris Jericho and Mike Enos f*cked around and put on a cult classic. The 1997 version of that is Chris Jericho and Eddie Guerrero vs. the Faces of Fear, which, if you’ve never seen it, is one of the best Nitro matches of the year. Probably one of the best WCW matches of the year, period.

I love this match. The Faces of Fear were always cooler than their matches were, but this is them fully realized and utilized perfectly. They’re in the ring with two top level cruiserweights who just had a competitive match at SuperBrawl and aren’t sure if they’re friends or enemies. They’re forced to figure that out quick, though, because the Faces of Fear have stopped being a Public Enemy-quality throwaway WCW heel team and decided to be the bastard love children of the Usos and the Miracle Violence Connection. They F*CK THESE CRUISERWEIGHTS UP, my dude.

Every few minutes you get something that makes you say, “Jesus.” Meng powerbombing Guerrero so hard it gives him an out of body experience. Meng and Barbarian doing that backdrop/powerbomb combo on Jericho that combines the danger of f*cking up a Styles Clash with the fun of being thrown from a great height. Barb sending Eddie to the Upside Down with a press to the ceiling. Jericho getting folded in half at the neck by a Meng backdrop. Jericho takes such an A-beating here that Meng and Barbarian were the first two names on The List.

The story’s great, too. Eddie keeps being forced to begrudgingly make the save for Jericho but slowly starts to respect him more and more, until he’s actively in the ring being a general and orchestrating teamwork to help his team get the edge. He sets up the finish perfectly — Jericho’s gonna hit a Lionsault to set up the frog splash — but Meng trips Jericho up behind Eddie’s back, and a pissed-off-from-SuperBrawl Dean Malenko shows up to shove Eddie by the ass and send him flying into a Barbarian big boot.

If you get 10 free minutes, watch this thing. It makes you wonder why it still took Jericho and Guerrero so long to become folk heroes, and it’ll make you physically angry that the Faces of Fear rarely got to be this f*cking dope.

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Best: Rey Vs. Juvi

As you’ll read in this week’s vintage Raw report (which should be up a couple of days after this), half of the WWF roster was in Germany doing the European Championship thing, leaving Raw to run an ECW invasion angle. To counter that — maybe by accident, maybe not — WCW was like, “here’s ECW’s Chris Jericho and ECW’s Eddie Guerrero, followed by ECW’s Rey Mysterio Jr., followed by ECW’s Dean Malenko.” They really managed to snag all of ECW’s top talent before ECW realized it could be a thing. That “make the most of what we have” vibe is part of what made ECW so passionate and cool, but man, comparing Rey Mysterio Jr. to the Blue Meanie must’ve been like comparing LeBron James to Moondog.

Anyway, Rey Mysterio and Juventud Guerrera have a fun little match we’ve seen/will see several hundred more times. The highlight is Mysterio turning a baseball slide into a headscissors takedown, and Juvy getting powerbombed for trying that ridiculous Robbie Rage flipping nothing. Rey picks up the strong win, and we try not to think about how he’s between bullsh*t Prince Iaukea losses.

Best/Worst: When You Take A Selfie vs. When Someone Tags A Photo Of You

Dean Malenko faces Ultimo Dragon — sh*t, this show’s card is GREAT if you pretend Pat Tanaka is Glacier (and won) — and it’s their standard wonderful affair, marred slightly by the ongoing and probably pretty necessary “Dean Malenko is losing it” story.

Before SuperBrawl, Syxx was getting under his skin. Malenko’s dad helped train Syxx, so they’ve known each other forever and are keenly aware of the other’s strengths and weaknesses. Syxx is also a horrible nWo sh*t-talker, causing the normally composed-to-a-fault Malenko to lose his temper. At SuperBrawl, Eddie Guerrero showed up to try to keep Syxx from bailing on the match and stealing the Cruiserweight Championship, but accidentally distracted the referee, got Malenko smashed in the face with the belt and cost him the title. Now Malenko is (1) mad at Syxx, (2) FURIOUS about apparently being betrayed by the last person he thought would do him wrong, and (3) unreasonably frustrated when matches don’t go his way.

That comes into play late in this match, when Malenko gives up on catch-as-catch-can karate lucha libre and just starts choking the piss out of Dragon. It gets him disqualified, but he doesn’t care. He chokes him into actual unconsciousness, more or less trying to kill him, and everybody’s like, “damn Dean Malenko, when did you become a serial killer?”

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Worst: Vivien Lee

He follows this with, “frankly my dear, weasels can’t BUILD a dam!” Because you need TWO shoehorned-in weasel gags in one phone call. Heenan should’ve garroted this dude the second he got home.

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Worst: Fan Sided

Diamond Dallas Page makes quick work of unexplained safari enthusiast Squire David Taylor. I think this is his last appearance, so sadly there’s no followup of like, Lord Steven Regal making poop faces while ostriches stick their heads through the windows of his Range Rover or whatever.

After the match, the Outsiders show up to put the boots to Page. He stands guard to hold them off, but doesn’t notice TOP SECRET TURNCOAT Macho Man Randy Savage sneaking into the ring behind him. Savage bops him in the head with a can of spray paint and paints stripes on his back, officially joining the New World Order (and getting a t-shirt).

The moment is most notable for what happens immediately afterward, when a fan jumps in the ring to celebrate with them and gets punched in his goddamn face by Scott Hall. Note Savage taking a little too long to figure out what’s happening and getting a little too enthusiastic with legally acceptable knees to a stranger’s ribs, and Nash saving dude’s life by dumping him out of the ring:

In other words,

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Worst: The “Main” “Event”

All show long they’ve been advertising a World Tag Team Championship match between the new champions, Lex Luger and the Giant, and Harlem Heat. Not sure why Harlem Heat gets the first shot instead of the #1 contenders Public Enemy, but whatever. The match never happens — Vince McMahon isn’t bullsh*tting about their love of the bait-and-switch — and the main turns into Eric Bischoff reversing the decision from SuperBrawl and demanding the tag titles return to the Outsiders.

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Raise your hand if you saw that coming.

Luger agrees to give back the titles, but leverages Bischoff’s “betting man” reputation into a match at Uncensored. Without going too deep into the specifics or getting anything in writing, Luger proposes a match for ALL the titles. All of them, all at once. WCW vs. the New World Order, winner take all. I don’t want to spoil too much for you, but literally none of that happens.

The show ends with a dramatically weird moment featuring Sting, who walks to the ring to confront the nWo and … uh, get hugged by them?

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Sting accepts the hug without incident, and that’s the end of the show. A trench coat mime responding to a hug by standing still. The announcers are like, STING IS DEFINITELY A MEMBER OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NOW, because they scream sh*t like that while they’re brushing their teeth.

Next Week: The worst segment in Nitro history. Not a joke. Not even hyperbole. You can’t wait.

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Previously on the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Hacksaw Jim Duggan wrestled Galaxy, sending me into a furious rage it took me an entire week plus possibly 19 years to overcome. Also on the show, Sting maybe joined the New World Order via hugging (?) and Teddy Long caught feelings for Jacqueline.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. Last week’s column was far and away the most read of all-time, probably because of GALAXY, so let’s keep that going! Nitro is better than Raw 20 years in the future, too!

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for March 3, 1997.

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Worst: As The Haliburton Turns

This week’s show begins with Public Enemy running in on a Mongo and Jeff Jarrett vs. Konnan and Hugh Morrus match, which is sort of like your collegiate career beginning with you falling down a flight of steps and landing face-first in your professor’s lap. And then the dean of admissions runs in and hits you both with a briefcase.

Yes, in a shocking turn of events, the cuck-welded relationship between a retired football player and his wife’s hillbilly concubine is having problems. At the end of this completely not-on-fire barn, Mongo’s taking the Dungeon of Doom to Shoulder To The Knee church. Debra’s on the outside in a ballgown and tiara, holding an empty metal briefcase and minding her own business when Public Enemy storms out and tries to debrief her. Wordplay!

Jarrett tries to defend her by getting into a tug of war with these paintless Juggalos and, whoops! Accidentally smashes Mongo in the temple with the Haliburton and costs his team the match. And I’m not talking “Eddie Guerrero causes Syxx to brush Dean Malenko in the forehead with the Cruiserweight Championship” either, Jarrett fucking MURDERS him. Mongo isn’t selling, Mongo can’t sell like that, he’s actually dead:

WWE Network/GIF

After the match, and I swear to God I’m as tired of writing this as you are of reading it, the Four Horsemen come to the ring to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and talk about how much they suck. They’re like a suicidally-depressed New World Order, showing up en masse to beat themselves up.

It’s finally gotten to the point where Ric Flair can’t even emotionally detach from the chaos to dance in a circle and loudly compare his dick to roller coasters. Dude straight up Animorphs into a swooping hawk to scream at Jarrett for making the Horsemen look bad:

WWE Network

Debra tries to hold the team together by insisting the briefcase shot to the temple was a mistake. Meanwhile, the camera has to film a weird angle on the interview because Mongo’s in the background somewhere bleeding to death. The Horsemen have a match with Public Enemy at Uncensored — spoiler alert, they totally don’t — and Jarrett reassures Flair and Arn that with him as a member, the Horsemen will stay elite. Take a crazy guess as to whether or not that’s accurate.

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Best: Fuller Wets The Bed

Diamond Dallas Page gets a quick win over Rick Fuller by countering a scoop slam into the Diamond Cutter, and at this point crowds would pretty much drink DDP’s bathwater.

In different parts of the planet, Okerlund to New York
I’m hollerin’ lifetime, he hollerin’ life’s too short
Parallel lives and jew-els held high

WWE Network

Genehova steps in after the match to make Page watch the footage of Macho Man and the nWo attacking him from behind and spray-painting his back, because he has no chill. Page challenges Macho and tells him to “snap into this.” Slim Jim burns would be the status quo for heel Macho going forward, and I wish every wrestler with an endorsement had it turned against them. “MANKIND, BOYARDEES FANS GOING TO BE DISAPPOINTED WHEN I BEAT YOU!”

WWE Network

Worst: Pick A Face

Back on the February 3 edition of Nitro, a guy with a scrotum forehead and gear with a big Roman numeral 4 on his gear showed up to wrestle Ultimo Dragon. Mike Tenay was like, “this is Ray Mendoza Jr., his father, Ray Mendoza, played a villain in a bunch of old El Santo movies!” A few weeks later at The Super Brawl, Villano IV wrestled. He’s a masked guy with a big Roman numeral 4 on his gear. Mike Tenay was like, “the Villanos are named after their father, Ray Mendoza, who played a VILLAIN in a bunch of old El Santo movies!” This week, Ray Mendoza Jr. and his 4 onesie return to face Juventud Guerrera. Sure?

Best: Juvy Zayn

The highlight here is when Mendoza gets knocked to the floor, and Juvy goes out to the perpendicular apron and dives through the corner ropes instead of over them. This is the first time most of us (or at least me) saw someone do that, years before El Generico or his affable Canadian pal Sami Zayn popularized it:

WWE Network/GIF

Zayn really needs to dive through the top and middle ropes like that into the tornado DDT one day. Maybe at a WrestleMania, against a really tall guy. Please sign my petition for Sami Zayn vs. Shaquille O’Neal at this link [add the link later].

WWE Network

Best: Jimmy Hart Airbrushed A Jacket To Express Kevin Sullivan’s Love For Jacqueline Via MC Hammer Lyrics

The confrontational interracial love wing of the Dungeon of Doom briefly takes over the announce booth to remind us that they are, in fact, too legit to quit. Jimmy Hart’s got it on his jacket now, along with a caricature of Kevin Sullivan with little hearts around it. Poor Jimmy stayed up all night with his airbrushing kit, mumbling about how much he hates women while colorfully drawing one on his clothes. I wish all of Jimmy’s overcoats and promos revolved around bad 90s rap. “MEAN GENE, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE HAVIN’ A RONI!”

Anyway, Jackie throws out a challenge to “any woman or man” for a fight, saying she could beat Hulk Hogan, Macho Man or Lex Luger. She also suggests that she got in the ambulance with Chris Benoit and beat his ass on the way to the hospital, which is almost as funny as the image of Lex Luger yelling AAAAHHHH and hitting a running forearm in a competitive match with child-sized Jacqueline.

WWE Network

Worst: Dean Malenko Is Losing His Mind

So Dean Malenko lost the Cruiserweight Championship to Syxx when Eddie Guerrero showed up, tried to keep Syxx from running away with the physical championship, got into an ill-timed and ill-placed tug-of-war and accidentally got Malenko hit in the face with the belt. Eddie’s sorry for what happened, but Malenko is batshit about it. Last week, he showed up to shove Guerrero off the top rope by the ass and cost him a match with the Faces of Fear, and this week he’s cutting two (2) promos about it.

The first one comes after a win against Meanderin’ Mike Enos, built around the idea that Malenko’s no longer a stoic mat technician but a PISSED-OFF LITTLE JEWISH DAD who will PUNCH YOU SO HARD. He’s the NEW AND IMPROVED DEAN MALENKO, which is exactly like the old regular one, except he ground and pounds you for a few seconds between limb grinding. Stinko still beats him by countering a slam into a small package, because you can’t teach an old dog how to fetch.

The second promo comes later in the night, after Eddie Guerrero and Ultimo Dragon have a terrible match. Dude, I know, I didn’t feel right typing it either. They go for like two awkward minutes before Dragon does a sideways cartwheel, crossbodies Eddie into the ropes and everyone chooses to ignore that 85% of the pinfall is happening out of bounds. Look at this:

WWE Network

It’s so bad that when Dragon kicks out after three, Guerrero has to physically roll over Mark Curtis while they’re both in the ropes, and Curtis is still like, “nope, this is fine, legal pinfall.” Sonny Onoo gets on the apron to raise hell about how blatantly unfair it was, but he’s the only person in the world who seems to care. Dragon and Eddie both look pissed, so I don’t know what happened. This is probably the shittiest match between two great wrestlers you’ll ever see. David Sammartino and Despy Joe Gomez could’ve done better.

WWE Network

But yeah, Malenko shows up again to inform Eddie Guerrero that he used to respect him, but no longer respects him, which is “shine it up real nice, turn that some-bitch sideways and stick it straight up, your candy ass” in Malenko-speak.

WWE Network

Worst: Schiller, Scary Good

Last week’s Nitro ended with Lex Luger surrendering the Tag Team Championships to the New World Order on one condition: they take him up on a challenge for a big WCW vs. nWo match at Uncensored, with every championship in the company on the line. Bischoff accepted, and our big PPV blowoff was set.

This week, Bischoff announces that the match isn’t going to happen because Lex Luger doesn’t have any authority, and that he just kinda reversed his own agreeable decision. Because WCW. Because WCW.

This week’s actual episode begins with the nWo pulling up in a hummer limo — nobody ask who’s driving — covered in gun metal print and WCW logos, because why not? They’re quickly followed by a second, more nondescript limousine featuring a bunch of low men in yellow coats identified by Tony Schiavone as representatives of Turner Sports. It turns out one of them is the President of Turner Sports, Harvey Schiller, and he interrupts Bischoff’s promo to tell him that he’s SUSPENDED for months and months of weird, self-serving, counterproductive business practices. Everybody in the world is like, YES, FINALLY, and the segment ends with Bischoff following him to the back, groveling for another chance.

Here’s a fun game. Take out a piece of paper and write on it how long you think they stay with this angle.

WWE Network

Worst: Scotty Riggs Is Definitely Never Getting To Look Good In This Angle

Scotty Riggs wrestles M. Wallstreet, and I think I put my computer to sleep just typing that. It ends with Buff Bagwell running in and beating up Riggs again, to set up AMERICAN MALES EXPLODE DOS at Uncensored. Riggs manages to escape, grab a non-folding bowling alley chair and slide back into the ring to make Bags beg off from AWKWARD HARDCORE VIOLENCE, but he’s also able to escape and nothing happens.

Man, nothing in wrestling is ever weirder than when guys use non-conventional seating to attack each other. Steel folding chair, that’s the aesthetic. When you bring one of those balsa wood chairs into the ring that break when you breathe on them too hard or try to beat somebody’s ass with one of these clumsy cafeteria chairs it’s just a no-go.

WWE Network

Worst: That Feeling When You Regret Taking Out The Trash

A drunk (?) (probably) Madusa talks to Scheme Gene about how depressing it is that she threw a “world class title” in the garbage to “open up” women’s wrestling, only to sit in the back doing nothing for like a year while Eric Bischoff masturbates into a jean jacket. She says nWo stands for “new women’s organization,” which gets the most groany “ughhhhh” pop from the audience you’ve ever heard.

Madusa says she should be the number one contender to Akira Hokuto’s WCW Women’s Championship — raise your hand if you remembered who the women’s champion was — and mentions that she saw LUNA VACHON backstage “in her garb.” Luna thinks she’s number one contender, which makes sense because she’s hanging out backstage before her WCW debut, hasn’t actually appeared on television yet and has had no matches.

Luna gets summoned like the Candyman and slaps Madusa in the shoulders until we go to commercial. Somewhere, a 21-year old Stephanie McMahon is watching this like, “wait a minute … why hasn’t anyone tried women’s wrestling?”

WWE Network

Worst: Mystery King Vs. Super Secret Initials

The final match of the night before I have to write about the Roddy Piper thing is Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Mr. JL, which looks to challenge Eddie Guerrero vs. Ultimo Dragon as the worst match featuring good wrestlers. That picture is sincerely the highlight. It’s JL coming off the top rope with a flying headbutt, getting the angle of descent wrong and sorta faceplanting in the middle of the ring.

Prince Iaukea gets a picture-in-picture promo here to announce that he’s giving Rey another shot at the TV title at Uncensored, because WCW saw Rey Mysterio Jr. lose to Prince Iaukea on pay-per-view once and thought, “we can make this feel worse.”

WWE Network

Worst: Rowdy Roddy Piper Forms A Family

Oh God. Try to stay with me here.

Earlier in the night, Eric Bischoff announced that the WCW vs. nWo match for all the championships at Uncensored wasn’t happening, because f*ck you, that’s why. He got suspended, but that wasn’t enough for Rowdy Roddy Piper. Piper decides seemingly in real-time that he needs a “family” backing him up if he hopes to fight the nWo on an even playing field, so instead of, you know, aligning himself with the promotion he keeps main-eventing pay-per-views for despite not being employed by that’s currently in a life-or-death war with the group he hates, Piper has arranged SIX CONSECUTIVE LIVE TRYOUT MATCHES for walk-on strangers we’ve NEVER SEEN BEFORE, and he will FIGHT THEM ALL RIGHT NOW and the crowd will decide who is family and who isn’t by GIVING A THUMBS UP OR A THUMBS DOWN.

Let me type that again. A non-WCW employee is hoping to destroy a non-WCW organization by teaming up with three other non-WCW employees he was given permission to shootfight on WCW TV, having a non-WCW vs. non-WCW match in the main event of a WCW branded pay-per-view and strike a victory for … not WCW?

Anyway, here’s Rowdy Roddy Piper shootfighting a bunch of increasingly naked guys in jeans.

WWE Network

Up first is a shirtless guy in jeans you couldn’t name if you had a WWE Encyclopedia and the fucking Infinity Gauntlet. Piper shakes his hand and they horribly grapple for like two minutes until Piper grabs a KIMURA LOCK. I’m not kidding. The guy is forced to tap out, but “tapping out” isn’t really a thing in wrestling yet and UFC isn’t popular enough for every pro wrestler to know what it is, so the guy taps out with big, single, strong slaps of the mat. Like, he hits it once, then looks around for Piper to stop. He doesn’t, so the guy slaps the mat one more time. It’s like watching Elaine Benes dance in MMA form.

Piper asks the crowd if they give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Every person with an opposable thumb points that shit at the ground. ENJOY THIS FIVE MORE TIMES.

WWE Network

Opponent #2 escalates the shirtless jeans game by strapping on a pair of DAISY DUKES. You may know him as future WCW jobber stalwart “Horshu” or as Thanksgiving-hating WWE star Luther Reigns. His career peaked in a jeep-tipping exhibition.

On Nitro, he’s playing a Never Nude who throws some stompy forearms at Roddy Piper before getting put to sleep in a sleeper. The crowd gives ol’ Horsey Shoes the thumbs down as well, because the approval rating for gay old/young narcolepsy porn in Atlanta in 1997 was surprisingly low.

I bet the third guy will be totally different!

WWE Network

Oh.

Wait, is that Battle Kat? Maybe the first guy was Battle Kat, I get them confused. That’s what you get when you hold your anti-nWo army tryouts in the middle of a sexy fireman calendar.

We don’t see much of this guy, because as he’s on the way to the ring he’s attacked from behind by the FOURTH guy:

WWE Network

This guy continues the increasingly naked motif by wrestling in boxer briefs and little shoes. “Wrestling” in quotation marks because like his briefs, he’s a BOXER. An unsolicited walk-on boxer. He tosses Piper a pair of gloves to box with him, because everyone LOVED that WrestleMania 2 boxing match, and the difference in their glove sizes is HILARIOUS. The boxer’s got big Punch-Out-style gloves, and Piper’s boxing him in mittens.

The boxer is Craig Mally, a direct-to-video action movie stuntman and I guess boxer who according to varying reports was either Roddy Piper’s movie buddy who needed a favor, personal young boy who carried around his luggage or Brother Bruti-style down-low love interest. All we know is that he was a terrible boxer everybody hated who just kinda runs at you and punches like a little kid until you hit him once, which temporarily paralyzes him, causing him to fall down. When he hits the ground, he pops back into form, gets up and runs at you again.

He and Piper foxy-box for what feels like an eternity while the crowd dies a thousand deaths, and when it’s over, Piper’s all smiles. He’s like, YEAH, THIS KID’S GOT MOXIE, HE’S A ROOKIE WITH RUTHLESS AGGRESSION, and the crowd is just like, BAOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Proving that this entire thing was Piper’s idea and total bullshit, Piper gets a microphone to tell the crowd they’re being “too harsh,” and decides to try it again. They box MORE, eventually taking off their wacky gloves and BARE-KNUCKLE BRAWLING until Piper calls time-out. He polls the audience with a thumbs up, every living human ever gives him a thumbs down, and Piper’s like, “CONGRATULATIONS, IT’S UNANIMOUS, YOU’RE IN.”

Note: this segment ain’t through with you, not yet by a long shot.

WWE Network

Opponent five (Jesus Christ) is a SHOELESS KICKBOXER who looks like Dr. Death Steve Williams spent a few years doing meth and got a bunch of bad tattoos and windbreakers. Piper is blown the hell up from play-boxing one of Lyle Alzado’s dingleberries for five minutes, so this guy just kinda lifts his bare feet into Piper’s face over and over and Piper can’t do anything about it.

This jerk with an exceptionally NXT-friendly name is Layton Morrison, another movie friend and stunt man. He did some stunt work on La Femme Nikita, so you’d think Vince McMahon would be all over him. He continues literally heeling on Piper until he goes for a military press, has no actual idea how to do it and gives Hot Rod a brutal wedgie. Piper calls time out again and thumbs ups Morrison into the group, while — you guessed it — everyone in the Omni boos and gives the thumbs down.

If you’re going through Hell, keep going.

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Opponent number six is John Tenta, last seen on Nitro almost a year ago when Big Bubba changed him from shark to man by shaving off half of his hair and mustache. The crowd pops for him because he’s the first recognizable actual pro wrestler they’ve seen in 20 minutes. The announce team puts him over as a big sumo star in Japan, because dot dot dot question mark question mark shark noises.

Piper barely wrestles him before the Kickboxer and Punchboxer charge the ring and attack Tenta, which … doesn’t seem like the rules, but whatever. Piper stands back and makes googily smiles at the crowd, as if to say, “ain’t these guys crazy?” The crowd stands with their thumbs down making bored angry faces, as if to say, “THE SHIT WERE YOU THINKING, DUDE?”

Via Legit Shook

Piper stops them from fighting, declares them his family and slaps them in the face all in a row like he’s reprimanding the Three Stooges. Roddy can’t decide if he wants to be Antonio Inoki or Moe Howard. Tenta’s body language here is funny as hell to me, as he actually sells the slap like a Stooge might, getting cartoon angry in place before realizing it’s about FIGHTING SPIRIT. Watch him. It’s funnier the longer you watch.

That leaves Piper’s team as:

1. a 43-year old insane man with a replacement hip who once locked himself inside an abandoned prison
2. a non-wrestling boxer who is terrible at boxing
3. a non-wrestling kickboxer without the strength to properly lift a man half his size
4. a fat guy who once thought he was an actual shark and was like the fifth most effective member of the Dungeon of Doom

And that concludes probably the worst actual segment (non-Russo division) in Nitro history. Piper had a bad idea, executed it poorly for 20 minutes, filled up a quarter hour of Nitro with a weird masturbatory brotherhood fantasy for his movie pals, alienated the Omni crowd in the last WCW event held in one of WCW’s most important buildings, further confused his weird story about not working for WCW despite clearly working for WCW and openly ignored his own established rules to get through a bit nobody liked.

Watch the entire thing here, if you dare:

Absolutely unbearable. Like watching a car crash, if it was a seven car pile-up happening slowly for like half an hour.

WWE Network

The segment is so bad that it’s followed almost immediately by the entire nWo coming to the ring and shitting on it, with Savage extensively shooting on how bad Piper is and Hollywood Hogan saying Piper’s Family was Piper fighting “a bunch of wrestling fans.” I mean, he’s not wrong.

Oh, and Eric Bischoff makes sure to come out with them like an hour after being suspended to explain that everything’s fine, he doesn’t care, and that he can’t be fired because he and Hogan are friends with Ted Turner. If you wrote “for a few minutes” on that piece of paper, congratulations, you won!

WWE Network

This is all so bad that it ends up bleeding into the main event, which is supposed to be the Steiner Brothers vs. Lex Luger and the Giant, but turns into the nWo surrounding the ring while the WCW troops and Roddy Piper’s definitely not WCW team hold them off.

I want to tell you that I’m exaggerating when I call this the worst thing a fully functioning Nitro ever did, but I also want to go ahead and tell you that the entire thing gets retconned next week in case you weren’t watching in 1997 and think I’m exaggerating. So last week the Uncensored main event was WCW vs. nWo with all the titles on the line. This week, the main event is, presumably, the nWo vs. WCW vs. Rowdy Roddy Piper and the three most intimidating dudes he could find at the Gothic Asshole for nothing. Next week, it changes.

Spoiler alert: it involves Mongo and Jeff Jarrett. I swear to God. THUMBS DOWN, THUMBS DOWN.

WWE Network

WWE Network

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Rowdy Roddy Piper orchestrated a series of increasingly naked, increasingly embarrassing street fights to see which three of six create-a-wrestler templates would be on his team against the nWo at Uncensored. He found a boxer, a kickboxer and John Tenta. The trick to joining was to not wrestle in jeans.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. These things keep getting more and more traction, and I want them to be the most popular wrestling column on the Internet by the time we get to Jim Duggan as a Benedict Arnold janitor who becomes champion by fishing title belts out of the garbage.

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for March 10, 1997.

WWE Network

Best: WOO SPRANG BRAKE Y’ALL

Welcome to the first-ever Spring Break edition of WCW Monday Nitro, coming to you live 19 years ago from Club La Vela, a Panama City drink-and-fuckery advertised as, “the largest nightclub in the USA and Spring Break headquarters of the world.” Once a year it transforms into a wrestling ring surrounded by a bunch of pools and hosts 2-3 hours of televised pro graps centered around (1) wrestlers in Hawaiian shirts, (2) everybody slumming it because they’re either already drunk or about to be, and (3) somebody getting thrown into the pool.

I love these dumb things, and Spring Break Nitro is my dream arena for wrestling video games. Bonus points if it unlocks a Scott Hall palette swap that vomits all over itself.

To show you how ridiculous these Nitros are, this is the opening shot:

WWE Network

Yes, that’s the poster for Double Team, the seminal 1997 Tsui Hark classic in which Bloodsport star Jean-Claude Van Damme and NBA star Dennis Rodman team up to kill Mickey Rourke with a combination tiger/land mine attack in a Roman coliseum and save themselves with a Coke machine. None of that is a lie. It rules.

Here, it’s used as a vehicle to preemptively announce that Dennis Rodman (and sadly not Van Damme, or Mickey Rourke) has joined the New World Order. Presumably this is to top Ric Flair getting a cuckolded football retiree and Big Bob Probert to join the Four Horsemen.

WWE Network

Worst: Hollywood Hogan Is A Dork Who Doesn’t Know How To Too Sweet

They announce that Rodman will join the nWo later in the show, and celebrate with a Too Sweet. You know, that loving gesture where New World Order types (or their Kliq ancestors) make wolf hands and make them kiss another dude’s wolf hands on the mouth. On the snout. You know what a Too Sweet is.

Rodman and Hogan don’t, though, and they do this weird thing where they press the wolves’ foreheads together and kinda interlock their ears. Watch it, it’s the weirdest thing, and my new signature handshake:

WWE Network/GIF

We haven’t even gotten to the pool yet. This is gonna be a long one.

Worst: Piper’s Family Tries To Top Last Week’s Segment

Remember last week when it took like 45 minutes for me to explain 20 of the worst minutes in Nitro history? Non-WCW employee Roddy Piper wants a WCW sanctioned cage match against Hollywood Hogan (even though he’s already beaten him twice, and been screwed over twice) so he uses WCW TV time to shootfight other non-WCW employees to build a “family” of jobbers that look like all the guys you can’t name from The Moody Blues. Like 20 minutes later, Hogan called them “a bunch of wrestling fans” and totally (rightfully) buried it. This week’s followup segment is necessary to bring home how truly embarrassing it all was.

The show opens with Mongo McMichael and Jeff Jarrett squashing High Voltage to show that they’re on the same page, which is really only notable for how dangerous is it to have High Voltage wrestle near a swimming pool. After that a white limo arrives — pay attention to the subtle symbolism — and out steps Rowdy Roddy Piper. He’s dressed normally, but his “family” is now decked out in tartan kilts and sashes. WITH THEIR GODDAMN PAJAMAS ON UNDERNEATH.

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The boxer looks like he’s wearing a Hans and Franz muscle suit under his sash, or like he’s a strongman in an old-timey carnival. Tenta looks like a giant girl scout. Piper says his mother told him not to come to Panama City, because there’s never been so many pretty girls in one place at one time.

In other words,

WWE Network

WWE Network

Piper explains that he’s here to shoot on the critics because they’re headed into Uncensored, and launches into the most incomprehensibly butthurt promos you’ll ever hear. He also thinks that by yelling “uncensored” at the end of his sentences, it allows him to say anything he wants. That includes:

– a bit about how when he was a kid, “spring break” meant one of the springs in his mattress was broken (please, contain your laughter) and that that’s how he “got six kids.” By having an uncomfortable mattress? UNCENSORED!

– the announcement that he’s got “a lot to say about some critics” who didn’t enjoy his weird underpants and jeans sweat-fights on last week’s show. Piper starts shooting on Howard Stern (?), who he says won’t have him on his show because “he’s afraid,” and that he’s criticizing Piper about “trying to give some guys a break.” Please tell me there was an actual half hour of Howard Stern in 1997 ragging on Luther Reigns getting put to sleep in daisy dukes. Piper confirms that Stern is “hung like a pimple.” Mean Gene says the dick is more like a “wild field mouse.” UNCENSORED!

– commentary on Dennis Rodman, who he calls “Denny.” He goes straight for the gay jokes — “It’s a kilt, not a dress, so don’t be pinchin’ my buns!” — and says the most confused old man shit of all time. I’m typing this verbatim, I swear to God: “He has tattoo parts on him! Me, I’m in the middle, folks, I got metal parts on me!” The hell are you talking about? Rodman should definitely be ashamed of those TATTOO PARTS. UNCENSORED!

– a rant about the WWF, and how they claim they have “no one-hipped wrestlers” on their pay-per-views. You might wanna sit down for this one, guys. Piper says that’s correct. They’ve got no one hip wrestling on their pay-per-views! Then he starts actually screaming about how they’re liars, screaming the actual word liar, because he beat up Goldust on one of their pay-per-views once, so “what about that time, huh? UNCENSORED!”

– the claim that critics “couldn’t put a diaper on if you had to,” which is an … insult? I think? UNCENSORED!

Pretty soon this existential crisis nightmare is interrupted by the Four Horsemen, led by Arn Anderson in his Spring Break attire.

WWE Network

Arn helpfully explains that if Piper wants to defeat the New World Order at Uncensored he should probably team up with actual wrestlers, and not dudes he saw pretend to kick a ninja off a speedboat or whatever in his shitty direct-to-VHS ’90s action tapes. He calls them “amateurs,” and poor Earthquake has to stand back there with his mouth shut pretending he’s a Japanese sumo in a skirt and a 5-XL undershirt who’s never wrestled before.

Piper is like, “c’mon, man, these guys are my FAM’LY, I’ve been friends with them for like a week, look, I gave them all starter kilts,” and Flair gets on the mic and screams borderline sexual shit at him until he accepts.

WWE Network

So now Piper’s Family will be “watching his back” at Uncensored, but Piper’s actual team will be himself, Chris Benoit and two guys who’ve been hitting each other in the face with a briefcase over a beauty queen for the past month. Piper’s Family doesn’t appear at Uncensored at all, so all of this has been for nothing. They don’t end up watching his back, and they aren’t there when Dennis Rodman shows up to interfere on behalf of the nWo. Great job, Rod, you picked three dudes who are worse at pro wrestling and general helping than Dennis Rodman. UNCENSORED!

I think my favorite part of the entire segment is carnie ass Jeff Jarrett trying to Donald Trump his way into the background whenever Flair gets a closeup:

WWE Network

That’s the most terrifying Zaphod Beeblebrox I’ve ever seen.

Watch this entire unedited dumpster fire here, if you want:

We get a little clarification on the stakes of the Uncensored main event this week, which I feel like I have to remind you changes every week up to and including the match itself. Right now it’s “Piper Team” vs. “nWo Team” vs. “WCW Team,” in a three-way match featuring teams of four.

– If Piper Team wins, Piper gets a cage match with Hollywood Hogan
– If WCW Team wins, the nWo and all its members are banned from the sport for three years (!!)
– If nWo Team wins, they get a title shot whenever they want

Look at the nWo setting up some low-ass stakes to make sure they’ll win. They could’ve been like, “Monday Nitro becomes nWo Nitro” like they’ve been trying to do, or “we get six Souled Outs a year” or something ridiculous. “We stay champions forever.” “We have the right to veto any title changes.” WCW might as well have made their stipulation, “if we win, we own the moon.”

WWE Network

Worst: Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here

In a rare moment of logical booking, Squire David Taylor challenges Prince Iaukea for the Television Championship to avenge the good honor of his friend and tag team partner, former champ Lord Steven Regal. Taylor is a Blue Blood again, which means I guess he’s done with his weird winter safari.

If you’re wondering what’s going on in that picture — a fallaway slam, right? Maybe a high crossbody? — here’s the scoop. Pun intended. Taylor’s got the match under control and goes for a slam, but totally forgets what he’s doing in the middle, loses all his strength and just falls backwards with Prince on top of him. Prince doesn’t actually do anything to counter the move, brother doesn’t even wiggle his feet, he just remains still while Dave has a brain aneurysm or whatever and collapses. It’s like somebody flipped an off switch. He retains the TV Championship, because Dave Taylor literally stopped wrestling.

Welp, back to hunting emu with drop toeholds or whatever.

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Worst: The Death Of M. Wallstreet

The nWo finally arrive on the scene, dropping their “curves and swerves” catchphrase that never really catches on. As they’re walking into the arena … uh, the bar … they discover that M. Wallstreet has been knocked out and is lying on the ground. It’s just like the Big Bubba attack from a few weeks earlier, so someone should ask sneaky-ass WCW-ass Hacksaw Jim Duggan if Wallstreet is handsome enough for him to “do.”

The nWo just kind of abandons the situation, because honestly, do you care about the health and safety of Michael Wallstreet?

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Best: Jerky Eddie Guerrero, Or
Worst: You Know What People At A Spring Break Wrestling Show At A Bar Wants To See? Jim Powers

Up next, Eddie Guerrero faces human M.U.S.C.L.E. figurine Jim Powers. Dean Malenko is on commentary putting over what a secret scumbag Eddie is, which is great given our knowledge that he only becomes a huge superstar once he embraces how much he loves to lie, cheat and steal. Eddie had an awkward finish with Ultimo Dragon last week with his feet in the ropes by accident, and they play off it this week by having him go for a pin with his legs under the ropes. Teddy Long (dressed like Retirement Mark Henry) gets on the apron to complain, so Eddie pushes Powers into him and rolls him up for the win. After the match, Eddie cuts a promo and Powers goes back to doing what he does best, which I imagine is “crying during the bench press.”

Eddie’s promo is honestly pretty great, and points out that while Dean Malenko says Eddie’s the wrestler who’s changed, he’s not the one calling himself “new and improved” or kicking and punching and choking folks uncharacteristically. He’s just sick of how things work in WCW, and is dealing with it. DON’T YOU BRING LOGIC ONTO THIS PROGRAM, EDUARDO.

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Best: Larry Zbyszko’s Thoughts On Spring Break

In what might be a perfect moment, Tony Schiavone is like, “go ahead, Larry, tell us what you think about Spring Break.” Tony is secretly savage. Larry’s thoughts: “There’s just too many kids here for my enjoyment, I mean the golf courses are CRAMMED with HACKERS.” Perfect. I know “hacker” is golf slang for somebody who sucks at golf, but I want to imagine Larry not being able to sink a putt because Zero Cool and Acid Burn are breaking into The Gibson between him and the hole. Tony’s like, “LOL, you’re old.” Tony knows what the kids like. Tony likes KISS!

Worst: Club La Vela Gets Overloaded

Diamond Dallas Page defeats Craig Pittman in the Pitbull’s final Nitro appearance — Sergeant Roc, we hardly knew ye — and tries to cut a promo on the Macho Man. If you’ll remember, Savage attacked him from behind two weeks ago and did baby’s first threatening spray-paint on his back. I say “tries,” because somewhere in the middle of it the lights go out and the microphone dies.

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IT’S SABU! IT’S SABU! THE … wait, that’s the other show.

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Best: Power Rangers In The Loss Galaxy

Welcome back to the homie GALAXY, who gets his second Nitro match following his humiliating loss to Patriotic Cross-eyed Harambe Jim Duggan. This time out he looks a little less like the Megazord, and a little more like Japanese architecture.

If you’re wondering how he does in the ring this time out, here’s another complete list of moves. Galaxy goes for:

1. one (1) full nelson, transitioned into … uh, the same full nelson, countered
2. one (1) hammerlock, also countered
3. one (1) shoulder to the stomach, transitioned into a rope walk, transitioned into him falling onto his own balls
4. one (1) clothesline, successful (hey, congratulations!)
5. one (1) moonsault, missed (aw)

Mysterio quickly shuts him down with a hurricanrana through the legs, and that’s that. This is Galaxy’s final Nitro appearance as well, but don’t worry; he returns in a couple of months as his unmasked and face-painted alter ego, Damian 666. He goes from outer space to Hell. He’s pro wrestling’s Event Horizon.

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The Strange Tale Of 1997 Miss WCW Monday Nitro Spring Break

’90s dorky everyman vee-jay John Sencio makes a guest appearance here, introducing 1997 Miss WCW Monday Nitro Spring Break, who Sencio claims was located after MTV “scoured the beaches for three days.” Once she’s in the ring, they stand with their backs to the hard cam and tell us that Scott Hall, Kevin Nash and Syxx will be “guest torturers” on MTV Spring Break Fame Or Shame. That actually happened, and ended prematurely when a drunk beach guy wouldn’t stop throwing rocks at them and Nash decided to kick his ass on live TV.

Amazingly, neither Kevin Nash Beach Justice nor Randomly Occurring John Sencio is the weirdest part of this segment. Take a look at 1997 Miss WCW Monday Nitro Spring Break:

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That’s a beautiful woman, right? Certainly a step up from the Large Marges in the Miss nWo pageant at Souled Out. Her name is Pamela Rogers. Sencio explains that she’s a student at Tennessee Tech, studying education.

Spoiler alert: She becomes a teacher.

If you lived in Tennessee in the 2000s, you may know her as Pamela Rogers Turner, the teacher who was charged with 15 counts of sexual battery by an authority figure and 13 counts of statutory rape for molesting a 13-year old student. I’m not shitting you. She was sentenced to eight years in prison, but was only made to serve nine months.

It doesn’t end there. This lady got sentenced to eight years and was only in there for 270 days, right? So after having served less than a year for statutorily raping her student, she gets arrested again for sending sexts, nude photos and sex videos to the same boy. That got her probation revoked, and she was told to serve the remainder of her seven-year sentence plus two additional years.

And it doesn’t end there, either. Via her Wikipedia page:

In June 2015 she was arrested again in a separate case after her release from prison. Allegedly she conspired with two current inmates to send cell phones into the state prison where she used to be housed.

1997 Miss WCW Monday Nitro Spring Break, everybody. Miss Becky the homemaker doesn’t look so bad now, does she?

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Best: Watch For Flying Roadblocks

Before they head into the most confusing match in WCW history to not involve two or more cages, WCW Team — Lex Luger, the Steiner Brothers and gung-ho anti-nWo former nWo member The Giant — get a rare warm-up 8-man tag against whichever four jerks on the roster aren’t already booked and will wrestle for drink tickets. That ends up being the all-star squadron of the Amazing French-Canadians, Greg ‘The Hammer’ Valentine and THE ROADBLOCK.

Roadblock spends this match getting more air than Galaxy, missing a splash off the second rope — pretty impressive for a 400+ pounder — and getting fucking EXPLODERED by Scotty Steiner.

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Roadblock is legitimately a better cruiserweight than Prince Iaukea.

Giant chokeslams him to clear up the road and win the match. Afterward, they stay in the ring to cut a promo about Uncensored that (1) never features any of them commenting on Howard Stern’s dick and screaming UNCENSORED, and (2) never quite addresses WCW thinking “everyone in the nWo is banned for three years” is an acceptable, enforceable or believable stipulation.

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Best: Open The Pool Gate

You’d think Ultimo Dragon vs. Juventud Guerrera would be the perfect time to send somebody flying into those pools, but nope, Booker Man had to go and save that for himself.

Instead, we get about five minutes of a not-happy-to-be-at-Spring-Break Ultimo Dragon taking out his frustrations Alberto Del Rio to Sin Cara-style on poor Juvy. Juvy eats a gruesome corner-to-corner running Liger Bomb that smacks his head against the ground like somebody dropped a bowling ball, takes a spinning backbreaker that nearly bends him in half backwards, and gets dumped on his head again with a Tiger Suplex for the finish.

Thank you for your sacrifice, Juvy. Sorry you didn’t get to take Galaxy’s gentle failures instead.

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Worst: Buff Bagwell Hard Gay

Speaking of “scouring the beach for three days,” Buff Bagwell interrupts a Chris Jericho vs. Scotty Riggs match in cutoff hot pants that would make Shawn Michaels be like, “dude, put on some pants.”

Bagwell and Riggs have a strap match coming up at Uncensored, so of course he shows up here with a strap to set it up. Gimmick matches are always a chicken or the egg scenario. Did he end up in a strap match because a strap was introduced, or did he introduce the strap because he knew there was gonna be a strap match?

Aside from basically having to stare at Mark Bagwell’s burnt sienna taint, the strangest part of this match is that Riggs just DOMINATES it. Jericho was competing for a championship at a pay-per-view just a few weeks ago, and now the Marty Jannetty of the American Males — a TEAM of Marties Jannetty, if we’re being honest — is taking him to the woodshed. I don’t know, I just noticed Bagwell’s little perfectly rolled socks and forgot what I was trying to say.

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Best/Worst: Hands On A Hardbody

Finally we have our main event of the evening, followed by two additional segments. Sure!

Taskmaster (and Jacqueline, and Jimmy Hart) shows up to squash Hardbody Harrison, whom you may remember as a guy getting kicked in the face by Glacier back in December. It’s your standard Sullivan squash, with him dragging his opponent around wherever they are, punching them a little too hard and throwing them down steps. Here, Hardbody gets dragged over to what looks like a patio and thrown down the stairs. It was pretty close to the beach, so he’s lucky Sullivan didn’t drag his ass out into the ocean and drown him.

There IS watersports-entertainment, however, as Hardbody takes an extremely fit belly-flop into the pool.

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We waited all night for that.

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As you may recall, Hardbody Harrison parlayed his pro wrestling career into the sex slavery business, and was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of keeping eight women as slaves and threatening to throw one of them out of a window. He brought them to his homes with the promise of turning them into pro wrestlers, then turned them into prostitutes who were also forced to do manual labor to keep his homes nice.

Serious question: did Hardbody Harrison meet 1997 Miss WCW Monday Nitro Spring Break at this show, and if so, which one turned the other evil?

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Worst: As The Worm Turns

The nWo show up at the end of the night and reveal that yes, after saying it was going to happen at the top of the show and leaving you in suspense for two hours, Dennis Rodman is definitely joining the New World Order. Now Kyle Petty will have someone to talk to at their weird hotel parties!

The rest of the segment is just everyone in the group seeming smashed and taking turns cutting promos about nothing. The highlight is Sting standing off to the side with a shirt on his shoulder, saying nothing. Don’t be sad, Stinger, this is quality time that’ll make sure they’ve got your back decades from now when you’re having your balls snipped off by Triple H at a WrestleMania.

(Throw Vincent in the pool already.)

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Worst: Speaking Of Seeming Smashed

Here’s drunk Madusa again, showing up to passive aggressively complain to Mean Gene about being “part of the scenery,” and how she’s still not wrestling anybody. She challenges Akira Hokuto again and calls out Luna Vachon, who validates her claim that she’s the number one contender to the WCW Women’s Championship by not appearing on the show. Mean Gene will certainly get all this figured out.

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Worst: The Main Event Nothing

Finally — Jesus Christ, finally — the show ends with a Public Enemy promo about how since their scheduled opponents for Uncensored are on Roddy Piper’s team now, they’re just wrestling the Harlem Heat instead. This is the MAIN EVENT of this Nitro. It lasts for about 90 seconds before Harlem Heat shows up, a brawl starts, and they immediately go off the air. Did they like, forgot they were supposed to do this and come up two minutes short?

And that’s how Spring Break Nitro ends. Not with a bang, but with a wait, what?

To recap, this episode featured:

– Dennis Rodman
– multiple limo arrivals
– Roddy Piper’s pajama pals getting ditched in favor of the Horsemen
– shooting on Howard Stern’s penis
– Goldust references
– a power outage
– everybody drinking too much before and during the show
– Larry Zbyszko complaining about youths and hackers
– a Public Enemy promo main event
– the world’s tiniest jorts
– MTV’s John Sencio
– an award-winning child molester
– a kidnapping pimp being thrown into a swimming pool

Join us next week when, I don’t know, Desperado Joe Gomez gets hip-tossed into a volcano.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: WCW went on SPRING BREAK, mostly centered around Larry Zbyszko complaining about hipster golfers and Kevin Sullivan booking himself to throw a jobber into a swimming pool. Also on the show, a future pederast was named Miss WCW Monday Nitro Spring Break. It was weird.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. Things have officially gone crazy in 1990s professional wrestling, and we want to write about it at least until Three Count shows up.

And now, this week’s pay-per-view edition of the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro, the Best and Worst of Uncensored 1997. Here’s what you need to know:

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Before We Begin

If you haven’t been keeping up with the Best and Worst of Nitro and are joining us for the first time, here’s what’s been going on during the build to the main event at Uncensored.

– Lex Luger broke a bone in his hand before his Tag Team Championship match against The Outsiders at SuperBrawl VII and did everything he could to get into the match, but kept getting stonewalled by Eric Bischoff. He ended up wrestling anyway, throwing Bischoff at the ground and helping Giant unseat the tag champs. Bischoff has a history of retconning any and all nWo losses, though (because it’s a terrible idea to have the same character be in charge of the wrestling promotion and the evil faction trying to destroy it), so the next night on Nitro he was like, “yeah, no, give us back the belts.” Luger agreed, under one condition: at Uncensored, they do a big WCW vs. nWo match with all the title belts on the line. Bischoff agreed.

Then, because WCW hates you and everyone watching, Bischoff changed his mind. That led to Turner Sports suit Harvey Schiller guest starring on Nitro to suspend Bischoff. Somehow that still didn’t get Luger the match he wanted, and it ended up being a three team match between WCW, the nWo and non-WCW employee-with-a-grudge Rowdy Roddy Piper with zero belts on the line. No idea.

– Since he’s not officially a WCW wrestler despite main-eventing two consecutive WCW pay-per-views and appearing on a ton of Nitros, Rowdy Roddy Piper needed to find three friends to be his partners at Uncensored. Instead of asking actual wrestlers to be in the match, Piper held a series of escalating jobber shootfights featuring exactly one (1) nominal wrestler (John Tenta), two (2) of his stuntman pals from his direct-to-VHS action movies, and three (3) hairless, helpless never-nudes. The crowd shit all over it, so the next show replaced these idiots with more familiar idiots, the Four Horsemen, and Piper openly complained about it for like 20 minutes.

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– In a related note, The Outsiders tried to for-realsies kill the Steiner Brothers by running them off the road in a car. This resulted in Scott being totally fine and Rick having some inner ear issues, because I’m pretty sure you could shoot either of the Steiners in the face at close range with a shotgun and they’d be fine. At Uncensored, they’ve joined Team WCW to get revenge for being attemptedly manslaughtered.

– NBA star Dennis Rodman got suspended for kicking a cameraman in the dick, so he decided to join the New World Order. As you do.

– The Vigilante Sting™ has also apparently joined the nWo, but he’s not helping them attack people are celebrating with them. He’s just standing near them and glaring while they do stuff. I’m sure that means he’s definitely an actual member of the team and hates us all, right WCW announce team?

– Sadly no, there is no Doomsday Cage match this year.

Okay, let’s remove these censors and get the show going.

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Best: Eddie Guerrero Vs. Dean Malenko, No Disqualification

Want to watch one of my favorite WCW cruiserweight matches ever, one of the best pay-per-view openers ever and probably the best singles match these guys had against each other in the company? Peep Eddie Guerrero vs. Dean Malenko, no disqualification for the United States Championship opening this show. Holy shit I love this match. What I love about it so much is that yeah, it’s Eddie Guerrero vs. Dean Malenko, but it’s completely different from their other matches.

To catch you up, Guerrero won the U.S. title at Starrcade with incidental help from the nWo, then accidentally helped Syxx win the Cruiserweight Championship from Malenko at SuperBrawl. Malenko put two and two together and was like, “okay, enough trading respectful pinning combinations, you’re pissing me off and I’m gonna punch you in the face about it.” Stinko’s pissed that Guerrero’s turning heel, and Guerrero says he’s not doing anything, he’s just trying to live his life in a promotion full of shitheads and cheaters. Malenko cost Guerrero a match with the Faces of Fear and keeps calling him out, and Eddie’s getting madder and meaner about it. So here at Uncensored, they have a match built around how much they suddenly hate each other, so much so that they not only want to win, they want to dickishly assert their dominance over the other. It’s GREAT.

The psychology in this match is A-fucking-plus. Malenko tries to pin Guerrero with a frog splash, so later in the match Guerrero one-ups him by putting him in the Texas Cloverleaf. A guardrail spot gets a callback. Eddie is supposed to be this passionate good guy, and he’s using the ropes for leverage in submission holds and screaming about how he’s gonna break Malenko’s leg. All of this with the trademark Guerrero/Malenko chemistry and smoothness.

Even the crappy sports entertainment finish makes sense! Syxx shows up to steal the championship like he keeps doing, and gets into a tug of war with Eddie. Is he doing that on purpose to cause the same tug of war belt shot to Malenko and help Eddie win? That happens, but Malenko has already lived through that shit and sees it coming, ducks it and blasts Eddie in the face with Syxx’s video camera. That’s good enough to give him the pissed-off little dad moral victory, and there’s a great post-match moment where Malenko holds the camera and looks at it a little too long, like he’s trying to rationalize to himself that he’s done the right thing, and not just sunk to Guerrero’s (presumed) level.

Baller, all the way through. Love this match.

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Best: Dusty Rhodes, Always

Until WWE Network adds WCW Saturday Night to the rotation, Dusty Rhodes-called pay-per-views are the best thing in the world. Dream is in rare form on this show, and in just the first match he’s got enough gems to fill a column. He talks about how Malenko, “needs to get unwobbly, and get up,” and drops my favorite underrated Dustyism, saying Eddie is “lollygaggin’ him.” His analysis of the guardrail spot is next-level Dust.

“You’re very observant. And that’s what happened. They were, they was a’goin’ on the knee of Malenko, trying to cripple him. And then Eddie hit the safety rail up in the upper part of his body, and now they trying to cripple him on the upper part of his body. That’s a good call. That’s a way to be very de-loogiant.”

Pretty sure he’s trying to say “diligent” there. Wait until we get to his discussion of toilet location in the Public Enemy match, or his intense argument about cement hauling in the strap match. Dusty Rhodes was the greatest.

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Best/Worst: Ultimo Dragon Vs. Psicosis

Not sure I’ll ever be able to go back to typing “Psychosis.” I’ll probably call him the “Ultimate Dragon” before I do that again.

Anyway, for some reason WCW decided to book a great match nobody cares about after a better match everyone cared about, with absolutely no build, for on reason. Mike Tenay tries to put it over as WCW’s most “colorful cruiserweights” going full-tilt to rise in the rankings of the division, because they both want to face Syxx for the championship. Tony (as he does sometimes) points out the very obvious, nihilistic flaw: “I don’t know what the point is. Even if you beat him for it, he’ll just hit you over the head and steal it back tomorrow.” But yeah, let’s still do 13 minutes of heel vs. heel for the right to maybe face a heel that wins even if he loses.

These guys kinda wrestle like video game characters, but they’re COOL video game characters, so it’s honestly really fun. Nobody this side of Super Calo threatens to injure themselves in the ring as much as ol’ Nicho el Millonario, best seen in his springboard leg drop from inside the ring to the FLOOR. Like, in a best case scenario you’re launching yourself like 12 feet in the air and landing on cement with your ass bone, all to drop the weight of one human leg on somebody. It doesn’t even have your weight behind it, you springboarded off to the side, you crazy nut. Dragon continues his theme of murdering dudes with his running Liger Bomb, too. I’m surprised they didn’t have to sweep Psicosis into a dust pan to get him out of the ring.

The crowd, of course, could not possibly give a shit. They haven’t been given a reason to, and this era of WCW’s so full of talented guys doing crazy moves with at least a skeleton of story behind it that you can’t get invested in guys doing the same for no reason. The nWo’s rendered every championship quest futile, ESPECIALLY after the Uncensored main-event bait-and-switch, so like, enjoy bruising your asshole to make 300 of 15,000 people clap, Psico.

Best: Ultimo Dragon’s Super Botch Save

At the end of the match, Dragon goes up top to hit a Dragonsteiner and, unless I’m reading this wrong and he actually did it on purpose, his leg doesn’t go all the way around. That leaves him kinda sideways in mid-air above the top rope with no way to finish the move. His solution? Grab Psicosis by the dome and hope for the best.

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Tenay screams, “HE CALLS THAT THE TORNADO DDT!” and I’m like, “does he?” We know what a tornado DDT looks like, and I’ve seen a lot of Ultimo Dragon matches but I’ve never seen him do that. A top rope tornado DDT is a killer idea, though, with emphasis on killer, because if he’d taken this like a DDT instead of like a suplex he would be 1000% dead.

Dusty Rhodes Call Of The Match:

Dusty, Bobby and Tenay get into a long, absurd discussion about how Ultimo Dragon has a hectic travel schedule and only travels to Mexico City via rickshaw, because he’s afraid of flying. That turns into a bit about how it’s a “stretch rickshaw” that seats four and has a hot tub in it.

The best moment of commentary, though, is when Psicosis hits a big dive to the outside, Tony gets too specific about what they landed on, and Dusty straight-up makes fun of him for it.

Tony: “Both men land beyond the mat on the concrete, that carpet laying over concrete, actually, laying over particle board on top of ice here, at the North Charleston Coliseum.”
Dusty: “I got one there because they went all to the way [condescending voice] to the PARTICLE BOARD! Which is layin’ underneath the carpet which is layin’ on top of the concrete!”

Heenan tops it off with, “which underneath all of that is dirt.”

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Worst: You Saw My Naked Wife In The Naked Photoshoot She Did! HOW DARE YOU

Diamond Dallas Page shows up for an interview where he once again tells Macho Man Randy Savage to “snap into” a Diamond Cutter, only this time he’s interrupted by Savage and Elizabeth. Savage says he’s been wrong about Page, and that Page is “the man, brother.” Turns out Savage came across an issue of Playboy Nude Celebrities in the airport, and that Page’s wife Kimberly is the centerfold. He notes that the issue also includes one of his “old girlfriends” Pamela Anderson — they did Baywatch together, he remembers, so I guess he hooked up with her before The Taskmaster choked him to death with the bench press — and that Tommy Lee is “cool with it.”

Anyway, the point here, bizarrely, is that Diamond Dallas Page is SUPER UPSET that Macho Man saw his wife’s nude pictorial in a popular magazine. “DON’T EVEN GO THERE!” As you can see in the picture, they added some editing “spray paint” to be able to show it on television. As you can also see from the picture, Diamond Dallas Page posed with her in the magazine. So Page is upset slash ashamed (?) that Savage bought a copy of the magazine he and his wife were in together and told people about it. This angle works, I guess, if you’re the type of cro-mag that brags about how hot your girlfriend is, then wants to punch anyone that looks at her.

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At around this point, Kimberly wanders out spray-painted, and you’re left to wonder how Savage could’ve possibly timed this reveal unless Kim was in on it. He jumps Page from behind during the distraction and tries to hurt him, but Kim covers him up. That leads to Elizabeth volunteering to further spray paint her, causing Tony to stress out about “what a vixen she’s become.” Savage then gets back on the mic and is like, “HE’S THE MAYIN’! I LIKE HEEYIM!”

It’s not a wholly terrible idea for an angle, but you’ve gotta think how much better it would’ve worked if Savage had shown up all disingenuously complimentary of Page for seeing his wife naked and Page had been like, “… yeah, she’s hot, that was a lot of fun, what are you trying to do, why are you being weird?” Page starts to figure it out, wonders where Kim is, and THEN Kim wanders out spray-painted. The way they did it, Page just kinda seems ashamed of her twice. I guess he DID steal lottery winnings from her that one time and she left him for both a Little Richard impersonator and a butts-obsessed Brutus Beefcake dressed like a birthday cake, so maybe it’s consistent.

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Worst: Call The Hotline, Somebody’s Gone

Is it Lee Marshall? Did he WEASEL his way out of a contract?

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Worst: Roddy Piper Is Really Worried About Someone Trying To Fuck Him

Rowdy Roddy Piper shows up coked out of his gourd to be interviewed by Gene, and he is very worried about how gay everybody is. I don’t know if he’d locked himself in a prison on Fire Island to prepare for Uncensored or what, but dude’s a homophobic fountain here.

Gay jokes about Dennis Rodman include, “I live metal! I eat metal! I got metal in my hip, and I ain’t talkin’ about the Queen Mary! SPEAKING of Rodman!” Also, “I come out of here in my dressing room, there’s Rodman, he’s knocking on the door, he wants to try on the kilt. What’s the problem? HE WANTS ME IN IT! I DON’T BELIEVE NONE OF THIS GARBAGE!” Also, “You clone Hogan and Dennis Rodman together, you know what you get? You get Frederick’s of Hollywood Hogan!” ALSO, “That means you’re working, watching my back tonight, not jumping on it, GET IT RODMAN!” The Horsemen show up, and Piper makes gay jokes about THEM. He doesn’t know what a Horseman is. “Do they ride mares, or do they ride STUDS?”

Amazingly, that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is when he says he doesn’t have to do this to get Hogan in a cage, and openly screams WHY AM I DOING THIS? WHY AM I DOING THIS? So to clarify, the non-WCW employee who is jeopardizing the future of the company by not helping them get the nWo banned from the sport for 3 years and get all the WCW titles back so he can exercise a personal grudge against one guy he’s already beaten twice is OPENLY ADMITTING THAT HE DOESN’T EVEN HAVE TO DO IT THIS WAY, BUT HE’S DOING IT ANYWAY. Holy shit.

On top of this, he buries the Mongo/Jeff Jarrett angle and calls Chris Benoit “the wino,” You know Chris Benoit, the famous WINE ENTHUSIAST. I’m guessing he had no idea who the guy was, didn’t want to watch tapes and only saw one of those videos of him drinking wine with Woman in Germany. Hope he doesn’t drink too much wine before the match and accidentally try to have some gay sex with Roddy Piper!

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yessssss

Best: MORTIS

The entire build for this has happened on the weekend shows, but Uncensored features the debut of MORTIS, the radioactive (?) skeleton (?) burn victim (?) from Taipei (?) who is managed by a businessman (?) and hates Glacier’s guts for reasons we never totally learn. His manager, James Vandenberg — the future “Sinister Minister,” not the quarterback — screams, “REMEMBER TAIPEI??” at Glacier a few times during the match, but that’s all we know. My theory is that if one guy’s Sub Zero and the other’s Scorpion, Glacier must’ve like, karate kicked him into a fire in Taiwan back in the day and now Mortis is back in skeleton form to get revenge.

Side note: As you might know, Mortis is played by future Best Guy On The Show Chris Kanyon, formerly one half of the wonderful, legendary-to-me construction-themed jobber tag team MEN AT WORK. WCW went through a weird period in the 90s where the only idea they had for tag teams was, “SEXY FIREMAN CALENDAR??” Anyway, I’ll write about it a lot, but Kanyon is dope, one of the most underappreciated wrestlers ever and absolutely one of my favorites from this era.

This is a MARTIAL ARTS MATCH. Tony says it can be won “via pinfall, submission, or by knocking your opponent out.” So … a regular match? It features the same amount of martial arts as any other Glacier match, so … yeah, definitely just a regular match.

It’s a GREAT regular match, though, from my extremely biased point of view as the world’s foremost Blood Runs Cold historian. Glacier is still Glacier, but they work their asses off, and Glacier pulls out some cool new stuff like a top rope chop feint into a forward roll, into a crossbody out of the opposite corner. Mortis is an admittedly cool-looking wrestler whose “martial arts” look considerably better than Glacier’s. They manage to get the crowd into it and keep them there, and Glacier defeats his mortal (kombat) enemy with a Cryonic Kick in his debut.

But that’s not all!

After the match, Mortis jumps Glacier from behind, and James Vandenberg brings out his SECOND debuting Fight Game Guy on the night: WRATH.

WWE Network

Wrath is a giant … what is he, a Dovakhiin? I don’t honestly know, but he’s Bryan Clark, future member of the “what if the APA were into weed instead of beer” tag team KRONIK. He lays out Glacier with the Death Penalty, a head-and-arm Rock Bottom, basically. That leaves Glacier at a 2-on-1 disadvantage going forward, and I hope there’s someone out there that can show up and help our hero, especially if they’ve won more than two but fewer than four world karate championships.

One more side note: As you might’ve picked up, the first half of this show is pretty great, so you know the second half is gonna be the super opposite of that.

WWE Network

Worst: Buff Bagwell Uses A Strap On Scotty Riggs
Wait, I Could Probably Phrase That Better

Buff Bagwell easily wins a strap match against his former American Males tag team partner Scotty Riggs, and it probably would’ve been fun if (1) Riggs had ever, ever gotten to look good against Bagwell, or (2) Bagwell had ever seemed like he actually cared about winning. He spends most of the match playing to the crowds and the camera, even when Riggs is in control. He completely no-sells a lot of Riggs’ offense, too, including a low-blow. He’s a wrestler who knows he’s going to win, which is basically the worst wrestler.

The highlight of the match is the finish, with Riggs taking a horrific bump over the ropes into the apron with his lower back. If Shawn Michaels had taken that bump he would’ve split in half. Bagwell puts his feet on the top rope and uses them as leverage to hang Riggs in the only 30 seconds of a 13 minute match with any urgency.

Dusty Rhodes Call Of The Match

Dusty tries to make lemonade out of these bullshit lemons by explaining how easy it would be to win a strap match against a bag of cement, then gets mad at Tony for not understanding. It’s amazing.

Dusty: “See, if you was haulin’ cement around at the end of a strap, it would be easier. See this man, you got to get him out, so he’s not movin’, you know what I mean? If he’s moving, it’s harder to pull than a sack of cement. You follow me on that?”
Tony: [long pause as Tony tries to figure out how his life led him to this moment] “Yes, I guess I do.”
Dusty: “CEMENT IS A DEAD SACK, IT’S EASIER TO PULL AROUND”

WWE Network

Worst: TMI

In preparation for the main event, the nWo cuts a promo about how Kimberly’s Playboy spread gives them boners. Macho is like, “I got another notch in my belt!” Hogan responds with, “that’s what my belt is for!” Does … does Hollywood Hogan want the WCW Championship so he can hide his hard-on? Or is he talking about that weightlifting belt he always wears?

This comes back around to Piper’s gay panic promo from earlier. They say that now that they’ve seen Kimberly “without her skirt” and “know the deal” — read: now that they’ve gotten blueprints of her vagina — they can focus on Piper, who will be wearing a skirt. I don’t know. That leads to positive discussion about how Dennis Rodman might show up wearing a wedding dress, and Hogan saying he learned some tricks from “Rod the Bod.” Hulk Hogan is the only person who could call someone “Rod the Bod” and think it’s a compliment. I’VE BEEN HANGING AND BANGING WITH ROD THE BOD BECAUSE WE’RE TOO SWEET.

WWE Network

Worst: As The Haliburton Turns

The originally scheduled tag team match for Uncensored was number one contenders the Public Enemy defending the number one contendership (I think?) against Jeff Jarrett and Mongo. Jarret and Mongo got heterosexually inserted into Roddy Piper’s unit, which made the match Public Enemy vs. Harlem Heat.

At Uncensored, the match ends with Mongo hitting Public Enemy with the Haliburton. I wish I was kidding. It’s like they booked the match, changed the participants, and left the finish the same. Then they were like, “wait, does Sister Sherri not carry a metal briefcase?”

Dusty Rhodes Call Of The Match (And The Night)

You might not think Dusty could top commentary on floor layers and cement dragging, but you didn’t anticipate Harlem Heat using a toilet lid as a foreign object.

“LOOK! HE’S GOT A COMMODE LID! THAT’S A TOILET LID! THERE’S ONE BATHROOM MISSING A TOILET SEAT, CAUSE IT’S OUT HERE!”

It’s the pay-per-view equivalent of “HE GOT A BI-SICKLE!” As you know, nothing concerns Dusty Rhodes more than what’s going on with the toilets.

Bonus points for Dusty’s call when Johnny Grunge attacks Harlem Heat with a trash can lid. “WOO! HE LAID HIS OLD TIRED ASS OUT!” I feel like Dusty would’ve been just as obsessed with hilariously calling out Jim Duggan’s underpants full of athletic tape if Duggan ever made it onto pay-per-views.

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Worst: Prince Iaukea Beats Rey Mysterio Jr. Again, This Time Clean, And Is Still Champion

Bruh. Bruh.

To show you how great Prince’s title reign is, the opening video for the pay-per-view claims Prince is facing Mysterio to remove “some of the tarnish from his newly-won cruiserweight title.” He’s the Television Champion.

I challenge you to find a worse Rey Mysterio match than this. Mysterio vs. Great Khali looked like Mysterio vs. Guerrero compared to this.

WWE Network

Worst: The Main Event Changes Again

A few weeks ago, the proposed main event of Uncensored was WCW vs. nWo with all the titles on the line. Then, after Bischoff took it back and got suspended, it somehow ended up being Piper’s family of untrained, undershirt girl scouts vs. the nWo vs. WCW. Then it became Piper and three of the Four Horsemen vs. nWo vs. WCW. If Piper wins, he gets Hogan in a cage. If the nWo win, they get “carte blanche” on WCW TV, which became “they get a title shot whenever they want,” like a confusing ancestor to Money in the Bank. If WCW wins, which they couldn’t POSSIBLY with this stipulation, the nWo has to relinquish all their titles and everyone in the group is banned from the sport for three years. Team WCW is Lex Luger, the Giant and the Steiner Brothers.

At Uncensored itself, the nWo jumps Rick Steiner in the back and he gets taken to the hospital. WCW doesn’t or somehow cannot find a replacement, so now it’s Roddy Piper and Three Horsemen vs. four nWo members plus a fifth in Dennis Rodman vs. only three WCW guys. And the match is now elimination rules with staggered entry, like War Games. And WCW has to send out somebody in the first round, instead of getting any kind of bye for Steiner’s injury. And you can be eliminated by being thrown over the top rope, like in a battle royal.

Anybody got a Doomsday Cage lying around? Seriously.

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If you couldn’t tell from all that, the main event itself is the hottest, hottest garbage. It’s the Alexandra Daddario of garbage.

WCW’s already down a man, right? So the first elimination, in the first five minutes of the damn match, is the Giant going for a Stinger Splash, missing, and eliminating himself. So that leaves WCW with TWO GUYS the ENTIRE MATCH. Piper and the Four Horsemen just attack them at will, too, because none of those dudes thinks getting rid of the New World Order forever is as important as Rowdy Roddy Piper getting a match to prove he can beat ONE of them three out of three times.

WWE Network

Speaking of Piper, he destroys the entire setup of the match by (1) entering a full minute too early, ignoring the staggered time entry and not having anyone stop him from doing so, and (2) spending most of his time in the match fighting Hogan on the outside. It’s the worst. Pretty soon after, Piper and his entire team get eliminated like chumps. Bet you wish you had John Tenta on the team now, don’t you?

So after Piper’s team and Scott Steiner get eliminated, we’re down to Lex Luger versus FIVE nWo guys. Hogan, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Macho Man and Dennis Rodman. In a moment I’ve got to give a supplementary Best, Luger decides to go NUCLEAR and almost wins the match by himself. He clotheslines Nash out of the ring and eliminates Hall and Savage with Torture Racks, and he even gets Hogan up and is moments away from pulling off the world’s greatest miracle upset, when — you guessed it — Dennis Rodman clandestinely slips Macho a can of spray paint, Luger gets either hit in the face with it or phantom sprayed in the eyes, is suddenly unconscious, and takes the pin. The nWo win, because of course they do.

The ultimate insult of all these Rowdy Roddy Piper segments with the jeans shootfights and the team replacements and all the crazy “shooting” on WWF and Howard Stern is that he loses, wastes everybody’s time, is a third party candidate siphoning away support from WCW in a match where they could’ve rid themselves of the nWo forever, and GETS THE CAGE MATCH WITH HOGAN ANYWAY. It happens at Halloween Havoc. I swear.

Okay, so here’s where the pay-per-view gets saved:

Best: Sting Comes Home

The nWo celebrate their victory by spray painting Luger, and Rodman gives him some bad paint-brushing. As they’re leaving, Tony starts in with his wrap-up speech, and all of a sudden …

WWE Network

Sting drops into the center of the ring, and everybody in the building is like, OH SHIT, WHAT, WHAT’S HE GONNA DO? The nWo is confused and the announcers are hopeful, so Hall, Nash and Savage return to the ring. Before anything can happen, Sting FLIPS THE HELL OUT and beats the EVER-LOVING CHRIST out of them with a baseball bat. The crowd LOSES IT.

WWE Network

One of the best, coolest pops and moments of the year. Dusty’s call really brings it home: “ALL HELL HAS BROKEN LOOSE AT UNCENSORED, AND HELL BROUGHT WITH HIM A BASEBALL BAT!” Heart eyes.

Sting points his bat at Hogan, and Hogan works up some confidence via a Rodman shoulder rub. He tells Sting to put the bat down, so Sting drops it, holds his arms out and turns around. Hogan cautiously gets into the ring and tries a cheap shot, and Sting LIGHTS HIM UP. Hot damn, almost 20 years later it still gives you goosebumps. The next night on Nitro, it gets even better.

That’s Uncensored. A show that starts off great, gets good, gets bad, gets terrible, then goes back around to great again. Sting has come home, and y’all better kiss his ass for the rest of his life and never second guess what he does.

(They don’t, it’s fine.)

WWE Network

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: WCW Uncensored 1997 happened, headlined by the helplessness of WCW and the self-centered futility of Rowdy Roddy Piper and the Four Horsemen teaming up to let the nWo win another goddman beneficial main event. Now the nWo gets a title shot whenever they want whenever they want it, which is different from how they normally operate, somehow.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page. If you want to check out the Raw that aired opposite this Nitro, click here.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. Things have officially gone crazy in 1990s professional wrestling, and we want to write about it at least until Tank Abbott shows up and threatens to slit a dude’s throat.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for March 17, 1997.

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Best: Rey Mysterio Almost Kills Psicosis

Up first this week is tiny jumping lizard Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. lanky suicide bull Psicosis. These two have a storied rivalry built around a sort of Mozart/Salieri dynamic, where they came up together and trained together, but Mysterio’s one of the greatest luchadors of all time and Psico has to follow him around wherever he goes trying to prove that shut up, he’s good, too.

Here we see an expertly executed hurricanrana, in which Rey MysterOH GOD–

WWE Network/GIF

I don’t know if Psico was rattled and forgot the flip bump or if Mysterio swung straight into his leg and prevented it, but holy shit, that’s poor Psicosis shoot DDT’ing himself at maximum velocity. I wonder if he grew out that Weird Al hair so he’d have something to land on when he’d like, jump asshole-first into the top turnbuckle and fall on his brain?

Not a bad match, but probably in the low 400s in the 500 or so Rey Mysterio vs. Psicosis matches you could be watching.

WWE Network

Worst: Arn Anderson Has To Retire And Is Extremely Old Man About It

Speaking of people who’ve accidentally destroyed their necks, Arn Anderson shows up for an interview and reveals that he’s having the fifth, sixth and seventh vertebrae in his neck fused because of paralysis in his hand. As you might recall, Arn’s last match happened a couple of months earlier, and ended with him standing on the apron while Mongo attacked the Amazing French-Canadians with an empty metal briefcase.

Around this point is when the conversation becomes an episode of Who’s More Grizzled? Arn compares him holding on to his wrestling career to the death of his grandmother, saying he saw her on her deathbed, battling cancer, and asked “why, Granny?” She had asked the lord to let her hold on until she saw Arn as “a mature, responsible adult that could be the head of your family.” She’d seen that, so she let go and died. He follows that with an anecdote about how he saw Kevin Sullivan’s son Ben tell his father that in his eyes, his father was dead. “No parent should ever have to bury a child, it looks like the child buried you, the fact is you’re dead to each other.” Arn explains that if he’d known Sullivan’s life would be so sad, he wouldn’t have kicked him in the ribs, and that after his operation he wants a clean slate.

Arn is like, “don’t worry though, it’s fine, I’ll be back,” but he won’t, not really. And I just kinda sit here in silence in the dark thinking about my grandmother and the nature of fathers and sons, and I’ve never, ever wanted a Jim Duggan match on a Nitro more than I do right now.

WWE Network

Worst: World Wrestling Confederation

Hey look, it’s a picture of America.

After hearing about the horrors of a neck injury and seeing one happen in real time, we move on to Maxx Muscle, a guy whose neck is 100% because he’s never done anything more athletic than a full nelson without his fingers clasped. He loses quickly to Diamond Dallas Page, and even if Savannah, GA, hadn’t brought confederate flags to the show I would’ve worsted this for nobody mentioning Maxx and Page’s long, unforgettably forgettable history. Maxx used to help Page cheat at arm wrestling, and Page was sort of The Miz to Maxx’s Alex Riley. They even broke apart and feuded, and Dusty Rhodes once compared their rivalry to the existence of Santa Claus.

Anyway, Diamond Dallas makes Nitro great again with a Diamond Cutter.

WWE Network

Best: Macho Man Wants To Do It

After the match, Macho Man Randy Savage and Vixen Elizabeth use the crowd infiltration techniques Savage learned during his Vacation Bible School or whatever with Sting to stand in the crowd and give Page further shit for being married to a hot lady. Savage drops some awesome heel work here, refusing to say Page’s name, calling him “Kimberly’s husband” and “the wrestler with no name.”

Page wants a match, and Savage is like, “I dunnooooo, should I do it? Should I do it now? Should I do it laterrrrr.” Eventually Page gets fired-up fed up, climbs into the crowd and runs up the steps to chase them off. This is the feud that officially makes DDP a thing, and it’s crazy to think that he went from slumming it with Johnny B. Badd to main-eventing two of the next three pay-per-views in like a year.

WWE Network

Worst: You’re Tearing Me Apart, Renegade

In this divisive world, let’s look to the everlasting friendship between Fake Ultimate Warrior The Renegade and Fake Steve McMichael Joe Gomez. Wait, they’re breaking up too? WHO CARES ENOUGH ABOUT JOE GOMEZ AND THE RENEGADE FOR THEM TO BREAK UP?

So yeah, Renegade and Desperado Joe take on the worst possible Dungeon of Doom tag team, Hugh Morrus and Konnan. Keep in mind that the Dungeon of Doom included an immobile 60-year old covered in baby powder, Brutus Beefcake dressed like a zebra and a butt-fucking Himalayan ice mummy and the worst possible combination of Doom Dungeoners is Konnan and Hugh Morrus.

Gomez gets the crap beaten out of him for a while, building to a “hot tag” in quotes to Renegade. Renegade throws two clotheslines and two bodyslams, then TAGS BACK OUT. Gomez is like, “what the hell, dude, I’m not Ricky Morton, I’m not 100% regenerated because I gave you a diving low-five,” and gets quickly destroyed. No Laughing Matter ends it, and Gomez and Renegade are left in the ring making confused faces at each other. Desperado had really enjoyed making that hot tag, but these things that are pleasin’ you can hurt you somehow.

Join us never for the conclusion of this angle.

WWE Network

Best: Dean Malenko’s Smart Squashes

Now that the American Males are officially broken up and Scotty Riggs has lost two straight to Buff Bagwell — possibly the only time anyone’s ever used “the American Males” and “too straight” in a sentence — here’s Riggs … still pretending to be an American Male? I wish Mean Gene had asked him about it, and Riggs had been like, “I was a fake Chippendales guy before I met Mark, I’m not gonna stop being a loser stripper just because he doesn’t want to do it with me anymore.”

He has an extremely short but honestly pretty good 2-minute loss to Dean Malenko, who is probably high from having one of the dopest matches of the year at Uncensored and thinking, “if I’ve only got two minutes and it’s against CFNM Marty Jannetty, I’m gonna make it work.” It’s Malenko vs. Guerrero if Guerrero only knew like four moves. That’s the story. Riggs is able to hang with him surprisingly well in a pinfall reversal sequence, but all he’s really got beyond that is dropkicks. Malenko gets caught early on, but adapts, knows enough moves to counter a dropkick and just victory rolls him for three. One of those rare moments where “knowing how to wrestle” becomes important in a wrestling match.

That’s good enough to be the Valvoline People Who Know Use Valvoline™ Valvolinic Knowledge of the Week. After the match, Scotty Riggs puts Liberty Gold Plus into his car and is like, “ughhhh what am I doing wrongggg”

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Best: A+ Jobber Names

Get ready for some Best and Worst of NWA World Championship Wrestling-quality jobbers here as Lex Luger and the Giant take on T. Rantula and Knuckles Nelson. Holy shit. I don’t know if they’re wrestlers or Dick Tracy villains.

If you’ve got a minute, check out T. Rantula’s extremely in-depth Wikipedia page absolutely not written by T. Rantula himself, featuring notes about how his one match on Nitro “greatly enhanced his profile on the independent circuit as promoters were eager to book him on their shows,” and a story about how Jim Cornette told him he should’ve been a huge star. Also, notes about how Beyond the Mat exposed the business and why the WWE Performance Center is ruining wrestling. On T. Rantula’s Wikipedia page.

After spending two minutes on TV ever, T. Rantula and Bumpy Knuckles lose to stereo finishers. Luger cuts a promo saying that Sting’s “return home” has him believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, but never actually contains the words, “and I’m sorry for thinking a guy dressed like you was you even though you said it wasn’t and I knew you were in Japan, it was raining and I’m stupid.” Also, neither of them is like, “hey Sting, if you were gonna drop down from the ceiling and beat up the nWo, could you have done it at the end of the match when WCW was down 4-1 and Luger was in there by himself? If we’d won that match they’d have been banned from the sport for three years and we’d have all the titles back, and you’d be saving yourself a lot of work.”

WWE Network

Best: No-Selling A Soda

Speak of the devil, the nWo get an uninterrupted promo where they brag about winning at Uncensored and having the right to challenge for any WCW title they want whenever they want to. Keep in mind that they already have the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, the Tag Team Championship and the Cruiserweight Championship. So what, did the big WCW vs. nWo war come down to the bad guys winning a shot at Prince Iaukea’s TV title?

Hahahaha, spoiler alert.

Anyway, the point of the segment is the announcement that the Outsiders will defend the Tag Team Championship against the Steiner Brothers at Spring Stampede. Except they won’t, and they don’t. I guess the actual point is this, where Scott Hall gets smashed in the head by a soda thrown from Heaven and no-sells it WITH STYLE.

WWE Network

That is SMOOTH. Also, if you’re feeling down today, take a moment to imagine Roman Reigns in the middle of one of his “hey, here’s what’s been happening for the last month, I don’t care” promos and then boom, 64-ounce Dr. Pepper to the dome. You should never, ever throw things into the ring and if you do somebody should kick your ass, but thinking about it is pretty funny.

WWE Network

Worst: Kayfabe, Guys, Come On

During the show we jump back to the Series of Tubes Control Center of whatever where Riff Raff from Rocky Horror is helping an unmasked Ultimo Dragon (whoops) and Sonny Onoo through an online chat. Dragon is trying his best to cover his face while communicating STOP SHOWING MY FACE, IDIOTS, and Sonny is wearing a St. Patrick’s Day t-shirt about how he got lucky at a Savannah bar. WCW, y’all.

WWE Network

Later in the episode, Dragon beats Bobby Eaton in about 70 seconds, either because he had to get back to his live Q&A or because that’s the most performing they could get out of him after he karate kicked the chest of the shit out of the producer that thought showing his face was a great advertisement for the Internet.

After the match, Bobby Eaton picked himself up, dusted himself off, and got back to his live AMA on the WCW abacus.

WWE Network

Worst: As The Haliburton Turns

Mongo and Jeff Jarrett were supposed to face the Public Enemy at Uncensored, but they got drafted to be members of Rowdy Roddy Piper’s self-serving “family” instead. So they didn’t wrestle Public Enemy, but chose to show up and attack them anyway. My theory was that they’d booked the match finish, forgot they’d subbed in Harlem Heat for the Horsemen and decided to stick with the finish even though neither Booker T nor Stevie Ray hit people with briefcases.

So on Nitro, Mongo and Jarrett take on the team of COCKSTAR, Alex Wright and Mark Starr. They beat them in seconds, because (1) it’s important to show that Mongo and Jarrett are Keyword The Bomb when they work together, and (2) if a match goes over 2 minutes tonight, the show will explode.

After the match, Public Enemy runs out and attacks them. Debra saves Jarrett by hitting Johnny Grunge in the back with the Haliburton, which he mostly no-sells. He gets in her face and threatens her, so Jarrett saves Debra by hitting Grunge in the back with the Haliburton. Which he totally no-sells. The teams brawl to the back, and Public Enemy kinda disappears so Mongo et al can cut a promo.

It’s one of two Horsemen shoulder-to-shoulder-we-suck promos on the night. The second one happens a little later, when WCW realizes they booked 15 20-second matches and need to fill 10 minutes. Chris Benoit uses the brain power of a hamster to reiterate what Arn said earlier about Kevin Sullivan’s son, and the Nature Boy goes full Colonel Guile talking about Roddy Piper:

WWE Network

Apparently all this Horseman discord and the Malenko/Guerrero angles were supposed to intersect in the “Apocalypse” angle with Brian Pillman, where he’d leave and come back to form his own pre-millennial Millennial Four Horsemen full of young super-workers and straight shooters to battle the old guard fogey contingent. Pillman got a real release to do a worked thing where he’d go to ECW and stir some shit, but he got into a car accident that put an expiration date on his in-ring career and decided to use free agency to just go to the WWF instead. Some folks say this era of awkward Four Horsemen mid-cardery was supposed to lead to an updated version of the Apocalypse group (sometimes called “Apocalypse X,” or “X Apocalypse,” or Jeff Jarretts of Future Past) with Lord Steven Regal subbing in for Pillman. Chris Jericho’s book says the group he was pitched was Pillman, Benoit, Guerrero and Jericho, so with the ongoing weirdness between Guerrero and Malenko and Guerrero and Jericho, maybe Jericho was getting subbed in.

No matter what it was actually supposed to be it didn’t happen, and all the names in this paragraph got to fart around in circles for years until something better came along. Which, like Pillman, ended up being the WWF. Whoops!

Best: The Last Piece Of Benoit

Benoit gets a way-too-quick win over Billy Kidman in a match that’s three moves long and lasts about 1/4 as long as the promo, but it does feature one very important moment: the debut of the Crippler Crossface.

WWE Network/GIF

That move hurts so bad it could get you kayfabe addicted to heroin, making you scratch yourself all the time and convince you that befriending a bunch of jobbers who follow around an Eddie Vedder type who misquotes Poe and is a little too into the Offspring is a good idea.

Best: Scott Norton Powerbombs

Scott Norton wrestles like a dick sometimes and doesn’t sell shit for shit, but his powerbomb makes Kevin Nash’s look like like a damn Mark Starr armbar. Look at that thing. And you wonder why Chavo Guerrero went nuts and spent the rest of his WCW career riding hobby horses and selling Amway. BECAUSE YOUR BRAIN ISN’T SUPPOSED TO HAVE AN EVERYTHING DROPPED ON IT LIKE THAT.

When everyone went to the bar after this show, Chavo and Psicosis sat in the basement of the arena guarding a bee in a jar.

WWE Network

Best/Worst: He’s Bunkhouse Buck And Here’s Here To Funkhouse Fuck

The fighting Tag Team Champions The Outsiders have a match that’s surprisingly against someone other than The Extreme, but it’s not much better. They take on the ultimate roughneck team of Mean Mike Enos and BUNKHOUSE BUCK, aka “Rough N’ Not Ready.” Buck hasn’t been in an actual match on an important WCW show since like Fall Brawl 1995, so if this is your first time seeing him, imagine if Terry Funk’s entire character was, “just stepped out of an outhouse in the old west.”

This is hilariously one of the longest matches on the show, with Scott Hall doing that thing WCW workers do sometimes where they get real into Mike Enos and want to make him look good on TV. Mike Enos is like, secret Ric Flair. He can’t have a five-star match with a broomstick, but he’s the broomstick you’d choose if you were trying.

The Outsiders win, obviously, and it isn’t a great match, but Jesus, it’s at least a match.

Worst: The Main Event

This week’s main event is Harlem Heat vs. the Steiner Brothers. Here’s a picture of it:

WWE Network

I know, I’m shocked too.

The match ends about three minutes in when the nWo attacks, and Lex Luger and the Giant show up to team up with Harlem Heat and the Steiners and drive them away. Then, after the nWo has clearly fled, Sting rappels down from the ceiling again to join WCW (again) and point his bat at them. Combine this with the Uncensored finish and you’re like, “hey Sting, you want to like, hang out on the ground so you can walk out here when we need you, instead of taking five extra minutes to secure a bungee cord?”

Join us next week when [checks papers] uh, Sting doesn’t show up at all. And Prince Iaukea main-events? Oh for the love of-

WWE Network

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: The Crippler Crossface debuted, Scott Hall got hit in the face with a thrown soda, and Sting confirmed that he’s once again on WCW’s side. We got to see Ultimo Dragon without his mask, Desperado Joe Gomez and The Renegade are breaking up (no!) and the homie BUNKHOUSE BUCK got to wrestle the Tag Team Champions.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page. If you want to check out the Raw that aired opposite this Nitro, click here.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. Things have officially gone crazy in 1990s professional wrestling, and we want to write about it at least until Glacier has to sell his mystical armor at a yard sale.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for March 24, 1997.

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Worst: The Assassination Of The Renegade By The Coward Hacksaw Jim Duggan

This technically doesn’t happen until late in the episode, but it’s been bothering me all week and I desperately need to talk to someone about it. In a hundred episodes of trifling ass, cheating ass Jim Duggan loosely wrapping his hands in tape to gain super punching powers and brutally cheat-murdering people half his size, this stands out as a Hall of Fame moment of assholery.

Jim Duggan wrestles The Renegade, which is already like trying to eat a steaming hot bowl of soup in the middle of a car crash. They do the cruiserweight division Code of Honor handshake at the beginning, and J-Duggs is so impressed that he immediately reaches into his tights and tosses his Dicktape Of Doom into the crowd.

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The important question to ask here is why any fan would be excited to catch a roll of tape that’d been playing horseshoes with Jim Duggan’s dong. Bobby Heenan’s call here is amazing. “Wow. I won a roll of tape.”

Duggan and Renegade “wrestle” quotation marks quotation marks, and Renegade manages to take control. He hits a handspring back elbow and some clubbering forearms to Duggan’s back. Duggan’s response as a man who respected this young talent enough to publicly eschew his traditional method of cheating is to reach into his underwear and pull out a second roll of tape.

WWE Network

WWE Network

We know from the previous year’s V.K. Wallstreet match that Duggan always has AT LEAST two rolls of athletic tape in and around his junk. But yeah, patriotic Bloater Jim Duggan punishes an under-undercard talent for trying hard to win a wrestling match by cheating to beat him in a way he socially promised not to. Holy shit.

Heenan: “Clever man. ‘I’ll take TWO rolls of tape with me!’ What a plan!”

After the match, Duggan once again calls out Hulk Hogan. Hogan continues living the remainder of his life never thinking about Jim Duggan. Honestly, I wish there’d been some kind of payoff, whether it was 65 guys putting the boots to Duggan or the nWo enlisting him as their cheat-to-win doomsday device. Imagine how many cans of spray paint he could keep in his panties!

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Worst: The Ballad Of Ineffectual Dean Malenko

Dean Malenko’s first task as United States Champion is to build a wall between himself and Mexico. He faces Konnan, on one of those nights when Konnan completely forgets how to wrestle and walk like a human and possibly breathe, and throws missile dropkicks like he’s slipping on a banana peel.

Seriously, tell me when you’ve seen a worse dropkick attempt than this:

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It looks like a cat jump fail.

After the match, Malenko continues to hit the competition with lefts and alt-rights by saying Eddie Guerrero’s in the nWo. We find out that the champion of the United States will face the champion of Canada (Chris Benoit) at the next pay-per-view, Spring Stampede, and that when Malenko looks at him, it’s like “looking in a mirror.” The uh, mirror in the pool house.

So later in the night, Benoit gets a match against Hugh Morrus. The Dungeon of Doom interferes and costs him the match, and they stick around afterwards to Clubber and Lollygag him. Malenko runs out and tires to help, and the announce team is like, “he must want his Spring Stampede opponent to be at 100%!” Also, all that shit he just said about mirrors and respecting him. But yeah, Malenko runs out and gets beaten up too.

That leads to one of the very best reoccurring moments in ’90s wrestling:

Best: Nuclear Ric Flair Cock Attacks

Ric Flair has been out with an injury for a while now, and he’s really ever on the show to wear old man professor clothes and/or assistant coach windbreakers and brag-yell at Mean Gene about how many women he nails and how many low quality beers he drinks. He’s ready to go again, though, and he makes this known via the memorial Ric Flair Super Dick Attack.

Here it is in action:

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Ric Flair has trouble beating up one person, but if he needs to beat up four or more at once, he’s got it on lock. He’ll start with punches and chops, and when you get too close, he’ll drop you with a nutshot. He’s got three good ones:

1. the back leg raise to the dick
2. the kneeling uppercut to the butthole
3. the straight-up kick to the dick

He’ll spam these until everyone’s on the ground, then dance about it. He’s basically a Dynasty Warriors character. Flair decimates the entire Dungeon of Doom (‘s penises) by himself, moderates a staredown between future Horseman buddies Benoit and Malenko, then sticks around long enough to cut another Mean By God Gene promo about how Roddy Piper’s a goober for having a family instead of being in the Four Horsemen. Woo, et al.

In retrospect, 1997 WCW’s final assault on the nWo should’ve been sending Luger out to get beaten up by 10 guys, Ric Flair showing up to balls-smash them into submission, Piper sneaking up behind Hogan to put him to sleep (which is the only thing that ever actually works) and Sting running interference with bat shots until Luger’s Limit Break kicks in and he’s able to Rack everyone to death. Instead they’re like, “what if none of the good guys ever won and STEVIE RAY joined the nWo! Oh what if JEFF JARRETT joined the nWo too!”

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Worst: As The Haliburton Turns

You might be wondering where Jarrett and Mongo were when Benoit and Flair were fighting off the Dungeon of Doom. You really care about Xhamster’s greatest briefcase-centric cuckery, huh?

Well, Public Enemy has a match with Pew Pew High Voltage. The Four Horsemen don’t really seem to care what happens in this WCW vs. nWo war, to the point they were helping Roddy Piper pursue a personal grudge instead of helping the company they work for stay in business, but they care deeply about the Hockey Stoner Nasty Boys not winning a jobber squash. Jarrett and Debra jog out with the Haliburton and bash Johnny Grunge in the back, allowing Robbie Rage and Kenny Kaos and Ernie Electrocution or whoever score the upset.

The best part is after the match, when Mongo wanders out and wants to know why the hell Jarrett and Debra are launching briefcase offensives without him. His actual quote: “WHAT’S THIS PUNCH AND JUDY ACT GOING ON?” Check out fuckin’ Mongo Steve and his knowledge of 16th-century Italian commedia dell’arte.

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Best: Horsemen, Get It

Speaking of the Horsemen, they’re the stars of a hilarious Spring Stampede commercial portraying them as actual horsemen, dressed like Bret Hart in that one episode of Lonesome Dove, riding horses around what’s clearly an amusement park cowboy ghost town. If you ever wanted to see Chris Benoit in leather chaps and a neckerchief riding a horse, here’s your shot.

Watch it, it doesn’t make any goddamn sense. YOU PUSH THIS THING TO FAR.

God, I wish this had actually become their gimmick. Stern ’90s syndication frontiersman Arn Anderson and Ric Flair in a white duster. Although I guess bad things happen when you let Mongo near a horse.

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Next Week

Next week’s episode is the first and, believe it or not, only episode of WCW Monday Nitro I attended live. I went to a bunch of pay-per-views and a bunch of Thunders, but only one Nitro. And oh my God, it’s terrible. But my only true regret is that Lee Marshall was pretending to be on a payphone in my area and I didn’t know about it until halfway through this episode.

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Worst: Mean, Gene, Potatoes, Tomatoes

Flair’s just back from injury, they’re not ready to blow off the Sting angle yet and Hollywood Hogan’s too busy hanging out with Dennis Rodman and/or filming 3 Ninjas: The 36th Chamber Of Six Flags or whatever, so WCW has no idea what to do with the main events of their pay-per-views. Uncensored’s main event was EVERYBODY GO TO THE RING AND DO STUFF, EVERYTHING’S ON THE LINE, UH, BUT NOT REALLY, and Spring Stampede isn’t offering any better ideas.

The proposed main event is, and I shit you not, the Giant and Lex Luger (aka “Giant Package”) vs. Harlem Heat, with the winner — specifically the person who gets the decision — getting a shot at Hollywood Hogan at some unspecified point in the future. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it DOES ask Harlem Heat to cut promos on Hulk Hogan, which you may already know is magic.

So yeah, Giant Package show up to cut a promo, and the Giant’s got full moose-knuckle and a cut up t-shirt that looks like a bib. Luger has apparently gone deaf due to the pyro and leans into Gene trying to hear anything he says. It’s weird. I bet Stevie Ray gets that shot at Hogan!

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Harlem Heat follows this up with a mess of a win against the Faces of Fear, making me wonder why WCW patriots didn’t just repurpose the Dungeon of Doom and ride them into battle with the nWo like Tolkein beasts. It’s mostly notable for this closeup of Stevie’s mouth, which has probably already made you spend at least half a minute staring at it and thinking, “what’s wrong with Stevie’s mouth?”

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Best: Karate Fighters

Hulk Hogan would put his hand in this blood and say AH IT’S NOT HOT, because Mortis is here and it’s running cold. Radioactive Skeleton Kanyon makes his Nitro debut against the Lightning Feet of Jerry Flynn, which is absolutely the pro wrestling equivalent of those highlights of Chong Li advancing in the kumite in Bloodsport. All it needed was Mortis doing a big uppercut palm strike that misses by 15 feet and Flynn throwing his head back, spitting up a mouthful of blood and falling off the platform.

Flynn gets in way more offense than you’d expect, probably to keep everyone in the crowd from unanimously loving Mortis. Even today, most wrestling fans you meet will say “ugh, Glacier” in disgusted tones but praise the shit out of Mortis. We get a few move debuts from him here including the original version of the Flatliner — a turnbuckle-assisted Samoan drop — and that great thing he does where he puts his dick in your ear and rides your face into the ground. In retrospect I’m sad he didn’t do a Falcon Arrow, which totally would’ve been called the Kanyonarrow.

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Best: LA PARKA

While we’re on the subject of awesome looking skeleton wrestlers, check out La Parka’s incredible goth mariachi entrance gear with an enormous golden skull championship belt. BREH.

He gets a great little 4-minute victory over Juventud Guerrera, and I swear, there’s an undercurrent of, “when are they gonna get smart and push La Parka to the moon? Everybody loves him. Is it now? Oh it’s not now. It’s not ever. But wow, they should really push La Parka. EVERYBODY LOVES HIM.” This is going to happen at least six or seven more times before WCW goes out of business. See also: Crazy Chair La Parka at next year’s Souled Out, or even his weirdly racist dub gimmick. Pro wrestling fans love wrestling skeletons. Mortis, La Parka, Pentagon Jr. … one day somebody’s gonna really figure that out and do something with it.

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Best: Everything Dangerous

That Todd McFarlane Spider-Man-looking blur in the upper right of the picture is Psicosis, getting MAD AIR for a guillotine leg drop on Super Calo. These are the two most routinely dangerous and suicide-prone luchadors on the roster slash in the world, so I’m surprised Psico’s not diving onto him neck first, and that Calo isn’t like, scissoring a bed of nails while it happens.

It’s sloppy as hell, nowhere near as good as La Parka vs. Juventud and only three minutes long, but Super Calo could ride a bicycle into a brick wall at max speed and I’d probably love it.

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Just wanted to take a second to point out that since Nitro’s in Minnesota, wrestling legend and Curtis Axel’s grandpa Larry ‘The Ax’ Hennig is in the front row to watch a sparkly mariachi monster, a crazy man with horns leg-dropping a rap mascot from the ceiling, and Jerry Flynn getting out-karate’d by a fucking skeleton.

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Worst: Hey Did You Know We Still Have A Women’s Division

In case you missed it, WCW brought in the WWF Women’s Champion, had her throw WWF’s belt in the garbage and declare that WCW was the revolutionary force in women’s wrestling, then paid her to sit in the back and do nothing except a Las Vegas wedding cheaters angle for like a year. Whoops!

Madusa’s had a few seemingly drunken appearances over the past few weeks, complaining about “number one contenders” in a division that never features actual wrestlers or wrestling matches, but she finally gets to wrestle this week. Foooor 2 1/2 minutes. She faces Malia Hosaka, a USA chant breaks out, Hosaka forearms her in the throat and gets weakly German suplexed with like, Barker’s Beauty display hands (pictured). It’s not much, but hey, it’s wrestling existing.

On next week’s show, we find out that WCW’s introducing a second women’s belt. For a division with exactly one (1) person actively wrestling in it. Then two months later, that one person loses a retirement match. I’m not kidding. WHERE THE BIG GIRLS PLAY!

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Worst: The Amazing French-Canadians Get The Boot

The Steiner Brothers are supposed to face the Outsiders for the Tag Team Championship at Spring Stampede, so they’ve got to prove themselves in WCW’s “everybody cheat and do stupid shit and we’ll see who comes out on top” tag team division. Seriously, between the Horsemen, Public Enemy, Harlem Heat and the Amazing French-Canadians, I’m surprised any tag match ever had a clean finish. It’s just like, MY MANAGER INTERFERED, I HIT YOU WITH A FLAG, I HIT YOUR MANAGER WITH A BRIEFCASE, NOW THE SECOND MANAGER IS HERE, I PUNCHED THE MANAGER IN THE NUTS, OH NO YOU ROLLED ME UP AND WE’RE BOTH IN THE ROPES BUT THE REF’S COUNTING ANYWAY BECAUSE THIS IS THE FINISH, OH NO THE ARENA IS ON FIRE, OH NO BUFF BAGWELL IS A CHERNABOG AND HIT ME WITH SOME WEIGHTLIFTING EQUIPMENT.

Anyway, the Canadians lose like stupid idiots because one hit the other with Colonel Parker’s boot. One of wrestling’s weirdest accepted facts is that holding a shoe and hitting someone with it hurts way more than kicking someone while wearing the same shoe.

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Worst: UNCENSORED!

Finally this week, the nWo cash in that whole “challenge for a WCW title any time, any place” thing they won at Uncensored by having the Macho Man Randy Savage face Prince Iaukea for the TV title. That’s overkill, right? Couldn’t like, Big Bubba challenge him? Or M. Wallstreet? They’re more on Prince Iaukea’s garbage level. Booking Macho Man to face Prince is like asking Mike Tyson to box a 5th grader.

Macho Man just murders him, and hits him with one of the most gruesome diving elbow drops you’ll ever see. It’s less an “elbow” drop and more of an “entire body to your face” drop. Macho’s like, “hey brother, I’m gonna jump off the top rope and land in your mouth with my pelvis.” Savage won’t go for the pin, though, because the nWo doesn’t actually want or care about the goddamn TV title, and that cues Diamond Dallas Page to jump out of the crowd and start throwing hands at random nWo-ites.

Eventually it becomes too much, and the show ends with Page and Prince Iaukea getting beaten down and spray-painted (again) by the nWo. The crowd is chanting “we want Sting,” which results in no Sting. Being live to see Sting do something on a Nitro in 1997 must’ve felt like winning the lottery. He doesn’t show up here, and he doesn’t show up next week (at the show I was at) either. But he’s on WCW’s side, we swear!

Join us next week, when teen Brandon gets reasonably upset about paying for nosebleed seats and driving an hour just to watch La Parka job to Prince Iaukea.

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the nWo black and alt-white

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: In an act that made me want to flip a table 20 years later, Hacksaw Jim Duggan tossed his stashed roll of athletic tape into the crowd to have a fair fight with the Renegade, then defeated him by pulling out a second roll of tape when the match got hard and cheating anyway. Other stuff happened, but can we seriously take another minute to think about this?

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page. If you want to check out the Raw that aired opposite this Nitro, click here.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. Things have officially gone crazy in 1990s professional wrestling, and we want to write about it at least until Ernest Miller is tasked with fighting random backstage ninja attacks.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for March 31, 1997.

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Best: Welcome To An Arena Featuring Teen Brandon Stroud

First and most importantly (to me only), I want to point out that this is the one (1) episode of WCW Monday Nitro I ever got to attend live. I used to go to the Greensboro Coliseum for NWA a lot as a kid, I’ve been to a Starrcade, I’ve been to a Great American Bash and four Fall Brawls and like half a dozen Thunder tapings, but only this one Nitro. And it’s terrible.

Fun note: The only episode of Raw I attended live in the ’90s happens at the end of ’97 in the same arena, and features Goldust in a ball gag and a metal boob bikini. I didn’t go to another WWE event until Unforgiven 1999 in Charlotte. Which, uh, featured Kennel From Hell. The ’90s weren’t very kind to me.

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Worst: All The Black Spandex In The World

Over on WWF television, Stone Cold Steve Austin is steadily becoming the biggest star in wrestling. WCW had fired him in 1995, and according to Austin himself in The Stone Cold Truth, Eric Bischoff had told him, “you go out there in those black trunks and black boots, and there’s not a whole lot of ways for me to market that.”

This week’s Nitro features Lex Luger (in black trunks) teaming up with The Giant (in black trunks) versus Rick Fuller (in black trunks) and Roadblock (in black trunks). Granted, Giant’s wearing his Andre the Giant caveman onesie and Roadblock and Fuller are both in granny bathing suits, but you get the point. It’s a BLACK SPANDEX BONANZA at the top of Mundy Nite Nitro. Luger and Giant are part of that bizarrely thrown-together Spring Stampede “main event” against Harlem Heat, so they get a quick win with their finishers.

Thankfully this is a one time thing, and WCW never has to rely on the insane, sudden popularity of a bald guy in black boots and black trunks.

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Best: Stevie Ray’s Boxing Jacket

After the match, Harlem Heat runs in and jumps the faces to help the heat of a possible Hollywood Hogan vs. Stevie Ray showdown at Starrcade reach critical mass. Three highlights here:

1. Stevie Ray is wearing one of those too-colorful leather dad jackets people wore in the ’90s. It has boxing gloves on it and says BOXING down the front. He loves boxing! I think it’s great that Steve was like, “I’m going to be wrestling on this wrestling show, what should I wear? OOH, MY BOXING JACKET!” I just hope it has Bugs Bunny and the Tasmanian Devil in backwards jeans boxing on the back.

2. Tony Schiavone refers to them as “members of Harlem Heat,” as if they aren’t the only two. Is there a larger gang conglomerate known as “Harlem Heat,” and we’ve just been getting to know two of their representatives? I guess it’d explain why two guys from Houston are repping Harlem.

3. I just realized that this is positioning Harlem Heat as possible opponents for Hollywood Hogan, which means they’re going to have to cut a promo on him at Spring Stampede, which means we’re about to get our magical first introduction of the Hulkster and the N-word.

Worst: Just What We Needed, A SECOND Women’s Title To Ignore
Best: (Joshi Legends On Nitro Before They Were Joshi Legends!)

Up next we have a first round match in the WCW Women’s Cruiserweight Championship tournament, which makes total sense when your one notable female wrestler has spent the past month complaining about how the company hasn’t let her wrestle on TV for a year. If you’re like, “wow, I don’t remember WCW even HAVING a women’s cruiserweight title,” there’s a good reason. The tournament finals happen on an episode of WCW Main Event in April and the title immediately goes to Japan, where it’s vacated five months later and forgotten forever. Whoops!

Here’s the good news:

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This Nitro features the debut of Drew Gulak’s (and my) choice for best wrestler in the world, Meiko Satomura. You may remember her from that time she absolutely stole the show at Chikara’s King of Trios 2012, from when she won it in 2016, or from her endless catalogue of amazing work in World Wonder Ring Stardom, Sendai Girls’ Pro Wrestling and Gaea Japan. She is so. good.

In 1997 though, she was 25 years old and had been in the business less than two years, wrestling in front of a yokel Virginia crowd holding up Confederate flags and booing anything that wasn’t the Four Horsemen. And she’s in the ring against … holy shit, Toshie Uematsu?

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Yep, this episode of Nitro I randomly got to attend in 1997 featured two future joshi legends when they were in their early-to-mid 20s, still trying to make names for themselves. And don’t think this is a Lucha Underground scenario where female Japanese stars show up and blow everyone away and become beloved. Nobody knows who they are, they aren’t really themselves yet, and they’re so nervous they like, Tiger Mask wall flip onto their own heads:

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It’s kind of a nightmare. Larry Zbyszko spends the entire match complaining about having to pronounce Japanese names, and refers to them as “that one” and “the other one.” Teenage me is like, God, why did I have to watch that, when’s Sting rappelling down? Adult me is like, OH MY GOD DUDE CAN YOU BELIEVE YOU GOT TO SEE THAT? It’s like when it took me 20 years to realize I’d seen Giant Baba wrestle in a Crockett Cup and had booed him for being foreign and beating the Rock N’ Roll Express.

The WCW Women’s Cruiserweight Championship is never mentioned on Nitro again.

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Worst: This Is A Picture Of Psicosis Vs. Villano IV

So WCW’s like, “the match between two Japanese women didn’t go well, let’s see if Virginia will pop for two Mexican guys … no, not the popular ones.” So we end up with Psicosis vs. Villano “Not Ray Mendoza Jr.” IV. And by “we end up with,” I mean, “they instantly go backstage to watch the nWo arrive and drink coffee.”

The major plot point of the episode is that Scott Hall is on the disabled list with alcoholism, Hollywood Hogan and most of the important New World Order types are at the premiere of Dennis Rodman’s Jean-Claude Van Damme banger Double Team, and Nash has to lead a total nWo B-teamers through this Nitro. M. Wallstreet, the B-est of the B-teamers, is upset about it. He storms off in a huff, and we’re supposed to believe that losing Mike Rotunda in sunglasses and jeans for an evening is the first crack in the foundation of the group or whatever. In fact, the main event is Nash and Syxx taking over the announce booth to explain what the nWo’s doing when they’re off-screen. More on that at the end.

Note: If you’re wondering what Nash is wearing on his hip in that shot, so was I. I even asked Twitter about it, and everybody was like, “garage door opener?” until Nash himself answered me.

If you don’t know what that is, it’s a device that sends pulses through your body to make it release endorphins to fight chronic pain. I’m surprised he didn’t move the sensors to his ass after having to deal with the Rotunda and Norton Kangol connection.

Psicosis wins with a leg drop.

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Worst: A Complete Re-Do Of Last Week

On last week’s episode, Chris Benoit wrestled Hugh Morrus. The Dungeon of Doom and “Sullivan” Kevin Sullivan attacked Benoit, causing Ric Flair to return to action and incapacitate the entire group with measured jabs and dick attacks.

This week, Chris Benoit and Hugh Morrus have a rematch. The Dungeon of Doom and Kevin “Sullivan” Sullivan attack Benoit again, causing Ric Flair to return to action again and incapacitate the entire group with measured jabs and dick attacks again. It’s the exact same thing. At least upgrade Flair’s cock assault to like, a pop-up jock kick.

Worst: Old Man Tinder

Flair’s major role in this episode is to interact with Roddy Piper, who has a great dad joke comedy bit about how women have told him they call Flair’s waterbed “the dead sea.” That was such a burn Flair should’ve had to lock himself in a furniture store for a week to deal with it. But yeah, Flair and Piper passive-aggressively hate each other but are also horny old man best friends, so they cut a long, long (long) rambling promo about partying, who they’ve respectively ran out of territories — get hype for some timely Mark Lewin jokes — and whether or not Flair will be able to hook Piper up with enough local moms to convince him to be a Horseman.

That’s not a joke. They try to cut them off with Piper’s music, but Flair waves it off and brings a gloriously discount Miss Elizabeth in mom jeans into the ring to hug Piper and say she “loves the Hot Rod.” Gene kinda sorta laughs about how they’re going to split roast her at the Marriott, and Flair and Piper do some corny old man slapstick:

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This is the “walking in on your parents having sex” of Nitro segments.

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Worst: As The Haliburton Turns

As for the rest of the Horsemen, yes, they’re arguing about who hit who with a metal briefcase and why. Oh, is this that episode?

Jeff Jarrett and Steve “Bunkhouse Cuck” McMichael team up to take on the Amazing French-Canadians, which in terms of clean match finishes is like Rube Goldberg fighting an OK Go video. As you guessed if you’ve watched even one of these episodes before, Public Enemy fatly jog out, steal the Haliburton from Debra and try to hit Jeff Jarrett with it. But as that’s happening, Colonel Parker sneaks up and steals it from THEM. He slides it into the ring, allowing Jacques Rougeau to blindside Mongo with it and get the pin. When Mongo wakes up, he sees Jeff Jarrett holding the briefcase and blames him for the attack, because if you’re gonna turn on your partner and hit them with empty luggage, you’re gonna want to stick around holding it and looking concerned afterward.

WCW should’ve just made the tag team division anything goes all the time, with the champs being the team that could come up with the craftiest schemes with the best timing. Why is ever goddamn tag team match a jewel heist?

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Best: Lance In The Pants

Speaking of jewels — I am a great writer — Diamond Dallas Page faces newcomer “Lance Ringo,” the pre-crisis identity of future Raven’s Flock member Sick Boy. So, Well Boy? He tries to get under Page’s skin by bringing out Randy Savage’s nWo-edited copy of Playboy Nude Celebrities, featuring scrapbook graffiti to cover Kimberly’s boobs. Page is like, “derp,” and beats him with a fireman’s carry Diamond Cutter in like 90 seconds.

The real money moment here is the post-match interview, which features two important moments:

1. DDP realizing he shouldn’t have initially sold his wife’s Playboy spread with angry shame and retconning the story into, “we’re proud of Kimberly’s shoot, I’m just mad about what Savage and Elizabeth did to her afterward.”

2. Macho Man showing up in the crowd to reveal that he’s apparently read Page’s Wikipedia page. The promo’s like, “your name is Diamond Dallas Page! Your finishing hold is the Diamond Cutter!” The best part is when he drops the world’s nastiest diss in wrestling history:

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“My question to you is, what are you, some kind of GEMOLOGIST or something?”

Via GIPHY

He follows that up by saying he doesn’t think Page has “family jewels,” and Page is so Diamond Dallas Enraged by the insult that he climbs into the crowd and chases Savage away. That’s the kind of dry cool dad wit that would’ve made even Ric Flair and Rowdy Roddy Piper do anime facefaults. Although to be fair, Flair invented it.

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Worst: Damn, Lee

Lee Marshall making WCW accept his collect calls just so he can call Bobby Heenan a weasel in the most roundabout way possible has started getting mean. Here, Lee launches into a thing about how NASA originally wanted to send weasels into space instead of monkeys, but the weasels wouldn’t stop “whimpering and wetting themselves.”

Eventually it’s gonna be like:

Lee: Thanks Tony I’m in Memphis Tennessee, site of the Blues Hall of Fame and home to the Memphis Tigers, hanging out at a Nitro party with the crew on the world famous BEALE street, and Bobby, I was WALKING in Memphis and I saw the ghost of ELVIS, and he gave me a special message from down in the jungle room!
Bobby: what’s that
Lee: FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING WEASEL

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Best: I Want La Parka’s Jacket

Last week’s episode featured La Parka as a skeleton mariachi, and I was like, “he’s never going to be able to top that.” And then this week La Parka’s glorious ass shows up in a ring jacket that is JUST HIS GIANT FACE. It’s a LA PARKA PARKA. For real, La Parka should’ve been the cultural event of the ’90s.

I can’t imagine something bad enough to make me dislike La Parka.

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Oh.

Worst: La Parka Having To Walk Prince Iaukea Through A Match And Then Lose To Him In The Stupidest Way

WCW’s deaf, dumb and blind love affair with Prince Iaukea continues this week as La Parka holds his hand and tries to walk him through a fast-paced cruiserweight affair while Prince makes “I love you” Jimmy Snuka hands and relentlessly shits the bed. At one point Parka just stops selling for him and sets up spots independent of the additional wrestling happening. Like, what else are you supposed to do with Squats McDropkick over here?

The finish is extra dumb, with Prince hitting a flying crossbody on La Parka while La Parka’s holding a chair, which somehow hurts La Parka but leaves Prince unfazed. I think the idea is that it’s supposed to hurt both of them but Prince has the momentum, so he’d land on a temporarily knocked out opponent and pin him. But Prince doesn’t consider selling for even a second, and just pops right back up into his squatting I Love You karate hands. Poor Tony tries to cover it up by being like, “I think Prince hit the chair with his abs instead of his chest, which absorbed some of the blow,” and Prince is like LOOK AT ME I’M CRAB WALKIN’.

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Best: Lord Steven Regal Loses His Goddamn Mind

Lord Steven Regal is pissed. Like us, he’s had to sit around for the past few months watching Prince Iaukea wrestle instead of being one half of a bunch of legendary Regal vs. Mysterio TV title matches. Before his match with future WrestleMania opponent Chris Jericho, Regal cuts a bad-ass promo about how all the planchas in the world won’t save “bloody dwarf” Mysterio from Regal turning him into a vegetable.

Regal’s not paying enough attention to Jericho, so Jericho’s able to O’Connor roll him with a bridge and score the upset in about two minutes. That causes Regal to pay LOTS of attention, and the wrestling match turns into Regal bludgeoning the ever loving shit out of him with palm strikes, kneeing him in the face like Jericho owes him money, and Regal Stretching him to death. It’s awesome.

Jericho’s a pretty low level guy at this point, so the only people who show up to save him are like, Billy Kidman-quality. The Renegade runs out and pretends like he’s going to help, but then gets scared and doesn’t, continuing his extremely important heel turn. Desperado Joe Gomez shows up right after that to try to help, but he draws the Queen of Diamonds, boy, and gets thrown out before he’s able. The best moment happens when future Chris Jericho ally LENNY LANE makes his Nitro debut, and Regal 1000% F’s up his Christmas.

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Lenny Lane, his balls are in his ears, and in his eyes.

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Worst: Your Mom Gets Naked And Wrestles Akira Hokuto

Meet DEBBIE COMBS, who looks and dresses like one of the Donatello Triplets from that one episode of The Golden Girls. She’s a 22-year veteran who absolutely looks like she started women’s wrestling in 1975, enters in a jacket that makes her look like a tree-topper and wrestles in what looks like a fat suit without clothes on it.

Seriously, welcome to NAKED GRANDMA THE WRESTLER:

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If you read up on Debbie, she came up as a teen in Angelo Poffo’s ICW and used to date the Macho Man, who I hope broke up with her by saying, “DEBBIE COMBS, MY QUESTION TO YOU IS, WHAT ARE YOU, SOME KIND OF HAIR STYLIST OR SOMETHING?”

Debbie’s job here is to look like a nude Cabbage Patch doll, hit the world’s lowest high crossbody and execute a gutwrench suplex onto her own face before losing to Akira Hokuto. But hey, if the dude from the B-52s is watching, he’s probably got a new favorite wrestler.

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Best: Drunk Madusa Almost Kills A Cool Cat

After the match, your friend’s drunk mom Madusa shows up to yell “ROANOKE ROCKS!” before getting attacked by Hokuto. The true highlight here is when Sonny Onoo flees and tries to hide behind Nitro’s pre-Nitro Girls mascot WILDCAT WILLIE, causing this great screenshot that looks like Madusa’s about to shootfight a radical NASCAR cat in sunglasses.

This is actually the second great Wildcat Willie moment of the episode. The first is when he covers his eyes as Lance Ringo walks past him with Kimberly’s Playboy. Can somebody fish that suit out of storage and send Wildcat Willie to WrestleCon? I’d rather meet him than, like, Ric Flair’s French maid and Bull Dempsey.

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Best Worst: Robbie Rage Should Stop Agreeing To Take Steiner Screwdrivers

The Steiner Brothers wrestle High Voltage again and OH GOD

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Robbie, how little do you value your life that you keep volunteering to let Scotty Steiner dick you in the face while he drops your entire body weight on the top of your head? Robbie took one of these in Disney World, too. I’m guessing we don’t see Robbie Rage at any wrestling conventions because he’s just a head in a jar.

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Worst: nWo State Of The Union

As mentioned, this week’s main event is Kevin Nash and Syxx taking over the announce booth to explain that Scott Hall is “dealing with things more important than wrestling,” and that if Nash has to face the Steiners by himself at Spring Stampede, he will. Spoiler alert: he doesn’t, and he wouldn’t have.

They also shade Hollywood Hogan and the rest of the nWo for going to the Double Team premiere instead of “handling business” on Nitro, which if you watched this Nitro clearly means “make M. Wallstreet happy and literally nothing else.” There’s no other nWo content. They just show up, Wallstreet’s like, “why are we here,” and leaves. And Nash is like, I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS CRAP, I WON’T LET THE NWO FALL APART, I WILL DESTROY WCW BY MYSELF IF I HAVE TO. I wish Buff Bagwell had joined them via satellite to be like, “Double Team was great, I gave character actor Paul Freeman a Too Sweet, it looks like you guys handled that La Parka vs. Prince Iaukea match without incident, congratulations.”

The best part is Bobby Heenan trying to flee the announce table and getting his foot hooked on the cords. Watch and try to figure out if he’s doing it on purpose. Then spend the rest of the afternoon watching Tony Schiavone’s face:

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Next Week: A Spring Stampede, which is not as cool as a Canadian Stampede, but slightly better than an Oklahoma.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: The nWo started falling apart because half of them wanted to go to the world premiere of Dennis Rodman’s new Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, and half wanted to stay at Nitro and make sure M. Wallstreet was happy. Also, a tournament began for a WCW Women’s Cruiserweight Championship you’re never going to see or hear mentioned again.

Click here to watch this pay-per-view on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page. If you want to check out the Raw that aired opposite this Nitro, click here.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. Things have officially gone crazy in 1990s professional wrestling, and we want to write about it at least until Miss Hancock gets pregnant with a stack of 8x10s.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Spring Stampede for April 6, 1997.

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Worst: Lee Marshall Investigates

So the main story of Spring Stampede is a continuation of Nitro; Kevin Nash is increasingly pissed about the New World Order and Hollywood Hogan spending all their time watching Mickey Rourke landmine a tiger to death than be wrestlers on a wrestling show, and he’s starting to take it out on everyone else.

Hogan’s not here tonight. Neither is Scott Hall, who is supposed to defend the Tag Team Championship with Nash against the Steiner Brothers. In an absolutely nightmarish journalism scenario, WCW sends Stagger Lee Marshall backstage to get a statement from Nash in the goddamn middle of a Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Ultimo Dragon match. Lee goes knocking on the nWo dressing room door to tell Nash Nitro’s gonna be in Huntsville on Monday and how Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ was originally intended to be a response to Neil Young’s hit song WEASEL MAN and how southern men don’t need weasels around anyhow, and Syxx answers. Lee doesn’t know how to talk to anyone he hasn’t called collect from a hundred miles away and gets the door shut in his face.

Rey Mysterio wins with a hurricanrana.

Anyway, when the match is finally over we can get back to the important stuff, and Lee once again goes a-knockin’. It’s super funny for some reason to see him knocking all rigidly and yelling “KEVIN NASH! KEVIN NASH!” in his Tony the Tiger voice.

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Syxx opens the door again, and before Lee can explain that 1-800-CALL-ATT is for pussies, A Restaurant Owner barges in. Nash pops in to say his only demand if he’s defending tag titles in a handicap match is that Nick Patrick be the referee, because of course it is, and spits in Steiner’s face. As you may know, Scotty Steiner is famous for his level head and even temperament, and he handles the situation with class and grace.

Just kidding, he punches a random dude in the face and WCW Security Santa Doug Dellinger maces him.

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God, I wish he’d sprayed Lee. But yeah, Steiner’s random punch leads to him getting held to the ground and arrested, conveniently allowing the Steiner Brothers vs. Outsiders Tag Team Championship match to become Kevin Nash vs. Rick Steiner.

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Best: Kevin Nash Goes Castigo Excesivo

So the stage is set for one of the most complicated-to-explain simple matches ever. It’s a singles match for the Tag Team Championship. Scott Steiner has been bear-maced and arrested, Rick Steiner has inner ear problems from that time the nWo tried to kill him in real life, Scott Hall is trapped in the Upside Down and Nick Patrick is a sleeveless, evil referee. Plus Syxx is out here for some reason and Ted DiBiase is on managerial duties, meaning it’s four-on-one against an injured guy for tag titles.

Amazingly, the story works. It’s interesting. Basically Nash is fed the hell up with how ridiculous all of this is and just wants to kill a dude, but he’s Kevin Nash, so he’s still inherently lazy until pushed over the edge. So he ends up jackknifing Steiner and Steiner kicks out, and Nash is like, “okay, you’re dead.” Syxx pulls off the turnbuckle pad and Nash hits Snake Eyes onto it, followed by a second jackknife. Ted DiBiase is like, “hey man, that’s enough,” and Nash is like nope, another Snake Eyes. Nash is like, “I’m going to throw him on his car wreck ear.” DiBiase walks out, so Nash hits ANOTHER Snake Eyes and ANOTHER jackknife. Even Nick Patrick is like, “holy shit, dude,” and they have to make him count the pin.

It’s a great moment, because it momentarily removes Nash from his role as “bored, disingenuous tall guy” and makes him an actual brutal pro wrestling monster, which he probably should be. He’s sick of the nWo being this lethargic, sluggish conglomerate who holds biker babe beauty pageants and dresses up jerks like Sting. He wants to get back to the good old days of wrecking people and throwing them face-first into the sides of production trailers.

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Best: DDP Becomes A Star, For Real This Time

Nowhere on the show is that nWo dynamic stronger than in the main event, with Macho Man Randy Savage taking on Diamond Dallas Page in a no disqualification match. Page is a guy the entire nWo hates and wants dead. Savage has him in a no disqualification match, which could START with every nWo guy in the ring with a tire iron. Instead, Savage goes it alone, and spends the early portion of the match posing for Asian babies in the front row. The nWo just hangs out backstage. The entire feud up until this point has been built around Savage assuming Page isn’t in his league, so much so that he just learned his name six days ago and mostly identifies him as the guy with the hot wife. Page is this hungry, grungy motherfucker who I guess just made up with his hot wife and wants to be a good dude to make up for that whole “stealing her lottery winnings and almost losing her to a Little Richard impersonator and a weird version of Brutus Beefcake that’s super into butts” thing. Page has a bulletproof finish. Macho is like, “pfft, you’ll never get that on me.”

Savage spends most of the early portion of the match stalling, which is perfect for the story. When the brawling starts getting real, we start figuring out that yeah, Savage isn’t taking him seriously, but he also actually doesn’t want to get hit with a Diamond Cutter and has done his homework. So he’s able to reverse it a couple of times, and Page is forced to sorta fight this wrestling legend as a completely formed competitor, and not just a guy with a good move. Savage gets dirtier and dirtier the more Page rises up. It’s great.

And that’s where it ties back into the bigger nWo story. Savage counters a Diamond Cutter with a backslide but he can’t get Page down, so he hits a cheap low blow. He goes for the pin, but Page kicks out. Savage decides to take out his frustrations on 2-foot-4 22-pound referee Mark Curtis, piledriving him and whipping him with his own belt. Out jogs Nick Patrick to seal the deal, and Savage is at his most confident. He scoops up Page to slam him to hit the flying elbow drop, but Page is like, “whoops, homework this,” and drops him with the Cutter. Nick Patrick, who I should remind you is already having a terrible night, doesn’t want to make the count, but he has to. Savage is OUT, because the Diamond Cutter is the damn truth, and Page wins a main-event against one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, against all odds.

And that is where it ties back in to Nash. How do you think Nash responds to Patrick making that count?

Yep.

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When Savage wakes up, he’s done with the confidence. He’s back to shifty-eyed, violent, lashing-out-at-everyone Savage and goes for the first person he sees: Kimberly. If you aren’t a longtime WCW viewer, Savage does not have great relationships with women. Everybody in WCW stays in the back — maybe Lex Luger’s in the showers, sure, but yo Jim Duggan, you wanna run your Gorillas in the Mist ass out here and wrap up your fists and help?

Surprisingly it’s Kimberly’s neighbor Eric Bischoff who steps up.

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Bischoff is like, “maybe don’t end our pay-per-view by making people watch you beat up somebody’s wife,” and they get into a shoving match. That leads to Savage just slapping HIM in the face a few times, and the nWo finally gets in the ring to pull them apart and try to calm things down. Everything I’ve typed in this entire column so far would be great if I hadn’t actually watched these shows in 1997 and didn’t remember what happens the next night on Nitro. You can probably guess.

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Worst: The Horsemen Are Falling Apart Too, But Nobody Cares

Ric Flair cuts a promo to let us know he’ll be cleared for action on May 1st, which is still a month away. But he’s putting together a supergroup, asking Rowdy Roddy Piper to team up with him and football star Kevin Greene to face some combination of the nWo at Slamboree. Yes, the same Kevin Greene Flair paid Mongo to turn on at the Great American Bash. The other guy locked himself in Alcatraz for a week. Man, I don’t even know.

He also wants a shoot fight with Eric Bischoff — no pencils, bookerman! — and says the Horsemen are reunited and at full strength. Let’s see if that’s true.

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Well, here’s Flyboy Rocco Rock about to deliver a devastating Haliburton Briefcase To The Back from the BOTTOM ROPE, giving it that extra pageantry it needs. Mongo sees Public Enemy trying to use the briefcase and gets into the ring, and the referee thinks HE’S trying to interfere and holds him back. So Mongo just goes back into his corner and holds up Four Horsemen hands with his back to the ring, allowing Rocco to hit his OMG Moment from like half a foot in the air and win the match for TPE.

So Little Lord Fauntleroy and Cuck Butkis over here aren’t on the same page, let’s check in on Benoit and Arn.

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Nope. Here’s Kevin Sullivan doing irreparable damage to Chris Benoit’s brain at like minute 18 of his United States Championship match against Dean Malenko, causing a disqualification. If you’re wondering where Arn is, he stepped aside when Sullivan told him to step aside and let him interfere. Yes, Ric, the Horsemen are at FULL STRENGTH. DANCE ALL NIGHT DANCE A LITTLE LONGER.

Another weird note here is that after Sullivan interferes, he gets knocked off the apron onto an injured Eddie Guerrero, who either also trying to interfere or trying to stop the interference after the DQ. The Dungeon of Doom steals the United States Championship, because they haven’t done a “steal the belt” angle in a few weeks, and force it onto Eddie’s shoulder as they drag him away.

Again, this is setting up an anti-Horsemen angle that never actually happens. “This is setting up something that never happens” should’ve been the name of WCW’s weekly show.

Worst: The Other Title Matches Are Rotten, Too

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I’m sure you were like, “I hope Prince Iaukea is still Television Champion after Spring Stampede!” Here’s some good news to tell your destitute family, huddled together in an abandoned warehouse on the edge of town, looking for any, any reason to cling to this futile process we call life and believe hope still exists in God’s cruel world: Prince Iaukea won with a roll-up.

In actual good news, Regal spends like five minutes after the horrible match beating the dog shit out of him, locking him in multiple Regal Stretches and basically destroying his entire face and torso. This becomes important on the next night’s Nitro, when WCW finally realizes their mistake, puts the belt on a different person and then has Regal beat THEM at Slamboree. Instead of, you know, letting Regal just murder this squatting fuck like everyone including Prince Iaukea’s parents and Godmother wanted to see here.

All I want to point out about the Women’s Championship Match is the finish, which defies the laws of physics so blatantly it’ll make you feel like you’re living life in reverse. So Madusa hits a German on Akira Hokuto and Sonny Onoo’s supposed to break it up, but he’s too busy playing with Snapchat filters on his disposable camera or whatever to hit his cue, so Hokuto has to awkwardly kick out of it. Then they go to the actual finish, which is supposed to be Madusa going for a powerbomb, Luna tripping her while the ref is busy with Onoo, and Hokuto falling on top of her for the pin.

Instead, we get this:

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Madusa goes for a powerbomb. Luna Vachon slides in and kicks Madusa in the back of the leg, which causes Madusa to fall FORWARD somehow, completing the powerbomb. But since she got kicked during it, the powerbomb doesn’t hurt Hokuto at all, and Madusa is like, completely knocked out from a blow to the back of her knee and a forward roll. NAILED IT.

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Best: And Now, The Moment You All Came To See

At Spring Stampede, the Giant, Lex Luger and Members Of Harlem Heat compete in a fatal four-way to name a new number one contender for Hollywood Hogan’s WCW Heavyweight Championship. That means Harlem Heat has to cut a promo on Hogan, and if you’ve been a wrestling fan on the Internet at any point in the past 20 years, you know what that means. Ladies and gentlemen, behold Booker T accidentally dropping an N-bomb on Hulk Hogan and immediately realizing his mistake. Behold the face of a man who seriously thinks he’s about to be fired.

Tell me he didn’t just say that.

Ah, it’s okay, Book. Don’t sweat it. I’m sure Hogan’s said way worse about you.

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Best: A Giant Gesture

As for the match itself, it’s … well, it’s a Harlem Heat vs. Giant and Lex Luger match. You kinda know what you’re getting when you start watching it. Lots of Luger bumping by falling down like he’s in a video game and nobody animated a “falling down” gesture so he just turns completely horizontal and falls. Lots of chicken dance arm pumping to call for the Torture Rack, and lots of not believing Harlem Heat’s going to challenge Hollywood Hogan for anything.

I do like the finish a lot, though. The idea is that whomever gets the decision becomes the number one contender, right? So the Giant has the match won and calls for AAAAH THE CHOKESLAM, but instead chooses to walk over to Lex and use his chokeslam hand to make a tag. Former WCW turncoat turned nWo oustee the Giant, a guy who spend the past few months learning how horrible it is when you have a title shot coming and you don’t get it, realizes superhuman-ass Lex Luger is the best shot at taking the belt away from Hogan. So he tags him in and lets him get the Torture Rack and the win, even setting him up with a rack taunt. It’s great, and a nice little moment of redemption for the character.

And that’s where we stand heading into Nitro. The nWo is in shambles, and half the members won’t even come to the show. Meanwhile we’ve got Sting on WCW’s side, Lex Luger with a guaranteed title shot, Diamond Dallas Page coming into his own as a Top Guy with something to prove, and Ric Flair at least attempting to bring together the Horsemen and finally use Roddy Piper for WCW’s gain. Everything’s building to a blowff in a couple of months at the Great American Bash, and by “in a couple of months” I mean “nine months from now,” and by “at the Great American Bash” I mean “actually never.”

But it’s a nice story for now.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: We took a look at Spring Stampede 1997, the pay-per-view where Booker T accidentally calls Hulk Hogan the n-word. Really that’s the most historically important moment. Please go watch that promo and laugh 100 more times.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. Things have officially gone crazy in 1990s professional wrestling, and we want to write about it at least until the wrestling boy band befriends an MMA fighter and they get into feuds based around people stealing and using their dancing circles.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for April 7, 1997.

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Worst: It Is Extremely Important To Know How The nWo Feels

The above picture is a shot from Lord Steven Regal vs. Rey Mysterio Jr.

On the previous episode, Hollywood Hogan, Eric Bischoff and … I don’t know, Big Bubba? Chono? went to the world premiere of Dennis Rodman’s new-in-1997 Jean-Claude Van Damme theater-banger Double Team instead of going to Nitro. That left Kevin Nash alone (or with Syxx, which is also “alone”) to deal with the nWo’s biggest pro wrestling-related problems, such as the car manslaughter revenge of the Steiner Brothers, Nick Patrick’s increasing inability to perform his duties as a crooked referee, and keeping Michael Wallstreet happy. This pissed off Nash something fierce, so at Spring Stampede Nash got Scott Steiner jailed, put Rick Steiner in the Ear Hospital and powerbombed Patrick for counting a couple of threes he didn’t want to count. Meanwhile, Macho Man Randy Savage got pushed from wanky indifference to UNSTOPPABLE RAGE thanks to a loss to Diamond Dallas Page, tried to hit Page’s wife and ended up smacking Eric Bischoff instead.

This Monday, the nWo basically has two choices:

1. They can fall apart, allowing their extremely popular, industry-changing storyline to come to its logical conclusion at the proper time, or

2. They can rewrite everything on the fly so the nWo is totally fine and drag this out for another six months, when they’ll be forced to make one of these two choices again.

Yes, the nWo is basically the United States Congress. “We have the option of fixing this now or just pretending it doesn’t exist and fixing it later.” They even both pander to Wallstreet! I am a great writer!

Rey Mysterio wins by disqualification. Up next is Chris Benoit vs. Ice Train. Here’s a picture:

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Well, at least we get to watch part of it on the split-screen.

The entire first hour of the show is basically Tony Schiavone going, “Okay, wrestling fans, there appears to be some sort of wrestling happening in the ring, but don’t worry, we’re going to keep an eye on the bathrooms and if Scott Flash Norton takes a shit at any point during hour number one, we’ll send a camera man back there to make sure to capture all the action.”

The point of Chris Benoit vs. Ice Train is that Hollywood Hogan is telling Kevin Nash that without Nash being nWo 4 Life™, the WCW Championship belt means nothing. Randy Savage is on crutches and basically trying to kill everyone in the room by tensing up until the sweat shoots out of his face like lasers. The nWo is going to either “do the thing right now” — one of those statements Hogan makes that aren’t sexual but sound SUPER sexual, like how he calls lifting weights with his friends “hanging and banging” — or they’re 4 Life™. We’ll find out in the ring at the end of hour number one.

Chris Benoit wins with a DDT.

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Also, uh, green?

After Benoit vs. the Polar Express, we check out a video package of what Hollywood Hogan and the nWo were actually doing at the Double Team premiere. Hogan explains that Rodman’s in the nWo because they want to “have fun and make a lot of money,” and Rodman explains (more or less) that he’s better than Ric Flair because wears gold robes AND bathes himself in body glitter, so he physically looks like jewelry. Hogan also brags to JCVD about hooking up with Dennis Rodman’s sister, which is exactly as awkward as you’d imagine:

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I wonder if Brooke Hogan had any thoughts on it.

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This really goes on forever. I’m so sorry.

At the end of hour number one — I really can’t stop saying it like Tony — the nWo comes out in two groups. The first, led by Hollywood Hogan, which we’ll call the “nWo Black & White.” The second is led by Kevin Nash, so we’ll call them the “nWo Wolfpac.” Just coming up with these names off the top of my head. Ted DiBiase takes on the role of moderator, explaining the situation between Hogan and Nash, explaining the situation between Savage and Bischoff, and expounding on the idea that the nWo will either break up and fight each other right now, or patch up their differences and remain nWo 4 Life™. After that, Hogan takes the microphone and says all of the exact same things. It’s like when you make a joke at a party and nobody laughs, and then a cooler person says it five minutes later and everybody loves it.

Hogan tells Nash the same stuff he told him in the cutaway from Benoit vs. Snowpiercer: if Nash isn’t nWo 4 Life™, the nWo Heavyweight Championship means nothing, and he and The Big Man need to Do The Thing right here, right now. Nash is like, “I know I’ve spent the past two weeks angrily complaining about there being a problem, but there’s no problem. It’s fine.” Hogan repeats himself again and preps like he’s about to fight. Nash clarifies, and I’m paraphrasing, but just barely: “When you’re nWo, you’re nWo 4 Life™. I told you I was nWo 4 Life™ when we started the nWo and my life has continued, therefore I am still 4 Life™ and henceforth nWo.” They Too Sweet it, Nash says Rodman is great, and that’s it.

If you think that’s underwhelming, they take forever to get through the Nash/Hogan stuff so the Savage/Bischoff stuff is like two sentences long. Savage looks like he wants to kill somebody, but then is like, “YOU’RE ON PROBATION WITH ME, I’M ON PROBATION WITH YOU, HOW DOES THAT SOUND,” and Bischoff says, “sounds good to me” and Too Sweets him. AND THAT’S IT. An entire episode of Nitro, an entire pay-per-view and another hour of Nitro featuring multiple cutaways, multiple video packages, a movie premiere recap and a 15-man promo to say, “everything’s fine.”

So.

Sighhhh.

So at the end of hour number two, Diamond Dallas Page shows up with an ice pack draped around him like a bandolier to announce that he’s going to literally murder Randy Savage for putting his hands on Kimberly. Savage crutches out to receive a murdering, but Hollywood stops him and says this one’s “on him.” That brings out the entire nWo. Before Page is asked to fight them all off, Sting shows up in an elaborate zip-line to bungee apparatus to like, swoop into the arena AND drop in on people.

Here it is in action. I’m guessing the thing that made Sting super religious is God saving him from falling on his ass when he hits the ground:

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The nWo is scared to death of the Human Claw Machine that is Sting, and Sting and Page are able to hold them off with baseball bats until TV time expires. The best part of all of this is when Sting no-look-passes a baseball bat to Page. Pretty sure I talked about how cool that moment was for years.

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And that’s our show for this week. Join us next week for-

Wait, that’s not everything that happened? [shuffles papers] All right, let’s write another 2,000 words about Prince Iaukea.

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Best: KILL THE PRINCE

As mentioned, Rey Mysterio Jr. defeated Lord Steven Regal in a five-minute match with like 40 seconds of actual wrestling shown when Regal gets him in the Regal Stretch, Mysterio reaches the ropes, and Regal refuses to break the hold. If you don’t remember, Regal has been slowly breaking over the past few weeks, evolving from mild-mannered “oh my” face-maker to cold-hearted, culturally insensitive leg-twister and face-palmer. Palming YOUR face, not his.

When Regal won’t break the hold, Prince Iaukea squat-walks out and gets immediately thrown at the ground and Regal Stretched himself. Regal is AMAZING here, mugging for the camera as he bends Prince in half and emotionlessly handing him in the eye socket over and over.

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Unfortunately for Prince, he’s scheduled to defend the Television Championship against Ultimo Dragon later in the night. Guess how well he does there?

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If you said, “honestly too well, considering he’s supposed to be injured but sucks ass at selling, and Ultimo Dragon should’ve been able to This Is Sparta kick a 100% healthy Prince Iaukea in the chest once and turn him to dust,” congratulations, you’ve been reading the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro. But yeah, enough is enough and Prince finally, finally loses the title belt he should’ve never gotten within farting distance of in the first place. The reign ends with the perfect imagery of Dragon kicking Prince in the ribs, walking around in the ring for a few seconds, then nonchalantly pinning him.

Note: Prince Iaukea won the Television Championship because the WWF had unexpectedly put their Intercontinental Championship on Rocky Maivia. Maivia would go on to be a 10-time World Champion, a 2-time Intercontinental Champion, a 5-time Tag Team Champion, a Royal Rumble winner, a 5-time WrestleMania main-eventer, a beloved celebrity outside of pro wrestling and the biggest box-office movie star in the world. Iaukea wouldn’t get another title run until 2000, when he was doing a Prince Rogers Nelson gimmick and WCW had run out of cruiserweights people gave a shit about.

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Best: This Random-Ass Tag Team

The show opens with the Dungeon of Doom taking on my new favorite tag team, Alex Wright and Psicosis, aka HORNY PACKAGE. Nobody calls them that, they have no reason to be teaming beyond a “last two not picked for the team” scenario and I’m pretty sure they never team up again, but in my head I’m going to Mandela Effect an alternate reality where they show up to next week’s Nitro in suspenders as the International Males. Can you imagine a Dicks’d-out Psicosis with Andrade Cien Almas’ body and a Psicosis head? Tell me you wouldn’t cheer for that guy.

The Dungeon of Doom beats them, of course, because nobody checked the expiration date on the sour fucking milk that was that angle. I wish in like, 1998 they’d hard-cut to the Dungeon’s villainous mountain base to find The Master in his underwear watching Spin City while a giant Himalayan ice mummy vacuums in the background.

Worst: Lee Marshall Is Just Straight-Up Calling Bobby Heenan Names Now

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I was going to explain what led up to this joke, but I think I’m going to leave it without the context. Enjoy trying to figure out why Lee Marshall though it’d be an ice burn to write erotic fiction about Bobby Heenan trying to comment on aquatic travel equipment and accidentally sex-offending a bunch of deaf Philadelphians.

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Worst: Speaking Of The Dungeon Of Doom

The Taskmaster Kevin Sullivan utilizes his Neighborhood Girlfriend’s inhuman ability to pick up 175-pound men and immediately drop them to defeat Hector Guerrero. Since there’s not much to say about it, let’s imagine another 1998 cutaway to the Dungeon mountain to The Master accidentally hearing Nicole Wray’s ‘Make It Hot’ on the radio and not knowing what to do about his water.

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Best: The Man Of 1,000 Pissed-Off Strikes

Dean Malenko was already mad at Eddie Guerrero for what he was perceiving as a heel turn, and then the Dungeon of Doom randomly helped Eddie lift Malenko’s United States Championship during a match with Chris Benoit at Spring Stampede. So now Malenko is OUT FOR BLOOD, and poor pre-Crisis Lionheart Chris Jericho has to deal with it.

This is one of the best 3-minute Nitro matches ever, which is a bizarre thing to have a list of, but we work with what we’ve got. The best part is that Malenko wins with a punt to the face, which is the least Dean Malenko thing you can imagine. Jericho vs. Malenko would, of course, go on to be (in my opinion) the greatest cruiserweight feud in the history of the company. Note: It did not involve the Dungeon of Doom, or some funny imagined scenario where the Taskmaster would be, say, checking his mail, getting upset about a package he expected to be delivered and finding out they’d sent it to the White Castle of Fear.

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Worst: Public Enemy Are The Dumbest Losers

Next week’s Raw is in Philadelphia and the WWF has had some success having Extreme Championship Wrestling stars invade their show, so finally by April WCW is like, “we should probably do something extreme, too.” Their idea: have Public Enemy lose to HIGH VOLTAGE, a team that couldn’t beat the goddamn Mod Squad on their best day, to set up a Philadelphia Street Fight for next week.

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I know that’s just the closed caption guy doing shorthand for “back,” but maybe he’s reading their minds and know they really mean they’re going to Burger King. Anyway, Johnny Grunge really sells this match by saying Public Enemy is going to, “put the E in ‘excitement’ in WCW.” First of all, “excitement” has three Es. Secondly, the word “excitement” does not appear in WCW or World Championship Wrestling. That sounds like a burn but I’m being literal. Thirdly, did dude for real forget what the E stood for in ECW? Did he think he used to wrestle in Excitement Championship Wrestling?

Rocco tries to save it by saying they “might have to get a little extreme,” which I take as code for, “we’ll do the same loosey-goosey table spots we always do, but we’ll wear jeans.” Grunge joins in. This is one of those interviews where you can tell Mean Gene wants to throw to commercial like five seconds into it, but people keep yanking the microphone into their face to continue.

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Worst: As The Haliburton Turns

At Spring Stampede, the “on the same page” Four Horsemen-ish team of Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael and Jeff ‘Dongo’ Jarrett lost to the aforementioned Public Enemy, the guys who just lost to High Voltage, when Rocco grabbed Mongo’s Haliburton briefcase and smashed Jarrett in the back with it. Mongo is excitemently upset at Jarrett for this, and no-shows his scheduled Nitro tag against the only team with worse match finishes, Harlem Heat.

The body of the match is Jarrett having to go it alone, because it’s not like he’s on a professionally organized team with four other guys in it, and Harlem Heat basically beating him to death. Mongo wanders out near the end to take the hot tag, cleans house on members of Harlem Heat, then just tags Jarrett back in to take the loss. Yes, Mongo just did the Desperado Joe Gomez turn on the Renegade after like two years of me calling him the Pokemon evolution of Desperado Joe Gomez.

After the match, Jarrett and Mongo argue about what happened. At no point does Mongo just scream YA SHOULDAIN’T-A FUCKED MY WIFE to end it.

If you’re wondering what Ric Flair was up to during all of this, let’s end this week’s report with some of the weirdest shit you’ll ever see.

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Worst: Humpy Old Men

The last time we saw Ric Flair on Nitro, he was trying to get Roddy Piper to join the Four Horsemen (which already features five guys and two women) by hooking him up with local moms. This week, they ask Piper how it went. His answer: he got a piece of paper allowing him to get out of the asylum, and now SHE’S in the asylum. Correct me if I’m wrong, but did Roddy Piper make this lady lock herself in Alcatraz for a week before she could have sex with him?

Anyway, at Spring Stampede, Flair announced that he was going to team up with Piper and Kevin Greene, the football player he had a tag team match with and defeated after paying off his tag team partner to turn on him via a deadly metal briefcase full of money, to take on some trio of New World Order guys at SLAM JAMBOREE 1997. Greene is basically Mojo Rawley’s dad. He’s like an excited puppy in Mr. Incredible’s body. He’s happy to be here with the “frickin’ icon, man,” and the threesome celebrates by jogging in place and hitting each other. I’m not kidding.

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At one point it gets so ridiculous that Flair just waves it off and bails.

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And that’s this week’s Nitro. The bad guys can’t get along and have agreed to fake it. The good guys all hate each other, and the ones who don’t should, they just can’t remember why. Join us next week as Lenny Lane gets a title shot, Debra McMichael and Sister Sherri execute the worst finish in the history of Bad Finishes, and WCW takes things to the EXCITEMENT.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Sting installed a zip-line with a secondary bungee cord attachment in a random arena just in case he had to swoop out and stop the nWo between the stage and the ring. Luckily for him, it came in handy. Meanwhile, Hulk Hogan hooked up with Dennis Rodman’s sister and called her his “sister,” because Hulk Hogan and the guy from Train are the only white dudes who refer to black women as “sisters.”

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Programming note: The Best and Worst of WWF Raw is War schedule got a little thrown off thanks to WWE now having 200 pay-per-views a year (and also my holiday time off for the Mondays after Christmas and New Year’s Day

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. Things have officially gone crazy in 1990s professional wrestling, and we want to write about it at least until Prince Iaukea becomes the singer Prince in the most 1999 pro wrestling joke ever.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for April 14, 1997.

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Worst: Someone Check The Sweetness Level Of The New World Order

To catch you up, the two-weeks-ago Nitro and Spring Stampede ’97 were built around Kevin Nash’s growing frustrations with Hollywood Hogan being a little too “Hollywood” and not enough “Hogan” and attending movie premieres instead of doing wrestling heel gang stuff. Last week’s show was an hour-long in-ring therapy session with Hogan threatening to “do the thing right now” but ultimately agreeing to do heel wrestling gang stuff and be a Good Brother.

This week, Hogan is nowhere to be found, and Kevin Nash is opening the show with the same B-team dudes that always follow him around. Lex Luger wants the title shot he earned by defeating Booker T, Stevie Ray and at least one notable N-bomb at Spring Stampede, and he wants it tonight. Nash says Luger will have to get through him first if he wants to get to Hogan, because the nWo is 4 Life® and just Too Sweet®. Presumably Hogan is somewhere angling for a cameo appearance on SPECIAL OPS FORCE.

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you don’t say

Best: Chris Benoit And The Barbarian Decide To Hurt Each Other As Much As Possible For Two Minutes

This week’s episode starts with Tony Schiavone announcing that Chris Benoit will face “a member of the Dungeon of Doom,” which would sorta be like Michael Cole opening Raw like, “tonight Sami Zayn goes one-on-one with a member of the Social Outcasts!” Couldn’t they just say “Chris Benoit and the Barbarian have agreed to hit each other for real as hard as possible for a few minutes?”

This is GREAT, though, because of course it is. It might be one of the best two-minute matches ever, non-WWE pay-per-view main event division. A motivated Barbarian is secretly one of the dopest wrestlers in history, and he never gets as much smark street cred as Meng, probably because he’s attached to fewer “ripped out a dude’s eyeball and smooshed it” urban legends. But yeah, Barbarian’s goal here is to remove Benoit’s face from his head using only the bottom of his foot, and also to belly-to-belly suplex him off the top rope so hard and so far Benoit’s feet hit the damn opposite corner. It’s MASSIVE.

My only complaint is that this is so unbelievably short, but on the plus side it briefly convinces WCW that they could keep Benoit vs. the Dungeon of Doom going for a while without doing Benoit vs. Sullivan on loop forever, and sets in motion Benoit’s summer feud with The Monster Meng and a death match that I’ve always loved.

After the match, the Dungeon jumps Benoit, and Sullivan (Sullivan!) and Miss Texas put Benoit in the Tree of Woe and put the side of their thighs to him. Eventually two of the five Horsemen, Mongo and Dongo, show up to run them off. Ric Flair is nowhere to be found despite his previous single-handed obliterations of the Dungon because he’s chilling in the back with a coked-out, sexually enraged Rowdy Roddy Piper and the Billy Batson-esque child piloting the enthusiastic meat corpse that is Mean Kevin Greene.

More on Mongo and Jeff Jarrett later, because that feud never ends. If you go to Jarrett’s house in 2017 you’ll find Debra in there trying to hit Johnny Grunge’s deactivated Myspace with a Haliburton.

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Best: Hector And Riff-Raff

Speaking of “good, short matches” and “Dungeon of Doom angles that go nowhere,” up next is Dean Malenko vs. Hector Guerrero, aka what happened when Eddie Guerrero faked his own death and traveled back in time as an older man to relive the Attitude Era. I have at least three science fiction scenarios in which Eddie Guerrero is still alive somehow, shut up.

But yeah, Hector had all of Eddie’s wrestling ability without any of Eddie’s ability to connect with crowds, so the match is good, but people mostly just want to see Malenko flip a bitch and tie their legs up. It’s crazy looking back at how absolutely nondescript and milquetoast Dean Malenko was as a personality, and how easily that translated into arenas of tens of thousands of hillbilly wrestling fans going APESHIT at him tying a dude up. It wasn’t always there, but it was there a lot. You’d get those Road Wild situations where the crowd wasn’t into it, but on the right night that guy could pop a crowd with a fundamentally-sound leg grab like he was Bruno at MSG.

The story here is that Malenko is mad at Eddie for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and having the Dungeon of Doom abduct the United States Championship on his behalf (?), so he’s going to torture Eddie’s brother and wag a finger at him when he comes down to help. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. If Eddie got the belt thrust upon him at Spring Stampede and got walked to the back by the lingering rat poop of the Alliance to End Hulkamania, wouldn’t he just like, hand the belt to a referee or something and say “give this back to Dean Malenko?” Did The Master take it back to Snake Mountain or wherever and put it in a trust fund?

Best: Juventud Ain’t Care

The final very-good and very-short match of hour one is Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Juventud Guerrera, which is enjoyable and dangerous as hell despite ranking somewhere in the high 80s of Best Mysterio/Guerrera matches. It’s a little loosey-goosey at times, but they’ve got a weirdly violent sense of urgency. Note Rey helicopter-headscissoring Juvy over the top rope, Juvy hitting Rey with a goddamn sunset flip powerbomb to the floor, and that West Coast Pop that goes so smoothly it almost goes all the way around and turns into a World Liner.

It’s like everyone got together backstage before the show and were told, “you’ve got two minutes, get all your shit in, we’ve set aside 25 minutes for Piper to explain who is gay and why he hates them.”

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Worst: Even The Women In The Women’s Division Don’t Know What’s Happening In The Women’s Division

After the match, Luna Vachon shows up and tells Mean Gene about how she’s the number one contender to the WCW Women’s Championship, and how she’s going to be the woman to take the belt off Madusa’s waist. The uh, only problem is that Madusa isn’t the champion. Akira Hokuto is. Derp.

Mean Gene opens the promo by joking that he met Luna at a swinger’s club, spends the entire thing staring at her tits, and ends it by trying to hook up with her after the show. Women’s wrestling, clap clap clap-clap-clap.

Best: RIP Lenny Lane’s Face

Here’s a picture of Ultimo Dragon dropkicking Lenny Lane in the fucking mouth.

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This is Lenny’s second appearance on Nitro, following that wonderful moment a few weeks ago when he tried to throw hands at Lord Steven Regal and got his testicles kicked into his brain. Competing as “Lane Carlson,” born from the same pretend 1997 NXT name generator as “Lance Ringo,” he takes on new Television Champion Ultimo Dragon. You can imagine how that goes.

Lenny’s actually pretty impressive here, bumping like a crazy person and hitting (I shit you not) a Cactus Jack clothesline over the top rope and a Whisper in the Wind from the top to the floor. But at some point in the middle of the match he sets up for Ultimo Dragon’s “backdrop me onto my feet” spot too early and pisses Dragon off, and the result is two toe-kicks to the center of the spine and that dropkick. Ultimo Dragon was SALTY, y’all.

Note: Lenny Lane’s real name is “Lenny Carlson,” which is somehow not a Simpsons reference.

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Worst: An Actual Syxx Match On Nitro

Has that ever happened before? The guy won the Cruiserweight Championship at SuperBrawl two months before this, but his only job on Nitro has been to be a small, omnipresent living mirror for Kevin Nash.

But yeah, if you saw a Television Championship match and were like, “I hope Prince Iaukea stays the hell away from this,” don’t worry, here he is messing up a shot at the Cruiserweight Championship. Near the end of the match he goes for a sunset flip off the top rope and somehow manages to hook Syxx’s arms, and takes him over into a pin on his own legs. If you’re like me, you’re wishing Regal would just materialize out of thin air and knee him in the face. Syxx’s response is to put him in a badly-applied crossface chickenwing and win the match. He keeps it on for way too long afterward, but the referee just keeps counting to five instead of reversing the decision because nobody wants to contribute to Prince Iaukea winning more matches.

All right, enough wrestling. Let’s get to what you all came here to see.

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Worst: Rowdy Roddy Piper Knows You’re Gay, You GAYS

Man, Piper must’ve been going through some real sexual identity issues in 1997, because his only talking points were, “I’m crazy” and “you’re gay.” It’s like somebody put Alex Jones in old Michael J. Fox’s body.

Piper, Ric Flair and Kevin Greene show up to cut a promo about WCW SLAM JAMBOREE, in which they’ll team up to face undisclosed members of the nWo. I hope it’s just three Barbarians. But yeah, Piper’s angle here is that Eric Bischoff wore a Dennis Rodman shirt, which means he’s gay, and that the nWo wears spandex, so they’re also extremely gay. Also, he’s singing Right Said Fred parody lyrics and doing the Pee-wee Herman ‘Tequila’ dance.

No, really:

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Here’s the entire promo:

Please note that this promo about how gay the nWo is features (1) Ric Flair taking off his clothes while reminiscing about “Dick the Bruiser,” (2) Kevin Greene and Roddy Piper talking about how they have been “chopping tons and tons of wood and laying asphalt” since the nWo was “sucking on mother’s milk,” and (3) Piper repeatedly insisting that spandex makes you gay while wearing a kilt over blue spandex underpants and a leather jacket with no shirt underneath. He says he’s going to back in the closet and see what’s “so afraid” in there.

Man, I miss the glory days of Piper. It seems like just yesterday he was in Alcatraz getting his shirt torn up by nobody and jacking off into a bay from the bow of a sailboat.

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Worst Money in the Bank match ever.

Worst: As The Haliburton Turns

So Steve McMichael and Jeff Jarrett have been brought together by the healing powers of a Dungeon of Doom beatdown and get a rematch with the team that beat them last week when they were beefing, Harlem Heat. This week, the terrible finishes of Harlem Heat matches and the somehow even worse Haliburton-flavored finishes of Mongo and Jarrett matches come together in the perfect storm of horrible bullshit and secondhand embarrassment.

Okay, so, the match is supposed to end, I guess, with Sherri Martel hitting Mongo with the Haliburton. Sherri’s been poisoned by two years of Colonel Parker matches and has lost her ability to understand “hold briefcase, hit man in face with briefcase,” and completely farts it up. Behold:

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I don’t know if she’s supposed to actually hit Mongo there or if she’s supposed to like, pull the briefcase away from him, lose it in the shuffle and maybe get hit by Debra, but this is what happens. She just kinda brushes it against Mongo’s face and it gets lost in the middle of the ring, so six of the worst improvisers in pro wrestling are forced to come up with a new finish on the fly. IT TURNS OUT SO WELL FOR EVERYONE.

Sherri grabs Debra by the throat and backs her into the corner to explain what’s going on, and eventually gets the briefcase back. The idea is that she’s going to try to hit Debra with it, but Debra’s going to duck, the briefcase is going to bounce off the top turnbuckle and snap back to hit Sherri in the face. Because turnbuckle pads are trampolines, and that spot always works so well.

What actually happens is … God, how can I even explain it? Let me show you.

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Sherri swings, Debra ducks, and Sherri hits the top turnbuckle. But instead of it bouncing back, Sherri follows through and shoot bashes Debra in the back of the head with the briefcase. Debra’s not expecting that to happen, so she no-sells it. Sherri still has to get knocked out, though, so the briefcase bounces back OFF DEBRA’S HEAD with the force of a caterpillar crawling on a leaf, Sherri just kinda presses it to the top of her own head and faints. Watch it. Watch it a thousand times. A full force smash to the back of the head does nothing, but trying to wear a Haliburton as a hat is an instant kill. It’s amazing. Probably one of the worst match finishes of all time.

The best part of it all is that the Horsemen have to stay in the ring afterward to cut a promo on FOOTBALL PLAYER REGGIE WHITE.

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Throughout the show, they’ve been pointing out that former Philadelphia Eagles player, then-current Green Bay Packers Superbowl Champion and future NFL Hall of Famer Reggie White is in the front row, and that it’s been announced that he’s signed with WCW to wrestle Steve McMichael. Kevin Greene was just out here cutting a promo about how Hulk Hogan betrayed him and the children by turning heel so he’s teaming up with the guy who literally paid someone off to hit Greene in the head with a metal briefcase, and now we’re jumping into FOOTBALL GUY ANGLE #2.

Mongo cuts a deranged, kinda wonderful promo where he continues his bizarre obsession with local football superiority, calls the Philadelphia fans losers and points out that Reggie White won a Superbowl for somebody else after ditching the city for money. Reggie hops the railing and gets into the ring — wearing all white because he’s REGGIE WHITE — and they get nose-to-nose. WCW’s wall of denim security shows up to separate them, Mongo insults Reggie by spitting in his face, and a pull-apart ensues. It’s like they decided to improve upon the Bam Bam Bigelow/Lawrence Taylor confrontation with two guys who were on LT’s squad at WrestleMania. And then WWF improved upon THAT by doing the same angle with characters the crowd and mainstream media actually care about.

Spoiler alert, Reggie White is not as good at wrestling as Kevin Greene. Reg makes Kevin Greene look like a big Mojo Rawley version of Chris Benoit.

We Hate ECW, A Play In Two Acts

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Act one is Public Enemy vs. High Voltage in a “Philadelphia street fight.” TPE lost to High Voltage last week to set this up, because the Urban Nasty Boys hitting hairless, electricity-themed muscle-jobbers with trash can lids needed an alley-oop. The entire match is just Public Enemy smacking High Voltage in the top of the head with flimsy lids, and the heat comes 100% from them wearing Philadelphia Flyers jerseys. The crowd chants for the Flyers, and they chant for Robbie Rage going through two tables after like two minutes of awkward spot construction. It’s basically the worst ever version of ECW, and that’s coming from a guy who sat through more than one XPW show, a decade of CZW and several years of WWE defining “extreme” as Mark Henry and Jack Swagger.

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Act two is a more direct Fuck You to the Philadelphia crowd, with The Giant defeating Big Al, aka Tombstone, aka former ECW star slash means-to-an-end 911. 911 is the guy who would show up and randomly chokeslam people to punish them for having bad matches. Here, he’s immediately emasculated by the Giant and chokeslammed. Hooray?

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Here’s a picture of Kevin Nash vs. Lex Luger.

Worst: Yep.

As you might’ve expected if you’ve ever watched a single episode of the nWo era of Nitro, the match the nWo didn’t want but demanded by specifically catered to them ends with everybody on the team running in for a DQ the second their guy starts doing poorly. The payoff here is WCW “uniting” briefly to run them off. Page runs out to help Luger, Giant walks out to help Page, and Sting finally shows up with a bunch of baseball bats and hands them out to even the odds.

And again, if this was building to a big logical blowoff over the summer, it’d be dope. Instead, because time is linear, we’re still not blowing this off until December, and by then it’s convoluted by the Montreal Screwjob and Hogan’s ego and fart noise and clanging a frying pan on your head noise and Goofy ya-hoo-hoo-whee yell.

Join us next week for a Yuji Nagata appearance, Glacier fighting a cyclops and none of this being resolved!

Oh, and before I forget …

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The closed caption guy doesn’t get it, but he’s trying to make an Eldorado joke about weasels. It’s not even a pun. Bobby Heenan says he wants to buy one, put Lee in the trunk and drive him into the Detroit river. Team Bobby for life.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: NFL legend Reggie White showed up in the crowd and challenged Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael to a match at Slamboree. NFL legend Kevin Greene will be teaming with Rowdy Roddy Piper and Ric Flair against three members of the nWo at Slamboree. NFL legend Dan Marino is taking on Dean Malenko for the United States Championship at Slamboree. Amazingly, two of those sentences are true.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. Things have officially gone crazy in 1990s professional wrestling, and we want to write about it at least until NFL legend Bernie Kosar shows up and gets punched in the face by Hacksaw Jim Duggan’s dick-tape.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for April 21, 1997.

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Best: Hollywood Hogan Plays A Genie In Hazaam, A Movie That Definitely Existed

The most important thing you need to know about this week’s episode is that Hollywood Hogan isn’t here, because he’s off filming his new movie, McCinsey’s Island. Despite the fact that the last like month of WCW programming has been built around Kevin Nash’s growing frustrations at Hogan honoring movie obligations instead of coming to Nitros and doing wrestling stuff, everyone seems cool with him bailing for this.

If you don’t remember McCinsey’s Island, don’t worry, I doubt even Hogan does. I certainly didn’t. Here’s the dense plot description from the IMDB:

A former secret agent finds a treasure map and decides to find the loot. But he is not the only one.

Sounds complicated! But yeah, the movie stars Hollywood Hogan, Grace Jones (the only woman cool enough to bridge the gap between David Bowie and Pee-wee Herman) and Robert Vaughn, star of the 1960s series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. Also, a talking parrot. Hogan shows the producer and director in nWo shirts doing 4 Life™ hand gestures and promotes this as the first-ever nWo movie, written, directed and starring nWo members.

Think about the nWo. Think about everything you know about them, and the vibe they try to give off, and what they stand for. Now watch this trailer for a movie by the nWo.

Obviously Grace Jones is in the nWo, because Hollywood Hogan is focusing on recruiting as many tall, lanky, non-wrestling black celebrities from the ’90s as possible, but you’ll be happy to know ROBERT VAUGHN has also joined the band. Here he is wearing an nWo shirt over a dress shirt, commenting that he’ll make the squad “implacable and the tops.”

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Sadly, Vaughn stopped being nWo in November of last year. But at least the legacy of McCinsey’s Island lives on! “Let’s have lunch!”

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Best: Blue Justice

Want to know how old these episodes of Nitro are? Dean Malenko opens this week’s show against the “youngster from New Japan Pro Wrestling,” Yuji Nagata. I know, right?

So yeah, Yuji Nagata makes his WCW Monday Nitro debut looking like a rubber mat in the floorboard of Chono’s car while Larry Zbyszko insists that literally every Asian human is raised to be a martial arts master. The match is a lot of fun aside from a horribly missed enzuigiri, and makes me wish there was a 22-minute New Japan version. Saginaw, Michigan, is SUPER INTO IT, by the way. They’re booing the hell out of Nagata for being Japanese the second he steps out, the “USA” chants are massive, and Malenko is getting Sting dropping down from the rafters pops for locking in the Texas Cloverleaf. They appear to have told Nagata to just go out there and be Chono, but it works, and his belly-to-belly suplexes are Jason Jordan-esque.

Be sure to check out the 7:19 mark of the following video, in which Malenko cements himself as the dopest boring wrestler in history with an elbow drop to the BACK OF THE LEG. Love it.

If you aren’t familiar with his carer, Nagata would go on to become a 2-time IWGP Heavyweight Champion, a 2-time IWGP Tag Team Champion, a G1 Climax winner, a GHC Heavyweight Champion, a GHC Tag Team Champion, one of the best and most popular fighters in the history of Japanese professional wrestling, and probably the worst MMA fighter this side of Bucky Boyd.

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Worst: Good Idea, Guys

Another major plot point of this episode is that WCW has named a new head of its executive committee, James J. Dillon. Yes, that J.J. Dillon, the guy who managed the most elite evil heel team of the 1980s, wore women’s underwear under his business suits and once orchestrated a cowboy bullrope fight that got him shirtlessly bludgeoned with a cowbell. WCW’s like, “we need to save our company from guys who get a little power and go rogue on us. How about the guy that managed the goddamn Four Horsemen?”

Maybe it’s a, “we need someone corrupt and evil to understand corruption and evil” situation. Or maybe it’s like a Trump cabinet appointment, and they named him head of the executive committee because they wanted to shut it down and privatize it.

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Oh.

Oh. :(

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Best: Glacier Vs. Ciclope

Pay no attention to these weird eye-holes on my cheeks! I’ve only got the one!

The next match is Glacier vs. Ciclope, and I feel like I need to break it down in two different ways.

The Lucha Underground Explanation: In this match, a Georgia gym teacher who traveled to the Mystical Orient to learn ice-themed martial arts and fused them with pro wrestling takes on a MEXICAN CYCLOPS. It ends quickly, though, because the ice ninja has played The Legend of Zelda before and knows that if a monster’s got a big eyeball, you hit them in the eyeball.

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Earlier in the week on WCW Saturday Night, sinister minister and ancient artifact collector James Vandenberg tried to steal Glacier’s ceremonial helmet, which was given to him by his Shidoshi. It didn’t work, so Vandenberg uses a multi-pronged distraction of his irradiated skeleton henchman and the giant karate knight (?) in his employ to get the jump on Glacier and incapacitate him. Once the helmet is in their possession, they realize it’s not the only artifact they want … they want Glacier’s MYSTIC ICE EYE, which may or may not be fake and may or may not be the source of his powers. They beat the holy hell out of him and try to DIG THE EYEBALL OUT OF HIS FACE USING THE HELMET. LIKE A DAMN ICE CREAM SCOOP.

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The WCW Explanation: A gym teacher who doesn’t actually know karate and doesn’t know how to wrestle kicks a poor luchador in the face for real, then gets jumped by some guys in Halloween costumes who think the best way to stab somebody in the eye is with a curved edge. Also, Glacier dyed his hair blonder now and looks like Sub-Zero fucked Colonel Guile.

Either way, shout-out to these superkicks. They’re really leaning into these things. I’d take a hundred loosey-goosey Young Bucks kicks before I’d take one of these.

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LOL What: Lord Steven Regal Had Sex With Fergie

Mean Gene Okerlund interviews Lord Steven Regal and shades Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, for doing tomato juice commercials. He shares the gossip that Regal and Fergie have been hooking up, because they’re both English I guess and there are only like 15 people in England, and Regal says it was “like spending the night with a ripped out bloody fireplace.” I had no idea what he was even trying to say there, and then I realized it was an extremely British “throwing a hot dog down a hallway” joke and made Jim Halpert face at the imaginary camera crew in my home.

Regal faces Ultimo Dragon at Slamboree, so he calls American fans xenophobic for booing him because he’s British, as he’s casually dropping Pearl Harbor references about how we “don’t have much luck with the Japanese,” how our flag should be a white cross on a white background because we’re cowards, and how he’s going to beat that “pathetic awful Japanese whatever he is.” Bill Regal’s on screen for like two minutes and is the most metal part of the show.

Best: FALCON KICK

Speaking of the Japanese and shit that looks like Colonel Guile, here’s Sonny Onoo taking out Beautiful Bobby Eaton with a JCVD Hard Target-quality flying kick.

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At this point Bobby Eaton’s so hopeless I wouldn’t put money on him going one on one with Onoo, much less with Ultimo Dragon. Even in 1997 Bobby kinda came across like a guy who’d wandered out of a hospice and ended up on a wrestling show because all he was wearing was purple leggings.

The nWo Is SHOOTING, Brother, Lightning Round

So much shooting in this episode. Oh lord.

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Up first we have WCW senior official turned ski mask referee at a fat biker mom beauty pageant Nick Patrick, who following the events of Spring Stampede has put back on a WCW polo and would like to be reinstated. His major argument is that the nWo isn’t what it used to be, thanks to them catering to people like the Macho Man Randy Savage, who Patrick had long-standing beef with. Way back in October, Savage attacked Patrick and Patrick tried to get him fined a MILLION DOLLARS.

Patrick also says that he’s been beaten up by everybody and chokeslammed by the Giant and jack-knived by Kevin Nash and he’s still coming to work, which as far as referees go is … well, it’s a pretty good argument.

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Formulating less of an argument is Eric Bischoff, who is suddenly desperately trying to get “bite me” over as a catchphrase. It’s like the powers that be knew they needed some kind of signature insult to add to the wrestling lexicon and “suck it” hadn’t really become a thing yet, so they tried bite me. It’s like that weird period where Shawn Michaels had started doing Sweet Chin Music but hadn’t figured out he should do a big taunt before it, so he just stood in the corner. But with WORDS.

J.J. Dillon has some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Eric Bischoff no longer has any actual power as a WCW executive, and some of his late-era moves like coercing Big Bubber and M. “V.K.” Wallstreet to nWo contracts are invalid. They’ll have to become WCW employees again. HOORAY WE GET MIKE ROTUNDA BACK, THE TIDE IS FINALLY STARTING TO CHANGE, RIGHT GUYS. The bad news is that Bischoff has a Big Show-style “ironclad contract,” and when you sign a contract on IRON it is FOREVER and NOTHING CAN ALTER IT. So Bischoff and the earlier nWo jazz is still here and isn’t going anywhere, and the nWo reserves the rights to their vague “challenge for WCW titles at any time” thing from winning at Uncensored.

Bischoff’s response? “Bite me!” I wish he’d accompanied it with little hand chops toward his mouth.

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The shootiest shoot of the week comes from Syxx and Kevin Nash, possibly caused by an underlying, passive-aggressive rage from finding out about McCinsey’s Island. Syxx starts off a promo by running down Ric Flair, asking how a guy can stand for honoring the traditions of pro wrestling when he ripped off the name, look and signature holds of Buddy Rogers. He calls Flair a biter, which is supported by the whole “Rambling” Ricky Rhodes part of the Flair origin story, and he’s got a damn point.

Nash follows that up with an intense, amazing, crowd-turning speech about how guys like Piper and Flair “layed the asphalt” for the roads for the next generation of wrestlers, but also filled it with potholes because they’re selfish, in it for themselves and not intending to actually leave anything for anyone else. He also points out that WCW had Hall and Nash when they were younger, and how Hall was ready to be a superstar and got ignored due to nepotism and general Old Man Stink, so they went to New York and found out the business had been strip-mined by the old-timers. It’s true, engaging, passionate, and retroactively hilarious due to Nash’s politicking and his transformation into the very definition of taking spots and holding dudes down.

I think that’s all the SHOOTING this week.

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Worst: Too Legit To Stop Shooting

Oh wait, I forgot about Satanic George Costanza.

Meng gets a match with Chris Jericho and no-sells everything, because he’s being “let loose” by the Dungeon of Doom. That’s code for, “we need to build Meng up as unstoppable for a few months so someone can look slightly more impressive beating him, please pay no attention to the other 9-10 months this year when dude loses to Public Enemy or whatever.” Afterwards, Mean Gene is trying to talk to Jimmy Hart when Sullivan (SULLIVAN!) interrupts, telling Jimmy to stop doing a “wrestling interview.” This turns into a shoot on his … daughter? He hates his daughter. He also wants Meng to put him in the Tongan Death Grip so he can feel it, and when Meng agrees, Jackie steps between them and tells Meng he’d better not do that to her man! Kevin Sullivan promos are like Nitro quarter-hours directed by Neil Breen.

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Worst: How Short Are These Matches

There’s a LOT of talking on this episode, so matches like Glacier vs. Ciclope get about 45 seconds. Diamond Dallas Page doesn’t get much more than that to fight his disruptive luchador son Psicosis. Like a minute into the match Page trips Psico up on the ropes and Diamond Cutters him off of them for the win. Which is a bummer, because seven minutes of DDP vs. Psicosis would probably RULE.

After the match, Macho Man shows up in the crowd on crutches again and does the “Kimberly knows what sex with me is like because I DEFINITELY had sex with her” bit. Page is used to it now, and tells Savage to get in the ring. Elizabeth won’t let him, so Savage leaves, presumably to come up with 5-10 new ways to say he slept with a gemologist’s wife.

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Best: Zamboni Alley

I’m extremely disappointed that there wasn’t a 2008 WWE ECW star named ZAMBONI ALLEY.

Anyway, the Steiner Brothers get jumped in Zamboni Alley by the Dungeon of Doom before a match with Public Enemy. I’m guessing because we just watched TPE spend two weeks struggling to beat the High Voltage, so you need to run over each Steiner brother with a car if you want to make the match a fair fight.

The match never really gets going, because they’re just going through the motions waiting for the Dungeon to run back out and interfere. This happens, and the Steiners and Public Enemy team up to fight them off. It’s a waste of time, but at least it’s easy to follow.

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Worst: As The Haliburton Turns

Last week we found out that then-Green Bay Packers star Reggie White, the Digevolved version of D-Von Dudley, had signed with WCW to face Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael at WCW Slam Jamboree because they’re both football guys. Mongo and Kevin Greene already had an established feud based on one turning on the other to join the Four Horsemen, but literally everyone in the world forgot that (for now) and Greene’s hanging out with Flair, so Mongo’s gotta Football Guys with SOMEBODY. This week, Reggie’s in the crowd again, presumably because he heard Yuji Nagata was going to work and he’s a huge New Japan mark.

Jeff Jarrett takes on Scotty Riggs, who is still using the American Males entrance theme and dressing like one of the American Males despite that ship sailing months and months ago. The highlight is the Nitro debut of THE STROKE, Jarrett’s forward Russian leg sweep that’d eventually win him four WCW World Heavyweight Championships.

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Man, poor Jarrett was always such a try-hard and all he needed to do to go from mid-carder to champion was cut his hair and think of a funny thing to call people.

The Stroke isn’t a finish yet, so Jarrett struggles against Riggs. Debra even tries to cheat for him, but he’s in trouble. That brings out Mongo with the Haliburton, because of course it does, which causes Reggie White to hop the rail, steal the briefcase and reveal that he’s wearing the amazing Stevie Ray BOXING leather jacket but FOR CHRIST.

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Science vs. Religion!

With Mongo chased off and the Haliburton finally in the hands of a non-Horseman, Riggs is able to … lose cleanly to Jarrett. Oh. Sure, okay, that’s fine too.

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Best: A Glimpse Into Rey Mysterio’s Future

WCW Rey Mysterio Jr. is often defined by how he was when he first got there. 1996 Mysterio matches are built around him doing a couple of exciting things, getting the dog shit beaten out of him for like 10-15 minutes, then doing one or two more exciting things and taking it home in either direction. WWE Rey Mysterio was built around preserving what little working body the guy had left, slowing down, and pacing out his matches to tell better stories. So the WCW stuff you think of when you think of WCW Mysterio stuff is more exciting, but the WWE stuff is structurally better and allowed for a longer career.

This match against Syxx for the Cruiserweight Championship is an anomaly, because it’s Mysterio finally facing a WWF-style heel who can control the pace of the match to make him look great, DURING the prime of Mysterio’s career when he could do literally anything. It’s a slower pace than usual for Rey but actually more exciting, because it’s not Malenko dragging him to the ground and jamming an elbow into his armpit for 10 minutes. And I LOVE that. A really surprisingly dope match, and I wish there was a bigger, longer, fancier version of it somewhere.

Unfortunately, we get another glimpse into Mysterio’s future for the ending, with Kevin Nash interfering due to Randy Anderson’s INSANE incompetence and total lack of ears or peripheral vision. Mysterio gets REKT on a jackknife and loses the match via Buzzkiller-into-unconsciousness. Syxx continues the attack after the match until J.J. Dillon shows up with Doug Dellinger and the Denim Security Taskforce to enforce a little law and order. Mysterio gets stretchered out, Syxx fights a security guard, and the nWo look young and energetic and hungry as hell.

Also, Robert Vaughn is in the group.

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Worst: No Seriously, Pave Over Them

The final segment of the show is a rushed promo wherein Ric Flair, dressed like Cliff Huxtable, lies down in a wet spot and tells the nWo to come down to the ring and “pave the road” over him. Piper and Kevin Greene do the same thing, with Greene raising his head a little and watching Flair for cues the whole time because he’s seriously Dug from Up as a human being.

The nWo shows up to do some huddle-threatening, and we get the surprise return of Scott Hall, formally setting up the team of Hall/Nash/Syxx for Slamming Jamboree.

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The Grumpy Old Sex Men and their lovable talking bear companion manage to fight off the nWo B-team, and just as the melee fully breaks out, aw nuts fans we’ve gotta go. The show goes off the air with arguably the first actually exciting thing of the entire episode, and we’ll have to find out what happened next week, when the show is only an hour long because it’s the pre-show for the NBA playoffs.

Spoiler alert: the Bulls win.

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RAINMAKER POSE!

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Hollywood Hogan teamed up with the latest members of the New World Order, Grace Jones and Robert Vaughn, to film McCinsey’s Island, a movie about ex-military searching for buried treasure or something and breakdancing with sassy parrots. I don’t know, nobody’s ever actually seen it. Also on the program, Glacier kicked a cyclops in the eyeball and almost got his own eyeball removed via helmet. It was weird.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. Things have officially gone crazy in 1990s professional wrestling, and we want to write about it at least until Hacksaw Jim Duggan becomes a lonely Canadian janitor because Vince Russo thinks any idea that exists is a good one.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for April 28, 1997.

Note: This week’s episode is only an hour long, because TNT was airing the NBA Playoffs but didn’t want to completely preempt their unexpected ratings cash cow. Plus, there are still what, 200 weeks before Slamboree? How far away is this thing?

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Best/Worst: Our Guy Beat That Guy People Are Talking About!

In case you missed it in last week’s vintage Best and Worst of WWF Raw is War, The Man We Called Big Van Vader But They Just Call Vader was detained in Kuwait and had to go to court for threatening a talk show host who asked if pro wrestling was fake.

It was legitimate news, so WCW capitalized by opening this week’s Nitro with footage of Ric Flair defeating Vader at Starrcade ’93. It’s ridiculously petty, especially when they edit the footage to make it look like Flair just beat Vader’s ass, which is the opposite of the story they told. I’m giving it a Worst for the Monday Night Wars of it all, and giving it a Best because that match rules and they tore the house down.

Note: Speaking of great Ric Flair moments and doing the opposite of things, here’s this week’s Nitro.

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Worst: As The Haliburton Turns

If you’re wondering what’s up with everyone’s favorite briefcase-dependent ex-football star and the long-haired Abby Wambach cuckolding him, here’s our weekly rundown.

WCW’s trying to build two Slamboree matches for the ass-end of the Four Horsemen; Steve McMichael versus NFL star Reggie White, because they’re both football guys, and Jeff Jarrett challenging Dean Malenko for the United States Champion, because … honestly, I’m not sure why, but Eddie Guerrero’s hurt and the Dungeon of Doom can’t remember their own angles with six days off between shows so why the hell not?

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Jarrett chimes in via picture-in-picture to challenge Malenko during a Prince Iaukea squash, built around the idea that Iaukea is dumb enough to take Malenko to the mat despite having the wrestling ability of a fucking carp. Even Larry Zbyszko, who has never been right about anything else in his entire life, is like, “wow, Prince Iaukea is pretty stupid.”

Later, WCW attempts to build Mongo as a legitimate physical threat by having him get his ass kicked by The Barbarian for like three minutes until he can free himself up enough to hit Barb in the face with a briefcase once. It’s probably twice as bad as you’re imagining.

The weirdest part is that last week Reggie White jumped the rail and snatched it away from Mongo, promising that if Mongo wanted it back, he’d have to come and claim it. This week, Mongo just has the Haliburton again. There’s some light effort from the announce team to say it’s a new, second briefcase, but that shit is smushed like a torta from being used as a foreign object every week for a year. You aren’t fooling anybody. You just forgot until you showed the “last week” clip.

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Best While It Lasted, Which Wasn’t Long: Chris Benoit vs. Lord Steven Regal

As you may notice, this screenshot is a wide shot of the arena. Yes, Benoit and Regal knucklelocked and headbutted each other until one of them bled like two minutes into the match, which is what always seems to happen when they wrestle. Or any time Regal fights someone who hits back.

Since this is only an hour-long show and they realized we weren’t gonna watch 1/8 of the episode from the nosebleeds, Kevin Sullivan — SULLIVAN! — wanders out and starts punching people, ending the match in a disqualification. Derp.

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Regal just kinda magically disappears to get stitched up (and catch a stern lecture about not using his skull to bash Chris Benoit in the face every time he sees him, because that is not good for at least one of your brains) while Benoit and Sullivan brawl. Ultimately THE MONSTER MENG shows up and Tongan Death Grips Benoit, continuing to set up the first of their two 1997 Summer Death Matches at Slam Jamboree.

Between Sullivan, Woman, Jimmy Hart and Jacqueline, there’s a lot of standing around and screaming and accusatory glances that suggest we needed to go to Babagge’s and buy the strategy guide.

So now that we’ve established 3/4 of the Four Horsemen are either goofy or helpless, what’s up with Ric Flair? Has he stopped hanging around Brave Cowardly Lion Kevin Greene and Dean Ambrose’s homophobic dad, because-

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Haha, no, of course he hasn’t.

Worst: Rowdy Roddy Piper Hates Millennials

At the top of the show, Rowdy Roddy Piper and business casual Ric Flair show up to fire back at the nWo for countering their “WE CHOPPED DOWN TREES AND LAYED ASPHALT” promo with a, “you left potholes in the road” response. Piper’s response to the response is that the young generation is too lazy to fill in a few potholes, saying they just love to “skateboard and collect checks.” Does … does Roddy Piper think young people are Tony Hawk? Is 39-year old Scott Hall a skater boi?

Piper says that they don’t have to wait until Slamming Jamboree, he wants the nWo to come out here RIGHT NOW and give it their best shot, or “don’t bother shooting at all.” That shoot comment is a shoot! Flair gets so hyped by this he just kinda starts Riverdancing in place:

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Tony Schiavone is my patronus in this GIF.

Best: Send For The Man

Somewhere in the middle of the episode, the Wolfpac takes over the announce table to respond to the response to the response, and Pro Skater Scott Hall almost cracks Kevin Nash up by responding to the entire challenge with, “whatever.”

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The delivery of the line is incredible, and Nash’s face is probably the best part of the entire episode.

Before we get the payoff (cough) of the Flair and Piper vs. the New World Order angle, let’s make sure we cover everything else that happened on the show.

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Best: Syxx And Juvy Become Benoit And Regal

Last week, Sean Waltman took a break from being the nWo’s cameraman to actually wrestle and be the Cruiserweight Champion against Rey Mysterio Jr., and it was great. Syxx used his veteran no-how to control the pace of the match, and tell a better in-ring story than the cruisers usually get. He does it again this week against Juventud Guerrera, but replaces Mysterio’s knack for timing with the suggestion that they just kick each other in the face as hard as possible. The above picture is Juventud smashing Waltman’s teeth in with a springboard somersault dropkick.

Want to know why that looks so stiff? Because earlier in the match Juventud was supposed to walk up the ropes and backflip but stumbled a little, and Syxx responded by kicking him so hard it practically decapitated him:

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Jesus. It’s like he’s kicking through his head. Syxx gets the win with the Buzzkiller, and Juventud walks backstage trying to hold his skull on his spine while Super Calo sits around happy as hell to just be backflipping on Konnan clotheslines.

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Lex Luger And The Giant Defeated The Amazing French-Canadians

My analysis of this match is, “Lex Luger and The Giant defeated the Amazing French-Canadians.”

The announce team reminds us that Luger is still owed a shot at Hollywood Hogan’s WCW/nWo Heavyweight Championship at some point, presumably when Hogan and Jon Voight and Iman aren’t being nWo 4 Life™ on the set of Corky’s Jetski And Puppies Adventure or whatever.

Worst: Lee Marshall, Professor Of Native American Studies

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Lee Marshall’s 1-800-COLLECT Road Report is truly a trail of tears.

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Worst: Anyway, Back To Flair And Piper

With the NBA Playoffs only minutes away, Roddy Piper and Ric Flair return from embarrassing their children at Thanksgiving or whatever to face off with the nWo. As Flair is talking, thousands of sheets of paper fall from the ceiling, revealing NWO PROPAGANDA that is still trying to get “bite me” over as WCW’s pre-Crisis “suck it.” Here’s a closer look:

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They should’ve done the Okada money drop, but with Syxx-dollar bills.

Anyway, the nWo eventually shows up on the ramp, and Flair charges at them and starts fighting. Piper stands in the middle of the ring crumpling up paper. Flair takes out Hall and Nash and puts Syxx in the figure-four on the floor — the FIGURE FLOOR — and uses the security railing as cheat leverage. Roddy Piper … uh, stands in the middle of the ring crumpling up paper.

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Hall and Nash recover, and Flair starts taking a 3-on-1 beatdown. At one point they’re holding his arms behind his back while two guys are punching him, and Flair is yelling “PIPER! PIPER! PIPER!” Piper stands in the middle of the ring crumpling up paper. I don’t know if he blacked out or went snowblind because of the paper or what, but it takes him like two minutes to realize Flair isn’t in the ring anymore and needs his help on the outside. It’s so ridiculous and absent-minded that they have to open next week’s Nitro with Piper explaining why he has the reaction time of one of those Zootopia DMV sloths.

After FOREVER, Piper slowly takes off his belt, slowly walks to the outside and slowly begins whipping Kevin Nash. And that’s where the show ends. WCW Roddy Piper is the worst person, the worst employee, and the worst friend. I can’t believe Flair actually improved his circle of friends by hanging out with a dickless football yokel and an actual murderer.

Next Week: The playoffs continue, and we ask Roddy Piper why he’s such a garbage pal.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: The show is back to being an hour long to make it a sort of pre-show for the 1997 NBA Playoffs on TNT, which is great, because the most interesting things that happened were Jeff Jarrett challenging for the United States Championship in a picture-in-picture and some nWo leaflets falling from the ceiling.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. Things have officially gone crazy in 1990s professional wrestling, and we want to write about it at least until Ric Flair gets abducted and buried in the desert.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for May 5, 1997.

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Worst: Arguing About Purses

Last week’s episode ended with Rowdy Roddy Piper forgetting he’s supposed to help Ric Flair if he sees Flair getting beaten up by three nWo guys. It took him like two whole minutes and Flair yelling “PIPER! PIPER! PIPER!” for him to get involved. This week’s show starts with Flair, Piper and their Ludo from Labyrinth Kevin Greene at the announce booth being questioned about it. Before Piper can explain himself, an nWo “Tradition Bites!” banner unfurls in the background. As they’re trying to tear it down, another one unfurls in front of them. Piper flips out and storms to the ring during the Nitro opening video, presumably to buy some more time to think of an excuse.

When they finally get to the ring, Piper announces that he didn’t help Flair because Flair had things under control, which is funny, because it looked like one guy was holding his arms behind his back and two other guys were punching him in the face while he yelled RODDY PIPER PLEASE LEAVE THE RING AND HELP ME, I AM ACTUALLY DYING. More nWo fliers fall from the ceiling and we find out that the New World Order’s only agreed to face Piper, Flair and Green and Slamboree if they get 75% of the purse. Piper’s response, predictably, is that he DON’T WANT NO PURSE because he DON’T CARRY NO PURSE. Because he likes SEX WITH WOMEN.

To make this segment even worse, new head of the WCW executive committee James J. Dillon shows up working from a completely different script and tells PIper (on the microphone) that he can’t do anything about the nWo demanding 75%, but if Piper doesn’t show up to fight them he’ll be in breach of contract and will be letting everybody down. First of all, since when was Piper under contract to WCW? Second of all, Piper JUST SAID he didn’t care about the purse and would be there. This is the beginning of the episode.

It’s so bad that Flair only gets to talk for a minute, and when Greene starts talking the production team plays Public Enemy’s music to cut him off and start the first match. We’ve only got an hour, guys.

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Worst: Konnan Wins By Losing

Here’s a picture of Johnny Grunge executing his most thrilling and athletic manuever, the “fall off the top rope through a bunch of tables for no reason.”

With Grunge taken out in the same way he’s always taken out, Flyboy Rocco Rock is left to fight Dungeon of Doom customer service representatives Hugh Morrus and Konnan by himself. He does pretty well, setting Konnan up on another table, but gets stopped by Hugh … who superplexes him through the table. The table with Konnan on it. So the finish is Morrus covering Rock, and Rock technically covering Konnan. The ref just counts to three and gives the match to the Dungeon of Doom, because seriously, we can’t be wasting time paying attention to what people said or what wrestlers are doing.

The Dungeon of Doom was awarded 65% of a Vera Bradley purse for winning.

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Worst: Power Is Meaningless

This is how Rey Mysterio Jr. takes an Outsider’s Edge. Tony Schiavone calls it the “nWo Drop,” because he knew it wasn’t a sidewalk slam, but he didn’t know what to call it.

But yeah, Mysterio gets a rematch against Syxx, following their Cruiserweight Championship match a couple of weeks ago where Kevin Nash interferes. This one only goes about 60 seconds before Scott Hall interferes, and … well, does this:

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Syxx locks the Buzzkiller on an unconscious Mysterio and gets the victory, but once again refuses to release the hold. This brings out James J. Dillon again, flanked by strawweight referee Mark Curtis and hoping-to-be-reinstated former nWo ref Nick Patrick, who wore an airbrushed shirt he bought at the county fair to work for some reason. The refs try to break things up, and Dillion tells Syxx that if he doesn’t release the hold, he’ll reverse the decision.

Before that can happen, Eric Bischoff and the rest of the nWo show up, and Bischoff calls Dillon’s bluff.

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He says Dillon has “no stroke,” and guess what? He’s right. Dillon has no power, can’t do anything, and does nothing. Syxx lets go of the hold when he wants, the decision is never announced as being reversed, and the nWo threaten Dillon and laugh in his face. So … great? The villains are never even briefly at a disadvantage, and the heroes are these worthless, ineffectual, limp old men who can’t back up anything they’re saying.

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Worst: Speaking Of Old Men And Heroes Who Can’t Back It Up …

Hollywood Hogan cuts a promo challenging Sting. Sting doesn’t answer, so Hogan plays air guitar with the World Heavyweight Championship and leaves. This takes five minutes, which is one minute longer than the longest match on the show.

20-Second Match Lightning Round

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The most offensive of the show’s several seconds-long matches is Lord Steven Regal vs. Meng, which shouldn’t be bad under any circumstances. Meng charges Regal and they throw hands for seriously like 10 seconds before Taskmaster Kevin Sullivan runs out, Regal dives out onto him and they brawl for a disqualification. Then Meng puts Regal in the Tongan Death Grip, and Sullivan, Jimmy Hart and Jacqueline try their best to make him stop.

O … kay? Why did Sullivan interfere at all? Last week Regal tried to help Benoit escape an attack from Meng, but what was the plan here? To beat the guy up, but not let Meng specifically help do it?

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The closest thing we get to an As The Haliburton Turns this week is Debra McMichael distracting the referee so Jeff Jarrett can defeat a dancing Alex Wright. They don’t even use the briefcase, it’s just a chop block and a figure four, because Jarrett couldn’t topple the juggernaut that is Das Wunderkind. They could’ve done a spot where Jarrett tried to hit Wright in the dick with the briefcase, Wright no-sold it, and Mongo spent the next six months carrying around a Haliburton with a big eggplant-shaped dent in it.

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The best of these matches is Glacier vs. Lizmark Jr., which lasts exactly one irish whip, one backflip, and one kick. That’s the entire match. Glacier has acquired a taste for luchador blood since murdering Ciclope on live television two weeks ago and absolutely fucks up Lizmark’s Christmas here:

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After the match, Mortis and Wrath beat down Glacier for about 10 times the length of the match. This is to set up matches with Mortis and Wrath at Slamming Jamboree and the Great American Bash respectively, and to show Glacier that he’ll need backup if he plans to survive. If you listen closely, you can hear the faint sounds of a fake James Brown song, and a 3-time karate champion asking someone to lock the doors of an arena so he can beat up everyone inside with karate.

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Let’s Check In With Lee Marshall

He’s in Baltimore, which is where Edgar Allen Poe was born, which is why they call their football team the “Ravens” and not the “Weasels.” Get it? Even Lee thinks that’s not a great weasel joke, so he uses a crab festival to warn Bobby Heenan about STDs. Get it? Do you get it.

Really hoping I’ve forgotten how this angle pays off, and that at some point the 1-800-COLLECT road reports involve the nWo running Stagger Lee off the road.

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Worst: The Zero-Second Main-Event

This week’s main is supposed to be Lex Luger and the Giant against Harlem Heat, but Luger has apparently been injured, so Diamond Dallas Page is taking his place. As Page is entering, Macho Man Randy Savage shows up on crutches and taunts him. Page rips the crutch away from him, so Savage uses Liz as a human shield. This is all a distraction to allow Hollywood Hogan to sneak up and attack Page with the other crutch. This devolves into an nWo beatdown of everyone, because of course it does.

To further drive home the helplessness of WCW, Flair, Piper and Kevin Greene run out and are immediately crushed. Nash puts Piper in the world’s most melodramatic sleeper hold for like three minutes, and Hogan and Savage hop on commentary to make fun of them. Sting is nowhere to be found.

“Hope you enjoyed literally nothing, see you next week!” — WCW

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Nitro is still stuck in these one-hour versions before NBA playoff games on TNT, so … nothing? Is “nothing” an okay recap?

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. Things have officially gone crazy in 1990s professional wrestling, and we want to write about it at least until the Howard Stern Wack Pack and Insane Clown Posse become regulars. And the Misfits.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for May 12, 1997.

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Worst: Let’s Get Ready To Suck It

This week’s episode begins with boxing announcer Michael Buffer hyping up the Baltimore crowd with his trademark, “let’s get ready to rumble!” A couple of things.

One, the main event of this episode is Konnan and Hugh Morrus versus Alex Wright and Ice Train, which absolutely does not require main-event boxing announcing and also might be the match if you made me hypothetically answer, “what’s the worst Nitro match you can think of?” Two, via a quick Google search,

How much does Michael Buffer make to say “Let’s get ready to rumble”? Depending on the match, Buffer typically earns between $25,000 and $100,000 every time he utters those five famous words. On a handful of extremely rare occasions, Buffer has been paid $1 million.

Adjusting that back 20 years for inflation and then adjusting it back up for how much WCW overpaid everybody, it’s safe to say Buff was making more than most of us make in a year to show up on a half-sized, NBA Playoffs pre-show version of Nitro to say “let’s get ready to rumble” 40 minutes before Eric Bischoff interviewed the fake Sting and the Dungeon of Doom took on Ice Dick. Jesus Christ.

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The best part of the bit is that Buffer gets interrupted by Macho Man Randy Savage and Elizabeth, and now all I want is a Nitro where Michael Buffer gets beaten down and spray-painted. Even better if he returns a month later for revenge, illogically joins the nWo instead and starts announcing in a top hat with his face airbrushed on the top.

Anyway, Savage says he’s healed, and that last week he slapped Diamond Dallas Page so hard that Page has to use his old crutches. He calls him out for a fight, threatening to slap him “Hollywood style,” but Page isn’t there so he doesn’t answer. Really hoping a Hollywood-style slap is removing an elbow-length opera glove and dramatically slapping DDP in the rain.

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Best: Regal’s Sweater

Up first in Actual Wrestling this week is Ultimo Dragon versus Juventud Guerrera, highlighted by a picture-in-picture promo of Lord Steven Regal challenging Dragon for the Television Championship at Slamboree. He’s also wearing the most Dawson Leery sweater I’ve ever seen.

Juventud is a great choice for these quick openers, because he has the high-flying aptitude and disregard for his own body that Rey Mysterio Jr. has, minus Rey’s ability to slow down and tell a story. Rey will do that against guys like Dragon, but Juvy’s just like, “hey, sit on the top rope, I’m going to springboard up to the perpendicular rope and stagger around until I can push off on one leg and like, thigh you to the ground.” You gotta build to that emotional stuff, you can’t always sit me down cold in a wrestling arena with a fresh bucket of popcorn and a stiff XL nWo shirt and say, “keep clapping during these chinlocks or the little guy gets it.”

Dragon wins after some Sonny Onoo interference, and also being like, “I’M ULTIMO DRAGON, HERE’S ATLANTIDA, HERE’S ME KICKING YOU IN THE FACE SIX TIMES, DRAGON SLEEPER, SUCK MY DIIIIICK.”

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Worst: Finish The Promo

On last week’s episode, Ric Flair and Rowdy Roddy Piper went long hyping Slam Jamboree and ranting about how they don’t want to carry purses, so their six-man tag team partner Kevin Greene got cut off by a Public Enemy match. I guess they were like, “WHY DIDN’T KEVIN GREENE GET TO SAY THIS THING ABOUT BREAKING HIS FOOT OFF IN THE NWO’S ASS,” so this week they pick up the same promo with Greene saying he’s going to break his foot off in the nWo’s ass. Then, as you might expect, Flair and Piper get additional promo time. Did gamma radiated Jeff Foxworthy really have to talk? Couldn’t Schiavone have been like, “we just got word that Kevin Greene is ALSO excited about Slamboree?”

Flair doesn’t really add anything, but he screams it so everyone enjoys themselves. Don’t worry, Roddy Piper has some extra thoughts on the nWo being homosexuals.

Piper mentions Kevin Nash saying the nWo had some “young lions,” arbitrarily says “lions, tigers and bears,” connects that to The Wizard Of Oz and says “I AIN’T DOROTHY” while like, flapping his kilt. He also takes offense to them calling him a dinosaur, but he IS a dinosaur … he’s a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and at Slamming Jamboree, he’s gonna be starving! I don’t know, man, you’re more like a dilophosaurus that spits bullshit.

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Best: Down There

You may not know this from the fact that I can’t stop talking about Alex Wright’s cock, but I appreciate a good dick joke, and my favorite wrestling dick joke ever is Scott Hall’s unofficial, wonderful catchphrase of “down there/down where?/DOWN THERE.” He usually sets it up by saying his crotch is an all-you-can-eat buffet. I think the conversation you have to have to set it up is my favorite part. It’s so procedural.

So yeah, the nWo interrupts the promo via satellite from somewhere that’s DEFINITELY not Baltimore to tell Piper that if he’s starving, they know of an all-you-can-eat buffet right down there. Syxx says he hooks up with Flair’s wife when Flair’s out of town, and Nash reveals that the Slamboree match is now no disqualification, no count-outs. I’m telling you, the nWo should’ve paid off Mongo to hit Greene with a Haliburton again for everyone forgetting him.

Later in the evening, cameras head backstage to find three guys in nWo shirts and jeans with bandanas over their faces — WHO COULD IT BE — jumping and trying to injure Piper.

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The Room

He’s gonna have to lock himself in a hospital for a week and ride to the arena in an ambulance if he’s going to be ready for Slamboree!

Best: Larry Zbyszko Asks Why Lee Marshall Hates Bobby Heenan So Much

Come for Stagger Lee saying the Biltmore Estate’s policy is “no shoes, no shirt, no weasels,” stay for Heenan’s amazing response when Larry Zbyszko asks him why Lee’s such a prick all the time.

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Best: Mumbling [Indistinct]

In an extremely WCW Monday Nitro match, Wrath takes on Scotty Riggs. This is actually the match where Wrath gets his name — James Vandenberg calls him “the” Wrath, so, close enough — and Riggs, despite being several months out of a feud where the American Males broke up and the other guy from the team beat him at two consecutive pay-per-views, is still dressing like an American Male and coming out to ‘American Males.’ I wish they’d given him a Shark/John Tenta promo where he was like, “I’M BIOLOGICALLY A MALE AND I WAS BORN IN AMERICA, I DON’T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO BE.”

Wrath finishes him off quickly to set up a tense post-match staredown with the Georgian ice ninja whose eyeball he tried to scoop out with a mystical helmet. Basic wrestling storyline. Larry tries to come up with a story about Mike Tenay telling him what Glacier was walking around mumbling in Japanese, which is somehow less believable than scooping out sub-Sub-Zero’s ghost eye with a fucking ornate hat.

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Best: Wait Is That Ray Lewis?

Members of the Baltimore Ravens are in attendance for the show, including 13-time Pro Bowler and 2-time Super Bowl Champion Ray Lewis. As you know, he’d go on to be one of Bret Hart’s favorite players and almost tag with The Rock at a WrestleMania.

I’m sad they didn’t show him watching a Chris Benoit match, because that joke would’ve murdered.

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Worst: As The Haliburton Turns

If you’re wondering what all the OTHER football players are doing on this one hour of pro wrestling TV, Mongo takes on Dean Malenko, which is the total possible spectrum of wrestling talent. It’s like Michael Jordan going one-on-one with a dead body.

Mongo has three choice allies, though: his wife, the guy fucking his wife, and a suitcase. He uses all three of these to distract and chop-block Malenko, but when it looks like he’s about to win, Reggie White comes jogging out of the locker room dressed like a toddler on picture day. He clotheslines and splashes Mongo, shoves Jarrett off the apron and helps Malenko win. That’s like, seven football players in the episode so far, including three that are wrestling at the next pay-per-view.

After the match, Reggie sticks around to cut a babyface promo about how Green Bay vs. Chicago is the “best rivalry in the game,” and how if Mongo wants to talk about him that’s fine, but he needs to leave “the people of Wisconsin” out of this. Keep in mind that (1) they’re in Baltimore, (2) Baltimore also has a football team, (3) members of that football team are SITTING IN THE AUDIENCE, and (4) Baltimore and Green Bay aren’t like, sister cities. The crowd’s like, “woo,” because what are they gonna do, cheer for Mongo and the cuckold handbag assault squad?

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Worst: The Festival Of Acquaintanceship

As mentioned, this week’s main is Representatives From The Dungeon Of Doom vs. the all-star squadron of ‘Das Wunderkind’ Alex Wright and ‘Ice Train’ Ice Train, collectively known (to me) as SNOWPIERCER. Amazingly, the match is a set up for Alex to suddenly turn heel, faking a knee injury to get out of tagging in and bailing on the match. This blows up the friendship between Wright and Train, which … like, are they even friends? I know everyone in that Teddy Long Jim Powers Desperado Joe Gomez posse of losers knows each other, but we haven’t like, seen them backstage palling around.

Train’s left to face the Dungeon 2-on-1, which mostly involves him not even being able to lie down properly. Hugh Morrus sets him up for No Laughing Matter, then has to hop down off the ropes and just stomp him a few times because he’s not in position. Eventually they give up and Konnan locks in Tequila Sunrise for the win. This is Ice Train’s last Nitro appears for THREE YEARS, and his last ever as “Ice Train.” He’d return in 2000 as “M. I. Smooth,” the wrestler whose name answers its own question. “No.”

Best/Worst: Sting Speaks!

For the entire episode, the announce team assures us that Eric Bischoff has promised to get a one-on-one interview with Sting, who hasn’t spoken in months. Nobody’s like, “Eric Bischoff is the leader of the nWo, and the nWo has a fake Sting that follows them around, it’s probably just a way for him to wank on us again.” Then, we get to the segment. What do you think happens?

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The funny part is that FAKE STING DOESN’T TALK EITHER. He just stares Bischoff down a bunch and plays along until Actual Sting shows up and punches him in the face. Fake Sting catches a Scorpion Death Drop, Bischoff escapes out through the crowd without “interviewing” Sting, and that’s the show. Everything I typed is this episode of Nitro.

Can’t wait until this weekend’s pay-per-view event, Sunday Night Football, featuring a halftime show from Ultimo Dragon and Lord Steven Regal.

(I meant that to sound sarcastic, but shit, that sounds pretty good.)