WCW MONDAY NITRO

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: WCW Slamming Jamboree happened, finally, after like 65 weeks of build. Ric Flair, Rowdy Roddy Piper and Excited IRL My Pet Monster Kevin Greene teamed up to defeat the nWo, which you know will definitely stick and affect the nWo and turn the tide for WCW.

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’re a fan of the WCW reports, would you consider dropping a few bucks into the post-production fundraiser for the movie I just finished? We made our goal but we’ve got three days left to raise as much money as we can and make the most beautiful movie possible.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for May 19, 1997.

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Worst: The Four Horsemen Are Dead And Stupid, An “As The Haliburton Turns” Production

This week’s episode begins with Syxx hilariously claiming that the “wrong man” was in the ring last night, meaning WCW didn’t actually win at Slamboree. Keep in mind that the finish of the match was Greene powerslamming Syxx and pinning him while Scott Hall was passed out in a figure-four and Kevin Nash was passed out in a sleeper with a homophobic polystyrene ghoul around his neck.

Ric Flair threatens once again to kick Syxx’s “flyweight ass,” which would have more impact if they weren’t more or less the same size. But the match is on: Ric Flair will face Syxx tonight in this very ring, in one of the greatest moments in the history of our sport, and it’s absolutely not an New World Order trap. Nothing is more guaranteed to end cleanly than a Nitro main event featuring one member of the nWo!

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So later in the episode, Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael and ‘King of the Mounting’ Jeff Jarrett team up to face the Steiner Brothers. Mongo wins after countering Red Ink into a Sling Blade, hitting a wrist-clutch Twist and Shout and nailing two consecutive High Fly Flows to put away Rick. Just kidding, they lose because they’re stupid about briefcases and football guys.

Jeff Jarrett has the chance to hit Rick Steiner with the Haliburton, but Mean Kevin Greene jogs out to stop him. Scott is able to pull Jarrett out of the ring, causing him to drop the briefcase, and Greene picks it up and whacks Mongo to put him away. If you’ll recall, Mongo turned on Greene and hit HIM with the briefcase a year ago, turning Mongo Horseman and sparking their rivalry. You may also recall that Greene has spent the entire past month and change teaming up with Ric Flair, the guy who gave the briefcase TO Mongo and ordered him to turn on Greene. That was fine, apparently, but now Mongo’s gots to pay.

After the match, Mongo and Greene get into a fight in the locker room and are escorted out of the building. Jarrett and Debra get escorted out, too, because Mongo has the bowl everyone put their keys into and they’ve got to get home.

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This doesn’t end well for Flair. With (1) Mongo, Jarrett and Greene thrown out of the building for fighting, (2) Chris Benoit figuratively dead from the Death Match against Meng at Slamboree and (3) Rowdy Roddy Piper being a terrible friend, the nWo realizes nobody would show up to help Flair if they, say, interrupted his match with Syxx like 40 seconds in and beat the shit out of him. So that’s what happens. They “nWo Drop” Flair and taunt him amidst a hail of overpriced arena garbage, promising to do the same to Piper the next time he shows up. Look how much the loss at Slamboree demoralized and affected these guys!

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Worst: Inviting The nWo Back Into The Fold

WCW’s other plan to neutralize the nWo (besides “pinning them once”) was to invalidate the contracts of the group’s least important members. Big Bubba and M. “V.K.” Wallstreet were ordered to return to WCW and stop wearing the nWo colors. That’ll show ’em! What’re you gonna do without BIG BUBBA? How could you POSSIBLY hope to get that Dungeon of Doom shine?

Wallstreet decides to protest this by wearing a t-shirt with an interdictory circle around a WCW logo on it. Yes, the Ghostbusters “no” sign is called an “interdictory circle.” The best part is that Wallstreet is like, YOU SAY WE CAN’T WEAR NWO COLORS, WELL HERE’S WHAT I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THAT, and his fucking WCW shirt is black and white. J.J. Dillon is really cracking down.

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Wallstreet wrestles Scotty Riggs — did I sense some millennial ears perking up? — with Nick Patrick as the referee. According to a pre-taped announcement from Dillon (that’s shown twice, once before and once after a commercial break, because nobody’s paying attention), Patrick’s actions at Slamboree and his pre-nWo record has earned him a second chance and a reinstatement. Nobody gets more officially reinstated than a referee, am I right folks?

Patrick uses this power to ruthlessly cheat to help Riggs win, because in wrestling you’re only an asshole if you’re doing unfair shit to popular people. The highlight of this, surprisingly, comes from Larry Zbyszko.

“Wrestling combines the two worst features of American life; physical brutality punctuated by committee meetings.”

Best: Bobby Heenan

Lee Marshall calls in from Nashville with a parody of ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ predating The Rock by 2 1/2 years. Just think, in a better world Lee Marshall is the biggest international box office movie star in the world. Anyway, it goes like this:

“Well since my baby left me, I’ve found a new place to dwell … the service reeks, the toilet leaks it’s … wea-sel ho-tel!”

Bobby Heenan’s response:

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WRONG GUY’S IN THE GROUND. I love that this has gone on so long that it’s turned into Lee saying, “you’re like a weasel” and Heenan saying, “I wish you were dead.”

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Best: Lord Expectations

New Television Champion Steven Regal has his first defense against Prince Iaukea, the ersatz Rocky Maivia that upset him and managed to hold onto the belt for what felt like an eternity. Regal has a newfound confidence and swagger, dropping the “Lord” from his name to show that he’s seriously business. He also shows he’s serious business by TROUNCING the Prince, dropping him on his face several times, punting him in the jaw and doing that boss Regal Stretch with the palm strikes to the nose. When Prince taps out, Regal SPITS ON HIS BACK, which is probably the rudest place to spit on someone.

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Best: Chono He Didn’t

After that, Dave Taylor — who may or may not still be a squire, I don’t know how his title is altered by Regal’s dismissal of Lordship — faces a returning Masa “My Hero” Chono. Chono became the first international nWo star back in December, meaning he’s a Japanese guy who owns an nWo shirt but never interacts with anyone else from the group. He murks Taylor, tapping him out to an STF.

After the match, Sonny Onoo cuts a promo about how next week he’s getting his revenge on Chono by bringing in his “worst nightmare.” Chono demands to know who it is, but Onoo says he’s not gonna say anything because he wants Chono to sweat. Spoiler alert: Onoo’s mystery opponent is GREAT, but it probably would’ve been a good idea to see which guys in Japan had recently placed a Pro Wrestling Tees order. Just saying.

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Best: A Polite Southern Child Is Giving Away A Racecar

Somewhere between Flair threatening Syxx and getting beaten up by the Wolfpac, he escorts Smurf-sized NASCAR driver Mark Martin out to announce that they’ll be giving away a Valvoline racecar. I swear, one of these days I’m going to go through this company’s financial archives and find out what happened to all these vehicles they gave away. I want to know if 20 years later some accountant drives to work in a Valvoline racecar he won from Ric Flair. That’s the dream.

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Best: Sting Ring, Do Your Thing

Because Flair and Syxx lasts about a minute, the actual main-event of the show is another Eric Bischoff promo where he spends 10 minutes talking about how he’d kick Sting’s ass, only for Sting to show up and drop him with one move. Here, Sting climbs up through the ring like so much Undertaker and Scorpion Death Drops Bischoff. It’s cool, but that’s it.

And that’s the show. Thankfully this is the last of the one-hour NBA Playoff pre-show episodes and we’re no longer building to goddamn Slamboree, so next week things are back to normal. We’re back to two hours, we’ve got room on the show for everyone and hey, even Hollywood Hogan is here! What a treat!

See you next week, and good luck winning that racecar.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Kevin Greene finally got his revenge on Mongo, Rowdy Roddy Piper continued to be the worst friend in the entire world and Sting came up through a hole in the ring a la the Undertaker to hit a wrestling move on Eric Bischoff. He could’ve just, like, snuck into the ring behind him, but under the ring is the best place to be during M. Wallstreet vs. Scotty Riggs.

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. Follow along with the competition here.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. If you don’t tell them how much you like these, nobody’s going to read them. Unless Sports Illustrated does a feature on how Jim Duggan’s underpants tape is “changing the game” for pro wrestling, in which case you don’t have to do anything and we’ll just ride the wave.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for May 26, 1997.

Worst: Hulk Hogan Without A Mustache

Nitro returns to two hours this week, and since we’re no longer in those one-hour NBA Playoffs pre-show filler episodes, Hollywood Hogan is back as well. Hogan — who is the WCW and/or nWo World Heavyweight Champion despite not having defended the belt since February — shows up sans mustache but with his stubble blackened, presumably thanks to the same shit he used to fill in Macho Man’s bald spot. The weird part is that I don’t think he shaved it off for movie reasons. We saw him with a mustache for the film we thought he was out shooting, McCinsey’s Island, and he’s got a mustache in everything on his IMDB around it. He has one in 3 Ninjas, in case there were reshoots or the timeline was worked. He’s got a mustache in his then-upcoming Commando ripoff The Ultimate Weapon, so I guess he just wanted to look like Fred Flintstone for fun?

So yeah, Hogan returns with a Homer Simpson-ass five o’clock shadow and both (1) assures us that the nWo has looked all over and couldn’t find Sting, and (2) calls out Sting. It’s the Hollywood Hogan OS. Don’t show up if anyone who wants to beat you up is there, and if they aren’t, show up and call them cowards for not fighting you. It’s the kid faking illness so he doesn’t have to go to school and confront the bully of pro wrestling.

If you’ve missed Hogan, don’t worry; he’ll be back at the end of the episode to cut the same promo, after spending two hours convincing one of the lower-tier nWo guys to dress up as a fake Sting. Note that Actual Fake Sting is somehow not available.

Best: The Opposite Of Hollywood Hogan, Or
Best: Super Calo Is Still Out Of His Goddamn Mind

This week’s opening bout is a lucha trios match between everyone’s favorite fat, chair-swinging, jigging Mexican skeleton La Parka and his cohorts Ciclope and Damian versus Juventud Guerrera, WWF ship-jumper Hector Garza and SUPER CALO, the rap mascot with no bones who wrestles in sunglasses. Juvy appears to have lost his luggage and is wearing a Hysteria mask.

Anyway, you come to these Super Calo match write-ups to find out what stupid thing he did to endanger the safety of himself and others, and this week is one of his greatest hits, so here goes: somewhere near the middle of the match, Calo shoots a topé suicida so hard he flips on impact, nearly smashes his ass (and Ciclope’s spine) on the top of the security railing, bounces off some child’s face and lands in the second row of fans. It’s amazing, assuming you aren’t a child who just had a masked stranger’s taint smash you in the mouth at 20 MPH.

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The point of the match is to get over Garza, who has convinced the North American wrestling world that his corkscrew plancha is so cool and revolutionary it’ll make him a fan favorite despite him possessing zero (0) other qualities. Note I didn’t say “likeable qualities,” I said “qualities.” The only thing you’d ever be able to say about Hector Garza is, “he does the corkscrew plancha,” and, “his name is Hector Garza.” Ciclope misjudges a diving headscissors because FFS he’s only got one eye, and Garza’s able to counter into a powerbomb and standing moonsault him for the victory.

Join us two weeks from now for a similar match, but with everyone fucking up and almost dying.

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Best: That Might Be The Greatest (And Most Sexual) Screenshot I’ve Ever Taken

It must’ve been the 1997 version of a WrestleCon weekend or something, because nearly the entire first hour of this Nitro is international. After the Preceding Lucha we get Psicosis vs. “Triumph des Genitalien” Alex Wright. Wright is still trying to settle into his heel turn, where he’s still just Alex Wright but he taunts more and his European uppercuts hit harder.

The highlight of the match other than that picture is the moment just after, where Psicosis tries a Whisper in the Wind off the top to the floor and gets whispered into the cement. Wright kinda steps over to catch him but Psicosis mostly just grazes the side of his arm. Maybe it was like at Halloween Havoc 95 when Sabu tried to moonsault out onto Mr. JL and The Sheik and forgot the Sheik was holding a sword. You probably don’t want to jump directly at Alex Wright. Because of his sword.

Psicosis wins clean with a guillotine leg drop, giving da churman a hell of a loss.

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Worst: Konnan vs. Villano IV

I don’t have much to say about this match, but I wanted to point out how this picture makes it look like Konnan is executing a single-leg crab on a luchador with huge testes. We’re talking tanuki balls.

After the match, Konnan cuts a Spanish promo on Mean Gene where he calls him “white boy” and says he’s not wrestling for the Caucasoids, he’s doing it for “la raza.” I’m sure tu raza feels empowered by your ability to take advantage of a man’s debilitating hernia and tap out one of like 16 matching Villanos.

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Best: The All-Right Muta

Hora número uno de Nitro Internacional continues with Masahiro Chono facing the man Sonny Onoo promised would “make him sweat” and be his “worst nightmare,” The Great Muta. If you aren’t familiar with Muta, he spent some time in the NWA in the late 80s and early 90s, becoming a former TV and Tag Team Champion. He was kind of an evil Japanese Sting who replaced enthusiasm with spastic weirdness and happy shouting with spewing mist from his irritated poison glands like a Dilophosaurus. He was amazing, and the reason I got into tape trading when I was nine. I was like, “oh my God, Japan seems COOL AS SHIT, what is even going on?”

Muta is still active today, continuing an unparalleled career that’s seen him become a 3-time Triple Crown Heavyweight Champion, a 4-time IWGP Heavyweight Champion, and a mystical force powerful enough to create an enormous monster sumo baby by spitting mist into the vagina of an erotic terrorist. No, really.

Anyway, Onoo didn’t get the memo that any Japanese dudes showing up on Nitro going forward are automatically in the nWo, so here’s Muta impregnating his face.

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I had a reaction like that to wrestling once, when I accidentally watched Fastlane.

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Worst: Steroids Don’t Make Kicks Hurt Less

Here’s a picture of Jim Powers sporting a massive cameltoe. You ever been kicked so hard it gave you a vagina?

After the match, Chris Benoit shows up and tells Jimmy Hart he wants another shot at Death Matching The Monster Meng. Jimmy’s like, “LOL,” and instead sets up a match for next week between Benoit and Barb. Not to spoil you too much, but if there’s ever a moment in a Benoit match where you see his brain irrevocably turn to mush, it’s next week. STOP TRYING TO DEATH MATCH THESE TONGANS, CHRIS.

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Best: Bobby Heenan Wishing Death On Lee Marshall Never Stops Being Hilarious

Stagger Lee: “Dayton is also the host of this huge air show, it features the Air Force Thunderbirds, the Navy Blue Angels, the Army Golden Knights, but Air Force officials want fans to know that because of the public’s outcry the stunt team of Crash and Burn Bobby and his Wing Walking Weasels will NOT be appearing this year! That is your 1-800-COLLECT Road Report from Dayton, Ohio, I’m Lee Marshall for 1-800-COLLECT!”

Heenan: “… guy should back into a propeller.”

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Best/Worst: I’m Gonna Pal Your Pal, Pal!

The nWo’s started in on this weird narrative that Ric Flair is an “old drag queen,” which has got to be them trying to piss off noted gay-panic monologist Rowdy Roddy Piper. They also call Flair a “fluff boy,” which Urban Dictionary defines as, “the guy who has no game and misses out on a shag to the stunt cock … usually plays the emotionally supportive angle to get in but at the end of the day is average looking at best so can’t close the deal.” Are they getting him mixed up with Mongo?

The Outsiders challenge Flair and Piper to a match for the Tag Team Championship at The Great American Bash. Nash promises to make Piper a man of his word and by retiring him, and says the only way he could get put to sleep again is if Piper tied him up in a recliner and made him watch his next movie. Yeah right, Dead Tides was next, good luck ever sleeping again after watching Piper have stand-up shower sex with Tawny Kitaen. Note: link is NSFL.

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Worst: I Would Do Anything For Love, But I Won’t Do That

Almost forgot about this. Before Sonny Onoo earned his Red Wings, he was confronted by Madusa about whether or not she was going to get a shot at Akira Hokuto’s WCW Women’s Championship. She says she’ll “do anything” to get a shot, and Onoo’s like, “ha, she said it, she said she’d do anything,” and Mean Gene briefly tries to make it sexual before Sonny reveals his plan: He’ll give Madusa a shot at Hokuto’s strap at Great American Bash, but Madusa has to put her career on the line.

To clarify, Madusa, the woman who jumped ship from WWF to WCW and threw her WWF Women’s Championship belt in the garbage for “real competition” is willing to put her entire career on the line for a shot at a belt (1) that hasn’t been mentioned on WCW TV in like a year, (2) represents a division including a total of three people, four if you count the one female jobber, and (3) she’s the only one who ever competes for. That’s the “I should get implants four times the size of my head” of career planning.

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Best: Blood Runs Red

Not much Blood Runs Cold content this week, but we get a fun video of Ernest Miller knocking people out in his full contact karate tournaments, and Wrath squashing Alex Wright’s British friend Mark Starr. After the match, James Vandenberg displays Glacier’s shidoshi’s mystical helmet and is like, “you want it, come and get it!” Giving this a Best because again, no matter how many condescending WWE.com lists you’ve read about WCW sucking, a Caucasian ice ninja was teaming up with an African-American cat-themed karate champion in a southern pro wrestling promotion to get back a powerful Oriental artifact from an evil businessman, an irradiated skeleton in a cape and a timeless Biblical The Great Wall monster in a steel helmet.

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Best: Receipts

The Giant wins a 3-on-1 match against the ultimate WCW Monday Nitro jobber trio of Roadblock, Rick Fuller and Johnny Swinger. Swinger accidentally wandered into the match from Mongo and Jeff Jarrett’s key party. Giant wins easily, because of course he does, and he and Lex Luger cut a logical promo about how Luger earned a title shot he’s never gotten at Spring Stampede, Giant earned a title shot he’s never (really or fairly) gotten at World War 3, and Hulk Hogan, they coming for YOU [indistinct].

Note: Luger also mentions that he’s scouting Dennis Rodman by watching the NBA Playoffs, and now my life’s goal is to watch a basketball game with the Total Package and spend the entire time asking him how he’d beat them at wrestling.

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Worst: As The Haliburton Turns

Members of Harlem Heat take on the MMF tag team hookup of Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael, Jeff Jarrett and Debra. If you added Colonel Parker and the Amazing French Canadians to this, it’d be the Triforce of bad Nitro match endings.

Kevin Greene shows up to do color commentary on the match, which eventually draws Mongo away from the ring. They brawl under the watchful eye of Security Santa Claus Doug Dellinger, leaving Jarrett alone to take a leg drop from the Heat and lose. Jarrett responds negatively to being abandoned by Mongo, despite being tossed into the ring BY Mongo at Slamboree, losing the match because of it, then running back out to help him beat non-wrestling-ass Reggie White with a non-wrestling-ass briefcase to the face.

Don’t worry, this angle continues for several more months.

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Worst: Fake Fake Sting

At the end of the night, Hollywood Hogan and his perma-stubble show up to once again call out Sting. This time “Sting” answers, but it’s a fake Sting … not THE fake Sting, but A fake Sting, because the nWo did not have a dude they paid to dress up like Sting and follow them around for a year. This fake Sting is Buff Bagwell in a bad wig and a Sting mask, so Hogan spits on the canvas and makes Sting “worship the ground he spits on.” You’re gonna get a staph infection, Fake Fake Sting.

As you might’ve guessed if you’ve ever watched wrestling or been conscious for more than 20 seconds, Actual Real Sting shows up, takes out Bischoff again and debilitates Fake Sting with a bat shot to the hip and a Falling Armpit Hold. Hogan teases getting back into the ring and starting something, but Sting reverses his bungee and zips up into the heavens to avoid further conflict.

The reason I’m giving it a worst is because of how long it all takes. Once Sting drops the imposter, we have to get an uninterrupted tight closeup of Hogan’s horrible ink-stained face for like a minute and a half so the cameras don’t pick up Sting hooking himself up to a harness, checking all the safety features and tugging on the cord multiple times to get someone — the Disciple? I don’t know — to pull him up.

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We end the night on a massive upskirt, and that’s your show. Join us next week when Diamond Dallas Page ALSO starts wearing a huge black trenchcoat for a mysterious, definitely-not-bungee-related reason.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Nitro returned to two hours and stopped being an NBA Playoffs pre-show, so Hollywood Hogan also returned and was like, “hey everyone, look at Hollywood Hogan!” Note: Hogan does not appear on this episode.

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. Follow along with the competition here.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. If you don’t tell them how much you like these, nobody’s going to read them. Unless Vice posts a thing about the Yeti with the headline, “THE CRAZY WRESTLING EVENT YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT,” and everyone scrolls to like, page three of the Google search results.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for June 2, 1997.

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Worst: James J. Dillon, Hard-Ass

About a month and a half ago, WCW named former Four Horsemen impresario and Buddy Landel spokesperson J.J. Dillon as head of the executive committee. In that same episode, Eric Bischoff showed up and was like, “bite me, you have no authority.” A few weeks later, Bischoff actually said this to Dillon’s face in the middle of the ring, calling his bluff. Dillon did nothing.

This week, James J. decides he’s going to be the toughest and most inscrutable bad-ass, because character consistency was never WCW’s strong suit. The show opens with Scott Hall and Syxx once again promising to throw Ric Flair and Flair’s aggressively heterosexual friend HOT ROD into the La Brea tar pits or whatever, so J.J. interrupts and says that Flair’s on a jet to Dayton, OH, right now, and Scott Hall will face him one-on-one in the main event or be forced to “leave the tag titles on his desk.” If you’re keeping score, this means the nWo — the organization that won the right to have any title match they want whenever they want it, and who have explicitly said the WCW executive committee has no power over them, save for costing them the precious contracts of Big Bubber and I.M. Wallstreet — must go through the motions of another nWo run-in in a no-finish main event or give up the championships they lost a couple of times but got back because they said “GIVE THOSE BACK TO US.” Got it.

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Flair does indeed show up, thanks to some “favorable tailwinds coming in from Charlotte,” as best illustrated by this screencap that makes him look like he’s being sucked into an airplane engine. This segment gets a glorious supplemental Best, by the by, for Flair saying he’s going to kick Hall’s, “toothpick chewin’, WHITE HONKY ASS.”

In context it’s a pretty funny half-shoot on Hall pretending to be Cuban and doing a bad Scarface voice from Razor Ramon on. Out of context, it’s an extremely funny moment of Ric Flair, the dictionary definition of a honky, calling anyone else in the world a honky. Ric Flair as an anti-white social justice warrior or whatever is the greatest gimmick that never happened. MEEEEEEEAN, WOOO, PRIVILEGED GENE!

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Hall vs. Flair goes exactly like you’d expect. It’s pretty good at times, with Flair doing his nuclear CHOP EVERYTHING THAT MOVES thing and the twice-the-size-of-Flair Scott Hall bumping way too hard off a 50-year old’s phantom jabs, but ends with Syxx interfering and Hall hitting Flair with a title belt for the DQ. They hold him up in the ring and slap him around a little until Rowdy Roddy PIper … haha, just kidding, until Jeff Jarrett and Mongo show up and run them off. Piper’s still off somewhere filming I’m Your Man 2: The KY Connection or whatever.

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Dillon shows up again at the end of the episode to get in the face of the Macho Man Randy Savage, the single craziest and most prone-to-hitting-non-wrestlers wrestler alive, and be all, “I don’t have any respect for you, because you stood in the crowd when you cut promos on Diamond Dallas Page like a coward and also I bet you don’t have any balls, here, let he stick my neck out and tilt my chin up and say more mean shit to you, I bet nothing will happen.” He gets punched. Then, when referees and Eric Bischoff and Security’s Deadliest Santa Doug Dellinger show up to separate them, Savage breaks through and punches J.J. a few more times. And yeah, Savage is a crazy nut, but I’m not sure any non-Hogan human being in the two-year run of Nitro episodically needed to be punched more.

Next week’s episode is built around the drama of “what will happen to the Macho Man now?” Spoiler alert, he still gets to main-event WCW’s pay-per-view, only now his match will be non-sanctioned, which means there are no rules and anyone from the nWo can interfere. Good call, J.

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Best: it’s A Bad Week To Be Alex Wright’s Head

This week’s opener sees everyone’s favorite Caucasian Ice Ninja — okay, the only Caucasian ice ninja — Glacier take on the human eggplant emoji, Alex Wright. Wright jumps Glacier before the bell and beats him down pretty effectively, but can’t stop pausing to hold up his hands and crotch-thrust at the audience. This gives Glashe enough time to recover, hit one (1) Cryonic Kick and score the win. It was only one kick, but to be fair, he really cold cocked him.

[cough]

After the match, Mortis and Wrath jump Glacier to get a measure of revenge for the locked-door whoopin’ handed out by Ernest ‘The Cat’ Miller at Slamming Jamboree. Alex decides his blood is running a little cold, too, despite evidence to the contrary, and helps them out. Mortis instructs Wright to hold him for a superkick, and since nobody in wrestling history has ever successfully completed a superkick while a third party was holding the victim’s arms back, Wright gets his shit kicked out for the second time on the night.

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Part of me — okay, all of me — wishes Blood Runs Cold had really taken off, and that they’d shaved Alex Wright and turned him into Berlyn two years early to be a Mortal Kombat villain with them. Imagine Disco Inferno as one of those Cyrax-ass Mortal Kombat robots but with like, an exoskeleton made out of disco balls.

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Best: Vicious And Delicious

Up next, Buff Bagwell takes on the physical opposite of Buff Bagwell, Desperado Joe Gomez. Gomez looks like he donated his muscles to Buff, so now he’s shaped like a child Gorgon from Zelda.

The major development here is that Buff is back from his job as one of the founding gaijin in nWo Japan, where he bonded and formed a tag team with Scott “Flash” Norton called “Vicious and Delicious.” If you’ve never heard that before, congratulations, you’re now aware of the greatest tag team name ever. The only thing that would’ve been better is if they’d called themselves “Thick and Laying It On.”

Buff wins a quick match with a Blockbuster, because you could beat Joe Gomez with a fucking Hollywood Video.

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Worst: Prince Iaukea Cannot Perform Basic Wrestling Holds

Before we throw too much shade at Joe Gomez for having the physique of a balloon animal, here’s Prince Iaukea, who proves that having muscles and being in good shape does not make you an athlete.

Before the match even starts, Konnan hits Hugh Morrus in the back of the head with a broom (?) to continue his extended leaving of the Dungeon of Doom. The Dungeon of Broom? Anyway, Hugh Morrus is Con Cussed, so the match is supposed to be Prince baseball sliding through his legs and schoolboying him for an instant three. This takes like, two minutes. Here’s a picture of the first attempt, in which Hugh takes a wide stance with his leg up and Prince just kinda butt-fumbles into it chest first.

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On the second attempt, Hugh decides to eliminate the difficulty of a baseball slide and tells Prince to duck a line. Prince ducks it, and Hugh goes instantly comatose, standing in the center of the ring staring forward, waiting to be rolled up. Prince just kinda runs into him, then backs up and puts his hand on Hugh’s butt. I’m not making this up. Hugh has to turn around and take a dropkick to stall, and then they go BACK to the baseball slide plan. Prince is able to put it all together here, and finally executes the impossible PUT YOUR HANDS BETWEEN MY LEGS SO I CAN LAY BACKWARDS AND THEN YOU JUST STAY THERE for three. Jesus Christ. Disappointed this didn’t end with Regal showing up and shit-kicking him again for professional reasons.

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Worst: As The Haliburton Turns

No actual Hailburton action this week, but here’s Jeff Jarrett trying to cost Dean Malenko a match against “Occupy” M. Wallstreet by grabbing his feet during an outside-in vertical suplex. The story is that Jarrett wants to prove that his loss to Malenko at Slam Jamboree was daffally frook. As you might expect, Jarrett totally fucks up his interference here, allowing Malenko to recover and tap out Wallstreet anyway. Which is double weird because this was a United States Championship match, so Jarrett was trying to cause Malenko to lose the belt so he could, uh, beat Malenko for the belt. This plot brought to you by ANTHEM.

After the match, Jarrett calls Malenko an “un-charismatic block of ice,” which shows Honky Ric Flair levels of self-awareness, and challenges him to a rematch for the championship next week. Mongo shows up, Haliburton in hand, to interrupt and cut a totally unrelated promo on Kevin Greene. The idea is that you’re super sure Mongo is going to interfere again next week, but surprise! Swerve! He doesn’t.

Somebody else does, though, because this is WCW, and “someone interfered” is the only way the titles ever change hands.

It’s also the way we decide #1 contender matches!

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Worst: As The #1 Contendership Turns

Somewhere in the middle of the show, James J. Dillon announces that the WCW executive committee board of committed executives has been looking “at the recent records,” and have decided that the Steiner Brothers are the number one contenders to the Outsiders’ Tag Team Championship. We know how well that worked out the last time. This brings out Members Of Harlem Heat and Sista Sherri, who insist that THEY’re the number one contenders. Dillon is like, “if the Steiners win their match tonight, they are a LOCK for the number one contendership.” He says this to Harlem Heat’s faces. He might as well have followed it up with, “I’m sure that match will have a CLEAN FINISH,” winking at them and nudging Sherri in the ribs.

So the Steiners wrestle Chono and the Great Muta, aka Sonny Without A Chance. What you’re seeing in that picture is Harlem Heat running down and blasting Rick Steiner with a chair while Scott stands in the ring holding Muta on his shoulders, waiting for nothing. With Rick knocked out, Muta … uh, hooks on a leg lock instead of going for a lateral press, and Rick has his shoulders counted down in the submission. Sure!

After the match, Harlem Heat is like, “NOTHING UNFAIR HAPPENED, NOW WE’RE NUMBER ONE CONTENDERS!” Dillon shows up and says the match is “under review,” and that neither Harlem Heat NOR nWo Japan are number one contenders. Ric Flair needs to come out here and run J.J. up the flagpole for being such an exclusive honky.

Later in the night, Harlem Heat wrestles Ciclope and Damien. BET YOU CAN’T GUESS WHAT HAPPENS.

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The referee decides to like, bury his entire upper body in Ciclope’s abdomen so the Steiners can run out and blatantly attack Booker T with a chair. That sets up the Heat to take a shocking loss to a lower-than-undercard luchador team, but somehow DOESN’T set up Ciclope and Damien vs. Muta and Chono for the number one contendership. Can somebody hit somebody else with a briefcase already?

Finally this week, we have two horrible sights.

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The first is Lee Marshall’s 1-800-COLLECT Road Report from Boston. I’m just gonna type this out again.

“As you know, Boston has so many sports legends it’s really hard to keep track. A lot of our own WCW stars are close friends with some of Boston’s best; for example, maybe you didn’t know this, Tony, that Sting actually once sent a special pair of basketball shoes to Larry Bird and he scored 40 points that night. Lex Luger once sent a special pair of skates to Bobby Orr, and Orr had a hat trick that night. And I’ll bet Boston fans would like to know that BOBBY THE BRAIN HEENAN once sent a customized WONDER WEASEL FIRST BASEMAN’S MITT to Bill Bucker and that day he only made one error!”

Shout-out to Luger for sending Bobby Orr a pair of skates when he was 17, because Orr stopped playing for Boston in 74-75. You really couldn’t update your sports references for 1997, Lee? Lex Luger can’t like Ray Bourque? Sting can’t teach Dee Brown how to dab?

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The last is Chris Benoit vs. The Barbarian, which is definitely a Best in that there’s no better way to spend two minutes of Nitro, but also kind of a Worst in that Barb does not play and Benoit’s never like, “maybe DON’T kick me in the temple as hard as you can and drop me on my face a bunch?” It’s dope, but it’s also terrifying. For example, here’s that throwing belly-to-belly they do off the top rope. Here’s a further example, in which Barbarian OH MY GOD-

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BARBARIAN, NO. NO.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Konnan attacked Hugh Morrus with a broom, Lee Marshall took 6500 words to call Bobby Heenan a “weasel,” and Randy Savage beat up James J. Dillon. Also, that thing that ruined Chris Benoit’s brain forever happened, by the look of it.

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. Follow along with the competition here.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. If you don’t tell them how much you like these, nobody’s going to read them. Unless Forbes Magazine Website breaks the exclusive news that Alex Wright’s package was 1997’s highest paid wrestler and everyone googles it.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for June 9, 1997.

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Best: Dizzy Bat As A Wrestling Match

Two weeks ago, Nitro opened with a super fun trios match that featured a Hector Garza corkscrew moonsault, Juventud Guerrera headscissoring Damian off the apron to the floor face-first, and God’s perfect hip-hop angel Super Calo tope-ing into the second row. It was so good the folks behind the scenes were like, “hey, we should do that again, but replace some of the iffier luchadores with our top guys.” So this week, Super Calo and Juventud Guerrerea team with Ultimo Dragon to take on La Parka, Silver King and Psicosis. Everyone almost dies. Barely an exaggeration.

It’s like everyone in the match did 10 shots before they got in the ring. That picture you see is of Ultimo Dragon trying to balance on his hands on the ropes, doing an awkward split and just kinda falling over backwards onto his own head. Everyone’s brutally off this week, and it is legitimately dangerous to be “off” and “near Super Calo” at the same time.

Pictured here is Calo monkey-flipping La Parka sideways upside down into the ropes to his doom. A few minutes later, Calo sidesteps a dropkick and Parka goes upside down in the ropes AGAIN, this time landing on his neck and somehow nothing else.

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By the end of the match Psicosis is straight up ignoring tags, chairs are being used with no disqualifications called and everyone’s just like, “this match went to shit, time to break out THE CRAZIEST THING I’VE EVER DONE.” That includes Silver King backflipping over the top rope to the floor, La Parka pulling off Sabu’s triple jump plancha with a Meng-style wooden chair, and a double springboard from Juventud where he slips halfway through, ends up jumping sideways off the top rope and almost breaks his neck on the apron. Dragon wins with a Dragon Sleeper on Psicosis.

After the match, La Parka brings the chair back into the ring, beats Super Calo to death with it and shoot-kicking him in the sternum. At first you’re like, “ha, La Parka likes attacking people with chairs, that’s his thing,” and then you’re like, “oh no, La Parka did not appreciate those near-death experiences.”

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when you see it youll shit bricks

Or, “can you find the two hogs in this picture?”

Worst: The Scariest Fan In Nitro History

This nightmare Saw pig man shows up in the background during Alex Wright vs. Chris Jericho. Wright gets his feet on the ropes to help with leverage on a chinlock, and Hoggish Greedly pops up behind him. The best part is that he just silently rises, then shrugs and waves off Wright’s cheating. THIS MASSACHUSETTS PIG MONSTER THOUGHT YOU WERE BETTER THAN THAT, ALEX.

Wright wins using the ropes, which doesn’t make any sense because (1) the announce team spent the entire match putting over how much momentum Jericho had since his latest Japan excursion, and (2) Wright had lost all his other matches since turning heel, so it’s not like he had any momentum. So let’s take a moment to really let that image of Murder House Piggy Man rising from asses to personify disappointment.

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Worst: Time To Enact Mashall Law

Pretty weak effort from Lee Marshall this week, who struggles to find good “weasel” material when they go to big cities because he’s got too much to work with. If you’re going to Tupelo, Mississippi, Lee can dig into the Funk & Wagnalls and find a choice Tupelo fact with which to burn the Brain, but if you’re going to Boston or Chicago he’s like, OH NO, ALL THE FACTS, IT’S ALL WEASELS. Nitro’s going to Chicago next week, so Lee’s brain breaks, and he goes on a rant about how all of Chicago’s tabloid journalists have quit because they have integrity and heard Heenan’s coming to town.

Also:

“Chicago, they call the wind the ‘hawk,’ they call the hot air the ‘weasel!'”

Tony Schiavone follows up his “thanks, Lee” with like a solid minute and a half of non-stop Nitro recapping, not even stopping to take a breath because he’s multitasking and trying to keep Heenan from hanging himself.

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Worst: The Most Hulk Hogan Thing Ever

At the top of the show, we learn that Hollywood Hogan and Dennis Rodman will be teaming up in the main event of Bash at the Beach. Hogan’s not on the Great American Bash card at all, and he hasn’t defended the World Heavyweight Championship since February. That means he’s not going to actually defend the title until August, and (spoiler alert) he only loses it there so he can get it back five days later on a pay-per-view.

Anyway, Lex Luger shows up and talks about how Hogan never defends the belt, so the WCW Executive Committee has decided that Hogan will have to face Luger right here tonight. Hogan’s response is to come to the ring, say, “I defend the belt where I want, when I want,” and then he DOESN’T HAVE TO DEFEND THE BELT. That’s it. The WCW Executive Committee has absolutely zero power over anyone better than, say, Jim Powers. In fact, Hogan even refuses to wrestle until the Wolfpac come down to ringside to back him up.

So after all of that, Hogan stalls for a little while, then proceeds to physically dominate Lex Luger. He just kicks his ass with back rakes and top-of-the-head punches. They say they have to go to a commercial, but they’re going to hold off on it to stay with the action. As soon as Lex gets in a little bit of offense, they go to commercial. When they come back, Hogan’s in control again. It’s insane, right?

Luger manages to avoid an elbow drop, which I guess constitutes enough offense to trigger the run-in. Lex fights off Hall, Nash and Syxx and grabs Hogan in the Torture Rack out of nowhere for the win. Wait, what?

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Before Hogan even hits the ground, the Wolfpac is beating down Luger. They continue to beat him down for like, twice the length of the match. Hogan hits probably eight leg drops on Lex while everyone poses. The Giant’s in Germany, but Sting isn’t, and neither are the Steiner Brothers, and neither is Diamond Dallas Page, and neither are Ric Flair and Roddy Piper, the Wolfpac’s opponents later in the night. Neither is Doug Dellinger and WCW security, but the world is collectively like, “fuck Lex,” and leaves him out there to get the dog shit beaten out of him for five minutes.

Once that’s over, Hogan and Bischoff literally lie down in the middle of the ring with the belt across their laps and cut a promo about how they let “Rod the Bod” down, and how they won’t at Bash at the Beach. Which isn’t even the next pay-per-view.

So Hogan loses to Lex, but only after (1) completely dominating him and allowing Lex exactly one forearm and one Torture Rack, (2) causing a confusing run-in, (3) making it non-title, (4) assuring us before AND after the match that Lex is worthless, (5) no-selling the loss, and (6) getting his heat back ten times over during a post-match attack where no one can stand up to him. Unbelievable. Hope you like getting arm-dragged by basketball players, Lex.

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Best/Worst: Whoops, We Have A Women’s Division

WCW Women’s Champion Akira Hokuto faces the WCW women’s division’s one jobber, Malia Hosaka, and finishes her off quickly with a Northern Lights Bomb. Remember a few months ago when WCW was launching a women’s cruiserweight division? Remember when Luna Vachon debuted by being a person backstage and then didn’t wrestle for months? Anyway, the story now is that Madusa is suddenly facing Akira Hokuto for the Women’s Championship in a career-threatening match, because what’s she putting on the line, really? A chance to show up on Nitro every two months and point at Mean Gene about how she wants to be Women’s Champion?

Madusa shows up after the match and hits Hokuto with three of those weird German suplexes she does where she holds the front and back of your waist instead of the sides. And what’s weirdest of all is that these are angry Germans to make a point, but she’s still like, bridging on all of them. Look at her, she’s using the ass cheek for leverage and going up on her tip-toes. That’ll show her! Use your fundamentals!

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Worst: Everybody Fights, A Prelude, Part One

Last week, the Steiner Brothers and Members of Harlem Heat got into an argument about who deserved to be number one contenders for the Tag Team Championship belts they can’t even keep if they win them. They cost each other matches, so this week they get in each other’s faces and come to blows. They brawl around a while, and this is important because it sets up a Royal Rumble go-home-show-style EVERYBODY FIGHTS bit at the end. You’ll see what I mean in a minute.

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Worst: Everybody Fights, A Prelude, Part Two, Or
Best: Oh My God I Want That Shirt

A little later in the show, the Dungeon of Doom shows up, and they announce the “surprise return” of Kevin Sullivan. If you were wondering where Sullivan was, raise your hand. Nobody? Anyway, Sullivan cuts a pandering promo about being in Boston and being from Boston, which builds to the only thing Kevin Sullivan ever does: calling out Chris Benoit and punching him in the face. Maybe the backstage monitors were broken this week and nobody back there could see what was going on in the ring, which is why nobody shows up to help their friends?

The major point I want to make here is, oh my God, look at Kevin Sullivan’s shirt. I tried to find a place to buy it online, but aside from an expired eBay auction, I had no luck. I did find a better picture of it, though. If anyone in the world reading this owns that shirt in a large, I will buy it from you, no questions asked. This includes you, Kevin Sullivan, although I’m guessing I’d look like Stevie Richards if I tried on any of your shirts.

As The Haliburton Turns

Speaking of the Horsemen, there are two big storyline developments this week. Okay, one, and one about football guys again.

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1. Mongo is supposed to wrestle Konnan, which might be the worst match you could put on paper in 1997. Before he can get to the ring, Kevin Greene shows up and realizes his destiny as Mojo Rawley’s real father by attacking Mongo from behind with a jumping dick to the skull. They brawl to the back, and the match gets called off. When we go back to the ring, Konnan has been knocked out by a mysterious assailant, and the announce team is like WOW WHO COULD HAVE DONE THIS, WHAT HAPPENED, like they didn’t see a chuckling fat dude get domed with a broomstick last week.

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2. Jeff Jarrett gets the United States Championship match against Dean Malenko he earned by, uh, trying to help M. Wallstreet win the United States Championship last week. He walks out without Debra, and everyone’s like, “hey, where’s Debra?” Tony Schiavone should’ve been like, THERE ARE FOUR SHADOWS ON THE GROUND IN FRONT OF US, WHAT COULD THESE FOUR SHADOWS MEAN

So yeah, Debra shows up late in the match and gets up on the apron to, I don’t know, tell the referee about her day. With the ref distracted everyone’s like, “here comes Mongo,” but instead of Mongo we get the POLAR OPPOSITE OF MONGO, Eddie Guerrero. Eddie hops out of the crowd with a sling on his arm, but reveals it’s a PROP SLING by hitting a ****3/4 Frog Splash on Dean-o and costing him the match.

Now the Eddie Guerrero vs. Dean Malenko feud is back on, and now Jeff Jarrett and Steve McMichael have something to fight over besides which one gets to have sex and which one has to hold the camera.

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Best, Then Worst, Then Really Worst, Then Best Again, Then Kind of Worst Again, Then LOL: The Ballad Of Diamond Dallas Page

So.

Okay, Nitro opens with a limo arriving to the arena. Before we can wonder WHO IS DRIVING THE LIMO, we find out it’s Macho Man Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth. As they’re stepping out, Diamond Dallas Page in a LEATHER DUSTER and tries to attack Savage, but Savage ruthless — he’s got 30s and hundred rounds too — and Page gets his entire upper body slammed in the car door.

Later in the night, James J. Dillon announces that Savage will be fined $500,000 for beating him up last week, and that Savage vs. Page at the Great American Bash will now be non-sanctioned. That means anything goes, and falls count anywhere. Savage shows up in the crowd again to threaten J.J., but Diamond Trenchcoat Page storms down to the ring and gets between them. In a highlight of not only the night but an entire career, Page adds an exclamation point to his “snap into this” taunt by putting the microphone between his legs so it looks like his dick.

DDP rocking a black dildo, everybody:

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Alex Wright is backstage like, “eh, I’ve seen better.”

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“What’s on Raw” is the best possible sign for the night’s main event, which is Ric Flair teaming with Roddy “Nice Of Me To Show Up” Piper against the Outsiders. These two teams are fighting for the Tag Team Championship at the Bash, so WCW was like, “just have them go out and do the match early, it’s fine, nobody cares.” Most of it’s built around Roddy Piper slowly turning into a Bloater and Ric Flair being too busy with Syxx to pay attention. After a few minutes, Syxx gets into the ring and the match gets thrown out. Because of course it does!

Here’s where it gets hard to follow. Flair and Piper are in the ring fighting the Wolfpac, which brings out the rest of the nWo and the Four Horsemen for a big brawl. Kevin Greene shows up to help the Horsemen, because dude absolutely cannot decide how he feels about them. As this is happening, that earlier brawl between the Steiners and Harlem Heat spills out onto the stage. Then the Dungeon of Doom shows up to beat up Benoit some more. Then LUCHADORES are out and randomly fighting. Then Glacier, Mortis and Wrath are here for some reason, because I guess they’ve been fighting over that abducted helmet across several states for a week. Savage runs out near the end, which brings out Page. And now EVERYONE IS FIGHTING EVERYWHERE.

Hogan finally shows up, and Sting follows closely behind. I guess Sting couldn’t find him when he was spending 15 minutes murdering Sting’s best friend with the armpit of his knee. Page is in peril, so Sting hooks his bungee-jumping harness to him and RIDES HIM INTO THE HEAVENS LIKE A HORSEY.

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One of the most ridiculous images I’ve ever seen. Also, LOL at Page wearing that trench the entire episode so it wouldn’t look weird when Sting was able to hook him and fly him to the ceiling. An absolutely bizarre, nearly inexplicable show leading into the Great American Bash. But hey, look on the bright side … next cycle we get to build to Flair vs. Piper AND a Dennis Rodman match!

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: We took a look at the Great American Bash ’97, a show full of people accidentally betraying each other. Or betraying each other on purpose. Long story short: DDP got a concussion trying to be a good dude, nobody helped him, and WCW is boned.

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

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. If you don’t tell them how much you like these, nobody’s going to read them. People need to know about the next, thrilling step in the Mongo McMichael vs. Jeff Jarrett saga.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for June 16, 1997.

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Worst: Dennis Rodman Is Going To Kick Lex Luthor’s Ass

Did you ever have a moment in school where you had an oral presentation due but forgot about it, so when the teacher called your name you had to stand in front of class with only the vaguest idea of what Ethan Frome was about and shoot from the hip about it for five minutes?

That’s how this week’s Nitro begins. Hollywood Hogan, Dennis Rodman and Eric Bischoff come to the ring to talk in the broadest strokes about the Great American Bash and the upcoming Bash at the Beach. Hogan kills most of the time by vaguely recapping his relationship to the other New World Order members — “I love those guys! And my man the Syxx-pack, he can do it all night long!” — and Rodman calls out “Lex Luthor.” Twice. Oh, and Hogan brings back the old “big stinky Giant” chestnut. They want to fight Lex and the Giant tonight, which of course means they do not.

Additional notes:

– Hollywood Hogan continues to be the worst by not showing up for several weeks at a time, not knowing the stories, trying to be the biggest heel in the company and still cutting straight-up babyface promos. Rodman even does the “I can’t hear you” bit to make the crowd cheer louder, and gets them to chant “the harder they fall” as part of his threat to the Giant. You’d think somebody would’ve pulled Rodman aside and said, “hey, we’re bad guys,” but Hogan’s not going to do that — he wants to be loved — and nobody’s ballsy enough to make sure the celebrity has the correct wrestler names. I fully expect one of these Nitros to involve Rodman draining a hookah and being like, “Alex Wright, more like Alex Wrong, WHEN I SAY HEY YOU SAY HO.”

– The nWo arrives in a limo and most of them are smoking cigars, which continues through the promo. I can’t think of many things grosser than sweaty-ass Hollywood Hogan and his half-beard sucking on a cigar. It’s like watching someone de-bone a chicken wing. I don’t know if it triggers something Freudian in my brain or what, but no me gusta.

– Superman’s arch-nemesis and the big stinky stupie Giant butt-face show up later in the show and are like, “yes, we would also like to fight you tonight, let’s have our Bash at the Beach match here immediately,” which of course means it 100% doesn’t happen. Just trying to protect you from disappointment here.

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Best: The Cat Returns

People remember the nWo as revolutionary and Blood Runs Cold as a joke, but honestly, which would you prefer to see now; fifteen minutes of Hulk Hogan audibly and somewhat visibly fellating himself and a celebrity guest, or an ice ninja and his friend karate kicking monsters in the face? Imagine if the next new episode of Lucha Underground‘s first match had Pentagon in it, but you had to sit through a quarter hour of Matt Striker vaping and talking about how great DeAndre Jordan is?

This week’s Glacier vs. Mortis confrontation (which should really have taken place on a moonlit bridge over some spikes) starts off quickly, and feels more like a grudge match than a karate standoff, which it should. Also, this happens:

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TOASTY

The referee’s sell really makes it.

The larger point of the match is to bring back Ernest ‘The Cat’ Miller, who ran out to save Glacier from a beatdown at Slamboree and hasn’t really been around since. Glacier wins with a murderous Cryonic Kick after some heel miscommunication, and Gato pops in to once again run off a beatdown through the power of FACIAL SHOOT-KICKS. At this point Ernie was just spinning and jumping and going for it.

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Worst: Queen Of So Long Style

At the Great American Bash, Madusa lost a title vs. career match to WCW Women’s Champion Akira Hokuto and was forced to retire. Before she could even leave the ring, Mean Gene Okerlund was in her face like, “DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU’VE DONE, OH MY GOD, YOU ARE SO RETIRED, YOU CAN’T WRESTLE EVER AGAIN.” It was so bad that the crowd started chanting “leave her alone.”

That rivalry (?) continues on Nitro, as Mean Gene brings out Madusa dressed like Shinsuke Nakamura to once again rub it in. She starts crying and thanks everyone for their support, and the crowd just murmurs. Man, there’s nothing more uncomfortable in the world than a wrestler retirement promo that doesn’t get a reaction.

As I mentioned in the Bash write-up, the funniest thing here is that Madusa comes back two years later, but Hokuto and the WCW Women’s Championship never appear or are mentioned again. Wrestling match stipulations are extremely important!

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Best: You Didn’t Specify

Dean Malenko lost the United States Championship thanks to interference from a returning Eddie Guerrero, so he announces with all the zest and charisma of a pre-hat Frosty the Snowman that he’s issuing an open challenge. He wants Guerrero to come out and fight him, right now. Unfortunately for Malenko he didn’t specify which Guerrero, so Chavo shows up and answers the challenge. As you might have guessed, Dean Malenko vs. Chavo Guerrero Jr. is like a lion vs. a plush gazelle, so Malenko wrecks him to “send a message” to Eddie.

Eddie shows up on the stage (in a haute couture couch-print vest) just in time to watch Dean put Chavo away with a Neutralizer and the Texas Cloverleaf. The swerve here is that Eddie doesn’t look like he cares that much, because come on, honestly, even Eddie didn’t want to watch a Chavo Guerrero match.

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Worst: Lee Marshall Is A Liar

“As a rock and blues historian I can tell ya, ‘Long Tall Sally’ was not the original name of that song, Little Richard intended to call it NO CLASS HEENAN! But he couldn’t find enough words to rhyme with WEASEL!”

1. A rock and blues historian, really
2. Lee Marshall should’ve managed a returning Johnny B. Badd in his quest to beat up Bobby Heenan for making his life so difficult
3. Easel, diesel, measle, these’ll, try harder Little Richard

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Best: This Is A Picture Of Super Calo Hitting A Dive On La Parka

Yep.

A week ago on Nitro, everyone’s favorite boneless rap mascot Super Calo did his best to break La Parka’s neck, and La Parka responded by beating the shit out of him with a wooden chair after the match. It wasn’t pretty. This week they get a one-on-one match to settle their differences in the only way they know how: by Super Calo almost breaking La Parka’s neck again, and La Parka responding by beating the shit out of him with a PLASTIC chair.

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Jesus. The sad crumple to the ground makes it even worse. Super Calo better tighten up before La Parka finds out about the metal chairs.

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Best: I Love That Screenshot

At the Great American Bash, members of Harlem Heat defeated the Steiner Brothers by disqualification in a number one contender tag team match when Vincent of the nWo — aka Virgil — showed up for seemingly no reason and elbow-dropped Booker T in the face. Vincent made black power fists at them after the match, because Virgil is nothing if not subtle.

On Nitro, The Members get a quick win over the Amazing French-Canadians, who (1) are just straight-up dressing like the Quebecers now, and (2) try and fail to enact one of Colonel Parker’s zany schemes. This one involves Parker slipping off his boot and handing it to Jacques Rougeau, then distracting the referee while Rougeau slips around behind him and smashes Booker with the boot. Because in pro wrestling, a boot without a foot in it hurts way more, somehow. Booker’s able to kick out, though, because the power of contendership compels him.

After the match, James J. Dillon announces that since the victory at Great American Bash was tainted, there is STILL no number one contender to the Outsiders, and Harlem Heat will have to face the Steiner Brothers in another number one contender match next week. Good lord. Vincent shows up again and explains that the assist at the Bash was an “early Christmas present from the nWo,” seemingly unaware that they just got fucked out of it. So, because suckas gots ta know, they beat the crap out of him.

I just wish one of the announcers had been like, “Virgil’s out here trying to taint all the number one contender matches so the Outsiders will never actually have to defend against anyone.”

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Worst: The Cruiserweight Championship Is Still Meaningless

You’ve seen this before. Hall and Nash are just standing at ringside before the match even starts, because there’s no more element of surprise left. Mysterio tries to fight them off, but Syxx grabs him in a Buzzkiller and retains the championship. Again. Nash doesn’t even remove his cigar when he jackknife powerbombs Rey, who takes it like this:

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Worst: WE KNOW WHO THAT IS

After the match, Hall, Nash, Syxx and the Macho Man Randy Savage alternately smoke and cut promos on whatever they want. It turns out that Savage and Hall are teaming up (because they are not the Tag Team Champions) to face Diamond Dallas Page and a mystery opponent at Bash at the Beach. Page pops in from the crowd and says he made a few calls and secured the best partner, and that everyone knows who he is.

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Tony Schiavone even adds, “HE’S UP IN THE RAFTERS, LOOKING DOWN AT THE RING!”

This is especially underhanded storytelling, because:

They want you to think the partner is Sting, but it isn’t
This happened the same week as the Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels backstage fight with Michaels seemingly walking out on the company, and it’s already such public knowledge that there are SHAWN IS NWO BOUND signs in the crowd. The partner isn’t either of them.
Page’s partner shows up two weeks early and turns on him during the match, so

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Best: Ultimo Dragon vs. Chris Jericho

Dragon pins Jericho quicker than he should’ve, probably, with a Tiger Suplex. Jericho is still about half a year from becoming Chris Jericho, so every time he shows up I’m like, come on, man, shit or get off the pot. Before the match, Sonny Onoo tries to offer Jericho a bribe and take a selfie but gets pie-faced, making Chris Jericho the first pro wrestler in history to refuse someone’s money to take a picture.

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Worst: Roddy Piper Is Very Straight

Rowdy Roddy Piper shows up to address the elephant in the room: Dennis Rodman WANTING TO WEAR HIS SKIRT! Sorry, I meant to type, “Ric Flair abandoning him in their tag team match at the Great American Bash.” But even Piper is like, “before I begin, Dennis Rodman is a gay.” But somehow he goes straight for the tired old “kilt = dress” jokes instead of pointing out that the nWo spent the first 15 minutes of the show holding a cigar party. I guess sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

The funniest part of this interview needing to happen at all is that Flair comes out and says, “I was fighting Syxx,” and Piper’s like, “aw, when I saw you fight Syxx I didn’t think you might’ve been fighting Syxx, I believe you, we are friends forever.” They aren’t. Here’s hoping Piper and Flair can get to Bash at the Beach without Piper calling him Liza Minnelli a dozen times and trying to shove a tartan dildo up his ass to prove a point.

Up next, Mongo joins the nWo.

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Wait, that’s not right …

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Best: As The Halliburton Turns

You know how we keep finding evidence that Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael wasn’t a terrible pro wrestler and was actually a savant genius? Here’s another one.

Mongo and Jeffrey “Baratheon” Jarrett take on Vicious and Delicious. Near the end of the match, they hit some double-teams on Bagwell, and Jarrett tries to do the two-person Fargo Strut. Mongo fakes him out, and when Jarrett turns around to be like, “hey, wha hoppen,” Mongo scoops him up and Tombstones him in the middle of the ring.

Here’s the best part: Mongo gets in the camera and says, “I WATCHED THE TAPE FROM LAST NIGHT.” At the Great American Bash, Mongo lost his match with Kevin Greene when Jarrett showed up and smashed him in the back with the Halliburton, and Mongo is apparently the only wrestler or personality or employee in the company who realizes these shows are taped and that he can go back and watch them. Whether it was on purpose or not, there have to be consequences, and he’s tired of getting briefcased to death every week while a southern dandy ruins his luggage and marriage. He also says he’s going to “leave Jarrett to the wolves,” if you’re wondering why Mongo ever Too Sweeted.

I think he said it best when he said,

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And that’s real talk.

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Worst: Womp Womp

Here’s a picture of your main event. Bet you couldn’t have guessed it’d all turn out like this!

Rod the Bod and Terry the Talking Hot Dog return to the ring to once again call out Flexy Lexy and the big stupie stinky pee-pee worm Giant. When their challenge is finally answered, it turns out the entire thing was a ploy to get them into the ring so the nWo could beat them up. Swerve! The highlight is either Rodman prematurely jumping for a chokeslam lift and being so tall he’s gotta bend his legs to look like he’s very far off the ground, or his series of increasingly terrible elbow drops, which are basically sentons:

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Lex and stinky winky poo-poo doo-doo Giant get spray-painted, and that’s the end of the show. Piper and Flair are still so far up their asses they don’t come out to help, Diamond Dallas Page is somewhere in the back on the phone with a guy who’s gonna turn on him, and Sting I guess is standing 20 feet behind the announce table, pointing his bat at Tony Schiavone for saying he’s gonna show up at Bash at the Beach. The nWo win again.

Join us next week for basically this show, minus Hogan and Rodman. Plus High Voltage!

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Hollywood Hogan showed up for a few minutes to justify him being gone for another month and a half. Also, Dennis Rodman showed the world that he can deliver an elbow drop. Not a good one, mind you, but an elbow drop nonetheless.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. If you don’t tell them how much you like these, nobody’s going to read them. People need to know where Lee Marshall is this week, and what he has to say about how weasels factor in to the local culture.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for June 23, 1997.

Best: The Amazing Vanishing Damian

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Up first this week is one of WCW Monday Nitro’s favorite matches, the throwaway Public Enemy tag where they lose because they’re more into putting people through tables than winning wrestling matches. They’re up against the subtly Satanic luchador team of La Parka and Damian, with the winners (I’m guessing) spending the next six weeks screaming at Mean Gene about how they’re the “number one contenders.”

As great as La Parka is, he is a musical violence skeleton, not a magician, so he can’t get much out of Rocco Rock and Johnny Grunge. There is, however, an incredible moment late in the match where TPE tries to put Damian through a table and ends up transporting him through time and space. Watch this GIF, and keep your eye on Damian. Now you see him …

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… now you don’t.

While Rock tries to figure out how his asshole could’ve created enough pressure to obliterate an entire man between it and some pressboard, La Parka uses his special move, “hit you with a chair,” to score the victory on Grunge. Somebody help me Kickstart a 1997 WCW game where you can hit a button combination late in a match to make the referee get on the ropes and stare outside while 1-5 people interfere with hijinx and weapons.

Best: Scumbag Eddie Guerrero

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Despite being remembered as a lovable, charismatic man of the people, Eddie Guerrero’s best moments and characters always, always centered around him being a piece of shit. Even the “we lie, we cheat, we steal” WWE promos for Los Guerreros had him robbing a mom in the street and insulting her baby. And that’s when we were supposed to like him.

This week marks the first true Nitro appearance of Scumbag Eddie, as he lies about his nephew Chavo wanting to answer Dean Malenko’s challenge to “Guerrero” last week — Chavo responds with, “I wouldn’t exactly say I offered” — and reveals that he’s gone to J.J. Dillon and given Chavo his Cruiserweight Championship shot against Syxx tonight. The idea is that Eddie’s simultaneously acting like this is the first he’s heard of it, and has been weaseling Chavo into doing his grunt work all week. Great stuff, especially with Moral Arbitrator Mean Gene Okerlund appearing to figure out the grift in real-time.

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Chavo ends up in the best Chavo Guerrero WCW match up until this point, getting absolutely sick elevation on a dive from the top to the floor (pictured) and losing about half of his face in the process.

Eddie once again shows up to watch, cross-armed on the stage, and does nothing when Syxx uses his special move, “make the referee look at me while I’m doing nothing outside the ring so Scott Hall or Kevin Nash can loudly destroy my opponent behind him.” This week it’s Hall, and Chavo eats 100% of a Razor’s Edge for the loss. Eddie makes disappointed faces and does nothing, because he is the worst, and it’s the best.

Do Not Look Directly Into This Image Of Alex Wright In A Liontamer

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If you have to, poke a hole in a piece of paper and stare at the image through that. Man, that guy’s waist looks like a scene from Tremors.

Speaking Of Huge Dicks

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Lee Marshall calls in from Las Vegas for the 1-800-COLLECT road report, because dude can’t even pay for his own calls.

“Bobby Heenan, I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you … the good news, and you’re gonna like this, Bobby, Las Vegas is still considered the home of the Rat Pack. But the bad news is, I looked ALL OVER Vegas and I could not find a show called WEASELS ON ICE!”

Bobby’s response: “I’d like to push him off the Hoover Dam.”

Worst: WCW Babyface Fashion Sense

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There’s a lot of ballyhoo (and pyro) about how weird Dennis Rodman is for wearing dresses and coloring his hair to make himself look like an unsanitary snow-cone, but he’s no weirder than “feather boas and drawn on beards and airbrushed lightning boots” Hollywood Hulk Hogan, and honestly no more fashion-backwards than the people we’re supposed to be cheering for. The Giant shows up in colossal jeans with a windswept half-pony and a tucked-in Lex Luger shirt to talk about how he’s going to “stick a big, giant hook in The Worm.” Phrasing.

Lex Luger is wearing a sleeveless, button-up table cloth that gets even more incredible when you realize what brand it’s repping:

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Yes, that says Muscle Boyz. This is the episode that Buff Bagwell and Scott Norton officially christen themselves “Vicious and Delicious,” and I can’t believe Lex Luger’s blouse subtweeted them with a better team name.

Note: this shirt influenced every Dragon Gate faction for the next 15 years.

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Worst: The 650th Number One Contender Tag Team Match Of The Year

For clarification purposes, that’s a screenshot of Rick Steiner hitting a flying bulldog on Booker T, if you consider Booker falling over sideways in a sitting position and smashing his face into Rick’s thigh a “bulldog.”

If you’ve been following along with these columns, you know the two defining characteristics of the WCW tag team division are:

the finishes are almost always ridiculous, and
they’re constantly having “number one contender” matches because the Tag Team Champions are Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, and Hall and Nash never want to wrestle. Plus, if they DO wrestle and happen to lose, Eric Bischoff reverses the decision the next night and whoever won has to give Hall and Nash the titles back. Which starts the number one contender process over again, which gives us 5-10 more Harlem Heat vs. Steiner Brothers matches

This one ends with the Thighdog after Rick whips Booker T into Sister Sherri on the ring apron, knocking her off into the crackerjack, yak-carrying arms of Stevie Ray. So once again the Steiners are number one contenders for the Tag Team Championship, and move on to Bash at the Beach to face … uh, Masahiro Chono and the Great Muta. For the number one contendership to the Tag Team Championship. I’m not kidding.

Spoiler alert: The Steiners finally get that match against Hall and Nash at Road Wild, which they win … by disqualification. Can you guess what happens at the next pay-per-view? You guessed it: the Steiner Brothers vs. Members of Harlem Heat at Fall Brawl to see who will get a shot at the tag titles.

Worst: Speaking Of Moves That Don’t Connect

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Hector Garza’s plan was to ride the “corkscrew plancha” to the top of the wrestling world. It was a spectacular move — he spins his body vertically as he dives from the top rope to the floor — and he mastered the “spin vertically” part. But, uh, he forgot to master the “from the top to the floor.” Dude’s got the depth perception of Mr. Magoo when he dives, as seen in this screenshot of him landing chin-first on Villano IV’s knee. If you think this looks painful, wait until next week when he corkscrew planchas onto Lord Steven Regal’s foot and 99% of his body hits the floor.

Also, for a reason that definitely didn’t get him screamed at backstage, Villano IV busts this out as a transitional move:

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FROM OUTTA NOWHERE!

To put this into proper context for modern wrestling fans, imagine if you were tuning into Payback and like an hour before Roman Reigns vs. Braun Strowman, Austin Aries decided to hit a Superman Punch and a spear on Neville. And then grab a chinlock. And then he lost.

Worst: As The Halliburton Turns

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He’s here to do two things: kick ass, and make bacon. And he’s all out of ass!

Rowdy Roddy Piper shows up to once again discuss Ric Flair’s betrayal of him at length, not bringing up the fact that everybody watched him wander around in the ring while Flair got beaten up by three dudes in the aisle like two weeks before. Piper assures us that he and Flair are friends, then calls him “Pinocchio” and says he dates two women at once so they can have someone to talk to when he falls asleep. He’s a good friend!

Flair shows up and points the finger at Piper, saying he was fighting Hall, Nash and Syxx when Piper was “floatin’ around the Caribbean with Jenny McCarthy, pal.” I really do not need to know about that. He calls Piper “pal” about 14 more times until Mongo and Chris Benoit show up for unnecessary backup. This turns Flair into peacemaker for some reason, and the Horsemen figuratively and literally point fingers at Piper — so much pointing in this segment — until he starts punching them. Flair throws a great angry “jump up and down in place” fit before trying to throw hands as well, and getting punched out.

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Old Man Piper is able to beat up three Horsemen by himself (because of course he can) until Flair distracts him, allowing Mongo to Halliburton him in the back. Thank goodness the Horsemen sprang for high quality luggage when they were paying off Mongo last year or they would’ve lost like 80% of their fights. Benoit grabs Piper in the Crossface and the Horsies put the boots to Piper. He is going to think of the meanest way to call them gay next week, watch.

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Mongo also wins a match against Konnan thanks to a Hugh Morrus distraction, which is one “we’re all on fire” modifier away from describing hell on Earth.

Best: Cat Match Fever

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Up next, Ernest Miller makes his Nitro in-ring debut, teaming with Glacier against High Voltage. Which is fortunate for Glacier, because ice types aren’t very effective against electric types.

The highlight of the match (because Scott Steiner isn’t around to drop Robbie Rage on his head again) is the debut of the FELINER, Miller’s jumping corkscrew roundhouse kick:

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If Robbie Rage doesn’t have the inner monologue of a white noise machine these days, I’d be shocked. Cat and Glashe pick up the win, and go straight into a stand-off with Mortis and Wrath after the match. Their tag match at Bash at the Beach is coming up, and I have to warn you, I’m going to write about it in such a flowery way my ass is gonna be a botanical garden.

Worst: Here’s A Picture Of DDP Vs. Scott Hall

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The main event of this week’s show is supposed to be Diamond Dallas Page vs. Scott Hall, with the story that Page and Kimberly went directly to James J. Dillon and arranged it around Nash and Hogan not being there so they could have a rare one-on-one match with an nWo member. As you might’ve guessed, this ends with the nWo running in and everyone throwing trash at them while they beat up Page.

I guess Page forgot that Macho Man Randy Savage, the guy he’s been fighting for months, is in the building and might want to beat him up. Sting shows up in the crowd to help out, but way too late, and Page eats another Macho elbow drop before they get run off.

And that’s the episode. The major story is that once again WCW can’t do anything right, Page cleverly walked into an obvious trap of his own laying, Sting isn’t really doing anything to help outside of elaborate transport, Luger and Giant stop watching the show when their segment is over and the good guys not only don’t win, they can’t.

Join us next week for the big Las Vegas Nitro, featuring the debut of DDP’s mystery partner, a familiar face in the crowd, news about title changes that happened on an audio-only Saturday show — seriously — and La Parka once again trying to end the life of Super Calo. All your favorites!

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Rowdy Roddy Piper and Ric Flair punched each other, Public Enemy put Damian through a table so hard it made him vanish, and Ernest Miller made his in-ring debut. Also, Alex Wright made us all uncomfortable by being in a Liontamer.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. If you don’t tell them how much you like these, nobody’s going to read them. People need to know how a German man’s bulge has challenged my sexuality for the past 20 years.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for June 30, 1997.

Worst: Mannequin 3: Hip To Be Square

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A quick recap: Rowdy Roddy Piper, a non-WCW employee, returned to WCW to challenge fellow non-WCW employee Hollywood Hulk Hogan for the WCW Championship. He wasn’t able to win (by winning twice), so he enlisted the help of Four Horseman paterfamilias Ric Flair. Well, first he enlisted the help of a boxer, a stunt man and The Shark, because they were the only people who showed up to fight him in gear instead of jeans, but he agreed to let Flair help him. That worked out badly for everyone involved, so Flair and Piper decided to become a tag team and face the nWo themselves. That worked out badly for everyone involved, and culminated in Piper standing around in the ring not paying attention while Flair got beaten up by three guys. Piper then disappeared for several weeks, and reemerged with a fresh idea: he and Flair would team up and face the nWo. This culminated in Flair not being able to make a tag because he was busy, you know, fighting members of the nWo, and Piper being extremely hurt by it. Last week, the rest of the Horsemen were like, “dude, Piper sucks,” so Piper punched them about it. Piper is the good guy, Flair is the bad guy. Got it?

This week’s episode opens with Ric Flair instructing two women to carry a Rowdy Roddy Piper parody mannequin to the ring. As you know, segments involving mannequins are always great. I need to clarify a few words here:

I said “always great,” but I meant to type both “embarrassing” and “make me want to gouge out my own eye with a screwdriver”
I said it’s a “mannequin,” but it’s only the top half of a mannequin with no legs
I said it was a Rowdy Roddy Piper parody mannequin, but it isn’t, really, it’s just wearing generic Scottish clothes
I also said “two women,” but I could’ve been more specific and said, “the former porn stars from SNL if they’d never heard of Ric Flair, Roddy Piper or pro wrestling before Monday afternoon

Any time Gene or Flair try to involve them in the conversation, they whiff it. Gene asks them if Flair is really the “sixty-minute man,” and one of them gets big-eyed and says, “what?” The other one leans in and yells, “MORE LIKE SIXTY SECONDS!” They open the segment standing in the corner by themselves with the mannequin toppled over on the ground, and when they finally get brought to the middle, they have their backs to hard cam. Seriously, it’s like Flair wandered by two random women fighting over a tartan skirt in the window of a New York & Company on the way to the arena and was like, “WOO, THERE’S MY SEGMENT FOR TONIGHT, WOO.” And then he danced in place for a while and dropped a knee on his own pants.

The highlight is when one of the women asks why Roddy Piper is called “Hot Rod,” because he is not hot.

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DailyMotion

The bit ends when Flair realizes he can’t salvage anything from it and the girls try to strip Mean Gene, because what happens in Las Vegas stays on WWE Network. Flair even unbuttons Gene’s jacket for him in an uncomfortable moment. Between this and the time in Roanoke where Flair tried to make Piper happy by pushing Local Moms on him, should we consider 1997 Ric Flair a pimp gimmick?

♫ Twenty-five years, he's worked at the paper
A man's here to take him downstairs
And I'm sorry, Mr. Jones, it's time ♫ pic.twitter.com/reFp9jYAJU

— Brandon Stroud (@MrBrandonStroud) May 8, 2017

Believe it or not, we’ve got two hours left.

Best/Worst: As The Halliburton Turns

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This is the big Las Vegas June 30th Nitro they’ve been building up to for weeks, so there are two big six-man tag team matches on top of the card: Diamond Dallas Page, Lex Luger and the Giant vs. Scott Hall, Kevin Nash and Randy Savage — guess how long that match lasts — and Ric Flair, Chris Benoit and Steve McMichael against Buff Bagwell, Scott Norton and Masahiro Chono. If they just, you know, let these be exciting six-man tags, this would be a hell of a card. Instead, it’s … I wanted to think of something mean to say, but the most accurate word I could come up with was “Nitro.”

The Horsemen vs. Vicious and Delicious and Malicious ends just as it’s starting to get good with a run-in from our old pal Vincent, aka Virgil, who has just had his Harlem Heat interference story dropped and has to interfere for somebody. He shows up, draws a disqualification, and Mongo gives him the Fuck Money shot to the back with the Halliburton.

Later in the night, Jeff Jarrett defends the United States Championship against Konnan. Nobody deserves a title shot more than KONNAN, who has spent the past month in a broom handle-based feud with Hugh Morrus. During the match, Konnan somehow manages to botch a kick to the gut by slipping and falling backwards on his ass. Maybe he should’ve tried doing a forward roll first?

The funny thing here is that despite Jarrett being on Double Secret Horsemen Probation, Flair shows up to help him get leverage on a figure-four and win. As a reminder, despite having spent MONTHS accidentally hitting each other with metal briefcases and passive-aggressively feuding over Debra, Jarrett got put on probation for hitting Mongo with the briefcase and costing him a match against Kevin Greene. Kevin Greene, the guy Flair had been teaming with for the past couple of months, despite having given Mongo a briefcase full of money so he’d turn on Kevin Greene and join the Horsemen. On Nitro, after helping Jarrett win and retain the only championship the Horsemen have, Flair kicks him out of the Horsemen.

None of that makes sense, but at least the way he kicked him out is funny.

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Where were you when the world stopped turning, that June day?

Worst: Lee Marshall Goes Walking In Memphis

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♫ Now Muriel plays piano
Every Friday at the Hollywood
And they brought me down to see her
And they asked me if I would
Do a little number
And I sang with all my might
And she said
“Tell me are you a weasel, child?”
And I said “Ma’am I am tonight!”
That’s your 1-800-COLLECT road report
I’m Lee Marshall
for 1-800-COLLECT ♫

Worst: Juventud Takes The Night Off

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Hey look, Chris Jericho is the Cruiserweight Champion! If you read these columns every week and are asking yourself, “when did that happen, did Brandon not mention it?” Don’t worry, it happened over the weekend at “WCW Saturday Nitro,” an audio-only house show presentation on WCWWrestling.com. If that seems weird, please note that they consider this an actual episode of Nitro, so much so that the 99th episode (August 4) is the “100th episode of Nitro.”

[deep sigh] Anyway.

Jericho’s first defense is against Juventud Guerrera, which would’ve been great if Juvy hadn’t chugged an entire bottle of ZzzQuil before he came to the ring. Early in the match he goes for a springboard, slips, and turns it into a stumbling hair-grab. You can practically feel the air go out of the crowd. Later, he goes for a spinning kick that completely misses, then goes for ANOTHER springboard, which he turns into a forward somersault onto nothing.

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If you look closely, you can see him get mad about it. Or he’s just completely forgotten how to wrestle and is making the bump noise way after the bump. Jericho wins after multiple-powerbombing the shit out of him, Super Frankensteinering the shit out of him and almost literally removing the shit from him with a Liontamer.

After the match, Mean Gene tries to get a word with Jericho. They’re interrupted by Syxx, who says he’s still the champion (because the nWo invented Alternative Facts) but that he’ll give Jericho “another shot.” Then he punches Jericho in the face. Get it?

The real money here is Mean Gene, who not only sells the punch like HE’S been punched, but has mannequin model PTSD, panics, and gets trapped in the ropes. Watch Gene for the entirety of this GIF. It’s the best few seconds you’ll have today.

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It’s like the in-ring version of Bobby Heenan’s legendary table escape.

Best: Alex Wright’s German Youth Street Clothes

After that altercation, Alex Wright shows up dressed like a Minion to complain about how he’s been overlooked. It’s because he’s German! He’s from Germany!

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You know what’s not being overlooked? The Buffalo Bill-esque tuck job he had to do to fit his banana into them jeans.

Worst: Corkscrewing Yourself Into The Floor

Juvy: “I had the most embarrassing high-flying moves of the night.”
Hector Garza: “Hold my beer.”

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That, ladies and gents, is Hector Garza going for a Corkscrew Plancha from the top to the outside and connecting with Lord Steven Regal’s foot. Regal does an admirable job of selling it by falling backwards, as though the spiraling winds from the move knocked him over.

Regal wins with the Regal Stretch. Hey, at least no high-flyer’s gonna be worse than Juventud and Hector Garza tonight, huh?

Worst: CALO THE WILD

Juvy: “I had the most embarrassing high-flying moves of the night.”
Garza: “Hold my beer.”
Super Calo: “Hold my beer, amateurs.”
La Parka: [runs in] NO, NO BEERS

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La Parka interrupts Super Calo’s attempts to kill himself and Psicosis by once again attempting to kill Super Calo with a chair. This time we’re back to the breakaway wooden models and it’s to the back, because Calo’s probably never letting someone hit him in the face with a molded plastic chair again. With Jim Duggan and his Time Lord underpants full of masking tape AWOL, my favorite ongoing story is how badly La Parka wants Super Calo to actually die.

Juventud makes the save just to make this as dangerous as possible for everyone involved, and we’ve got the beginning of what eventually involves a Villano and becomes a trios match at Bash at the Beach. The “beach” here is Calo’s face, and the “bash” is La Parka somehow building a recliner out of bricks and bashing him with it.

Worst: That’s Enough Of High-Flyers Killing Themselves Tonight

Shit, wait.

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Earlier in the night, Rey Mysterio Jr. announces that he’s challenging Kevin Nash to a match, because he’s tired of being bullied by the Wolfpac. As you probably guessed, the match ends in about 90 seconds with Mysterio taking a jackknife powerbomb like this. After the match, Nash punches out referee Scott Dickinson and powerbombs Mystery AGAIN, which he takes like THIS.

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Forget that “I had surgery FIVE TIMES, in my left knee” soundbite, I hope Mysterio had surgery on what was left of his spine. Amazingly, those two powerbombs aren’t even the most painful move Mysterio takes in two minutes. Feast your eyes on this atomic drop, which will replace every atomic drop you’ve ever seen and most MMA knockouts in your brain:

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That is just mean.

After the match, Konnan runs out to make the save for Mysterio. Then, because Vampiro has always been right about Konnan, Konnan turns on him, puts him in the Tequila Sunrise and more or less joins the nWo.

Join us after the commercial break for our next segment, “Ultimo Dragon accidentally Asai moonsaults into a wood chipper while all his friends stand around and laugh at him.”

Worst: Oh Wait, One More

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In their continuing quest to see how many ways they can ruin a sure thing, Nitro books this Eddie Guerrero vs. Dean Malenko match with very little technical wrestling, and ends it with Chavo Guerrero providing a distraction. Chavo gets up on the apron, Eddie shoves Malenko into Chavo and frog splashes him for the cheap victory.

I’m so disheartened by this entire Nitro that all I can do to cheer myself up is imagine that after the show Malenko went home, popped open a bottle of flat seltzer water, sat rigidly on a small wooden bench in the center of his empty living room and watched the MacNeil/Lehrer Report on a black and white TV to relax.

Best: Feline Groovy

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I’ll give a Best to the other distraction finish of the night, because (1) it’s our second chance to see Ernest Miller on Nitro, (2) the Feliner in the dopest move on the show until Billy Kidman’s shooting star press with a 65% failure rate starts showing up more often, and (3) it’s a rare moment of turnabout being fair-play seeming earned. Mortis and Wrath have been showing up and trying to screw Glacier out of victories for MONTHS now, so Glacier distracts the referee and Wrath long enough for Cat to shoot-kick Mortis in the jaw and cost him a match against HIGH VOLTAGE. That’s a Joe Gomez away from being the most depressing way you can lose on Nitro.

I hope next week we get Mortis and Wrath vs. High Voltage in a Parts Unknown Or Thailand Or Wherever Street Fight.

Worst: Hulk Hogan Tells Jokes

You can’t expect Hollywood Hogan to actually show up and do any work to build to his main-event tag team match for NOT the Heavyweight Championship at Bash at the Beach, but his latest direct-to-Betamax movie about shooting guns on the beach had a break this week so at least he’s here to say some stuff.

The major point he’s making is that the nWo doesn’t care about anything currently happening in WCW, so he and His Main Man Rod The Bod The Dirty Worm are going to have a big party in Las Vegas. He also brings back my favorite Hoganism, the “big, stinky Giant,” and shades Dallas Page with a nickname so bad you’d smack your decidedly not-Heavyweight-Champion little brother for thinking was funny:

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DD PEE PEE.

DD PEE PEE. That makes “Flexy Lexy” sound like the entirety of the Box With God promo.

Worst: In Other ‘The nWo Doesn’t Want To Work’ News

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The Steiner Brothers show up to discuss at length the most talked-about story on Nitro: who is or is not the number one contender to the Tag Team Championship. Keep in mind that the Steiners have already faced the Outsiders for the belts once and won, but had their titles stripped and returned to the Outsiders the next night because one team’s nWo and one isn’t. That isn’t even me being catty about the bad booking, that’s the actual storyline reason.

The Steiners see that Hall is teaming up with Macho Man to face Diamond Dallas Page and a mystery opponent at Bash at the Beach, so they make it clear that they want their title shot against Hall and Nash as soon as possible afterward. Hall and the nWo show up with a contract, which the Steiners eagerly sign. When the Steiners leave, Hall reveals that the “Einsteiners” have signed to face The Great Muta and Masahiro Chono at Bash at the Beach in — are you ready for this? — a number one contender match for the Tag Team Championship. I’m not kidding.

I don’t know if this is what turned Scott Steiner into a crazy person, but if it is, I’m starting to understand.

Worst: The Outsiders Pin Set

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Sure, they’re dorky, but look on the bright side: it’s the only way you’re going to see the Outsiders pinned.

Best: The Impact Player

As I mentioned earlier, this week’s main event (LOL) is supposed to be The Outsiders and the Macho Man against Diamond Dallas Page, Lex Luger and the Giant. We get a few minutes of battle royal-style tornado brawling until, and again, this seems confusing and exciting but bear with me, Hollywood Hogan and the rest of the nWo interfere and the match gets thrown out. After the match, Savage spends several minutes dropping flying elbows on DD Stupid Urine Poopface with nobody helping.

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Then, help arrives from everywhere!

Okay, so, the story here is that Page has a mystery partner for Bash at the Beach, and we’ve been assured it’s an “impact player.” He teased pretty openly early on that it was Sting, then walked back on that a bit. The ending of Nitro gives us three impact player options, and in a rare moment of quality storytelling, gives us reasons to believe it could be any of these men. And then it goes off before it ruins it!

Our options:

1. Sting

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[roddy-piper-coming dot png]

During the beatdown, a very realistic Sting in a comedy wig appears in the crowd. The nWo wants him to come down to the ring and fight, so the actual Sting, Shoot Sting, rappels from the ceiling. The announce team says they know what he’s packing, which is a baseball bat, but makes me wonder what would happen if already Columbine-ass Sting just pulled out a gun and started shooting nWo guys.

Anyway, Sting does the grunt work and makes the nWo flee the ring. Because as the story goes, at least until goddamn Starrcade 97, Sting is the only guy in the entire company who can boot and bat a group of 35 guys into submission.

2. We Know Who That Is!

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While Sting is cleaning house, the announce team clutches their pearls because Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig has arrived on Nitro. He’d be a great choice as DDP’s partner. The last time we saw him was late last year on Raw when he was pretending to be Marc Mero’s mentor, tricking Mero into putting the Intercontinental Championship on the line against Hunter Hearst Helmsley, then helping Helmsley win it. That’s a guy you can trust!

3. What About Me?

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The final option, also making his WCW Monday Nitro debut, is former ECW Champion Raven. Raven hops the rail as Hennig is walking to the ring and appears to “stand up” to the nWo, meaning he stands still and wipes his nose with his jacket a few times.

The cool thing here is that Page, Hennig and Raven (in a previous life) all have connections to Diamond Dallas Page. Page was Hennig’s manager in the original version of The Diamond Exchange in the AWA in 1988. Back in 1992, when Raven was Scotty Flamingo, he was a member of Page’s “Diamond Mine.” And, as you may recall, Sting once rode Diamond Dallas Page into the sky like a horsey. You can probably guess which of the three he decides to trust, and how that works out for him.

Next Week:

The long-awaited Nitro debut of Stevie Richards
The Konnan vs. Desperado Joe Gomez match you’ve been begging for
and, maybe the actual greatest Diamond Dallas Page moment ever

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: The mystery of “who will be Diamond Dallas Page’s tag team partner at Bash at the Beach” heated up as Sting showed up, Curt Hennig made his Nitro debut and ECW’s Raven appeared. Also on the show, Ric Flair yelled at a Rowdy Roddy Piper mannequin. If you liked that part, you’ll love this week.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. If you don’t tell them how much you like these, nobody’s going to read them. People need to know about the time Desperado Joe Gomez wrestled Konnan and it was so boring the world almost turned off its axis.

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

Worst: Ric Flair, Stupid Sex Pimp

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Almost a year ago now, WCW signed away a second-generation blonde star from the World Wrestling Federation. Despite him having just been a heel, WCW tried to make him a face. Ric Flair saw this person and said, “I trust that person and want them to be in the Four Horsemen.” It ended badly for him. Last week, he kicked that guy out of the group.

A few seconds later, WCW revealed that they’d signed away a second-generation blonde star from the World Wrestling Federation. Despite him having just been a heel, WCW’s trying to make him a face. In the opening of this week’s show, Ric Flair sees this person and says, “I trust them and want them to be in the Four Horsemen.” Can you guess how this ends?

So yeah, Curt Hennig opens the show with a “sure, Mr. Perfect, whatever, that’s fine” reaction from the crowd and cuts a mild, heelish promo until a screaming, convulsing Flair flops out with the most Go-Bots-ass Debra McMichael you’ve ever seen to (1) insist that Hennig is joining the Four Horsemen, and (2) provide Hennig with tail. Hennig seems reluctant and says he’s a free agent with allegiances to no one. Spoiler alert, it totally turns out that the free agent WWF heel guy has an allegiance to someone.

Sting might be hanging out in the rafters, but he left his trusting bullshit with Ric Flair.

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Later in the episode, Flair and the blonde reemerge, this time with a FULL Rowdy Roddy Piper mannequin, as opposed to the halfie they had last week. What’s funny is that last week it didn’t have legs and just lied in the corner for most of the promo, but this week it has legs that are too long and make it super tall. So Flair has to like, go up on his tip-toes and point a lot to get in “Piper’s” face. Also, they thought it would be a good idea to have the greatest wrestler in the history of the company throw shade at a fashion mannequin for two weeks.

There’s also this, because of course there is:

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Note that this is the second week in a row that Ric Flair has (I guess) paid an escort service to deliver him women in ball gowns so they can publicly ask why a guy named “Rod” gets called “Hot Rod.” Because, sexually, they assume it is not so! Gene makes fun of her for having a southern accent, because between him, Flair and Hennig, this Nitro has been a real Minnesota sausage party.

Speaking of sausage parties, Flair repeatedly calls Piper a “stiff” and tugs at the crotch area of the mannequin (including a moment where he looks under the kilt, and Mean Gene sells it like he just saw it hanging fiberglass dong) until Piper shows up, drags him to the ring and rips off his pants.

No, really.

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Noted heterosexual Rowdy Roddy Piper knows there’s nothing straighter than refusing the company of women to rip off your enemy’s pants and whip him with a belt for calling you stiff! Also, my very favorite part of this GIF is that the only crowd reaction whatsoever is a lonely fist-pump is a guy in a homemade “I AM WCW 100%” iron-on t-shirt and full clown makeup with a rainbow afro. That guy went home and made Frank the Clown that night, didn’t he.

Flair is beating beaten within an inch of his nude life until Chris Benoit and Steve McMichael show up to save the day. Nobody understands this situation better than the guy who spent the past year letting a southern dandy in white suspenders stuff his wife and the guy who just stole his girlfriend from a dwarven satanist in command of a Himalayan fuck-mummy. The best part of the entire thing is that Jeff Jarrett runs down to make the save for Piper, but he does it while we’re in a wide shot going to commercial. The announcers are like, “WHO IS THAT IN THE RING??”

Anyway, speaking of dwarves that worship The Devil and why you shouldn’t seduce their snake-handling wives, here’s the finish to Chris Benoit’s match:

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Worst: The Canuck And Cuck Connection

It’s Chris Benoit and Steve McMichael vs. the Steiner Brothers, which I’m legitimately shocked isn’t a number one contender match to set up their number one contender match at Bash at the Beach, which was already set up by two different number one contender matches.

The full finish is insane, so let me try to type it out. Mongo’s on the outside fighting both Steiner Brothers, so Jeff Jarrett (of course) runs out and starts attacking him. This doesn’t cause a disqualification, despite the fact that the referee is standing on the ropes looking directly at them and yelling at them. In the ring, Jimmy Hart appears and distracts Benoit. As Benoit is grabbing him by the lapel — Jimmy’s one great weakness — we jump over to Kevin Sullivan ripping a wooden chair out of Jacqueline’s hands so hard it appears to knock her out. She goes face-down on the floor. Sullivan smashes the chair over Benoit’s head, then picks up a wooden spike and starts toward him like he’s going to stab him to death with it. He doesn’t, as Rick Steiner slides in the ring to prevent it, but that moment is gonna be a really key episode of my WCW Quantum Leap crossover fan fiction.

Having saved Benoit from a stabbing, Rick turns, drops an elbow on Benoit’s abdomen and pins him. The referee turns around and counts the pin like nothing happened despite (1) witnessing Jeff Jarrett interference, (2) seeing like five people at ringside, (3) seeing the ring covered in balsa wood and (4) HAVING JUST WITNESSED AN ATTEMPTED STABBING. As Sullivan is leaving, he creams Jackie again by accidentally backing over her, then fights her all the way up the ramp.

Note: everything I’ve typed about the show so far has just been the Four Horsemen. This includes:

prostitution
inadvisable talent management
sexually assaulting a mannequin
being pantsed and whipped
bad WCW tag team match finishes
domestic abuse
attempted murder

Nobody else is gonna almost get killed on this episode, are they?

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God dammit.

Worst: Hector Garza Almost Gets Killed Again

If you’ve been following along with the rise and repeated falls of Mexican wrestling star Hector Garza, you’ll know that he has a marketable signature move — the spectacular Corkscrew Plancha — that would make him the biggest star in the world if he could ever actually hit it. Most of the time he undershoots his opponent and, best case scenario, smashes his face into their leg.

This week, his landing pad is dos Villanos. One Villano sees the takeoff and is like, “nope, not taking that.” Garza ends up OVER-shooting the dive this time, catching uno (1) Villano in the ear with his thigh and eating face-first-to-the-floor shit on the landing.

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In fact, if you watch closely, he wouldn’t have connected with ANYTHING if the Villano hadn’t caught his leg on the way over. He would’ve just like, sailed into the barricade. Important note: if you don’t have the depth perception for a frog splash, maybe don’t do a dive where you’re looking at the ceiling the entire time?

Special shout-out to Villano IV and V here, who are tasked with keeping both Hector Garza and Juventud Guerrera alive for an entire tag team match. Here’s a Villano looking on in fear as Juvy goes for the very simple Poetry In Motion, ends up landing ass-first on the top rope and accidentally moonsaulting himself from the top rope to the cement.

*record scratch*
*freeze frame*

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“Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.”

Worst: Harlem Heat Loses A Member

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No tag match finish on this episode of Nitro is going to top Kevin Sullivan trying to preemptively, vampirically murder Chris Benoit, but you know that Members of Harlem Heat have got to try.

They’re up against Public Enemy — whew — and appear to have the match in hand until the homie Vincent runs out again to cause a distraction. Sister Sherri notices him, gets on the apron and physically stops Booker T from wrestling so he’ll notice too and CONTINUE to stop wrestling to go beat him up. This happens, and Stevie Ray’s left alone. He easily beats up Public Enemy by himself. Sure! As he’s trying to piledrive Johnny Grunge, Rocco Rock climbs to the top rope. Sherri once against interjects, pushing Rock in the butt. Rock flies off the top rope into Johnny, which somehow knocks out Stevie Ray and the Heat lose. That makes the finish the People Who Shove Flyboy Rocco Rock In The Butthole Use Valvoline™ of the week.

After the match, the Members bring Sherri into the ring and fire her for always ruining their matches. But it turns out they can’t fire her, because get this: she quits!

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Now she’s free to join the Legionnaires!

Worst: Desperado Joe Gomez Vs. Konnan Is The Tenth Circle Of Hell

Here is an extremely accurate GIF of me trying to watch Konnan vs. Joe Gomez:

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Watch it on loop for five minutes and you have my full experience. Konnan wins by moving Joe’s leg slightly, causing Joe’s entire torso to go into a panic seizure.

Best: Sunday Night Heat’s GM Shows Up

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Later in the episode, Raven’s rando appearances pay off when another Mike Tenay attempted interview is interrupted by Raven’s former ECW tag team partner, lackey and summer camp pal Dancin’ Stevie Richards. If you aren’t up on your Extreme Championship Wrestling lore, Richards desperately wanted to be (and/or be with) Raven so much so that he tried to emulate him, and followed him around. Raven would treat him like crap, but he’d take it. In fact, the Steve loves Raven loves Beulah McGillicutty loves Tommy Dreamer summer camp love rectangle is one of the defining stories of the promotion, and managed to somehow be the most progressive and offensive angle to only sometimes involve crucifixion.

Anyway, Stevie shows up and tells Tenay to go ask the Mexican wrestlers about their favorite movies — look how dejected Mike is — and says he’ll get to the bottom of whether or not Raven has signed a contract with WCW. He asks twice, so Raven stands up, smacks the shit out of him and leaves. Very excited to continue recapping this angle, and also my weekly fall down the rabbit hole of Beulah McGillicutty YouTube videos.

Worst: Lee Marshall Is Going To Disney World

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This week’s ‘On The Road’ comes to us from Orlando, FL, so of course Stagger Lee Marshall is wandering around Disney World asking about Alice in Weasel Land and trying to ride ‘It’s A Small Weasel.” What’s pissing me off here is that there are actual Disney weasels he could’ve referenced. He could’ve worked in those evil Roger Rabbit-ass weasels from The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. He also could’ve gone the “Heffalumps and WEASELS” route and accurately compared Tony Schiavone to Winnie the Pooh. Take pride in your work, Lee.

A supplemental Best to Bobby Heenan, though, for absolutely ETHERING Lee in response.

“He not only is in Orlando, he looks like Tony Orlando. Idiot.”

Best: Vicious And Delicious Are Vicious

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First of all, yes, supplemental Worst to Larry Zbyszko for saying that of COURSE Eddie and Chavo Guerrero couldn’t get along as a tag team, because they can’t even agree on how to make a taco.

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Second of all, Los Guerreros vs. Vicious and Delicious is by far the best match of the night, non-swerve division. The Guerreros obviously know what they’re doing, but they’re helped by an active story: Eddie is manipulating Chavo into taking a bunch of beatings for him, but is too short-tempered and impatient to let his plan work. He keeps setting Chavito up to get his ass kicked, then getting mad that Chavito’s getting his ass kicked. It’s wonderfully complex, like the dude wants Chavo to surprise him and start winning on his behalf, despite being completely thrown to the wolves.

Also, and you may not know this, Scott Norton is dope. He’s like the Caucasian Meng, a shoot bad-ass who only loses wrestling matches because it’s a TV show. If this was real life, Scott Norton would beat the god damn out of any non-Meng person in a heartbeat. Guarantee it. This match features him double-suplexing both Guerreros, and holding up Chavo’s lifeless body so Buff can come off the ropes with an elevated Blockbuster. Norton’s little “done” gesture after Buff hits it is wonderful. To the modern fan, Vicious and Delicious were like a heel version of Enzo Amore and Big Cass, if Enzo got swole and Cass looked like a guy who could actually win a fight.

As you might’ve guessed, Eddie leaves Chavo in the ring to take a beating, gets frustrated about it, walks out on him so he can’t tag out but stays on the stage watching in disgust. I love that Eddie’s entire character growth from Mexico to WWE Champion was about a man learning how to love and be loved in return.

Worst: Silver King Needs To Invest In Some Bigger Trunks

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Silver King and Psicosis team up to face Glacier and Ernest Miller, but it’s just an excuse for Mortis and Wrath to run in and attack everybody. I’d write more about it, but I can’t stop stressing out about the screengrab. I know that’s technically a wedgie, but it feels like so much more than that. Is it possible for a guy to have severe camel-toe of the ass? More like Sliver King.

Worst: The Main Event Is Trash

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The highlight of this week’s Nitro is actually what appears to be a throwaway match somewhere in the middle, so I’ll go ahead and knock out this week’s “main event,” which is Hollywood Hogan rambling on about nothing while fans fill the ring with a Death Star trash compactor full of arena garbage.

Lex Luger and the Giant show up to stand up to him, and by “stand up to him” I of course mean “beat up the worst nWo guys while Hogan holds up his hands and walks away and does nothing.” I don’t think this guy’s taken a bump since March. Luger Torture Racks Eric Bischoff, which should be a big deal, and The Giant chokeslams Buff Bagwell and Vincent while the crowd keeps hurling every concession in the house at them. Seriously, you could feed an impoverished nation for a week with what the Mid-South Coliseum threw at this.

BEST: Macho Man Gets L.A. Parked

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Near the end of hour one, Scott Hall, Miss Elizabeth and an unusually laid-back Macho Man Randy Savage take over the announce booth to say how lightly they’re taking Diamond Dallas Page and his Definitely Not nWo For Life mystery partner at Bash at the Beach. To illustrate this, Macho Man says he’s going to give someone in the locker room a “rasslin’ lesson.” He wears a headset mic AND talks into a microphone, just to make sure you hear him.

Larry Zbyszko refuses to leave the announce table and actually stands up to Scott Hall for once, instead of Classic Larry where he’d call them the “New World Odor” for an hour and flee if one of them got within 15 feet of him. Hall begs him to throw hands and Larry refuses. This becomes important later.

It turns out that Macho Man’s opponent is none other than La Parka, WCW’s own chubby, dancing, chair-swinging, Super Calo-hating Mexican skeleton guy. He’s looking unusually tall and slim here, but as a guy who watched it live when it happened, I have to be honest: nobody noticed.

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Macho Man beats him up with basic clotheslines and arm drags to show what a good wrestler he is, and eventually Hall gets bored and decides to wander back up to the announce table to harass Zbyszko. While this is happening, La Parka miraculously counters a flying elbow drop by getting his feet up, then, you know, hits a Diamond Cutter on Savage and pins him.

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How great is that? As Dean Malenko will eventually show, there’s nothing better in the WCW storyline playbook than a vengeful babyface disguised as a luchador. Hall moseys back to the ring with his Too Sweets in the air thinking Savage has easily won, and doesn’t find out what’s happened until L.A. Page is celebrating in the crowd. Spectacular.

Wait, did that random Villano hit a Diamond Cutter in the middle of his match a few weeks ago to set up that moment of disbelief between the move and the unmasking and make the Page swerve even better? Oh man, I hope so.

Next Week:

We finally make it to Bash at the Beach, which features:

Dennis Rodman arm-drags
Dennis Rodman shoulder tackles
Dennis Rodman hip-tosses
some non-Dennis Rodman wrestling
the end of the 18-month long Chris Benoit vs. Kevin Sullivan angle
not the end of the six times as long Jeff Jarrett vs. Steve McMichael angle
DDP’s mystery partner getting revealed
DDP’s mystery partner definitely not turning on him after almost one match

And mannequins? Maybe mannequins.

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not yet hold on

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Bash at the Beach ’97 happened, and featured rare WCW events like a Kevin Sullivan vs. Chris Benoit match, Jeff Jarrett hitting Steve McMichael with a metal briefcase, the nWo winning and all WCW babyfaces looking like total idiots. A show like that may never happen again!

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for July 14, 1997.

Worst: Look Upon The Nitro Girls, Ye Mighty, And Despair

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You know what Nitro needed to really put it over the top? A mash-up of the Spice Girls (if they couldn’t sing) and the In Living Color Fly Girls (if they had no rhythm) that mostly seemed like Eric Bischoff went to the hot pants section of a Nordstrom’s that afternoon and sweded a dance troupe.

Meet the Nitro Girls, or what happens when Kimberly Page convinces a media conglomerate that she can dance and nobody ever asks her to prove it. They’re supposed to dance during commercial breaks to keep the crowd interested, because they old commercial diversion — a NASCAR-themed cat mascot named “Wild Cat Willie” — didn’t create enough boners. There’s Tayo, the black one; Chae, the Asian one; Kimberly, the white one; AC, the white one; Spice, the white one; and Fyre, the white one. If you watch them dance, they’re all the white one.

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They get an introduction at the top of the show from Michael Buffer, who is probably THRILLED that he gets to open the show with “let’s get ready to rumble,” pocket his ten grand or whatever and bail before the first match starts. It took him longer to put on his tuxedo than it did for him to make five figures. Kimberly trots out to intro the girls, but the microphone doesn’t work, so these enthusiastic Stranger Ladies are forced to enter in silence.

Their first number is a “synchronized” chair dance, and I’m not sure quotation marks are sarcastic enough to describe the event. Even with the music playing you can see and hear them talking to each other, and the meat of the routine is (1) them walking around in circles, playing musical chairs, and (2) leaning back on the chairs to spread their legs. You know a dance troupe sucks at dancing when their debut number is just walking and sitting. Here’s their full intro, if you hate yourself:

They show up later in the hour wearing hot pants, confirming my Nordstrom’s theory, and again to do a “dance” that’s literally them standing still while putting on sunglasses. And they wear shiny jackets. Like, imagine if The Matrix was about mannequins who come to life, but really slowly. That’s the Nitro Girls.

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Good Things The Nitro Girls Gave Us

– Stacy Keibler
– that time Alex Wright tried to join them
– Sharmell, when she was a queen with King Booker
– Shawn Michaels married a Nitro Girl named “Whisper” who got punched in the face by Chris Jericho during one of the best angles and rivalries ever
– This Wikipedia description of 2000-era Nitro Girls “Gold” and “Silver”

The sisters were cast as the Coors Light Twins in 2002. The sisters have appeared as regular cast members on Steve Harvey’s Big Time Challenge, as the Big Time Twins. They appeared in full makeup, and with CGI animated tongues, as alien strippers in the series premiere of Star Trek: Enterprise.

Terrible Things The Nitro Girls Gave Us

– all Nitro Girls dances
– all Nitro Girls angles, especially when “Beef” joins
– Sharmell, when she was one half of objectively the worst pro wrestling match ever
– after WCW folded, the Nitro Girls minus Kim became “Diversity 5,” one of the worst-ever attempts at a pop group, featuring one of the worst-ever pop group names.

Best: Alex Wright And The Giant Dick

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I’ll let you guess what the last word is.

This week’s opening match is Alex Wright versus Prince Iaukea, a real showdown between a man with an impressive dick and a man who can’t wrestle for it. To illustrate, I’ve provided this image:

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If Das Wunderkind had tried the Joey Ryan YouPorn Plex he would’ve torn off Iaukea’s arm at the shoulder.

Wright and Iaukea just kind of aimlessly start punching each other, and before you can say, “hey, it’s like they didn’t even bother to put a match together,” The Giant shows up. He chokeslams the referee, chokeslams Prince Iaukea and threatens Wright out of the ring. Six security guys show up, and The Giant chokeslams them all.

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For some unexplained reason he’s mad that at Bash at the Beach a seven-foot tall guy with a beard showed up dressed like Sting, stepped over the top rope and baseball-batted him in the spine. The best part is that when we see the replay, the announce team is finally like, “hey, so upon reflection, this isn’t Sting and is actually very obviously Kevin Nash.” I wish they’d start announcing retractions at the top of every Nitro. Also, a brief recap of what happened when the show went off the air in the middle of something exciting happening.

Anyway, the point is that The Giant promises he’s going to beat up Kevin Nash. Which will be a problem, because, and this may shock you …

Worst: Kevin Nash Is Injured*!

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*not really**
**probably really but it’s part of an angle

Somewhere in the middle of a match that had nothing to do with them, a limo pulls up to the arena and out pops the New World Order, wearing embarrassing dad shorts from the Sears For Giant Men collection. They have two announcements: that Konnan is officially a member of the nWo, and Kevin Nash is so injured he’s confined to a wheelchair and could not have possibly been the 7-foot-tall, Kevin Nash-ish imposter Sting.

Members of Harlem Heat are supposed to have a “ghetto street fight” against Hall and Nash later in the show, but Syxx ends up filling in for Nash, and the match gets downgraded to a “nondescript neighborhood regular match.” It’s important to note that when this challenge was originally laid out, two things were strange about it:

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Booker T was wearing a Harlem Heat hat, which he definitely got at a print-on-demand gift shop at Myrtle Beach, and
They explain that they kicked out Sherri and Vincent can’t join the group because they “ain’t Lee Harvey Oswald” and “this ain’t 1962.” First of all, Kennedy was assassinated in November of ’63. Second of all, is he saying that if they let Virgil wear some flame pants they’d have to plan a murder? Third of all, what

As you might’ve guessed, Harlem Heat loses their one kind-of match with The Outsiders when Nash is miraculously well enough to jump up from his wheelchair, climb onto the apron and hammer Booker in the back of the head. Honestly I think the injury made him more agile. Was it a ghetto street fight because the rich, influential white people who can do whatever they want and face zero consequences cheated to keep the black guys from succeeding?

The nWo lost the main event at Bash at the Beach and looked vulnerable for a second, so this Nitro is a solid two hours of them teabagging WCW and reasserting their dominance.

Worst: Quoth Nothing, Never!

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Despite Stevie Richards’ announcement at Bash at the Beach that there’d be an announcement on Nitro, Raven announces that the announcement is that there is no announcement. And that you should quote him nevermore. So don’t quote that he said he’d say nothing!

Best: 0.0 On The Muta Scale

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In one of the most random-ass Fire Pro matches you’ll ever see, Public Enemy took on Masahiro Chono and The Great Muta of nWo Japan. WCW’s use of these tippy-top-level New Japan guys is so crazy. Like, imagine today if WWE announced they’d brokered a working relationship with New Japan and would be doing a talent exchange, then brought over Tanahashi and Okada in exchange for Darren Young and Otis Dozovic. Now imagine that when they got the two biggest stars in New Japan, all the ever did with them was have them wrestle American-style tag matches in the middle of Raw against R-Truth and Curt Hawkins. And the only reason they’re on the card at all is to get the crowd to chant “USA” and side with whoever isn’t Japanese.

The crowd’s super into it, too, because a couple of paintless Juggalos in hockey sweaters with shit like “NAUGHTY MACDADDY” on them are preferable to the two coolest Japanese dudes of the 90s, a guy who kicks you so hard it represents the ENTIRE MAFIA and his partner, a legendary poison-spewing ninja genie who kicked Sting’s ass for years.

Muta and Chono win by Dilophosaur’ing Johnny Grunge in the face and kicking it. This GIF of Dramatic Muta’s “bitch please” face has been popping me since I made it.

Best: Vicious And Delicious

Speaking of great reaction GIFs, pay attention to Nick Patrick’s face when Buff Bagwell slaps Scott Steiner.

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That is some straight-up Mr. Belvedere-ian acting with the “oh BUFF” and the slow backing up.

I remember really liking Buff Bagwell a lot at one point, but by the time he showed up slashed sank WCW forever on Raw, I couldn’t remember why. It’s actually really nice to see Marcus Alexander Bagwell become fully-realized “Buff” again, because it’s very, very obvious why. Buff Bagwell owns during this part of his career. He’s SO INTO IT. After every successful move, he does a full taunt and pose, often directly into the camera. When he gets hit with ANYTHING, he sells it like he took a Sweet Chin Music and gets indignant about it. He’s this weird wet blood-red gigolo man who won’t stop exploding with emotions. And he’s partnered with SCOTT NORTON, the polar opposite, a guy with the body and power of that giant boulder from Indiana Jones who is ostensibly a heel, but mostly seems like he’s there to collect a paycheck. Imagine if Dan Connor from Roseanne won the Over The Top tournament and decided to professionally fight people alongside a human-sized Scrappy-Doo. They’re the best.

They have a really fun house show-style tag match with the Steiners, too, which is sadly interrupted by the nWo limo scene. I guess Bagwell and Norton had to cab it. When we come back from the aside, though, Scott Norton is going HAM on the Steiners. It’s so good. He even hits a tornado DDT. SCOTT NORTON.

Chono and Muta run out and interfere, causing a disqualification and, I’m assuming, trying to set up two concurrent number one contender matches for the Tag Team Championship. The Steiners manage to fight off four guys, because they’re en route to definitely not winning the tag belts in Sturgis. Don’t worry, though. Their day will come, and in like six months Scotty decides he’d rather lift weights and scream insane shit than hang out with his brother anyway.

Worst: Lee Marshall Phones It In

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I think Stagger Lee is running out of weasel jokes, because this week’s 1-800-COLLECT Road Report is especially weak. He’s in Jacksonville, you see, which is the home of Pat Boone, Christian pop crooner of the 1950s and 60s. This is during that weird time in the 90s when Boone released an ironic (?) heavy metal album, so Lee says Pat turned down a metal song called “Whippin’ the Weasel.”

My theory is that Lee is still shook from Bobby calling him “Tony Orlando” last week and got scared.

Best: La Parka, Man Of Mystery, Or

Worst: La Parka Just Pawn In Game Of Life

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Last week’s show featured one of the best swerves in Nitro history, with Diamond Dallas Page dressing up like La Parka to get the jump on the Macho Man Randy Savage. This week, Kimberly hangs out on the stage and makes a Diamond Cutter symbol behind La Parka’s back to make everyone wonder if, you know, Diamond Dallas Page has decided to once again cosplay La Parka and wrestle his throwaway Nitro match against Super Calo. Because that seems like the best use of Diamond Dallas Page’s time.

Before the match can end the way you’re expecting — with Calo causing one or both of them to break their necks, and La Parka trying to murder him for real with a chair — Macho Man runs out and beats up La Parka out of paranoia. While he’s doing that, DDP runs down to the ring and gets the jump on a preoccupied Savage. Then, because this is WCW and we cannot be happy for even a second, Curt Hennig, the man who turned on Page a night earlier at Bash at the Beach, jogs down to punch Page in the face with the dreaded TAPE KNUCKS, WCW’s strongest non-women’s-shoe weapon. Jim Duggan really should’ve taken the time to make some tape knuckles before his matches instead of trying to DIY them on the fly.

Worst: Ric Flair Is Still Extremely Stupid

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I’m starting to think that Ric Flair legitimately went senile for a period in the 90s. From the 6/30/97 Nitro report:

The funny thing here is that despite [Jeff] Jarrett being on Double Secret Horsemen Probation, Flair shows up to help him get leverage on a figure-four and win. As a reminder, despite having spent MONTHS accidentally hitting each other with metal briefcases and passive-aggressively feuding over Debra, Jarrett got put on probation for hitting Mongo with the briefcase and costing him a match against Kevin Greene. Kevin Greene, the guy Flair had been teaming with for the past couple of months, despite having given Mongo a briefcase full of money so he’d turn on Kevin Greene and join the Horsemen. On Nitro, after helping Jarrett win and retain the only championship the Horsemen have, Flair kicks him out of the Horsemen.

The man Flair wants to replace Jarrett with in the Horsemen lineup is Curt Hennig, right? From that same report:

While Sting is cleaning house, the announce team clutches their pearls because Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig has arrived on Nitro. He’d be a great choice as DDP’s partner. The last time we saw him was late last year on Raw when he was pretending to be Marc Mero’s mentor, tricking Mero into putting the Intercontinental Championship on the line against Hunter Hearst Helmsley, then helping Helmsley win it.

At Bash at the Beach, Hennig turned on his tag team partner at the first sign of trouble, attacking him and leaving him to get beaten up by the nWo. On this episode of Nitro only moments before this interview, Hennig attacked Page from behind and hit him in the face with a foreign object, causing him to once again get beaten up by the nWo. Ric Flair’s stupid bird-feather-headed ass shows up and is like, THIS GUY IS THE GUY I TRUST, THE GUY I LITERALLY WATCHED HELP THE NWO BEAT UP THE BEST WCW GUY TWICE IN THE PAST 24 HOURS.

I don’t want to spoil this for anyone who isn’t up on their WCW history, but Jesus Christ, of course Curt Hennig turns on the Horsemen to join the nWo. He’s not even being subtle about it. He could’ve shown up in a black and white shirt with N W QUESTION MARK on the front and Flair would’ve been like, “thank goodness that ain’t an O, let’s go fuck some moms!”

At Least The Other Horsemen Are Doing Well

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OH MY GOD CHRIS BENOIT WHY ARE YOU LETTING MIKE ENOS GANSO BOMB YOU ON NITRO. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.

Best/Worst: All The Horsemen Are Dumb, It’s A Rule Apparently

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Later in the episode, Flair gets a United States Championship match with Jeff Jarrett for … kicking him out of the group a couple of weeks ago? I don’t know how it works. Anyway, the match is honestly really entertaining thanks to the presence of FIRED-UP PERVERT Ric Flair, my personal favorite version of Flair. I’ve written about it before, but the best Flair ever is is when he stops being good at wrestling or telling 1970s and 80s-style NWA match stories and just dances around the ring obliterating everything that makes with dick-blows. It’s just chops and low blows, non-stop. He will make your chest AND your crotch look like raw meat.

The best moment of the match is this image, in which Debra instructs the camera to get a closeup of her so she can explain why Jarrett’s great. Meanwhile, Jarrett’s getting his balls uppercutted into his throat in the background. The worst moment is that the Horsemen run down to beat Jarrett up, but only when Flair’s about to win the match with a figure four. The match for the United States Championship. They could’ve waited like, three seconds to not only beat Jarrett up, but like, hurt his career. Instead, Mongo just walks into the ring and stomps him to cause a DQ. Couldn’t you guys have done this anywhere else? I … I don’t know, I think maybe the Horsemen got lobotomies at some point and were too close to the Dungeon of Doom guys for too long for anyone to notice.

Best: Los Guerreros Estallan

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Before I say anything about the match, I want to say how much I love this screengrab. Not only is Eddie Guerrero getting backdropped into the goddamn stratosphere here, if you flip the image upside down it looks like Eddie’s backdropping Chavo.

Over the past few weeks, Eddie Guerrero has been acting like the worst uncle ever by manipulating his nephew into fighting his battles for him, then getting mad at the nephew for not being good enough to win them. Last week, he walked out on a tag match with Vicious and Delicious and left Chavo to get his ass beat, but stayed on the stage to watch it happen.

This week, they have grudge match that only lasts a few minutes, but it’s HOT. Chavo actually seems like he wants to kick Eddie’s ass for manipulating him and bailing on him, and Eddie turns the condescending superiority up to 11. At one point he makes the cameraman get a closeup so he can yell SAY HELLO TO GRANDMA in Chavo’s face, yell HI MA into the camera and punch Chavo in the mouth. Then, as soon as Chavo starts to get an advantage, Eddie’s on his knees doing prayer hands. It’s awesome.

The finish makes a lot of sense, too. Chavo starts doing really well by hitting Eddie with suplexes he’s not expecting, but when he has him on the ropes, he goes for a frog splash. I don’t know if you’ve watched Chavo Guerrero do a frog splash at any point during the last 20 years, but he’s terrible at it. He certainly can’t do it to EDDIE, so Eddie gets up the knees and hits two of his own in response.

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After the match, Eddie Guerrero from the future travels back in time to tell his past self to please stop doing drugs.

Best: Master Of Disguise

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This week’s main-event (segment) is Lex Luger formally challenging Hollywood Hogan for the WCW Heavyweight Championship at Road Wild Pay-Per-View® in Sturgis. Guess whether or not that match happens as announced!

After he makes the challenge, the nWo surrounds the ring. The imposter Sting shows up again and gets in the ring, and one of the best things that semi-regularly happens in wrestling happens for the first time: we find out that it’s actually STING. DRESSED AS STING.

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I can’t tell you why this is great, honestly, but it’s always great. You may have seen the time he fooled Rob Van Dam by just wearing a Sting mask over his Sting paint, which is sorta like if Mike Trout tried to fool the Angels by wearing a second Angels hat over the first one and standing in center field.

This is where the episode ends, too, so I guess WCW’s big plan to destroy the nWo right now is, “dress up like ourselves and others so they’re never sure who they’re wrestling.” The nWo’s counter plan is, “never wrestle, and if we do, win easily.”

Next Week: Ric Flair announces a new member of the Four Horsemen and then immediately turns on him, a skeleton fights a different skeleton, and the match that will eventually kill WCW happens four years early. See you then!

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oh no

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: We were not ready for the debut of the Nitro Girls. At least this week they ditch the chairs and go for the simpler choreography of, “stomp in place like a horse that can count, then Bushwhacker walk off-screen.”

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And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Tuesday Nitro for July 22, 1997.

Wait, Tuesday Nitro?

That’s right. Remember back in April (of 1997) when Nitro became an hour-long pre-show for the NBA Playoffs? This week, Nitro gets completely bumped from Monday in favor of the only thing 1990s TNT loved more than basketball and wrestling: Americana prestige drama.

On back-to-back nights, TNT aired Rough Riders, an original miniseries about how badly your grandpa wants to record this on VHS but can’t figure out how. The miniseries stars Gary Busey as Major General Joseph Wheeler, R. Lee Ermey as Secretary of State John Hay and Sam Elliott as Bucky! Captain Bucky O’Hare. He goes where no ordinary rabbit would dare.

Here’s Tom Berenger definitely winning an Emmy for his starring role as Theodore Roosevelt from the Hall of Presidents.

To be honest, I’d rather watch four hours of this over two nights than sit through another Konnan match.

Worst: Another Konnan Match

Dammit.

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You can’t just blame it on the bossa nova, you have to Tsubasa.

Konnan — now the nWo’s K-Dogg, I’m just guessing it has two Gs, I haven’t checked — “takes on” Osaka Pro mainstay Tsubasa in the poor kid’s only WCW appearance. At this point he’d only been wrestling for about a year in CMLL and Ultimo Dragon’s Toryumon Mexico, and Konnan proves to be a giving, thoughtful vet by allowing him exactly zero (0) offense. Not even an ATTEMPT at offense. Here, watch, it’s only like 30 seconds long.

Tsubasa would eventually go on to become a 4-time Osaka Pro Wrestling Tag Team Champion, and be far less embarrassed wrestling Osaka Pro’s biggest stars, which I assume includes a comedic fire hydrant or whatever.

Worst: A Generous Use Of The Word ‘Pace’

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This week’s show opens with an illustration of how much Hulk Hogan likes working Tuesdays. He lies down in the middle of the ring — which he got a pump on and slathered himself in oil for — and cuts a promo about how he accepts Lex Luger’s challenge that’s mostly about how nobody in the back would have a job if he hadn’t made wrestling popular in the ’80s. Eric Bischoff adds, “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” which should appear in flashing lights at the beginning of every Nitro.

Note: the “pace” for professional wrestling is taking off 80% of the year to make movies despite being the World Champion, not defending your title between February and August, and only coming back to do tag team matches with basketball players.

Worst: Poor Steven Regal

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If you’re a regular reader of these columns or have a basic understanding of what makes people cool as shit, you’ll know that Lord Steven “William” Regal is one of my maybe … ten favorite wrestlers of all time. I didn’t like him as a kid, because I wasn’t supposed to, but as an adult I’ve developed a great, severe affection for a sour-faced British guy doing expert physical comedy between smashing people’s faces to death with the heel of his hand. He rules now, and he ruled back in the day. He’s also the reason Bryan Danielson exists.

Unfortunately we’re reaching the end of Regal’s WCW run, which culminates in February of ’98 with the best-worst Goldberg match and him getting fired for recreational drug abuse. You can already start to see the toll drugs are taking on his body, as he’s gone from “barrel-chested” to looking like Doctor Eggman. WCW has started to see it, too, so instead of the 20 minutes Ultimo Dragon and Regal got at Slamboree we get three. Dragon just Dragon Sleepers him out of nowhere and wins the TV title.

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And hell, you’d be forgiven for remembering that Regal was even Television Champion at all over the past couple of months.

The good news for Regal is that even though things get bad, then worse, then even worse with a second drug firing from WWF in April of ’99. That leg of the story ends with him in rehab getting straight. In the Nitro column, a story that ends without death, suicide or murder is a blessing.

Worst: Mike Tenay Knows The Complete History Of Super Calo But Doesn’t Know Steven Regal Is British

During the Dragon/Regal match, New Japan Pro Wrestling expert Mike Tenay mentions that Regal is “one of just three American wrestlers to compete next month in a major tournament,” the G1 Climax. Before he’s even done with the sentence, Larry Zbyszko starts (correctly) (what) yelling, “WHO’S AN AMERICAN? REGAL’S NOT AN AMERICAN.” Larry Zbyszko, the guy who screams about ORIENTALS every time there’s a Japanese wrestler on Nitro and gets lethargic having to pronounce all the syllables in their names, knows more about the G1 than you, Iron Mike.

Worst: Update, Ric Flair Is Still Stupid

I promise I’m going to give this episode some Bests, just hang with me.

At the top of the program, the announce team excitedly shares the info that Ric Flair will be officially naming the new member of the Four Horsemen later tonight. The suggestion is that it’s Curt Hennig, because he’s been openly courting him and trying to get him to join the crew for weeks. When it’s time for Flair to actually make said announcement, Syxx shows up instead and tells Flair there’s no new fourth member and that the Horsemen are a thing of the past. At first Flair is like, “hey man, you win,” but then he punches him out.

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Two things:

1. Yes, they put the hot-fire Syxx vs. Ric Flair feud on hold for a month and a half so Flair could feud with Rowdy Roddy Piper, and now that Piper’s gone they’ve picked it back up with no heat and no momentum. Because listen, I know your interactions had fans excited and interested in the product, but this old man with a false hip and the body of the guy from the ‘Unforgiven’ video has to beat up the greatest champion in the history of the company, all that guy’s friends and everyone in the nWo at once.

2. Curt Hennig, the guy who helped the nWo beat up Diamond Dallas Page two nights in a row and repeatedly says he’s not a Horseman, is supposed to be your fourth Horsemen. When it’s time for him to debut, a member of the nWo shows up instead and tells you there’s no fourth Horseman. Shouldn’t you, I don’t know, take that as a sign that Curt Hennig’s in the fucking nWo and not let him be a part of your faction? Better yet, maybe he shouldn’t be a part of your War Games team when you’re locking yourself in some cages with the nWo?

Worst: Hell On Earth Is The Nitro Girls Dabbing

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It would take these girls six months to teach you how to Dougie.

Worst: Lex Luger And The Giant Are Having Problems

I think the reason this episode feels so bad is that all the matches are super short. Like half the matches go less than a minute, and nothing goes over five. It’s brutal.

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For example, Giant is supposed to face the Great Muta. About 30 seconds in, Giant grabs Muta by the neck for the chokeslam but accidentally activates Muta’s poison glands, and Muta mists him for the disqualification.

That instantly triggers an nWo beatdown that’s like four times longer than the actual match. Vincent and Macho Man show up to attack Giant 3-on-1, and Giant’s Forever Friend Lex Luger runs out to make the save. The mist-blinded Giant almost chokeslams Lex, however, until he realizes that Virgil is not 300 pounds of muscle and doesn’t have the voice of an old woman.

Later in the night, Luger and Scott Norton wrestle for about two minutes until [Final Fantasy fanfare] Vince runs in and causes a disqualification. Here’s Luger hitting him with an Alpamare Waterslide:

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But no, Luger Torture Racks Vincent and gorilla-presses Delicious into Vicious, and that’s the match. Hogan shows up near the entrance to taunt Luger, so Luger ends up following Hogan, Bagwell, Norton and Vincent to the back. I’m talking like, two steps behind them. Nitro goes to commercial with the announcers screaming about how Luger’s making a huge mistake, and how they’re gonna lure him into a trap and beat him up. When Nitro returns from commercial break … nothing. It’s not addressed. But hey, Hall and Nash are finally here, and Kevin Nash forgot to put on pants!

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So Let’s Have Some Good Wrestling, Already

Here’s Mongo almost killing Dean Malenko, does that count?

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What would you call this? A “botch-style Neutralizer?”

Worst: As The Halliburton Turns

Yeah, up next is the social experiment of Dean Malenko vs. Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael. It’s the pro wrestling equivalent of that Patrick Swayze/Chris Farley Chippendales sketch. As a bonus, Larry destroys all that good will he earned correcting Mike Tenay by spending the entire match saying shit like this:

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Is Larry sexually attracted to elephants, but unable to commit? Because that’s the vibe I’m getting here.

The match ends when Jeff Jarret straight-shows up dressed like Country Music Beetlejuice and interferes. Debra keeps the referee distracted by standing on the apron and holding up the United States Championship, which definitely seems like a reason to ignore everything else happening in the ring. Jarrett hits a stunner on Mongo across the top rope, allowing Malenko to dropkick the big man and roll him up in a very slow, Mongo-esque small package for the win.

After the match, Jarrett and Debra formally ask Malenko to form an alliance with them. Malenko’s acting chops are on full display here, as the conversation goes something like this:

Jarrett: “There’s strength in numbers! Help us win matches and we’ll help you.”
Malenko: “I’ll definitely do it!”
Debra: “I think you should, as well!”
Malenko: “I’ll give you my answer later!”

Jarrett’s trying to add a gimp to his posse, isn’t he. In retrospect I’m sad that when the WWF did their “Dean Malenko, ladies man” gimmick they didn’t explain it away by saying he knew 1,004 sexual holds.

Worst: Hector Guerrero Gets Too Excited And Almost Kills Himself

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Last week, Eddie Guerrero’s older brother Hector showed up to keep Eddie from beating up their nephew Chavo Jr. This week they have a fast-paced grudge match that highlights exactly how much better Eddie is than … well, all of his relatives, and begins with Hector almost dying.

The idea is that Hector’s supposed to duck an elbow, hit the ropes hard and use them to propel him up into the air for a headscissors or something. What actually happens is that Hector’s moving too fast, so when he jumps into the top rope, he completely misses it with his right hand. So basically he’s doing a somersault over the top rope to the floor onto nobody. He saves himself by like, clinging to the rope with his abdomen, and Eddie has to run over, pull him back up and pretend he got headscissored. Good lord.

Best: Eddie, Though

At one point during this, Eddie escapes a pinfall attempt by biting Hector’s arm, and when Hector gives up the pin, Eddie KEEPS BITING HIM. It’s great. Eddie works the entire match with just biting and low blows. Malenko of course runs out and starts trying to attack him, and Hector, being a good dude, gets between them. What does Eddie do? He sides with his brother, right?

Nope, he shoves Hector into a fight with Malenko and bails. I love you, rudo Eddie Guerrero. You’re on a different level.

Best: SKELETON FIGHT

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If you’re like me, you’ve been waiting for this since birth. This episode of Nitro features the first match I would’ve booked if they’d put me in charge of the company in 1997: Mortis and Wrath vs. Psicosis and La Parka. The radioactive Thai karate skeleton versus the dancing Mexican skeleton with a chair fetish.

As you know if you read my Bash at the Beach column, the Blood Runs Cold guys all own right now, and nobody really realizes it or knows what to do with it. If WCW had just observed a “three ring circus”/something for everyone mentality, they could’ve had Mortal Kombat characters fighting masked Mexican guys all the time and invented a completely new kind of pulp pro wrestling like 15 years before that became a thing. Instead, we have these little crystalline gems of matches. If WWE Network ever adds Worldwide and Saturday Night to the schedule, we’ll have a lot more.

Mortis and Wrath win a super fun match with the Villano Killer. Two moments of interest here:

1. At one point during the match, Psicosis runs into the corner and is supposed to like, bounce to the top rope and flip back into the ring. Instead, he bounces to the top, slips, does a split on the top rope and falls to the floor. Super Calo was watching that shit backstage like, “LOL, depth perception much?”

2. After the match, La Parka attacks Mortis with a chair, because yassss kweeen, slayyyy. La Parka dances, so Wrath kicks him in the face so hard it knocks him into another dimension. Watch:

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Best: It’s Like Some Kind Of … Latino World Order!

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Rey Mysterio Jr. returns on crutches to announce that he’s had surgery five times, in his left knee. I ruptured a disk which, fragmented into my, spinal column. Careers ended in an instant. Yes, this is entertainment, but the hazards are real. How’s he even able to stand? Trainers, EMTs, referees down.

Sorry, don’t know what got into me there. That PSA is like the Babadook.

Anyway, Mysterio shows up to talk about how he’s trying to heal his leg “the natural way” (like Dustin Rhodes) so Konnan shows up and kicks away his crutches. This is such a dick move that WCW’s rudos show up to stand behind the least rudo man ever, Rey Mysterio, against him. Konnan is extremely scared of a skeleton, Weird Al in a buffalo mask and two Pink Panther guys.

Worst: The Match That Killed WCW, Four Years Early

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Shinsuke Nakamura looked weird in the 90s

Explaining why Booker T vs. Buff Bagwell for the WCW Heavyweight Championship main-evented an episode of Monday Night Raw is hard enough. Explaining why it was set up to fail after the company had been bought by the competition and in theory could’ve made a shit-ton of money off it instead of being weird and petty is harder. And man, it might be even harder to explain how Raw was going to be in Atlanta, GA the next week and how much better the crowd response would’ve been if they’d waited.

As it stands, Booker T (who is visibly afraid to do anything exciting) and Buff Bagwell (who was told by Shane McMahon not to cheese for the camera when his entire gimmick was cheesing for the camera) got a shitty crowd response, wrestled an underwhelming match, and built to the finish of POPULAR WWF GUYS SHOWING UP AND BEATING THE WCW CHAMPION TO THE BACK LIKE A CHUMP. I can explain a lot of things, but the Invasion angle, any second of it, breaks my brain and sends me into an confused anger spiral.

Anyway, four years earlier, Booker T and Buff Bagwell had a match on Nitro. It ends with Booker getting cheated out of the decision, and three guys beating him up after the match with no save. So … the exact same thing? Was it never WWF’s fault? Was this the match they thought was their best?

Stagger Lee Visits West Virginia

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I’m so mad this wasn’t a slow burn for Pauly Shore to debut on Nitro and attack Lee Marshall. They gave Riki Rachtman a job, it’s not that much of a stretch.

Oh, also, this week they really start hitting the idea of “Nitro parties” hard, asking fans around the country to send in pictures and videos of their Nitro parties. I don’t remember these, but oh my god I hope the coming weeks are full of them. I also hope that somehow I got pictures or video onto Nitro and just missed an episode and never realized it.

Watches ‘Bowling For Columbine’ Once

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Worst: Curt Hennig Debuts (For 30 Seconds) (And We Miss The Finish)

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Aside from the announcement of the new member of the Four Horsemen, which didn’t happen, the big selling point of this Nitro for the broadcast team is the Nitro in-ring debut of Curt Hennig. Which, uh, only sort of happens. He faces MICHAEL WALLSTREET of all people, because I guess aging WWF mid-carders with drifting relevancy can only wrestle each other, and it only lasts about 30 seconds before Diamond Dallas Page shows up from out of the crowd and hits Hennig with a Diamond Cutter. The worst part? The moment cameras cut away to show Page is the moment Hennig hits a Perfect Plex and wins the match.

Man, how is this an unopposed episode of Nitro? Shouldn’t they have gone out there guns-blazing and tried to kill it and make some new fans, instead of doing a lightning round of shit that didn’t make sense a month ago?

Speaking Of That …

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After punching out Syxx earlier in the show, Ric Flair made a challenge to the Outsiders. He wanted a match for the Tag Team Championship, and he wanted it tonight. Because he’s not a Member of Harlem Heat or one of the Steiner Brothers, he instantly gets this by asking, instead of having to wrestle in six non-consecutive number one contender matches. I mean, I guess he does have a hookup with J.J.

Amazingly, the Outsiders actually agree to the match and wrestle it. Weird, I know. It’s a shame to see how great Flair is in the ring with the Wolfpac, and how much the Piper feud absolutely wasted what might’ve been a crucial month in the guy’s last run as a legitimate top-shelf performer. Flair bumps for Kevin Nash like the world is ending, and it’s the greatest. Nash will like, put his hand on Flair’s head and Flair will hit the ground like a bullet and go completely unconscious. I don’t think anyone ever made Nash look better than Flair.

The finish, as you might’ve guessed, is Syxx distracting Flair so Benoit has to wrestle the Outsiders alone. He does an admirable job of it, too, getting the crowd hype in a way nobody else has come CLOSE to in an actual wrestling match tonight, but ends up eating a big boot and getting pinned. Because he’s Chris Benoit. After the match, Syxx locks in the Buzzkiller on Ric on the floor, and Mongo has to trot out and hair-mare Syxx away. The Steiners show up on the stage to stare down the Outsiders, too, but Aw Nuts We’re Out Of Time®.

You should get excited about next week’s show, though, because it’s the one where-

-whoops, sorry, I’m out of space in the column. Guess you’ll have to find out next week!

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speaking in foreign language

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW (Tuesday) Nitro: Hollywood Hogan accepted a match against Lex Luger at Road Wild on his terms, which I guess include promos where you’re lying down in the middle of the ring. Also, a skeleton fought a second skeleton, and a dragon won the TV title.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. If you don’t tell them how much you like these, nobody’s going to read them. People need to know about the time the Great Muta went under the ring and a cameraman followed him.

Important Note

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In case you missed it, we posted the untold story of WCW’s Glacier, Ray Lloyd. It’s a longform interview and an original video, and I consider the best thing I’ve ever done at UPROXX. If you love WCW — and if you’re reading this, you either love it for real or you love it ironically — please, please click over and give it a read. It’ll make your blood run surprisingly warm, because your heart’s growing three sizes.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for July 28, 1997.

Worst: This Is The Weirdest Coppertone Ad I’ve Ever Seen

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Up first on this historic 99th edition of WCW Monday Nitro is the endless saga of ‘The Nature Boy’ Ric Flair, a once glorious and sophisticated champion driven to insanity thanks to a year spent hanging out with a murderer, the homophobic version of Michael J. Fox’s dad, one of the 1985 Chicago Bears and Jeff Jarrett. Flair is currently involved in two stories:

He hates nWo member Syxx, because while most of the New World Order guys are tall and tough, Syxx is kind of a benchwarmer and needs to get the shit kicked out of him, and
He’s convinced that Curt Hennig, a man who has been helping the nWo for several weeks and openly refuses to join the Four Horsemen, is the perfect new member of the Four Horsemen

Those stories collide in this week’s opener, which teams up Flair and Hennig against nWo B-teamers (and secretly the best tag team in the world) Vicious and Delicious. For the most part, Hennig plays ball, but he approaches the match in an extremely less-than-perfect way: by trying to go toe-to-toe with Scott Norton. We’ll get back to the story in a second, but first:

Best: Selling For Scott Norton

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen him wrestle, but Scott Norton weighs about 1,400 pounds. He’s not fat, either, he’s shaped like a Goron from The Legend of Zelda and made of the same material. He is literally a brick shit-house. Hennig is like, “let me try to chop this guy in the thickest part of his chest.” And don’t forget, Hennig is the guy who if like, TATANKA touched him, he’d backflip onto his neck.

So here’s a taste of how that goes for him.

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This is 20-pounds heavier, 5 years into semi-retirement Curt Hennig. WWF Mr. Perfect with a perfectly functioning back would’ve gotten chopped in half. Norton would’ve pulled a Geralt of Rivia dismemberment finisher on him. It’s great.

Flair goes with the much smarter SPASTIC SEX FIEND plan of eye pokes and low blows, which does much better, but he also gets some moments of glorious selling. As a reminder, he’s fired up to be wrestling the nWo and/or anyone who isn’t Roddy Piper. Remember last week when Flair wrestled Kevin Nash, and would collapse to the ground like he got an anvil dropped on his head if Nash touched him? This week’s version of that is internally combusting when Norton runs into him. I don’t wanna make you load two GIFs on the same page, but watch this and try not to smile. It’s like Norton opened the Ark of the Covenant on him.

Worst: Anyway, Back To The Bare-Assedness

Syxx runs down and tries to cost Flair the match by pulling down his underwear, but Flair spent like 10% of his time in the ring in the Greensboro Coliseum in legendary championship matches with his ass hanging out, so it doesn’t phase him. Flair fights him off and manages to trip Buff at the same time, allowing Hennig to hit a bee-yootiful Perfect Plex — actually caught on film this week — for the win.

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Later in the show, Curt Hennig tells Mean Gene that he’s still a free agent and not the newest member of the Four Horsemen. Ric Flair shows up with a random blonde and is like, WE’RE GONNA GO TO THE CLUBS AND EACH HAVE SEX WITH FIVE WOMEN BECAUSE WE ARE ALL FOUR HORSEMEN GUYS, ESPECIALLY YOU. And Hennig is like, “no,” practically adding, “I’m actually in the New World Order” at the end, but Flair is too busy Cosby dancing with a stranger to listen.

Worst: The Most Awkward Opponents Chris Benoit Has Ever Faced

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To make things worse, their names are “Psycho” and “Killer.” Let’s hope nobody put K-Dogg in the enclosed pool area.

So yeah, these AWA-ass looking dudes with uterus faces are the Texas Hangmen. This version of the team is masked versions of Tough Tom and Mean Mike of epic WCW Saturday Night jobber tag team Disorderly Conduct. A different version of the team — featuring future WCW Also Jobber and, amazingly, Chikara star “Bull Pain” — held tag titles in the USWA and WWC.

On Nitro, they provide awkward bodies that Steve McMichael can’t figure out how to Tombstone without falling down.

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Careful, buddy. Between this and last week’s attempted paralyzing of Dean Malenko, I’m starting to think most of the crap Mongo gets for being a “bad wrestler” comes from someone making the Tombstone his finish and never really teaching him how to do it.

The highlight of the match is Scott Hall and Kevin Nash calling in from Michigan, where they’re supposedly looking for Steiner Brothers fans. Hall asks Tony if he’ll accept a collect call, and Tony, I swear to God, responds with, “I will if you used 1-800-COLLECT.”

Best: Please Let Scott Hall Take Over ‘On The Road’ And Visit Nitro Parties

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Lee Marshall is also in Detroit, and Tony mentions that next week we’ll be able to start sending in our pictures and videos from our Nitro parties to try to get on the air. Brother, Lee Marshall’s been going to Nitro parties for a YEAR and the best he’s ever gotten on TV was a U.S. map and a picture of him on the phone.

Lee’s joke this week is that Detroit is where cars come from, and Henry Ford’s original plan for the horseless carriage was “weasels on a treadmill,” but all they did was “whimper, complain and sniff each other.” Bobby: “He should be like Tiger Stadium, they should tear him down, too.” I’m still so mad we got matches from Randy Anderson, Mancow, the Insane Clown Posse and the Howard Stern Wack Pack on NItro, but Lee Marshall and Bobby Heenan never threw hands.

Best: Lex Luger Is Peaking

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Gene’s got the right idea, you have to stand at least a body length from Luger when he’s peaking.

In the most important news of the week, “Package In Toto” Lex Luger announces that he’s talked to the WCW Executive Committee, and they agree that Hollywood Hogan should have to defend the WCW Heavyweight Championship every 30 days. Keep in mind, he hasn’t defended it since February. But now instead of Luger facing Hogan for the title on Hogan’s own terms at a motorcycle rally, Luger’s getting a title shot next week on the 100th edition of Nitro. This and next week’s match are GREAT if (1) you’ve never seen it, and (2) you don’t remember what happens immediately after.

Anyway, speaking of peaking packages, comma,

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Is that a WEASEL in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Worst: 1997 Can’t Handle Beautiful Wrestlers

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Chris Jericho won the Cruiserweight Championship from Syxx on the still-totally-counts-as-an-episode “Saturday Nitro” audiocast on WCWwrestling.com, but he hasn’t turned heel yet and figured out he’s a billion times better that way, so he’s cold booger on a paper plate. The good news here is that the new, arrogant Alex Wright is able to drag him around by his hair and German suplex him to become the new champion. Don’t worry, Jericho puts it together in about five months.

The bad news is that this show takes place in central West Virginia in 1997, so you can imagine how much they like seeing one of the German New Kids on the Block with his bratwurst stuffed into some dreamscicle panties. They start chanting “faggot” at him like he’s Adorable Adrian Adonis in 1986. C’mon, West Virginia. You’re definitely probably not better than that.

In an unrelated note, if time travel ever becomes a reality, my first trip is gonna be to Charleston in ’97 to start a counter-chant of, “I WISH.”

Best: There Is So Much Going On In This Picture

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Dean Malenko is entering week two of his, “I’ve agreed to be on your team, I’ll tell you my decision about joining your team later!” world tour. Mean Gene’s Steve Harvey suit. Jeff Jarrett looking like the angel of a dead Bee-Gee. Debra in the background checking out Alex Wright’s junk while nobody’s paying attention. Bro, I love that Debra is systematically trading up.

So back in April, Malenko was mad at Eddie Guerrero because he thought he was joining the Dungeon of Doom, so he ended up wrestling Eddie’s older brother Hector on Nitro. On this episode, Malenko is mad at Eddie Guerrero and suspicious that Jarrett’s trying to get him on the team they just kinda-sorta formed, so he ends up wrestling Hector. The only difference is that this time, Dean has a bag of Jiffy Pop from the CMAs looking out for him.

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Chavo Guerrero shows up after the match to help Hector, so Malenko pops him in the back of the head and the Guerreros get beaten down. Dickbag rudo Eddie is nowhere to be found. Really all this segment did was solidify the Malenko/Jarrett alliance, and make me notice that Debra and Jeff have a real Cheryl and Jason Blossom thing going on.

Worst: That Face You Make When You Have To Work Prince Iaukea

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Poor Ultimo Dragon. He was a little loosey goosey himself sometimes, but nobody should have to wrestle Prince Iaukea in a live wrestling match this deep into 1997. Instead of actually writing anything about the match, I’m gonna post a GIF of the finish.

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Good lord.

Worst: Konnan Ruins All Of La Parka’s Hard Work

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Over the past several months, La Parka has become a cult favorite. He spent several weeks trying to actively cripple Super Calo, then Diamond Dallas Page dressed up as him to get the jump on Macho Man in one of the greatest swerves ever. Even last week he had a cool match with Mortis and Wrath, who might as well be Mama and Daddy in the underrated family.

This week, Konnan takes a huge, slow, stumbly dump on the entire thing by squashing La Parka and making him look like shit. Parka tries to salvage it by showing up with a chair with Konnan’s name on it, literally, but Konnan just dropkicks him in the face with hit and makes him tap out. After the match, Psicosis shows up to back up La Parka, setting up Konnan making him look like shit next week.

Reminder: Curt Hennig Is SUPER Not In The nWo

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That’s why he shows up to attack Diamond Dallas Page from behind for the third time, helping the nWo score yet another victory over him. Hennig is pulling Ric Flair’s blood rival Syxx onto the most WCW guy on the roster for a cheap pin after a sneak attack and Flair is just like, “you’re so great, let’s go get drunk and have sex with moms.”

Best: Assault Suit Larry

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The Giant gets a rematch with The Great Muta and wins by utilizing Muta’s one weakness: not realizing people could, like, put something in front of their face so the mist wouldn’t blind them. Giant goozles Muta, Muta spews, and Giant just puts his other arm up to block. SCIENCE.

Note: My favorite Hulk Hogan match ever is when he wrestled Killer Khan in The Spectrum in ’87 and not only blocked the poison mist with his hand, but then rubbed his misty hand in Khan’s eyes. Hulk Hogan being smart instead of just typing in a cheat code at the end of the match is a rare sight.

Eric Bischoff sits in on commentary for the match and makes Bobby and Mike Tenay leave so he can mess with Tony the whole time. When it’s over, Larry Zbyszko shows up and gets in Bischoff’s face, screaming about how he’s got no power and how he’s gonna kick his ass if he starts something. FINALLY. Bischoff logically assumes that Larry’s not going to do anything, because Larry’s NEVER done anything, so Larry hooks him in a front chancery, drags him to the ring and dumps him in for a Giant chokeslam. The crowd is HOT, man.

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Because we can’t be happy, not even for a second, I’ll go ahead and tell you that next week’s Nitro not only starts with an Eric Bischoff promo, it features TWO (2) Eric Bischoff promos where he shits on the Giant, shits on Larry, and threatens to sue everybody. Good times.

Best: This Shot Of The Great Muta Crawling Under The Ring

Oh, right, during the match Muta tries to escape the Giant by crawling under the ring, and instead of just wondering where he went, the cameraman actually lifts up the apron and films him crawling.

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I wish the Ultimate Warrior had just randomly been down there.

Worst: Your Weekly nWo Run-In Main Event

Here’s a picture of Macho Man Randy Savage vs. Scott Steiner:

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As it turns out, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall weren’t actually in Detroit when they called in earlier, they were just on the phone. What?? Next you’re gonna tell me Lee Marshall’s just calling in from backstage (or his house) and not actually traveling the country a week ahead of Nitro like the world’s corniest Silver Surfer.

There’s actually a really great moment in the post-match attack when the Giant makes the save and the Outsiders are in the aisle surrounded by security. Giant challenges Nash to a match right here, right now, but Nash declines because he doesn’t want to also have to fight a bunch of security. So the security parts and lets him pass. That’s great. Of course, Nitro actually goes off the air before anybody fights anybody. [tap dancing] ♫ Because Nitro ♫

Next Week: Join us for the historic 100th (or 99th plus one audio) episode of Nitro, featuring

Lex Luger vs. Hollywood Hogan for the Heavyweight Championship in a match that could Change The Face Of The New Era®
James J. Dillon offering a contract and an opponent for Sting to try to get him back into the ring
Two (2) Eric Bischoff promos
The Nitro debut of Coach Scott D’Amore (no, really)
THREE HOURS OF NITRO

Please be here and help me get through that.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Larry Zbyszko finally stopped being the world’s most spineless hypocrite and stood up to Eric Bischoff, dragging him to the ring to get chokeslammed by The Giant. Alex Wright is the new Cruiserweight Champion, Curt Hennig is definitely not in the New World Order, and Lex Luger is “peaking” for Sturgis. Spoiler alert: he peaks too early.

And now …

Best: 100 Episodes Of Nitro

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We’ve finally reached the landmark 100th episode of WCW Monday Nitro, originally aired on August 4, 1997. That also means I’ve now officially written up 100 episodes of Nitro, starting the beginning with episode one from way back in September of ’95. Technically I’ve only written up 99 episodes, though, because WCW’s “100” includes the audio-only “Saturday Nitro,” broadcast on WCWwrestling.com on June 28. Man, only WCW could have a three-hour celebration of 100 episodes of Nitro and do it on episode 99.

Here’s to 100 more. In case you’re wondering, episode 200 — aired in July of 1999 — is dramatically different. Ric Flair’s making a bunch of bad decisions, Sting is unhappy with management, Dennis Rodman’s supposed to wrestle soon and Hulk Hogan is the Heavyweight Champion. Crazy the difference two years can make.

Best: Silver Bails

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WCW decided to make this episode three hours long, but much like, say, Raw in 2017, they don’t actually know how to fill that much time. So there’s a lot of “… and now LUCHADORES, I guess!” My favorite of those matches, because of course it is, is Glacier and Ernest Miller vs. Silver King and Damien. How can the Mortal Kombat ice ninja and his leopard-print karate champion friend hope to defeat the son of the Devil and the KING OF ALL SILVER? [Lucha Underground bwomp]

In case you haven’t read our longform piece on Ray Lloyd and watched the accompanying video, Glacier secretly ruled hard and is never better than when he’s murdering Mexican wrestlers with karate. Remember when he legally manslaughtered Lizmark Jr.? Remember when he kicked Ciclope so hard he turned him inside out? Here he is turning Silver King into a Copper Pauper:

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Glaishe and Ernie pick up the win here when Glacier distracts Damien with POSSIBLE KARATE, long enough for The Cat to bounce around on the ropes for several seconds and kick dude’s teeth through the back of his neck. And that’s good enough for this week’s People Who Snow Use Valvoline®.

(That’s my favorite joke I’ve ever written.)

Worst: Who Bettah Than Hennig?

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♫ I had the time of my life ♫

Glacier’s blood rival Mortis doesn’t fare as well, because he’s up against the scowling, soaking-wet M.U.S.C.L.E. figurine that is 1997 Curt Hennig.

This is one of those matches that would probably be incredible if anyone realized it at the time and thought to give them time and a story. It’s basically the two best — or at least “most pronounced” — bumpers on the show. It’s just a shame that Hennig is still borderline retired, even when he’s actively wrestling, and can’t seem to go more than three minutes even when he’s in a tag.

Hennig doesn’t do Mort any favors here, knocking out James Vandenberg and winning with a Perfect Plex from relatively out of nowhere. Which makes sense, because you want the nWo sleeper agent who won’t stop attacking the crowd’s favorite wrestler from behind to use big, sweeping babyface tropes like punching out a heel manager. Honestly, nothing Hennig does during this brief time of relevancy in WCW makes any sense.

Best-ish: The Greats Of Wrath

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Wrath does better than Mortis, but it’s another match that should’ve been way better than it is. He takes on The Barbarian, and what should be an epic, disconcertingly stiff clash of hosses is just kind of a jobber squash to set up another match. Wrath catches Barb off the ropes and sends him to the Upside-Down with the Death Penalty. Meng shows up to keep Wrath from doing further damage, and we get a staredown.

And even that’s kind of a bummer, because we just used up all of Meng’s “scary monster” points on the Chris Benoit/Dungeon of Doom feud. Every few years Meng decides to get overpowered for a few months, usually involving him wearing dress clothes or sunglasses, and you can tell he’s getting a push because someone attacks him with a wooden chair. If they break a wooden chair over him, he means business. If he’s in blue skull pants getting into half-cooked beef with a War Gods character because the guy pinned his 700-year old tag team partner, not so much.

Another Week, Another Raven Segment

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No one will be seated during the “Raven gets offered a contract” scene!

I’m not even sure what to say about them at this point. This is the same bit we’ve seen half a dozen times already. Raven’s in the front row, Mean Gene wants to talk to him. Raven won’t say anything, so Stevie Richards comes out and says “RAVEN IS A WRESTLER!” That makes Raven mad, Raven humiliates Stevie. Really the only difference this week is that Stevie briefly stands up to him. Raven doesn’t show up at Road Wild or the Nitro after this, and only shows up the week after that to interfere in Stevie’s match. He doesn’t actually have a match until the Clash of the Champions after that.

Best: Walk Up In The Club Like

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I’d finish that song lyric, but Mean Gene Okerlund makes this week’s contractually obligated Alex Wright dick joke for me:

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Me talk English? That’s unpossible!

Alex Wright defends the Cruiserweight Championship against Scotty Riggs, who is pushing at least 260 at this point. The guy is made of muscle. I mean, Alex Wright is made of muscle too, but only one. Okay, you get an extra one this week.

Wright will defend the strap against the former champion, Chris Jericho, at Road Wild. They can’t call it “Hog Wild” this year, because every show with Alex Wright on it is hog wild.

Best: Speaking Of Road Wild

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One of the funniest things happening on this episode is the announce team suddenly realizing kids might be tuning in to a pay-per-view at a bike rally and, worst case scenario, will hear a bunch of racist slurs and see an errant titty. This causes them to give repeated warnings about how OUT OF CONTROL the “adult-themed pay-per-view” will be. All that really does is make me wish they’d done a Spring Break Nitro from a strip club.

The funniest warning is from Mike Tenay, who has DEFINITELY never seen a boob. Listen as Iron Mike tries to explain what will happen without the word “tits” or the phrase “the n-word.” “Well I certainly remember last year, and Road Wild has so many extra aspects besides the wrestling! All the great surroundings! All the riders! All the motorcyclists, and all the people along with those motorcyclists as well!” If you added “sad” to the end of that, it could be a Donald Trump tweet.

Note: I am using this as a reason to not talk about Public Enemy vs. High Voltage, which is seriously happening on the 100th episode of Nitro.

Worst: This Version Of The Bronco Buster

The regular Bronco Buster is pretty embarrassing for everyone involved, but this version as seen in this epsiode’s Syxx vs. Chris Benoit match is especially heinous. Watch:

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If you can’t figure out what’s going on there, Benoit’s hanging in the Tree Of Woe (like he does) and Syxx is smashing his dick into Benoit’s dick. Just mashing them together good. I don’t know who it’s supposed to hurt or what it’s supposed to accomplish, but if he tried that against Alex Wright he would’ve ended up in the hospital with a shattered pelvis.

In a rare moment of journalism from the Best and Worst of Nitro, I actually reached out to Syxx himself, Sean Waltman, to explain the spot. Here’s what he had to say:

“Oh, yeah. You know what happened? It was banned. The Bronco Buster was banned at the time. [TNT] Standards and Practices said it was lewd and lascivious. They told Eric [Bischoff], and Eric told me. So, being me, I’m going to figure out loopholes, and ways to get away with still doing shit. So I was trying different things.

“I don’t know what I was thinking right there. When you’re working with Benoit, a lot of it’s just kind of ad-libbing. Because you can’t really call a lot of shit ahead of time with Benoit. He was not good at that. So that just kind of ended up happening.

“I’m not 100 percent sure. My memory’s a little sketchy on it, but I think a lot of it just came off spontaneous. The way it ended up and we were dick to dick, but if I had done it correctly, I would have landed my ass on the bottom turnbuckle, and then we would have ended up 69ing each other. Neither one is really very good, is it?

“Something like that happened with Jericho, too. When Jericho came to WWE, he was really adamant on doing this spot, and it ended up like that, and afterwards, he was like, ‘Oh, that fuckin’ sucked.'”

The match ends when Jeff Jarrett attacks Benoit from behind and Mongo rushes out to make the save, which is also a lot like dicks touching.

Worst: Taint Misbehavin’

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you vs the guy she told you not to worry about

Earlier in the night, Jarrett and his new best friend Dean Malenko team up against Hector Guerrero and Chavo Guerrero Jr., who I’m going to call “Lose Guerreros.”

Hector is normally a pretty good wrestler, but man, he could not handle being on Nitro. The last time we saw him he was almost killing himself by trying to catch the top rope with both hands and missing, and this week he wrestles as though his character is “man who is wrestling for the first time.” He’ll punch the heel in the corner, then turn and start taunting the guy’s opponent with his back turned, and it’s like, dude, have you ever watched a wrestling match before? He’s going to hit you from behind. And then he “goes for a hurricanrana,” which is less going for a hurricanrana and more “comfortably putting yourself in position to get electric chaired.” It’s weird.

Anyway, Malenko taps him out to the Texas Cloverleaf to continue the honestly pretty confusing feud between the babyface family of wrestlers having to cover for their heel relative who isn’t around and a heel teaming with a face because the heel needs protection from different heels and the face needs backup against different faces. Or something. I kinda miss when they’d just hit each other with a suitcase every week.

1-800-COL-RADO

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Lee Marshall calls in from the Buffalo Bill Museum to, in a rare moment, insult Bobby Heenan for being a weasel. The funny part here is that it’s not just a museum, it’s the Buffalo Bill Museum and grave, so imagine Stagger Lee like, sprawled out on a cowboy’s grave, calling in to a wrestling show to tell one of his co-workers he hates him.

Best/Worst: You Can’t Keep It 100 Without Konnan

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Last week, Konnan more or less made La Parka seem worthless after WCW spent weeks and arguably months accidentally turning him into a cult favorite. This week, Konnan gets basically the same squash match against Psicosis, a guy who has competed for the Television and Cruiserweight Championships on this show, because I guess he’s taking a hard-line “I brought you into this world and I can take you out” stance.

I’m giving it a half Best, though, for the post-match angle. A few weeks ago, Rey Mysterio Jr. returned on crutches to announce that he’d be letting his leg heal “the natural way,” which for most of us means, “sitting at home pretending nothing’s wrong so you don’t have to pay hospital bills and just having a shitty leg for the rest of your life.” Konnan showed up, pushed him around and kicked away his crutches. If it weren’t for the courage of the fearless Villanos, the minnow would’ve been lost.

This week, Rey shows up on crutches again to stick up for Psicosis. It’s a real “Superman teams up with Lex Luthor” situation. Konnan tries to humiliate him again, but Rey reveals that whoops, it turns out he’s fine, and he’s here to beat K-Dogg to death with one of the crutches. This sets up the MEXICAN GRUDGE DEATH MATCH at Road Wild, which is almost an actual match stipulation.

Best: Tony Schiavone Is Sleeping On The Couch Tonight

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I don’t think there’s ever been a more “Hooters patrons falling in love with a Hooters waitress and thinks she’s being nice to them because she’s into them, too,” moment on Nitro than Tony Schiavone, Mike Tenay and Bobby Heenan thinking they’re getting laid because the Nitro Girls have decided to horribly pop and/or lock at the announce table.

Bobby Heenan getting up to “dance” and just awkwardly clapping his hands a few times before sitting down is the closest I’ve ever come to siding with Lee Marshall on something. And for real, I’m gonna guess Mike Tenay’s sexual preference is stuck somewhere between flower pollination and vegetative propagation. He’s like an actual turtle that found a man’s suit and got an announcing gig in a Chicken Boo scenario.

Worst: POWER STRUGGLEZ

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In one of two (2) Eric Bischoff promos during this episode, Easy E shows up to (1) threaten to sue the Giant if he touches him again, (2) threaten to sue Larry Zbyszko if he touches him again, and (3) introduce the classic “Eric Bischoff threatens you with his deep knowledge of the martial arts” trope. Watch out for the back leg front kick! He’s so talented he can kick you in the FRONT with the BACK. He also pokes James J. Dillon between the eyes, because WCW’s favorite storyline is the power struggle between two guys who have all or none of the power depending on the moment. I don’t think they ever clearly established a hierarchy. Bischoff runs the nWo and WCW, but Dillon also runs WCW, except he doesn’t because there’s an Executive Committee that can push them both around. Unless Bischoff doesn’t want them to, or whatever. Sure, this is all fine.

And The Rest!

Let’s just burn through the rest of the filler on this episode, shall we?

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The epic Harlem Heat vs. Virgil feud continues this week with Booker T squashing Vincent in about a minute, then sticking around after the match to beat him up 2-on-1. I don’t think you can trust Virgil to go for more than 60 seconds in 1997. The highlight is Stevie Ray cutting a post-match promo and doing that thing where he gets too close to the camera and spits all over it. Pretty sure kids in Harlem run through Stevie Ray’s speech during the summer to stay cool.

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Los Villanos defeat Lizmark Jr. and Hector Garza, because seriously, WCW had three hours to fill and a large chunk of this show just becomes WCW Saturday Night with dancing girls. The Villanos win using Twin Magic, which would be a lot more effective if they didn’t put giant Roman numerals on their thighs.

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Finally we have The Giant squashing three dudes. His opponents are:

Lenny Lane, last seen getting dropkicked in the face by Ultimo Dragon and getting his balls booted into his throat by Lord Steven Regal
legendary WCW jobber Jumpin’ Joey Maggs, who frankly didn’t do a lot of jumping
Scott D’Amore, future Vice President of International Relations for Impact Wrestling, Coach of TNA’s Team Canada and, believe it or not, Bullet Club member

Giant squashes them in the style of his pretend father and cuts dueling promos with Macho Man Randy Savage to add hype to the Road Wild match they’re apparently having. I really feel like these Nitro reports would get greater context if WWE Network would hurry up and add Saturday Night and Worldwide to the archives. Worst case we’d have about 200 times more Blood Runs Cold coverage.

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The Sting segment is also pretty much useless, as J.J. offers him a contract for a match against Curt Hennig and Sting tears it up. I think the best part of the bit is that even Dillon knows Curt Hennig’s in the damn nWo. You’d think he’d have connections to the Four Horsemen and could give them a heads up.

Ron Howard Voice: “He Doesn’t”

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I’ve got to applaud this match for at least attempting to add some context to Hennig’s deal. So the guy hates Diamond Dallas Page for accidentally partially pulling down a ring rope when he shouldn’t have at Bash at the Beach and can’t stop attacking him about it. Flair is thirsty AF to add Hennig to the Four Horsemen, and while Hennig still claims to be a free agent, he shakes Flair’s hand before his match.

Meanwhile, Diamond Dallas Page feels bad about the Four Horsemen immediately jumping on Hennig’s dick instead of, you know, asking the most stalwart and successfully anti-nWo guy in the company, Diamond Dallas Page, to join the group. It’s not that he wants to be a Horseman, necessarily, he just wants to be asked. He wants to be important. It’s the same reason he didn’t join the nWo. They didn’t ask him to until they already had like eight guys on the team.

So Page has an issue with Flair, and they wrestle. Hennig shows up and tries to cost Page the match again with the dreaded WCW WAD OF TAPE OF DOOM, but Page fights him off. Flair cheats his ass off anyway, so Hennig and Flair end up on the same bad side of DDP whether they’re actually aligned together or not. That’s a nice and surprisingly self-aware story wrinkle. Usually the most cohesive thing Nitro does is have all the cartoon villains that hate Hulk Hogan living in one mountain fortress with no hot water.

Best: The Einsteiners

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The other extremely non-nWo guys, the Steiner Brothers, have a “bombshell” to drop on the nWo: only five days before Road Wild, they’ve enlisted former nWo impresario Ted DiBiase to manage them. DiBiase knows all of Hall and Nash’s secrets, so who better to finally put them over the top in a Tag Team Championship match?

Of course, Hall and Nash show up with actual mic charisma and burn the entire group to the ground. Hall calls DiBiase “pumpkin head,” which is hilarious and accurate — I’ve got a big head, and DiBiase’s is at least four times the size of mine — and they claim the Steiners only brought him on so they’d have someone who could read the menus when they’re on the road. The Steiner Brothers as Les Incompétents who can barely function as humans but are great at suplexes is forever one of my favorite character descriptions.

And speaking of Scott Steiner …

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FREAKABOO

Man, Kuato looked weird in 1997.

Best: Flexy Lexy Cashes Chexy

When Hulk Hogan attempts to have a “good” match, it’s always this one. It’s about 20 minutes long, with the first 15 devoted to people either powdering and stalling (when he’s a heel) or making puffy-lipped googly-eye faces at each other (when he’s a face). See also Hogan vs. Andre or Hogan vs. Rock. The crowd is usually SUPER into these matches, and they often have great historical significance, but they’re also … you know, Hulk Hogan matches. So the most athletic thing you’re gonna see is a back rake.

Luger’s about to win, so the nWo runs to the ring. Nobody’s better at fending off multiple nWo members than Lex Luger, so he dispatches Hall, Nash and Macho Man, all without the referee stopping the match. He eventually manages to get Hogan up in the Torture Rack and by God, wins the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. Five days before the pay-per-view where he was supposed to win, because WCW needed something special for the 100th episode. Even though the actual 100th episode is the one AFTER Road Wild. Hogan even does his best to nerf the title change right out of the gate, too, telegraphing it at the top of the show by saying he’d go on to face SCOTT HALL at Road Wild if he won. The guy in the tag title match.

It’s weird, and it doesn’t end well, but it’s an exciting and memorable moment. The crowd eats it the hell up. Luger, in perhaps his greatest moment in 20 years of wrestling, celebrates by holding the title upside down.

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And on the way out, he accidentally smashes Giant in the face with it.

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Good luck at Road Wild, Lex. Try not to let any Adult Situations distract you.

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My baseball bat could cut that in half

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: We headed to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally for World Championship Wrestling presents Tim Allen’s WILD HOGS 1997, featuring an immediate re-do of anything we liked from the 100th edition of Nitro to make sure we’re as sad as possible. Also, Mean Gene Okerlund got a tattoo.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. If you don’t tell them how much you like these, nobody’s going to read them. People need to know about referee Scott Dickinson’s attention deficit disorder.

And now, the best and worst of the ACTUAL 100th episode of WCW Monday Nitro, originally aired on August 11, 1997.

Worst: No One Will Be Seated During The Restraining Order Angle

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Some wrestling shows like to start off with an exciting match, or a moment or confrontation that gets you hype about the next few hours. WCW Monday Nitro begins with The Giant being given a restraining order for chokeslamming Eric Bischoff a few weeks ago. Before I talk about anything on the show proper, take a look at that “police officer” on the far right. He’s either somebody’s awkward teenage son or the world’s markiest cop, because he spends the entire segment grinning from ear to ear and staring directly into the camera. He’s hilarious. I’m guessing he’s like, Chumley Guerrero.

Instead of saying, “The Giant has been given a restraining order and can’t appear on Nitro tonight,” they devote like, 15 minutes in the middle of the show to jerking off about it. They announce Scott Norton vs. The Giant, but Eric Bischoff rides a motorcycle to the ring to announce the protective order. Then, Buff Bagwell goes out into the middle of the aisle and spray-paints a line across it, which The Giant cannot cross. Because pro wrestling, The Giant shows up just to cross it. That gets him arrested.

If all that’s not bad enough, the segment also includes the nWo b-team singing Happy Birthday to Hollywood Hogan, who could not be farther away from the product despite having been champion all year, showing up to drop the belt a week ago and getting it back a day ago.

At least that’s all the nWo content from six months ago on this ep-

Nick Patrick Is Still nWo 4 Life

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…

All right, so at WCW Ridden Wild, Nick Patrick disqualified The Outsiders for yanking him out of the ring during the climax of their Tag Team Championship match with the Steiner Brothers, forcing the already wandering-through-the-desert Steiners into, I’m assuming, another several months of number one contender matches with no payoff. Ted DiBiase left the nWo by choice, but he wonders if Nick Patrick getting kicked out means he wants to suck up to them to get back in.

That brings out Patrick — secretly one of the best talkers in the company, in case you’ve forgotten, and 1000% the proto Kenny Powers — who explains that he let the match go as long as he could, and finally had to disqualify them for putting their hands on him. And then he starts in on RANDY ANDERSON again, because lord knows the thing that’s been missing from Nitro for the past seven months has been referee performance evaluation and employment beefs.

Patrick’s got a point, though. Anderson let the nWo interfere in a Heavyweight Championship match without calling for a DQ, not even when a guy dressed as Sting showed up and hit Luger with a bat. Anderson just counted the three with no regard for the context the championship match was happening in. Nick Patrick is a modern pioneer in that political “sure, I might have done something, but wasn’t this thing someone else did worse?” angle.

Worst: Scott Dickinson

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If Nick Patrick wants to find the REAL worst referee in WCW, he should forget Randy Anderson and pay attention to Scott Dickinson. Check out this shot from the finish of Diamond Dallas Page vs. Buff Bagwell, who provides his own ref distraction when Vincent needs to interfere and there isn’t a third nWo guy there. He just turns his back to the match, points at his wrist and repeatedly asks the timekeeper how much time they’ve got left. In the middle of the finish of the match. GREAT JOB, SCOTT, YOU FUCKING VIRGIL ENABLER.

Best: The Outsiders Face Their Toughest Opponents Yet

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The guy on the left who looks like Sir Oliver Humperdink had a baby with Hugh Morrus is “Bobby Starr,” who is almost impossible to google because that’s the name at the top of the list when you graduate porn star school and pick a handle. The Al Bundy motherfucker with the sideways vagina on the right is “David Moore,” better known (sort of) as CZW original Lord Everett DeVore. It’s like they walked into a Burger King and were like, “who wants free lunch, all you have to do is let Scott Hall shit-kick you on television for a few minutes.”

Jokes aside, you’ve really got to respect a grown man who goes for the full-on Wynonna Judd-style teased bangs mullet.

Anyway, once the Outsiders are done squashing Irish Joe Dirt and Donnie Diapers here, they demand WCW bring out another team for them to defeat. That, of course, brings the Steiner Brothers out of the crowd, and the fans go APE. The Steiners whomp them, send them fleeing and pose with their Tag Team Championship belts. It’s a real shame that this story never actually gets to end with Rick and Scott beating Hall and Nash.

Okay, after looking at Bobby Starr’s face and David Moore’s crotch, I need a palate cleanser. Anybody on this show got a good one of both?

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[chef kiss]

Best: Alex Wright Is Still The Best Nitro Girl

Just like last week, Alex Wright interrupts and scares away the Nitro Girls with his intense step-and-thrust dance. Did that dance actually have a name? Is it just the Alex Wright dance? Das One-two-kind? I love that it’s the only dance he did in like a decade of wrestling, and that no matter what song was playing, he was always dancing to ‘Warped Mind’ by Dominic Glynn.

Worst: Lex Luger Has A Stroke

When asked to explain why he let everyone down, lost the World Heavyweight Championship back to the nWo and retroactively wasted a bunch of perfectly good champagne, Lex Luger goes full Super Brawl Saturday.

“Last week was a starting point, a huge turning point for WCW, ’cause in the post-match celebration of my world title victory, you saw zubbayou sevateet uh ….WCW wrestlers, both friend and foe, come together as one to celebrate what happened.”

Sturgis is a great place to visit, but you shouldn’t drink the water. Because it is gasoline.

Best: Blood Works Hot

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Last week, Wrath and The Barbarian had a way too short but still kinda fun hoss fight. This week, Wrath takes on the Pokémon evolution of The Barbarian, MENG. They still don’t get much time, but they work fast without any filler and just suplex each other until it’s time to stop. I’m into it.

Meng wins with the Tongan Death Grip but won’t relinquish it, which brings out Mortis. That brings out Barb, and we’ve got TONGANS VS. MONSTERS. This is to set up the Faces of Fear vs. Mortis and Wrath for Fall Brawl, which (spoiler alert) is the second time in a few months the Blood Runs Cold guys bust ass and end up stealing the show.

Honestly, they steal this show, too. Wrath vs. Meng is fun, and then Mortis gets a few minutes to wrestle Ultimo Dragon for the TV title.

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Of all the matches I’ve seen on NItro in 1997, this is the one I wish was longer. It’s criminally short, and they’ve got such an easy chemistry together I wonder why the hell Ultimo Dragon was never considered for Blood Runs Cold. You’ve got a faction of karate guys and you’re not including “the last student of Bruce Lee?” Is there any way we can go back in time and let me book a WMAC Masters-ass 205 Live show for the WCW karate dudes?

Also, a supplementary Best to Mortis for breaking out one of the coolest minor variations of a suplex I’ve ever seen, a Northern Lights suplex with a leg hook. He takes him over like a Northern Lights, then snatches up the leg. Tony calls it a “fisherman suplex,” but it’s dope. How great would Mortis have been as a TV Champion? Or as ANY champion? Chris Kanyon never held a singles championship in WCW. He didn’t win one of those (the United States Championship) until he had to do it on a Smackdown. Total bullshit.

Lee? Is … Is Something Wrong?

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Lee Marshall calls in from Birmingham, Alabama, where he’s eating a rib dinner at a Nitro Party (?) and he .. doesn’t make a weasel joke. Lee Marshall does not make a weasel joke during this edition of On The Road. He sorta loses track of what he’s saying when he’s setting up a bit about Tuxedo Junction, so I hope he had one prepared and just botched it. Maybe he’s mad about not getting to go to the biker rally and is just mailing it in?

I’m not sure why this bothers me so much. I hope he works in two next week.

Worst: Chris Jericho’s Big Swing

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Maybe I live in a world with Claudio Castagnoli and am spoiled beyond understanding, but this is one of the worst giant swings I’ve ever seen. Eddie Guerrero tries to block the Liontamer (or whatever), so Jericho swings him around 3 1/2 times, and they both sell dizziness for like a minute. The crowd turns on it completely and starts chanting “boring.”

We’re still about half a year from Jericho’s heel turn, which is insane. The guy’s always been better as a heel, sure, but the instant difference in how interesting a wrestler is going from Lionheart Chris Jericho to Conspiracy Victim Crybaby Hair Metal Weirdo Thief Chris Jericho is maybe the all-time biggest jump. The guy goes from Alex Wright’s boring dickless American equivalent to one of the greatest of all time in like, a heartbeat. It can’t come soon enough.

+1 to Eddie Guerrero for murdering him with one of the most heinous, long-distance frog splashes to the face you’ll ever see, though:

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Worst: Ric Flair Still Can’t Figure This Out

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Ric Flair shows up in like, a shawl and asks Curt Hennig if he’s in the Four Horsemen or not. Apparently courting a guy for a month and not getting a straight answer from him while you watch him constantly beat up Diamond Dallas Page and hand wins to the New World Order isn’t clear enough for him. Hennig still won’t answer, saying that he’s in tonight’s main event against Macho Man Randy Savage and “has a lot on his mind,” so he won’t say if he is or isn’t a Horseman. Seriously, Flair should’ve just nodded and pointed and Benoit and Mongo should’ve lit Hennig up.

The best part is that they’re asking the question because they saw Hennig talking to Eric Bischoff backstage. Hennig doesn’t even deny it, and says he “has business” with Bischoff. CAN ANYONE FIGURE OUT WHAT THAT BUSINESS MIGHT BE? MAYBE WE’LL FIND OUT IF WE PUT HENNIG ON OUR TEAM IN THE ENCLOSED CAGE MATCH AGAINST ERIC BISCHOFF’S TEAM.

As The Halliburton Turns

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After several weeks of asking Dean Malenko to be his partner and watch his back against the Four Horsemen, Jeff Jarrett got himself intentionally eliminated in a tag team match at Road Wild so Malenko would have to go it alone and get his ass kicked by two guys. As plans go, it’s not the best.

So they have a grudge match on Nitro, which is a ton of fun because (1) hyped-up Dean Malenko is pretty much the greatest wrestler ever, and (2) Jeff Jarrett suddenly has MASSIVE heat from Nitro crowds. I thought it was just the fact that he looked like that at a biker rally that did it, but he’s getting as big a reaction here as anyone on the show. He’s also wearing his rare “gold star” gear variant, which is like his classic white suspenders but he’s also done his reading homework.

I’d give this a Best, but it suffers from the same “who is on what side” infinite logic problem that every Horseman segment seems to have right now. Mongo and Benoit are face or heel depending on the segment. Flair is detached from everyone and kind of a default babyface because he’s weird and old and funny, but was a heel against Piper. That made Mongo and Benoit heels. But they were also feuding with Jeff Jarrett, who the heels kicked out of their heel group, making him a … heel. So Mongo and Jarrett feuded, face Malenko and heel Eddie Guerrero feuded, and Jarrett eventually asked Malenko to be his partner. Then Jarrett swerved him and left him to get beaten up by Mongo and Benoit as .. faces? I think?

So here, Jarrett is the face and Malenko is the heel. Jarrett tries to run, so Mongo stops him. Malenko has the match won with a Texas Cloverleaf, but Guerrero runs out and attacks him, causing a DQ. That brings Mongo back out, who runs off the heels and celebrates. Then, MALENKO ATTACKS MONGO. And when that’s done, Mongo is like, “HE’S TOUGH, I LIKE THAT!”

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A few segments later, Mongo and Benoit are heels again when they’re wrestling the Steiner Brothers. This is a photo of Mongo taking an overhead belly-to-belly suplex, which should not happen.

Join Us At WCWWrestling.com For Mark Madden Talking To Members Of Harlem Heat

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Via YouTube

Best/Worst: J.J. Dillon Is Deaf And Dumb

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Executive Head of Literally Nothing James J. Dillon offered Sting a contract to face Curt Hennig. Sting tore it up. Dillon’s next negotiating tactic: offer Sting a match against a(nother) nWo member. Syxx. Sting tears up the contract again, and Dillon is like, TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT, STING, I’M GETTING MIXED MESSAGES. The crowd chants “HO-GAN, HO-GAN, HO-GAN” while Sting points at them, and J.J.’s in there like, “d’oh well, I guess we’ll never know.”

Worst: So How Do You Think That Curt Hennig Main Event Played Out?

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If you guessed, “with the nWo beating up Diamond Dallas Page for some reason,” congratulations, you’ve been watching Nitro.

They only get a few minutes before the post-match stuff begins, and man, how much do you want to see Macho Man Randy Savage vs. Mr. Perfect in 1989 instead of 1997? But yeah, Page shows up to attack Hennig, Macho attacks Page, Scott Hall joins in, and Luger shows up to even the odds after the legally required “several elbow drops” beatdown Page has to get every couple of weeks to keep his ribs taped. This is all to set up another tag team match at Fall Brawl with a finish that will definitely spell the beginning of the end for the nWo.

Join us next week for … well, basically this again. We’re only two weeks away from Spot-gate, though, so look forward to that.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Attitude Era Superstars Bobby Starr and David Moore challenged The Outsiders for the WCW Tag Team Championship. Also on the card, Lex Luger pronounced “WCW” as “zubbayou sevateet,” and Alex Wright used his penis to make six women run away.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. If you don’t tell them how much you like these, nobody’s going to read them. People need to know about the time Sting tried to get through a promo without speaking and got hit in the head with a drink.

And now, the best and worst of WCW Monday Nitro, originally aired on August 18, 1997.

Best/Worst: Raven Is A Bad Friend

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♫ I TEAR MY HEART OPEN
JUST TO FEEL ♫

Okay, so as a heads up before we get too deep into this week’s column, this is one of the most trifling-ass, filler-ass episodes of Nitro ever. They’ve got the Clash of the Champions coming up on the following Thursday — the final Clash, in fact, until WWE awkwardly re-branded it 20 years later — and Fall Brawl isn’t for another month, plus everyone’s burned out from the biker rally. That means literally nothing of consequence happens on the entire episode, and most of the ongoing stories don’t even advance. They just sort of appear and disappear in supercut fashion. Good luck finding a social hook to get people to click and read the column, Brandon!

It’s so inconsequential, in fact, that the episode opens with a pre-taped Raven promo about how much it sucks to have acne.

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Later in the episode, Raven shows up to ruin the Days of Flock Future Past showdown between Stevie Richards (in his official Nitro debut) and Scotty Riggs. Raven’s WCW debut will happen at the Clash of the Champions, and here’s the weird thing: WCW just spent two months building a non-wrestling, mostly off-television feud between two non-WCW employees who were supposed to be friends but kept beefing over when they’d announce their signing. That’s seriously the story. Although I guess this is the company that spent half a year booking non-WCW employee Rowdy Roddy Piper as the only person who could stand up to also-not-WCW employees the nWo, despite only having one hip and a fighting spirit fueled by uncontrollable homophobia.

Spoiler alert: Raven and Stevie feud in August. They’re friends in September, and then Richards gets released in October. So if you’re really into wrestlers in jean shorts, mind the gap between October 1997 and whenever John Cena starts rapping.

Worst: Restraining Order Angles Sure Are Fun

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During last week’s episode, audiences were taken on the non-stop thrill-ride of the Giant being unable to come within 50 feet of Eric Bischoff. He was arrested and removed from the arena, because court orders don’t include loopholes for “heels asking for it.”

This week the fun continues as Bischoff reveals he’s also got a restraining order for Larry Zbyszko. I know the idea’s supposed to be that you as a viewer know this is what experts call a “bitch move” and you wanna see him get his ass kicked for it, but it also leans a little too heavily into the late ’90s obsession with pro wrestlers getting arrested every time they go to work. If you’re the boss and an employee beats you up, why are you getting a restraining order against them but keeping them employed? You’re like, “hey Giant, you can’t come anywhere near me tonight as we work in the same building, but please put on your caveman singlet, you’ll be wrestling if I don’t wander past you and have you sent to Alcatraz.” Just fire the guy. It’s WCW’s #4 babyface, not Stone Cold Steve Austin.

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Later in the episode, Giant takes on Curt Hennig. Bischoff shows up waving around his restraining order and orders Doug Dellinger to arrest him, because I guess WCW security counts as policemen. Dellinger is like, “we’ll enforce it when he violates the order, which we have read and understand,” and Bischoff disputes it. That leads to several pulse-pounding minutes of two non-wrestlers arguing the defining terms of a legal document until Giant and Larry Zbyszko pincer attack Bischoff on the ramp. He tries to flee out into the crowd, but Giant pulls him back over the rail. That counts as violating the restraining order, apparently, and he’s swarmed by cops.

Join us next week as we cut away from Ultimo Dragon vs. Rey Mysterio Jr. to watch the WCW executive committee file some paperwork.

Speaking Of Curt Hennig, This Is Still Happening

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Curt Hennig debuted in WCW in June. It’s August 18. Ric Flair has been trying to get this guy to say the words, “yes, I am a member of the Four Horsemen” for a month and a half, and he won’t say it. Wonder why? Maybe going out drinking on Monday nights and hooking him up with 40-year old ladies in Nitro t-shirts will work this time.

At Clash of the Champions, Flair and Hennig are teaming up against the nWo all-star team of Syxx and Konnan. That’s the nWo team you get in NBA Jam when you can’t license Hogan or the Outsiders. The highlight of the interview (and of this entire episode) is Flair saying he’s going to “ride Konnan hard and put him up wet,” which pops Mean Gene so hard he’s got to hide his face.

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The match ends up being Ric Flair vs. Syxx instead, because I guess Konnan didn’t like the idea of being fucked ragged by the Nature Boy.

Here’s a picture of that match, if you couldn’t have guessed how it’d end before it was even announced:

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I’m sad they never sold those hats. Comic-Con would’ve loved my “Amelia Earhart heel turn” cosplay!

The match ends up being a slowed down, abridged re-do of the much better version from Road Wild, so maybe Konnan like, did a warmup somersault backstage and couldn’t recover because he works like a turtle. Seriously, if I told you “Konnan is just a turtle who fell into some mutagen and gained the properties of a man” you’d believe me, wouldn’t you? You’d at least Wiki it to make sure. Look at Tokka from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II and tell me they aren’t basically the same.

And while we’re tangentially on the topic of Vicious and Delicious, Cait Sith looks really weird in the Final Fantasy VII remake:

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Worst, But Best: More Road Wild Rematches

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As a reminder, Road Wild happened eight days before this, meaning there was a Nitro between then and now, meaning it’s pretty ridiculous to do all the Road Wild rematches now, especially when this is two days before a Clash.

This one’s a rematch between Vicious, Delicious, and Members of Harlem Heat, done mostly so they could wrestle the match they want without Booker T and Stevie Ray getting booed for being black. It’s also accidentally (on purpose?) one of the first times we truly get to recognize that Booker is the Shawn Michaels of the team, as he manages to fight off three nWo guys in the contractually obligated New World Order Fuck Finish. It’s kinda lost in his post-WCW legacy and his current “shucky ducky quack quack” corporate shell thing, but Booker T was the shit in the ring and deserved all the singles glory he eventually got.

It Is With A Heavy Heart That I Must Announce That Lee Marshall Is At It Again

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After the brief scare of last week’s weasel joke-free On The Road report, Stagger Lee is back to focusing on his true destiny, “throwing shade at Bobby Heenan over the phone and hanging up before he can hear the response.”

“By the way, when you guys get to Columbia you’ve got to go to Riverbank Zoo, they’ve got thousands and thousands of BUTTERFLIES. It’s an attraction they call JEWELS OF THE SKY! They did try an attraction called THE WEASELS OF DIXIE, but nobody cared!”

I don’t remember it, but I really hope the final edition of Nitro involves The Outsiders driving Lee Marshall off the road and flipping his car.

Best/Worst: As The Halliburton Turns

The most important development in this week’s chapter of the Steve McMichael/Debra McMichael/Four Horsemen/Jeff Jarrett/Dean Malenko/Eddie Guerrero/Alex Wright/Random Football Players sexual and professional tetradecagon is that Alex Wright lost the WCW Cruiserweight Championship to Chris Jericho on WCW Saturday Night. That means he doesn’t have a title belt, which means he can’t impress Debra enough to get into the group.

Please enjoy this GIF of Alex Wright responding to the denial the only way he knows how: GERMANIC PELVIC DANCES. I can’t decide who has the best response, between Debra’s shock, Gene’s disbelief, Eddie’s embarrassment and Jeff’s unbridled joy.

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Also funny: When Debra says she doesn’t want Alex on the team, she says she’d “rather be covered in honey and stuck out in an ant bed.” An ant bed? Gene and Jarrett look at each other like, “did she for real just say ANT BED.” Gene is the gift that keeps on giving in this episode.

To be honest with you, it’s crazy that anybody would want to be on a team with Jeff Jarrett. The guy was trying to be a Four Horseman and couldn’t get anyone in the group to like him, so he teamed up with Mongo and ended up stealing dude’s wife. Then he spent weeks convincing Dean Malenko to team with him, just to throw an elimination match and leave Dean to a 2-on-1 attack. Now he’s got MULTIPLE DUDES trying to team with him?

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Anyway, later in the episode we are gifted (cough) with Chris Benoit and Steve McMichael against Jeff Jarrett and Eddie Guerrero. It ends when Mongo startles Debra, causing her to drop the United States Championship and allowing him to use it as a weapon against Jarrett in a very Breath of the Wild scenario. That’s good enough to be this week’s People Who Mongo Use Valvoline®. Only three more months of this!

Best: Blood Runs Cold (But Not Enough Of It)

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The issue between the Faces of Fear and James Vandenberg’s Oddities progresses this week with The Barbarian getting a win over Mortis with a loaded boot. The only thing more dangerous than a woman’s shoe in WCW is a man’s shoe with something other than a foot in it. That brings out Wrath to drop Barb with the Death Penalty, and Meng to choke out Wrath with the Tongan Death Grip. Choke out? Pinch out? How does that work? It brings out Meng to GRIP OUT Wrath.

More angry Tongans battling supernatural pit fighters and less football guys having cuckolding arguments with dandies, please.

Worst: La Parka Vs. Ultimo Dragon, Somehow

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HOW? This is like when WWE books AJ Styles vs. Kevin Owens and it ends up boring. They should’ve tossed both of these guys into the Blood Runs Cold angle, frankly. Ultimo Dragon had that “last student of Bruce Lee” street cred, and Glacier could always fight a second skeleton. Especially a funny one trying to murder him with seating.

But yeah, La Parka vs. Ultimo Dragon happens and it’s nothing, partially due to this being the one crowd in the continental United States that isn’t into La Parka. Dragon wins with the Dragon Sleeper, and without looking I’m like 75% sure there are two better versions of this match somewhere in the Saturday Night and Worldwide archives.

Worst: This Crowd Though, Seriously

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James J. Dillon still can’t figure out what Sting wants, so he’s giving him until EOD on Thursday to let him know. Sting points at a sign that says, and I’m paraphrasing, “STING WANTS TO WRESTLE HOLLYWOOD HOGAN, JAMES, YOU IDIOT.” He even brings one into the ring that says STING VS. HULK. The crowd’s response is to throw full sodas at Sting’s head.

Between this and not loving La Parka, this is the worst WCW crowd of the year. Get your shit together, Birmingham.

Best: The Main Event, At Least Until This Happens

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This week’s main event is Diamond Dallas Page and Lex Luger vs. The Outsiders, who have (get this) actually decided to work this week. And it’s good, too, because Hall and Nash are rarely as motivated as when they’re in the ring with Page. Page’s effort and enthusiasm usually brings out something good in the lazy guys. It’s also why he had the best Goldberg match by a mile.

Sadly it ends as soon as Lex Luger gets the hot tag, because Lex got nuked at Road Wild and we ain’t gonna start rehabilitating him now. Or, spoiler alert, ever. Giant and Flair run out to even the odds, and aw nuts we’re out of time.

Next Week:

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Clash of the Champions: Final Edition! Things to get hype about include:

the nWo’s “birthday party,” even though their birthday was over a month ago, or MONTHS ago if you count Scott Hall’s debut
maybe the worst Chris Jericho botch ever
Jeff Jarrett vs. Steve McMichael, again
an unexpected swerve from cable TV cooking show hosts
an actual bird

All this, plus Raven beating up Stevie Richards! Be there!

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: The final Clash of the Champions went down, and it was mostly about Sting threatening the New World Order with birds. I don’t know, man, go read it.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. If you don’t tell them how much you like these, nobody’s going to read them. People need to know about the most controversial conversations about spots since Macbeth.

And now, the best and worst of WCW Monday Nitro, originally aired on August 25, 1997.

Best: Why So Superstation?

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On last week’s episode of Nitro, WCW’s Executive Head Of Literally Nothing James J. Dillon gave Sting an ultimatum: he wanted Sting to talk to him, with words, and tell him the match that would get him back into the ring. If Sting didn’t give him a verbal answer by the end of Clash of the Champions, negotiations were over. No more games. So at the Clash, Sting stood in the rafters holding a bird while audio of a child reading a poem from a Crow: City of Angels deleted scene played, then I guess got a vulture to stand on the top rope and scare the nWo. On Nitro, Dillon calls in to tell Eric Bischoff that he somehow, somehow heard Sting loud and clear and will do everything in his power to give Sting a match with Hollywood Hogan.

I guess the plan at Clash was for the vulture to be holding a picture of Hulk Hogan in its talons, but in the darkness and confusion and ridiculousness of a handler having to put a living vulture on some ring ropes to scare an evil wrestling faction, the bird dropped the picture and nobody knew what to do. If you watch it, you can see Bischoff getting close to it, looking for the picture. Of all the things WCW did, I think “trusting an actual bird to work a wrestling angle” is one of the strangest. And like, this is the company that had Rick Steiner feud with a murderer-possessed doll and got Hulk Hogan elaborately butt-fucked by a 7-foot Himalayan ice mummy as the payoff to a rooftop monster truck sumo battle.

So!

Mean Gene turns into a Lizard Person as he listens, which is an unexpected highlight. Bischoff is clearly upset by the news, and his tantrum allows Sting to walk to the ring and sneak up behind him. A terrified Bischoff drops to his knees and starts begging, so Sting puts a Hollywood Hogan shirt on dude’s head and shoves him in the face with his foot.

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Once again, keep an eye on Gene in the background. He’s cracking up. Oh, and we’re like ten minutes into a Nitro without Larry Zbyszko getting over his “shitty uncle who had too much to drink at the family dinner” character, so when Bischoff hits his knees, Larry screams, IS HIS PROPOSING??

Sting smiles, kind of, and that’s enough for the announce team to decide that the tide has finally turned in WCW’s favor. If you just heard Ron Howard’s voice saying, “it hadn’t,” congratulations, you’re paying attention. I think the weirdest thing about the entire bit is that Sting has grown a giant mustache, and is covering it with white paint like he’s the Cesar Romero Joker.

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Hey look, he was doing Joker Sting back in the ’90s!

Best: Basically A Game Of Thrones Episode

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Up first this week is Glacier and Ernest Miller vs. La Parka and Psicosis, which when you break it down for a newcomer reads as, “a guy with ice powers and a martial arts warrior battle an insane bull man from south of the border and an evil skeleton with an enchanted weapon.” If you assume the Westeros analogue for Mexico City is Dorne, that’s definitely a Game of Thrones jam.

But yeah, the bloom is off the froze for Glacier at this point, and he and Miller lose to the luchadors when referee Mark Curtis spends like 90 seconds trying to physically escort The Cat through the ropes and misses La Parka whaling on Glaish with a wooden chair. Twice! To make things even more Thronsey, a dragon suddenly comes to their rescue.

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Ultimo Dragon hits the ring because he hates Sonny Onoo and doesn’t want him to get away with cheating … which brings out Silver King, THE KING OF SILVER, who we’re gonna pretend is what, the Iron Bank? They get into it, a 4-on-1 attack becomes 5-on-3 when Glacier and Ernest Miller recover, and we do the classic ECW “one match bleeds into the other” bit. They should’ve added Brutus Beefcake to the mix as a Faceless Man. And Alex Wright as an EXTREMELY SULLIED.

Dragon vs. Silver King is pretty good, as Silver King is suddenly super into impressing every time he goes out. He goes on a streak here for a few weeks where he looks like he’s working twice as hard as everyone else, possibly to compensate for the fact that even in 1997 he looked like Texano’s grandpa. The only hangup is that Silver King won’t stop doing the Lex Luger “torture rack” ram flap before he takes a hurricanrana, so he keeps accidentally catching Dragon’s leg in his armpit. They do it twice; once in the middle of the ring, and once off the top.

Despite the pre-match beatdown, Dragon pulls out a submission victory with the Dragon Sleeper, which I’m retroactively naming the “Smaug Trap.”

Best: The Hypest, Fastest 3-Minute Match Ever

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This week’s best match is Chris Benoit vs. Jeff Jarrett, which moves at such a cracking pace I actually had to check my WWE Network feed to make sure I wasn’t somehow watching Nitro at 1.5x speed. They are HUSTLING. I guess they knew they only had three minutes, so Jarrett’s wearing sprint shoes (and high jump boots, pictured) and Benoit’s hitting everything like he’s trying to chop through a brick wall. That screencap is actually my favorite moment of the match, in which Jarrett absolutely SKIES over Benoit Vince Carter-style with a leapfrog, yelling “I GOT ‘IM” as he jumps and rolling backwards for a monkey flip when he hits the ground. Benoit stops in his tracks and stomps Jarrett in the face. It rules so hard.

Jarrett ends up winning by countering a Benoit superplex — again, at only three minutes into the match — by utilizing Benoit’s tendency to land at the wrong angle, hooking his feet and getting a quick three. After several months of total apathy, Jarrett got booed out of the racist field at Road Wild and has been one of the most reaction-inducing wrestlers on Nitro. Maybe he’s just happy to be done working Mongo.

Best: Suicidal Mean Gene And The WCW Nitro Party Pack

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Oh God, this is the greatest. Mean Gene Okerlund and the No-Fly Zone Fly Girls take a moment to remind folks of the America’s Funniest Home Videos-style request for homemade Nitro Party footage on VHS, with the best party clips getting an in-house appearance from the Nitro Girls. When I die, I want my tombstone to be nothing but a video screen playing this segment.

If your tape is selected, you get:

an appearance from the Nitro Girls
an appearance from the Macho Man-looking version of Wild Cat Willie, which is like winning a chance to meet Hugo the Hornet and getting the guy in the morphsuit and sunglasses they used when they needed somebody to dunk
a satellite crew at your home, which causes Eric Bischoff to ask, “who’s PAYING for that?”
a WCW Monday Nitro shirt, featuring a passive-aggressive top 10 reasons to hold a Nitro Party
WCW “Ringo,” which is bingo based on who’s wrestling that night
WCW “digit wrestling”, which is just stickers you put in your thumbs for thumb wrestling. You get three Stings, but only one of everybody else. Sorry, fourth person at the Nitro Party, you have to be Stevie Ray!
a WCW Monday Nitro hat, which Mean Gene says he’ll wear to the golf course so someone will shoot him

God, I wish I’d been one of the people who won a Nitro Party. If you were and are reading this, hit us up. I have so many questions. And I wanna buy those stickers from you.

Best: Cool Spot

And now we get to the most important part of the episode, and one of the best and most emotional promos ever delivered on Monday Nitro. One of the best promos of that year, and probably of that era. It’s also a reason you’ll get very upset next week, but that’s jumping ahead.

Ric Flair brings out Curt Hennig and for like the 9th week in a row asks him whether or not he’ll join the Four Horsemen. Hennig is still like, “I don’t know if I want to join the Four Horsemen, especially since I’m wearing this nWo shirt under my polo … I mean, since I’m not wearing an nWo shirt under my polo, er uh,” so Flair pulls his trump card: a returning Arn Anderson, who explains his career-ending injury, officially retires from pro wrestling, and offers Curt Hennig his spot in the Horsemen. Not “a” spot in the Horsemen. His spot.

Here’s the complete transcription from DDT Digest (who, fun fact, gave me my first online wrestling writing gig like 20 years ago):

“Well, Gene, all I can tell you, to get a response like this makes what I got to say tonight mean that much more. You see, I’m a realist. As everybody knows, I’ve got average size and speed and average ability. But I’ve parlayed that into what I would call a very successful career. And I did that on sheer will alone. But another reality is four months ago they took four vertebrae out of my neck. Consequently, I’m left with a hand, my left hand, too weak to hold a glass, too weak to button a button.

But I thought in my mind, I knew in my mind I could overcome that too through sheer will. And I was doing just like that. I think I’ve come back a long way. But the other day I had something happen in the gym that was like a cold slap in the face of reality. A guy about your size Gene came up and he slapped me on the back and he said, ‘Double A, where ya been? We hadn’t seen you on TV.’ And just that slap sent a jolt through me and I dropped the water I was drinking and just for a second my system shut down. And it became crystal clear as I watched the few little drops of water draining out of that bottle the symbolism that was involved. It was like someone had turned an hourglass over and the sand was running out on the career of Arn Anderson.

Now the fact of the matter is not only do I put myself in a suicide situation by trying to wrestle again, I endanger these two men’s careers and I respect them too much for that. And rather than being anything other than the Enforcer in my best friend’s eyes, I’d rather walk away. And for all of you people out there that have ever bought a ticket to see Arn Anderson wrestle, whether you loved me or you hated me, you know that when that bell rang you got all I had that night. Whether I won, whether I lost, I gave you everything I had. And you knew that. And when you did this to me [four fingers] that was your acknowledgement.

Well, the fact is I got nothing left to give. And I want you to remember me as I was, not as I am. But being the man that I am, my last act formally as a Horseman, I got one last challenge. And that is to you, Curt Hennig. And don’t misunderstand me. It’s not for a fight. You got something special. I’ve seen you in this ring. Your skills, your maturity, your commitment to excellence make you something special. And what my challenge is to you, Curt, is stand beside my best friend, Ric Flair, and lead these two men back to the glory and the prominence that the Four Horsemen once had. And I’m going to tell you what your prize is. It’s not a spot in the Horsemen. This is worth a lot more than that to me. I’m going to give you the only thing I got left. Not a spot. I’ll give you my spot.”

Obviously this is incredible, incredibly moving stuff. Flair fighting back tears in the background makes it real. Hennig can’t turn that down, and says it’d be a privilege to be the new Enforcer of the Four Horsemen. He does a great job, too, for almost three weeks!

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NO MORE WIFE STEALIN

That promo leads directly into Steve McMichael vs. Eddie Guerrero, which is maybe the best Mongo Nitro match ever because of (1) the powerful Horsemen segment that came before it and gave it weight, and (2) Eddie Guerrero is Literally A Wizard. Mongo counters a moonsault into a tombstone to get the win, and promises folks that it’s “not gonna be easy anymore.” R.I.P. Halliburton briefcase, 1996-1997. You were the real MVP.

Best/Worst: What A Dick

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Eddie returns a little later in the episode to mess with another future Horseman, Dean Malenko, and help Alex Wright retain his Television Championship by disqualification. It’s important to keep a belt on Alex Wright, because otherwise they’ll have to make the show TV-MA. Jarrett is also here to help with the beatdown, as the literal and figurative biggest dickbags on the show, non-nWo division, officially band together.

They hit Malenko with their ultimate finisher combo, which is a figure-four from Jarrett, a frog splash from Guerrero, and Alex Wright dropping a top rope knee and trying make it look like he uncontrollably rolled into the ropes on purpose:

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It’s a shame these guys didn’t stay together long, as Jarrett was out of the company by October, but at least it opened the door for the epic antiquated dance bromance between Alex Wright and the Disco Inferno.

Best: Skullduggery Continues

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The feud between Mortis and Wrath and the Faces of Fear continues this week. I’m still not totally sure what they’re feuding about, but it’s either about the Dungeon of Doom wanting to acquire rare oddities, or Mortis being offended that Meng and the Barbarian wear skull faces on their pants. Skull and crossbones has gotta be like Chief Wahoo for skeleton guys.

But yeah, they continue the very modern WWE-style build of Mortis and Wrath vs. the Faces of Fear at Fall Brawl by doing Mortis and Wrath vs. the Faces of Fear over and over. This week, Meng catches Mortis jumping off the top and Tonganly death-grips him. These teams are great together, and I wish there was some undiscovered Japanese show where Kanyon and Brian Clark went strong style against Meng and Barbarian for like 29 minutes.

Note: Mortis and Wrath losing this match becomes important later, because …

LOL Harlem Heat

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Members of Harlem Heat show up to officially add a new member — Jacqueline, who I assume they found in The Neighborhood — and to complain about, get this, the Steiner Brothers being number one contenders to the WCW Tag Team Championship. I think this is the only story that’s been going on longer than Jeff Jarrett’s been southernly gentlemanning Mongo’s wife. The Steiners come out to complain about the complaining, which brings out Buff Bagwell and Scott Norton to complain about complaining about the complaining. The three teams brawl, and the stage is set for some kind of triple threat to determine the true number one contenders. Again.

The best part? The Outsiders defend the WCW Tag Team Championship on Nitro in few weeks. Against Mortis and Wrath. The team we just saw lose. Good luck with everything, Harlem Heat!

Best: 1-800-COLLECT Goes Hard

Somewhere in hour two, Eric Bischoff shows up and replaces Mike Tenay and Bobby Heenan at the announce table. He’s feeling emasculated by the Sting segment, so he has to sit in for like an hour of TV time and repeatedly insist that he’s great. He calls Tony Schiavone “fat head,” laughs at the anti-WWF signs in the crowd, and so on.

So when Lee Marshall called in with the On The Road report for 1-800-COLLECT, I figured he’d either hit a weasel joke for the sake of familiarity or do the call straight. Instead, he goes HAM on the nWo:

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Via GIPHY

You come at 1-800-COLLECT, you best not miss. Lee Marshall should’ve been the Oracle that helped WCW ultimately defeat the nWo. I mean, he was literally always one town ahead of them. If he put 50% as much effort into setting traps as he did penning weasel jokes, they’d have been out of the company by ’98.

Worst: The Castrol GTX Climax

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Yuji Nagata vs. Chris Jericho isn’t that bad, really, but Nagata’s not sure what to do on WCW TV, and Jericho’s more in need of a heel turn and/or a personality than anyone in WCW history. He just doesn’t fit or connect, which is crazy to say, because he’s Chris Jericho and because my favorite wrestlers on the show are an ice-themed karate guy nobody liked, his martial arts sidekick, a couple of evil skeletons and a Mexican guy who wrestles in sunglasses so he can’t see and keeps hurting himself.

All I could think of watching the match is how much better it would be in 2017. You can’t say that about a lot of WCW matches, but how great would it be to see modern “The List” Chris Jericho taking on cagey veteran on his last legs Yuji Nagata? Throw that match into a G1 Climax and it’d be hot. Instead, we get two talented guys who haven’t found their hook trying to get over while Eric Bischoff screams about signs in the crowd.

Worst: BUT CAN THEY COEXIST?

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At the Clash of the Champions, Diamond Dallas Page accidentally cost WCW a tag match with the nWo when he was blinded and hit a Diamond Cutter on his own tag team partner, Lex Luger. This week, the nWo shows up like, “CONGRATULATIONS TO THE NEWEST MEMBER OF THE NWO, DIAMOND DALLAS PAGE,” which nobody with a functioning set of eyes or a thought process believed was true. Page shows up and tells Mean Gene he wants to talk to Lex, but Lex doesn’t show up.

The main event of Nitro is Savage vs. Luger, which has happened so many times I can’t even count it. And like always, the match is pretty good, but indistinguishable from the other 400 matches they’ve had exactly like it. This one ends in a no contest when, get this, the nWo interferes. This is the Nitro where that happens!

Hall gets on the apron to interfere, Luger pushes Savage into him, and Savage and Luger accidentally bonk heads on the rebound. Diamond Dallas Page runs out to even the score, but a disoriented Luger puts him up in the Torture Rack. This is going to be an extremely difficult interpersonal situation to resolve, assuming neither of them has access to tapes of Nitro and/or works for a company full of people who are at and/or watching the show!

Next Week

Oh boy.

the nWo does one of the best heel segments of all time and ruins everything for everybody
Two random Dungeon of Doom guys return!
Mongo and Jeff Jarrett square off! Shit!
Buff Bagwell tries karate

And more. Reserve a spot for next week!

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Arn Anderson retired from wrestling in an inspiring, tear-jerking speech, giving his “spot” in the Four Horsemen to Curt Hennig. It’s one of those timeless moments that touches the hearts of wrestling fans forever. Nothing could ruin that! Not in a million years!

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. If you don’t tell them how much you like these, nobody’s going to read them. People need to know about how much Konnan looks like Mongo McMichael when you put a Bears jacket on him.

And now, the best and worst of WCW Monday Nitro, originally aired on September 1, 1997.

Best/Worst: The Man Of 1,000 Halliburtons

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Now that the Four Horsemen are back to full strength and not being easy anymore, you’d think they’d be done with the whole “Jeff Jarrett was a Horseman and now he’s not and all he accomplished was ruining a football star’s marriage” fiasco, right? This is WCW, friend. Issues here are never over. It’s 2017 and I guarantee you that while you’re reading this, somewhere’s halfway through a wrestling show and just watched Jeff Jarrett knock Steve McMichael out by hitting him in the back with a briefcase.

The good news, I guess, is that Jarrett’s at least multitasking while he feuds with Mongo. He’s also got beef with Dean Malenko now, thanks to his months-long plan to court Malenko just to make him look like an idiot during an elimination tag match at a biker rally. This week’s opening match is Jarrett and Eddie Guerrero against Mongo and Chris Benoit, which the Horsemen win when future Horse Person Malenko shows up and frog splashes Jarrett. I think it’s important to note that the Horsemen are at “full strength” now and still almost lost this curtain-jerking tag match to a couple of randomly assembled jerks.

The crowd loves it, though. Ever since Road Wild, everything Jeff Jarrett touches turns into molten crowd reactions. Genesis of “Slapnuts” aside, I don’t think the guy’s ever been as over as he was for the final couple of months of his first WCW run.

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Jarrett gets his revenge later in the show when he utilizes his patented Stone Cold Stunner™ to help the opposite of Jeff Jarrett, Yuji Nagata, defeat Malenko. These two will eventually settle their differences at Fall Brawl in a THIS HAS WAY TOO MUCH TIME match.

I think the highlight of this one is Larry Zbyszko shitting all over Malenko for not being in good enough shape to break arms on the mat like he used to. Surprisingly, this is not the most ridiculous and/or offensive thing Larry “Japanese people have seven hearts and will deceive you” Zbyszko says on the night.

What We Did Inside The Black Ropes This Week

As you know if you watched any WCW show from 1996 until it folded, they didn’t do much right, but they understood cruiserweight wrestling. They knew that to truly differentiate cruiserweights from the rest of the roster, they had to — get this — do things the rest of the roster couldn’t do. Modern cruiserweight divisions will say “we gave Mustafa Ali 5 minutes of TV time and no promo time this week, pop for his 450 splash,” then be like, “here’s beloved superstar AJ Styles cutting promos to set up our heavyweight main event, and he can do a 450 splash!” Dean Ambrose is out there at like 240 doing the same boring dive they let everyone else do.

Anyway, WCW did two things wrong with their cruiserweight division:

They occasionally needed bodies for the more important characters on the show to beat up, so you’d get Scott Steiner mauling four cruiserweights for no good reason, and
They just did too much of it, sometimes all in a row

This show’s a great example of the second point. They run a hot Ultimo Dragon vs. La Parka match (which we’ll get into in a second), and then two matches later they run Lizmark Jr., who is not Ultimo Dragon, vs. Villano IV, whose ass isn’t even Villano III. WCW never seemed to figure out that SOME luchadores were super over, and some might as well have been Mike Tenay in a Pink Panther mask.

Our good friend Larry Zbyszko sums it up:

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Lizmark wins with a moonsault, if you’re keeping score 20 years later, and the crowd couldn’t give a fuck if they were handed one before the match and ordered at gun point to give it back.

The other aimless cruiserweight schmozz of the night happens later in the show, when Chris Jericho is supposed to defend the WCW Cruiserweight Championship against Chavo Guerrero Jr. Eddie shows up and demands that Chavo once again hand over his title shot to him, but Chavo refuses. This brings out Scotty Riggs (?), who thinks HE deserves a shot. Then everyone else in the cruiserweight division shows up looking for a title shot, and I mean EVERYONE. Pre-Crisis Billy Kidman’s out there, Ciclope, even SUPER ASTRO, whose WCW career consisted of one (1) dark match a few weeks later. Tony Schiavone sums up my thoughts with an incredulous, “Super Astro?” and all Mike Tenay can add is, “he’s another one of the luchadors from Mexico!”

Ultimately the argument turns into a makeshift battle royal, ending with Eddie frog splashing the Cruiserweight Championship into Jericho’s chest. Keep your eyes peeled for Kidman deciding it’d be a good idea to do a shooting star press off the apron to the floor in NOT A MATCH, in front of a crowd that hasn’t even been told his name, while like 10 guys stand in the ring blocking the view of most of the crowd.

Once again, the announce team works overtime to put over the talent in the ring:

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Poor Super Astro. He never did get that title shot he earned by never wrestling.

In good cruiserweight news, this Ultimo Dragon vs. La Parka match rips. Even the ring entrances are good, as Sonny Onoo brings out a framed picture of him putting the Dragon in a Dragon Sleeper from an attack on WCW Saturday Night. I don’t know how often Sonny goes to wrestling conventions or whatever, but if he sells 8x10s, this better be one of them:

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These guys had an underwhelming match on Nitro a few weeks ago, so they’re both visibly out here to make up for it. La Parka’s wrestling like I wrestled as La Parka in WCW video games, namely doing his full dance taunt after every move. Few things bring me joy in this world like a chubby skeleton man from 20 years ago clapping with his knees to celebrate a properly executed dropkick.

Parka breaks out the Chris Hamrick/Alberto Del Rio bump through the ropes to the floor, and Dragon’s in there bouncing around like he just drank a pitcher of 5-Hour Energy. He gets his revenge for the deep, personal insult of Framed Photography by slamming Sonny after the match and choking him out. As we learned from Jason and the Argonauts and the various Castlevania games, skeletons can only protect you so much.

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And hey, speaking of skeletons, here’s Mortis taking on Silver King. Silver King’s been kicking a lot of ass lately, because maybe he knew his booking capped out at “another one of the luchadors from Mexico” and wanted something better.

There’s not much to say here, though, other than (1) Mortis interestingly uses the Flatliner you know, the reverse STO where it looks like you’re Rock Bottoming yourself, to set up the original Flatliner, the Samoan drop off the second rope, and (2) the Faces of Fear once again attack him after the match, setting up the best match at Fall Brawl ’97.

Worst: Stevie Richards Even Loses When He Wins

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Also kind of in the cruiserweight division this week — see? It’s so much — is Stevie Richards vs. Damien. Raven Evenflow DDTs Damien on the concrete before the match and rolls him into the ring for Richards to pin, but Stevie doesn’t get it and tries to resuscitate him with CPR and mouth-to-mouth. It takes Raven smacking Stevie in the face again to get him to take the easy win. It’s … kind of funny? I guess?

And Speaking Of Kind Of Funny

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This week, Lee Marshall is in Wisconsin, so he ties in Green Bay and says “wease heads” instead of “cheese heads.” Heenan’s response is to say Lee’s also known as the “Limburger Man,” which is so not funny but also hilarious that I’ve been laughing about it all week. Lee Marshall is absolutely the Limburger Man.

Worst: He’s Coming (Back)!

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Ah, shit.

Best Buff Bagwell, Master Of Karate

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If you were wondering how Glacier’s undefeated streak as a singles competitor ended, it happened thanks to the dreaded combination of nWo Vincent grabbing his foot too many times and Buff Bagwell hitting a few moves between INTENSE MOCKINGS. One of them is pictured above. Buff Bagwell ruled so hard I can’t even explain it sometimes. His gimmick of basically riffing his own matches was top shelf, and if he’d been allowed to do even 10% of that in his one awful Raw match it might’ve not shit the bed so mightily.

Anyway, one of my favorite tangential Glacier moments ever happens in this match, when he does his full elaborate entrance with snow and lasers and custom body armor. When the lights come on, the camera pans over to Buff making this stunned face, and he mouths, “what was THAT?”

The only real hiccup in the match is a mistimed high crossbody spot that looked like it hurt like a mother. Glacier would occasionally do this thing where he’d jump off one buckle, miss a strike, roll through, jump onto the diagonal buckle and come back with a crossbody, right? Well, one or both of them didn’t time it right, and Glacier ended up hitting the lowest possible crossbody onto Buff’s knees.

Buff eventually wins with the Blockbuster thanks to an assist from Virgil and the impossible blindness of referee Mark Curtis. Glacier’s win streak would live on in history as one of the most impressive ever seen in WCW, at least for the three weeks between this loss and Goldberg’s debut.

Best, Then Worst: The Traylor Park

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Remember back in February when someone attacked nWo member Big Bubba in the parking lot? No? Well, apparently neither did the New World Order, because Big Bubba has returned and is spitting HOT BABYFACE FIRE.

Doctors told him he’d never walk again, he’d never wrestle again, and nobody sent him a card or letter or came to visit him in the hospital … in fact, the only correspondence he got from the nWo was a telegram telling him he was fired. So he put up a photo of Eric Bischoff, and every time someone told him he couldn’t do something, he’d look at Bischoff’s face and take a step. Now he’s back, and he’s done playing games, and he’s Ray Traylor, and Ray Traylor’s gonna rip Bischoff’s head off. It’s an absolutely fantastic, epic babyface promo that could’ve positioned Traylor as one of the primary soldiers in WCW’s war against the nWo, and then he immediately goes to the ring and wrestles like a heel against Prince Iaukea. So … no?

Best: The Dancing Fools

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Yes, yes it is

From the Best and Worst of WWF Raw is War 4/21/97:

Over on WCW Monday Nitro, booker slash satanic George Costanza Kevin Sullivan and his girlfriend “from the neighborhood” Jacqueline have been beating up and humiliating jobbers. Apparently WCW wanted Disco Inferno to get beaten up by Jacqueline and disappear for six months (despite him only having four months left on his contract), and Disco was like, “wait, you want me to get beaten up by a lady half my size and then never come back? No thank you.” They fired him for it. So HE was supposed to be the new Honky Tonk Man, to the point that they put a silhouette of him in WWF Magazine. But then WCW hit him with a no-compete for that four months of remaining contract, WWF got restless and Disco never got hired. So Disco went back to WCW, and Billy goddamn Gunn ended up as Honky 2.

But hey, at least now Disco’s back where he belongs, as ship #2 in a Ships In The Night scenario with WCW’s best dancer, Alex Wright. Disco’s return involves him interrupting a Nitro Girls routine, which as you know is Alex’s territory, so they engage in a tense dance-off that ends in a shoving match.

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Cooler enormous heads prevail, however, as Disco returns a few minutes later to help Wright defeat Hugh Morrus. The crowd chants “DIS-CO! DIS-CO!” and Randy Anderson like, blatantly watches him attack Hugh Morrus, but doesn’t call for the disqualification. Because really, why would you ever side with Hugh Morrus? Has dude even been on the show since Big Ray ran him over with a motorcycle?

Worst: Don’t Do It, Hollywood

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Last week, WCW Executive Head of Something Something James J. Dillon announced that he was going to do everything in his power to make sure Sting got a match with Hollywood Hogan, you know, despite giving Sting a “talk to me before the end of the Clash of the Champions or you’re not getting anything” ultimatum, Sting not saying shit, and JJ responding with “I HEARD YOU LOUD AND CLEAR, SOMEHOW.”

This week, Hogan responds to Dillon promising to make the match by beating him up and leg-dropping him. As you do. This is inadvertently the biggest heel move in nWo history, as eliminating Dillon created the need for an interim commissioner, and I bet you can’t guess which one-hipped homophobe is coming back soon and would love another match with Hollywood Hogan.

The best Hogan moment of the week, however, has to be Larry Zbyszko throwing shade at him for his cocaine habit on live television:

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Hey Hogan, you should start snorting cruiserweights, Larry wouldn’t give a shit about that.

Worst: CAN THEY COEXIST?

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Man, WCW can’t get their shit together to save their lives.

At the Clash of the Champions, pre-bird nonsense, Diamond Dallas Page and Lex Luger lost to the nWo when Page got blinded and accidentally hit a Diamond Cutter on Luger. He didn’t mean to, obviously, so he showed up on Nitro to apologize. Lex didn’t accept the apology. So later that night, Lex got blinded and accidentally put Page in the Torture Rack. He didn’t mean to, obviously, so he shows up on Nitro to apologize. Page doesn’t accept the apology.

The main event of this show is Diamond Dallas Page and Lex Luger versus the nWo. Can you guess what happens? If you said, “one of them accidentally hits the other one and WCW loses to the nWo for like the 60th time this episode,” congratulations, you’ve got a third grader’s capacity for abstract thought and could’ve booked this show.

Page and Luger have to get on the same page soon, or Team WCW will be compromised at War Games! So join us next week for Diamond Dallas Page vs. Lex Luger, both guys being taken out of War Games before it starts, none of this mattering, and quite possibly the worst hand shake ever attempted on a televised wrestling program.

Best: Average Carpentry Skills

The thing you’d remember from this episode is this, the nWo parodying last week’s legitimate emotional retirement and taking it to the fucking woodshed.

Detached from how bad it made the Horsemen feel for trying to have an actual human moment on a wrestling show and the Horsemen never, ever getting to beat the shit out of them for doing it, it’s funny. It’s SUPER funny. Syxx doing an impression of Ric Flair by saying “woo” after every line (whether he’s talking or not) was Southpaw before Southpaw, Konnan looked EXACTLY like Mongo somehow and wouldn’t stop rubbing his hands, and Buff Bagwell is the unsung hero of the entire thing. His thing at the end where he’s like, “I don’t like you, and I don’t like the Four Horsemen, but I tell you what, IT WOULD BE AN HONOR” is amazing. Kevin Nash as a gigantic, dying Arn Anderson in a Canadian tuxedo wearing a neck brace and holding a beer cooler under his arm kinda speaks for itself. It’s brutal, and biting, and totally smokes every non-Jason Sensation part of the D-X Nation parody. And it sure as hell aged better.

The sad thing, though, is that you can’t detach it, at least not from the rebuttal thing. If the Horsemen had shown up at the end of this segment, or later in the show, or at any point ever and just tire ironed the shit out of the nWo, it would’ve been awesome. They should’ve gone complete old school heel and broken their hands in the parking lot. Rub their face in concrete until their noses break. Instead, they look like a joke, act like a joke, and are even MORE of a joke at Fall Brawl. They never recover, either. This nukes them, completely.

And that’s a shame, because it’s really good.

Join us next week for a new acting chairman for the executive committee (sigh), Mark Curtis shooting on a fan, and a Sting segment that’ll make you breathe through your teeth so hard it might break them.

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Ideally, Meng selling WCW t-shirts is you reading this report.

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Sting is back, but nobody knows which side he’s on. He’s experimenting with Crow cosplay, but he hasn’t really gotten into it yet. Also, the major Heavyweight Championship feud heading into Halloween Havoc is Hulk Hogan acting like an a-hole on the set of a 3 Ninjas movie and Macho Man Randy Savage wanting to kill himself over it. Things are great!

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network, and here to watch Halloween Havoc ’96. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page, and you totally should.

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Before We Begin

Here’s what you need to know about Slim Jim’s Halloween Havoc ’96, easily the year’s best pro wrestling pay-per-view named after a small cylinder of meat. I mean, unless you include In Your House: Assembly Line Run-Off.

Dean Malenko Rey Mysterio Halloween Havoc

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Dean Malenko Is The New Cruiserweight Champion

If you can’t tell what’s happening in the picture, that’s Stinko Malenko plucking Rey Mysterio off the second rope and gutwrench powerbombing him to f*cking eternal death.

Here’s a link to the complete match, which I’d definitely recommend checking out if you’re in the mood for one of those 20-minute show-opening WCW Cruiserweight clinics. If you need a rundown of the match, it’s Malenko vs. Mysterio, which means it starts really excitingly, ends really excitingly and has about 13 minutes in the middle of Malenko lying on one of Mysterio’s appendages. If you know me, you know that’s my favorite part. Malenko would just straight-up refuse to have a high flying match with you. He’d grab you by the wrist and throw you at the ground and just lie on it and bend it for half an hour. It’s like watching Picasso paint in blue.

The best part of the Malenko/Mysterio rivalry is that for as good as it was, it was never about anything more than having the Cruiserweight Championship. They built it around Malenko stealing Rey’s mask and getting Mike Tenay to write book reports about what that means in Mexican culture, but aside from a fun moment in the middle of the match where Rey gets it back and switches masks mid-ring, it’s just wrestling as hard as possible until the other guy drops. It wasn’t so much about what Mysterio did, but when he did it. You remember what he did BECAUSE of when he did it.

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The Outsiders Are Your New Tag Team Champions

The opposite of Rey Mysterio (and somehow still one of my favorites) is Colonel Robert Parker, who teamed with Sister Sherri to make sure that every Harlem Heat match from 1995 until 1997 had the worst finish you’ve ever seen.

At Halloween Havoc, they defended the WCW Tag Team Championships against Scott Hall and Kevin Nash. “Harlem Heat” plus “nWo” equals “Jesus take the wheel.” Booker T has the match won with the Harlem Hangover, but the referee is distracted. Nash steps in to break it up, but Colonel Parker intercepts him. As this is happening, Parker sorta sees the blue of Adriatic Water and the yellow of Algerian sands and realizes he’s toast. Nash makes him hand over his cane, which he uses to lazily hit Booker and cost the Heat the championships.

The nWo now controls the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, the United States Championship (which they just outright stole), and the Tag Team Championships. Things aren’t going to get better for a while. Colonel Parker’s about to get HILARIOUS, though.

Hulk Hogan scalped

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Hulk Hogan’s Greatest Moment Happened

The greatest moment in Hulk Hogan’s career wasn’t winning the WWF Championship against the Iron Sheik at Madison Square Garden in ’84, main-eventing the first WrestleMania in ’85, slamming Andre the Giant ’87 or facing The Rock in 2002. The greatest Hulk Hogan moment happened here, at Halloween Havoc ’96.

Hogan shows up for his match against the Macho Man wearing one of his weird, unconvincing wigs from 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain. Early in the match, Savage punches Hogan so hard that the wig comes off. Savage puts it on, looking like Poochie from ‘The Simpsons’ as a giant hamster, and Hogan sells it like he’s in a childhood nightmare and just realized he went to school without his pants on. Keep in mind that Hulk Hogan has been visibly bald as f*ck for like 15 years at this point. His response? To kick the bottom rope in frustration, then run and charge at Savage with the worst double axe-handle in history. Jump to about the 6:00 mark in this video. Heenan’s call of, “HE’S A CONVERTIBLE!” is A+.

THAT, my friends, is the perfect Hulk Hogan moment. Of course, he wins the match via incessant cheating with what looks like a vibrator — no, seriously — and the show ends with like 15 minutes of promos. Take what you can get.

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Rowdy Roddy Piper Is Here

So begins my years-long anger at everyone calling him “Roddy Roddy Piper.” It’s WCW’s version of calling Paul Bearer “PAW BEAR.”

Piper shows up to confront Hogan. Hogan almost immediately says, “I know I said I created wrestling and all, but as I remember it, me and you were running neck and neck.” Piper tells him to shut up, then spends about five minutes to get to the point where he says, “you didn’t create wrestling by yourself, I was also there!” From listening to it, Hogan wanted to cut the promo by like 10 minutes and Piper just breezed through it anyway. It’s such a rambling “do you remember WWF” mess that the show actually GOES OFF THE AIR BEFORE IT’S OVER. Piper’s just like, “BLAAHHH MR. T” and they fade the hell out.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for October 28, 1996.

Lord Steven Regal Juventud Guerrera Nitro

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Worst: Let’s Open By Firmly Establishing That No Good Wrestling Can Happen

This week’s opening match is Lord Steven Regal (now in classic Bryan Danielson burgundy) vs. Juventud Guerrera. If this had happened on WCW Saturday Night, we’d probably be hailing it as a great, undiscovered gem. Instead, it happens on Nitro — in the opening segment of Nitro, following an already nWo-heavy pay-per-view — so … no. It’s nothing. It’s a wristlock followed by a finish.

Why? Because we’ve got better things to do! The nWo propaganda team starts marching through the crowd, where we find:

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Syxx, alongside a guy in an ape suit and Nitro regular Justin Roberts. He’s got a lot to slur about nWo dominance, and makes a plea with free agent Sting to “do the right thing” and join the team.

Wither Sting, you ask?

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Why, he’s finally upgraded to his most powerful form — Full-Blown Crow Sting — and makes his first appearance in the “rafters.” He doesn’t say anything, which is great, but allows Larry Zbyszko completely misses the memo and buries the sh*t out of him. “What a pathetic looking soul!” Tony Schiavone tries to cover it up by being all, “I don’t think it’s pathetic, Larry, I think he looks scary!” Larry just steamrolls through it and calls him pathetic like five more times. Imagine JBL and The Ascension, but with the biggest star in your company at the beginning of the biggest and most profitable story in company history.

And, if you’ve already forgotten, a match happens. When Syxx and Sting have had some TV time, Juvy goes up top, misses a 450 splash and taps out to a Regal Stretch. This could’ve been so good, but hey, at least I’ve got a realistic setup for my, “a burnout, a monkey and a ring announcer walk into a bar” gag.

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Best: Clenching Your Enos

Welcome back to top secret super-worker Mike Enos, 1996’s WCW MVP. Not only did he have one of the best Nitro matches of the year (out of nowhere) with Chris Jericho, but he was in the ring when Scott Hall debuted and began the nWo story. Is Mike Enos the Forrest Gump of WCW?

Here he gets another surprisingly good match with surprisingly good Diamond Dallas Page, featuring an important plot point: the Outsiders are suddenly in the crowd cheering for Page. If you don’t know where that goes, I won’t spoil it for you, but it turns Page from a guy slumming it in prelim matches with Craig Pittman into a multiple-time Heavyweight Champion. Crow Sting and people’s champion DDP formally start in the same episode, and that’s pretty cool.

As for the match, it’s full of hard work from both dudes and ends with a creative Diamond Cutter spot. Enos tries to powerslam Page out of the corner, but Page hooks his ankles on the top rope. Enos can’t move forward, and when he tries to adjust, Page reaches down and slaps him in the stomach. That causes him to lose his balance and lean backwards, which leaves him wide-open-as-f*ck for a Diamond Cutter. It’s SO easy to cheer DDP at this point. It’s everything good about the RKO without having to pretend that Bob Orton’s preening son with the bad shoulders is literally a snake.

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Best/Worst: Jim Powerless

WCW could never commit to making Dean Malenko a thing. He’s obviously one of (if not THE) best wrestlers on the show — and he just tore it up for 20 minutes with Rey Mysterio on pay-per-view and won the Cruiserweight Championship — but they can’t keep him strong. They built to the Mysterio match by having him take fluke losses to meandering nobodies like Alex Wright, and his first match as champion involves him only being able to beat JIM POWERS via referee malfeasance. It’s so weird.

But yeah, Jim Powers wrestles Malenko here, and honestly it’s one of the best Powers matches I’ve ever seen. He’s still all physique and desperate clapping, but Malenko keeps him wrestling and gets something pretty good out of it. Powers hits a big powerslam — Powers-slam? — and seems to have the match won, but Nick Patrick is busy trying to get Teddy Long to stay in his corner. Note: Teddy Long is already IN his corner, has not moved, and is repeatedly yelling I’M IN MY CORNER. Patrick takes forever to count the pin, Malenko kicks out, and a yelling-at-the-ref distraction rollup ends up costing Powers the match.

As for Patrick …

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Okay, at Halloween Havoc, Syxx wrestled Chris Jericho. Patrick reffed the match and was biased as hell, because of course he was. On Nitro, Patrick brings out a LAWYER, finally making good on those threats to sue everyone who besmirched his good name as an official, and they all (somehow) blame it on Jericho. This is building to a Jericho/Patrick match, and there are two major problems.

1. Nobody needs to see Nick Patrick wrestle, and
2. Why on Earth would you bring in someone to talk for pre-Kenny Powers Kenny Powers-ass Nick Patrick?

Nick Patrick had accidentally become one of the best promo men on the show, and I can’t help but wonder how much better a Patrick/Jericho feud would’ve been if he’d talked for the entirety of it. One funny note, though: Chris Jericho, most famous for being a crooked “conspiracy victim” during his WCW run, is entering his first actual feud in the company against a crooked ref who says there’s a conspiracy against him.

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Worst: I Can’t Wait To Be Alone With My Leader Tonight

Jeff Jarrett wrestles Ricky Morton in a match I would’ve fast forwarded like five years ago, and gets an easy win with the figure-four. After the match, he gets on the mic with Tony and, like Larry, kinda-sorta buries Sting. He says if Sting won’t be WCW’s leader, he’s volunteering to do it himself. Of course, he stumbles over his words in his big declaration of leadership ability and is the living heat equivalent of an unplugged electric blanket, so it doesn’t go anywhere.

These are WCW’s choices. A mopey guy dressed like The Crow, or the dollar store Ric Flair who looks like Edward from Final Fantasy IV fell into a picket fence.

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Worst: Nobody Likes The Nasty Boys

The Nasty Boys interrupt a High Voltage vs. Amazing French Canadians match, which is sorta like a power outage interrupting a bout of diarrhea.

If you’ll recall, the Nasties recently tried to leverage a real-life friendship with Hulk Hogan into an nWo membership, but got beaten up for their troubles because nobody wants to hang around with the Nasty Boys. Now they’re out here trying to cut face promos like we didn’t JUST see them get rejected by a squad that accepted Virgil. VIRGIL.

The best part is Knobbs’ reasoning. He says the Nasty Boys aren’t loved, they aren’t even wanted, but they are one thing: nasty. Well, thank God we weren’t calling you The Loved Boys.

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Best: Rey Mysterio Clean Up Graffiti

Hey, remember Jimmy Graffiti? He’s back, this time being not a luchador in a match with Rey Mysterio.

For an example of why Mysterio has had surgery *five times in [his] left knee*, check out the finish to this match. Mysterio dodges some stuff, jumps up onto Graffiti’s shoulders knees-first, then flips over all the way and lands on his feet. He transitions that into a mule dropkick, and goes right into a springboard hurricanrana for the win. It’s amazing, but it also might as well be that one scene from Misery. You know the one.

After the match, Mysterio says he’s coming for Malenko, but that’s not happening for a while: Malenko’s moving into a feud with Psicosis, and Mysterio’s on a runaway mine train headed into the cavern floor that is Trying To F*ck With The Ultimo Dragon.

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Best: Guerrero Vs. Benoit, In Any Form

Here’s an interesting one: Eddie Guerrero has a match with Chris Benoit, with the story being that they’re both severely injured and shouldn’t be wrestling. Guerrero has busted up ribs and Benoit got jumped by the Dungeon of Doom at Halloween Havoc, so it’s built around both men having great intestinal fortitude, but not a lot of physical endurance. It’s weird. Honestly, any form of Benoit vs. Guerrero is good, and these little anomalies where a modifier pops up and changes the dynamic makes it compelling.

That said, we’re back into that whole “Kevin Sullivan booking his own divorce” story from the late spring. If you aren’t familiar with that, Kevin Sullivan booked a story where his wife left him for Chris Benoit, while his wife was actually leaving him for Chris Benoit. That resulted in a lot of really violent matches full of actual punching and actual slamming bathroom stall doors on each others’ heads, which seemed super cool until a decade later when peoples’ brains stopped working and, you know, murders occurred. It’s the absolute most uncomfortable thing to write about in mid-90s WCW, so I’m just gonna say “I wish we could’ve watched the match instead of devoting half of it to the flaming gun-metal picture-in-picture” and move straight into the “Lex Luger’s an idiot” material.

Note: former NBA star A.C. Green is in the crowd for this, and he earns points for appearing as a notable guest in the crowd for both an episode of Nitro and multiple episodes of Lucha Underground. Celebrities who actually like wrestling and aren’t just there to promote a thing and pretend, y’all!

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Worst: Lex Luger’s An Idiot

The main event of the show is Lex Luger vs. Booker T. That’s not really a barn-burner in and of itself, but the finish is Harlem Heat-levels of ridiculous.

Luger has Booker beat, and is about to put him in the Torture Rack. Instead of doing the move and winning, Luger is suddenly struck by feeling that Sting — who has spent the entire show watching from the crowd — is somewhere in the crowd, watching him. Spooky! Luger leaves out through the crowd to try to catch him, but Sting just kinda turns around and leaves and Luger loses by count-out. Great match strategy, Lex.

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Worst: Wait, There’s Also This

Finally, we end the show with a recap of the entire Hogan/Piper segment from Halloween Havoc, plus an extra 5-10 minutes of Hogan live in the ring, rewriting history as it happens. He throws the Macho Man under the bus (because they weren’t sure Macho was ever coming back) and says that Piper is afraid of him, and the big payoff is Ted DiBiase giving Hogan permission to “entertain us.” That’s just Hogan posing a bunch, and … that’s it. No Piper, no Sting stepping in, no Luger wandering back in from the crowd, nothing. Just Hogan being Hogan, as if someone watched Havoc and thought, “you know what would make this better? If Piper wasn’t there.”

Spoiler alert: next week’s episode ends with this exact same segment. They show the entire Piper/Hogan promo again, followed by Hogan saying nothing, again. HURRY UP WITH THE STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN STUFF, RAW.

20 years ago today, one of the earliest shots in the pro wrestling Monday Night Wars of the ’90s was fired.

On December 18, 1995, WCW Monday Nitro opened as it often did, with Steve “Mongo” McMichael pointing out his chihuahua Pepe’s mariachi costume. The moment was interrupted by Madusa, also known as the World Wrestling Federation’s Alundra Blayze, making her return to WCW with the WWF Women’s Championship in tow. From the Best and Worst of Nitro:

This is Madusa. If you don’t remember her, she used to be in WCW as the flea market Sherri Martel; a good worker without any competition stuck in a valet role based around how less pretty she is than the popular girls. If you want to know how bad stateside women’s wrestling was in the early 90s, she had a Clash of the Champions match against Paul Heyman. In case you were wondering why it’s “Madusa” instead of “Medusa,” it means “made in the USA.” Not a joke.

She left WCW in 1993, winning a six-woman tournament to become the new WWF Women’s Champion. They wanted to build the women’s division around her and revitalize it, so they supplemented her with some of the best female workers ever. Female wrestling in Japan in the early 90s was as good as the US stuff was bad, and is arguably the best any wrestling has ever been. WWF brought over Aja Kong and Bull Nakano, and from 93-95, WWF women’s wrestling was one of the coolest things in the world. In 1994, Madusa (calling herself Alundra Blayze) lost the WWF Women’s Championship to Nakano at Big Egg Wrestling Universe in Tokyo in front of 40,000 fans. It was a big deal.

1995 happened, and attitudes started to change. WWF brought in Stampede’s Rhonda Singh as “Bertha Faye,” an overweight lady who lived in a trailer park. Faye broke Alundra Blayze’s nose so she could take time off to get fake boobs and a nose job. A few years later the Women’s Championship would be held by folks like Miss Kitty, Mongo’s ex-wife Debra, a 76-year old Fabulous Moolah and “Harvina,” Faye’s ex-boyfriend Harvey Wippleman in drag. At some point between that — December 18, 1995 — Madusa unexpectedly returned to Nitro. With the WWF Women’s Championship. And she threw it in the garbage.

You’ve probably seen this clip on all the Monday Night Wars shows, and with good reason. Before, WWF and WCW rarely acknowledged one another. They’d say something passive-aggressive in passing, like Bischoff’s “we’re the only show on Monday night’s that’s LIVE,” but it was nothing. Luger showing up on the first episode of Nitro was something, but he didn’t show up and rip a WWF shirt in half and call Bret Hart a homo. Madusa stood in the center of the screen, said “the WWF belongs in the garbage,” then tossed it in the f*cking garbage. Shots. Fired.

Fun fact: the WCW Women’s Championship was around for less than a year, and Madusa never won it.

Things worked out okay for Madusa, as the memorableness of the incident (as well as her stellar in-ring career) saw her inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame class of 2015. Funny how things work out. Two decades later, we’re hoping somebody fishes a Women’s Championship out of the bin so Sasha Banks and a generation of talented women caught in a Divas Revolution can claim something more thematically fitting than the sparkly butterfly belt.

Eric Bischoff Oregon

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Halloween Havoc ’96 happened, and everything changed. Rowdy Roddy Piper showed up and put the fear of God in Hogan, and the following Nitro showed the segment again in its entirety. You know, in case you missed it. Also, Sting is now full-blown Crow Sting, and he’s sorta drifting in and out of frame to make WCW’s heroes feel weird about themselves.

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, and you totally should. Programming note: We’re doubling up on vintage Nitro reports this week, so check back here tomorrow (Thursday) for the next edition.

As for now, please scroll through for the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for November 4, 1996.

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Best: Rebuff Bagwell

At some point — read: 1997 — WCW stopped caring about why characters were face or heel, and started having them turn by changing their shirts. That was it. They’d be normal, but then they’d put on an nWo shirt, and that’d make them evil. You can see it in the way characters interact with one another already. If you’re in WCW, your only real reason for not wanting to join the nWo is “WCW.” “I’m WCW!” It doesn’t really mean anything. You just are or aren’t wearing a shirt.

This week’s show pre-dates that phenomenon with the beginning of two great character alignment changes; one from good to bad, the other from bad to good.

The first is Marcus Alexander Bagwell, who as you may know has spent his entire WCW career as, for lack of better phrasing, a rookie with ruthless aggression. He always came across as a gentle, handsome southerner who at his best was a more serviceable Jim Powers. He has a million dollar smile and the personality of a block of wood, so they put him in an endless string of tag teams with similar character types. Scotty Riggs, The Patriot, Lex Luger, and so on. He’s been a dirt-boring babyface forever, and this episode really kickstarts the heel turn they’d been foreshadowing.

He opens the show against Brad Armstrong in a match elevated by the fact that the crowd is crazy into everything. Bagwell gets frustrated in the middle of the match and slaps Armstrong in the face, and you’d think Goldberg just Jackhammered Hulk Hogan. He tries to go heel with it and do sarcastic American Males claps, but the crowd’s like YEAH NO LET’S DO WHAT THE WRESTLE MAN IS DOING, CLAP CLAP NYAH HA HEE HEE. Bags ends up getting the win by getting the higher percentage of a crossbody attempt head-on collision.

Later in the show, Scotty Riggs challenges Dean Malenko for the Cruiserweight Championship. If you’re wondering, most of the match is the announcers being all, “Scotty Riggs must have lost some weight because dude is barely a Cruiserweight, this is bullsh*t.” It’s just a means to an end, though, as the finish is part 2 in the night’s epic Bagwell turn. Riggs goes to the top rope to hit a 225+ pound splash or whatever, and Malenko shoves him off to the outside. Riggs takes a nasty bump off the apron and hits the floor, so a frustrated Bagwell just picks him up by his hair and tights and rolls him back in. Riggs immediately gets pinned.

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What’s great about this is that they’re actively giving us reasons why Bagwell would turn, and want to throw in with the nWo. He’s a good wrestler, but his career’s on a bit of a downward slide, and he’s struggling to beat guys like Brad Armstrong. That’s Hugh Morrus bad. He’s taking those frustrations out in places that don’t warrant it, like in Riggs’ singles matches or in tags where he could probably win if he’d pull his head out of his ass and stop sabotaging himself. Remember that moment on a previous episode where Bagwell could’ve broken up a pin, but he hesitated and they awkwardly lost a match? That’s the rub.

As a reason for being seduced by the dark side, it beats the hell out of “some jerks I know gave me a free shirt.”

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Best: There Are Great Face Turns, Too

The second is Diamond Dallas Page. On last week’s episode, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash showed up in the crowd to cheer him on, causing the announce team to immediately insist that they were recruiting him, and that he’d sold his soul or whatever. Pay no attention to that legendary company man you made go goth and hang out in rafters because you constantly doubted him and called him a traitorous liar.

Anyway, Page wrestles Ice Train, which is quickly becoming a 2015 WWE feud. They wrestle all the damn time. Late in the match, Page gets knocked to the outside and Nick Patrick suspiciously follows him out. That leaves the ring open for a surprise attack from Hall and Nash, who whomp the sh*t out of Train with their Tag Team Championships. Patrick is (spoiler alert) (not really) the nWo referee, so he purposely checks on Page for like two straight minutes and misses the entire thing. Ice Train seems totally fine no-selling repeated belt shots from two of the biggest stars in wrestling and sorta shouts at them from the ring until Page recovers, hits a Diamond Cutter and gets the win.

What’s great about this is that Nick Patrick missed the action on purpose, but Page didn’t. In fact, Patrick sorta inadvertently prevented Page from seeing Hall and Nash interfere on his behalf at all, so when he got back in the ring, he just took advantage of Train’s lack of focus and won the match. The announce team hell confirms that this means DDP is nWo fuh-fuh-fuh-for life, but they’re missing a key part of the story. More on that next week.

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Worst: Jeff Jarrett Is A Dork

So, uh, that’s all the good stuff on the show. Sorry!

You know what makes me feel like I’m in the Impact Zone? Watching Mike Tenay interview Jeff Jarrett. It’s like those pictures of Keanu Reeves that claim he’s an immortal vampire.

Jarrett starts cutting a promo about how he’s assumed leadership of the Four Horsemen, by-proxy leadership of WCW as a whole, will single-handedly (or four-handedly, I guess) destroy the New World Order and also kick Sting’s ass — Sting, who is up in the rafters listening to him right now — for dropping the ball. WCW Jeff Jarrett is maybe the most spectacularly tone-deaf babyface ever. It’s so bad that Chris Benoit and Steve McMichael are like, “hey, nobody said Jeff Jarrett was the leader of anything, he’s an idiot, nobody approved this.” They take over the interview, set the record straight, and leave. When they’re walking away, Jarrett gets back on the mic and continues his promo.

If the point of this was “make everyone listening want to set Jeff Jarrett on fire,” mission accomplished.

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Worst: Ix-Nay On The Ife-Way

Speaking of Benoit, he has a fun match against Hector Guerrero built around the idea that Hector is lucha libre as f*ck, and Benoit has to deal with it. It’s great watching Benoit try to keep pace with this guy as he throws weird arm drags, rolls away slash into everything and does awkwardly backwards planchas to the outside. To put it in a modern context, imagine if Kevin Owens went to Lucha Underground and got wackily headscissored every time he tried to throw a punch. Also great: Hector looks like Eddie Guerrero from the future, especially when he walks to the ring wearing a silver cape.

I’m giving it a Worst, though, because it continues the most weirdly uncomfortable angle ever, aka “Kevin Sullivan books his own divorce.” It’s furthered by these unsettling picture-in-picture promos where Sullivan says the vaguest, most threatening things he can. The announce team will be like, “Sullivan and Benoit had some great matches, let’s hear from Kevin Sullivan,” and Sullivan is like, “she’s whispering sweet nothings in your ear, but she used to whisper those same sweet nothings in mine, and now I’m going to for real kill you both, you’re f*cking dead.” I’m paraphrasing. If I was looking back on this without all the real-world stuff that happened with it, I might have a different perspective. As it stands, my response is “nervous whistling,” followed by me scrolling down to write jokes about literally anything else.

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Best/Worst: This WCW Women’s Championship Tournament Is Already Crazy

Remember when Madusa threw the WWF Women’s Championship in the garbage and declared that WCW was where the Big Girls played? Well, in the 11 months since that happened — Jesus Christ — we’ve seen a match to decide whether a racist plantation owner will stay with his wife or his mistress and a racist match about motorcycles, and that’s pretty much it.

On this week’s show, however, Tony Schiavone debuts the new WCW Women’s Championship and announces a tournament to crown the first champ. That starts tonight, with Madusa (naturally) going one-on-one with “Reina Jubuki.” What’s weird about that, you might ask? Well, Reina Jubuki is Akira Hokuto’s CMLL gimmick. Akira Hokuto is also in the tournament, and according to commentary, Jubuki and Hokuto have the same international accomplishments. Also, it’s very clearly Akira Hokuto. Like, imagine if they had a Cruiserweight title tournament and Malenko wrestled Mr. JL in round one and Jerry Lynn in the finals. Also, imagine that in the 1990s, WCW could find so few female wrestlers that they made the ones they could find work double duty.

So yeah, Madusa runs through the same woman she eventually faces in the finals — I’d say spoiler alert, but even WCW didn’t care about the WCW Women’s Championship — and gets stared down by ZERO, the alter ego of legendary joshi star Chigusa Nagayo. She’s managed by Sonny Onoo, because in the 1990s WCW’s mission statement was, “make sure everyone knows Japanese people are evil.” Just all of them. WCW booking sheets were written on the backs of 1940s propaganda posters.

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Amazingly, this is one of two WCW Women’s Championships launched via an international tournament in the span of five months.

Chris Jericho Teddy Long Nick Patrick WCW Nitro

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Worst: Nick Patrick Still Doesn’t Need A Mouthpiece

If you’ve seen any of the other “Nick Patrick has pretended to be injured for months and WCW losers try to call him on it” segments, especially the ones with Patrick’s wholly unnecessary lawyer present, you’ve seen this one. I have no idea why they let Patrick be one of the best and funniest talkers in the company for a month and then yanked away the microphone, unless somebody was threatened by Patrick’s natural, proto-Kenny Powers charisma.

Here, the highlight is Teddy Long calling Patrick a “playa hater.” Don’t say things you can’t take back, Ted. Patrick’s lawyer throws shade at Jericho for being the son of a “goon” — no, not that one — and reminds Teddy that the most crooked referee in the history of WCW is Teddy Long. I mean, Tommy Young was in the pocket of the Four Horsemen, but he never tried to steal a mentally challenged man’s teddy bear.

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Worst: The Curse Of Harlem Heat Continues

As regular readers know, the words “Harlem” and “Heat” in the same sentence must be followed by the phrase, “sh*tty finish.” That goes for their singles matches, too.

On last week’s episode, Lex Luger sorta wandered away from a match with Booker T because Sting showed up in the crowd. Sting had been in the crowd the entire episode, but Luger sorta sensed him and meandered out into the crowd to wrangle him. This is the rematch, and Colonel Parker is here to make sure it ends as stupidly as possible. Booker’s about to win, in that way Booker did for years before anybody actually let him win, and Parker gets too excited. He pops up on the apron and starts dancing around, so Booker grabs him by the jacket. Luger rolls him up from behind and gets three, and once again Colonel Parker’s existence has caused a Rube Goldbergian chain of events to unfold that make Booker’s life a living hell.

The good news is that this has actually become a story now and goes somewhere, instead of being an annoying thing I have to point out every week. The bad news is “Lex Luger’s wrestling.”

WWE Network

Worst: The Main Event Is Eric Bischoff Being Bad At Negotiations, And A Halloween Havoc Replay (Again)

Seriously, the main event of this week’s show is two things:

1. Eric Bischoff taking one of those Lee Marshall 1-800-COLLECT road trips out to Oregon to try to sign Rowdy Roddy Piper. He wants Piper vs. Hogan, assures his that the fans want Piper vs. Hogan, and says he’s pretty sure Piper wants Piper vs. Hogan kinda sorta maybe. There’s like five minutes of Bischoff saying “I’m talking to Piper’s management and I hope something happens” in as many ways as he can.

2. A replay of Piper’s return at Halloween Havoc. If you’ll remember, this is what ended last week’s show, too. Hogan shows up in the arena after we’re done reliving two weeks of rambling madness and says that he was just pretending to be intimidated by Roddy, and that Piper’s just a sissy in a skirt. He drops the skirt line a few times, eventually upgrading it to “mini-skirt.” Can we go back to the Eric Bischoff graphic?

Next Week: The show ends with video of Roddy Piper, and Hulk Hogan talking. I’m not kidding.

WWE Network

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Eric Bischoff traveled to a Nitro Party in Portland, Oregon, to try to get Rowdy Roddy Piper to agree to a match against Hollywood Hogan. He absolutely could not have done this over the phone. The show ended with the second consecutive main-event recap of Piper’s return at Halloween Havoc ’96, and Hogan sorta mindlessly talking about it for several minutes. We are extremely comfortable beating Raw in the ratings, guys!

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, and you totally should.

As for now, please scroll through for the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for Nov. 11, 1996.

WWE Network

Best: Jeff Jarrett Gets His

Since showing up in WCW, Jeff Jarrett’s story has been, “I’m a bad guy from the WWF, but I’m DUBYA SEE DUBYA ALL THE WAY BABY! F*ck the nWo! F*ck that traitor Sting! I cain’t wait to be alone with my baby tonight, and my baby is the dubya see dubya!” On last week’s episode he cut a tone-deaf promo about how he was the leader of WCW and the leader of the Four Horsemen, despite two of the four being there beside him saying, “we hate this guy, he ain’t the leader of sh*t.”

On this week’s episode, Jarrett wrestles one of those four, Chris Benoit. The match itself is fun while it lasts, but it’s all about the finish. Jarrett starts strutting in the ring, and motherf*cking CROW STING shows up out of oblivion to Scorpion Death Drop him for running his mouth. If you’ve ever wondered why WCW fans were so enamored with this version of Sting, it’s for moments like this. Watching from the outside, you can’t really do anything about these Jeff Jarrett types who show up and talk too much and waste the show’s time. Sting, though, Sting can show up from out of nowhere or repel down from the ceiling or jump in from a f*cking helicopter and dish out righteous justice.

The post-match stuff is pretty funny, too, with Woman using the worst logic ever to unite the Horsemen.

Woman: “You should help him up.”
Benoit: “I DAHN GIVE A DAHM ABOAT HIM”
Woman: “He’s WCW! We don’t know who Sting is! But Jeff Jarrett is WCW, so help him up. You should really help him up. Help him up. Sting, the guy who has been a company man for 10 years, we don’t know his allegiances! The guy who beat up the nWo at War Games because WCW doubted him, we have no way of telling which side he’s on. But Jeff Jarrett, the guy who’s been here for a few weeks, the heel from the WWF who has shown up acting real suspicious about how much he wants to lead us in a fight against heels from the WWF, he’s definitely WCW. So help him up.”

(I’m paraphrasing.)

WWE Network

Best/Worst: The Face In Your Dreams Of Glass

As you know if you read our recap of last week’s show, there’s a doomed WCW Women’s Championship tournament happening. Madusa defeated Reina Jubuki (Akira Hokuto’s CMLL gimmick) in round one, only to be confronted by the mysterious ZERO, who looked like what would happen if season 1 Full House John Stamos put Triple H’s trunks on his face.

This week, we get to see Zero in action against Malia Hosaka, who is straight from the 1980s lady wrestling academy of leotards and L’eggs pantyhose. The match is just Zero no-selling everything and sending Hosaka back to The Orient (Hawaii) with a crucifix powerbomb. It’s great in a “tough Japanese woman shrugging off dropkicks and shaking her head ‘no’ ” kind of way, but bad in a “this is to set up a meaningless round two match in a tournament for a belt that almost immediately vanishes” way. Forest or the trees, I guess.

+1 to Tony Schiavone for shrugging off Larry Zbyszko’s sh*tty “I think it’s a her” jokes with a firm, “YES IT’S A HER.”

WWE Network

Best: DDP Doesn’t Want To Be #8

Two weeks ago (in 1996), the Outsiders showed up in the crowd to cheer on Diamond Dallas Page during a match. It makes sense. Page used to team with Nash and manage Hall. Hall was once “The Dimond Studd,” if you’ll recall, which almost caused me to call Zero’s crucifix powerbomb a “Diamond Death Drop.” Last week, Hall and Nash interfered in Page’s match against Ice Train and helped him win by politely bashing Train in the head and back with heavy gold belts. Page missed the whole thing thanks to Nick Patrick trying to “help” him outside the ring.

This week, Hall and Nash make it official: they want Page in the nWo.

Now, by this time next year there will be no logical heel or face turns. It’ll all be about whether you put on a shirt someone gave you. That’s what decided “good” and “evil” in WCW for like three years. If you put on the shirt, you were a jerk. If you didn’t, you were a hero! Here, there’s a lot more to it. Page acknowledges his friendship with both Hall and Nash, but brings up a very good point: If they’re such good friends, why did they wait until now to ask him to be a part of the group? This would make him the eighth guy and have him join the group after Virgil. That’s a slap in the face, man. The Outsiders try to justify it by saying they were looking out for Page and needed to build some political clout before they could ask all their friends to join, but Page knows they’re full of sh*t. I mean, the 1-2-3 Kid is in the group for God’s sake.

When Page doesn’t immediately join, the story becomes, “we couldn’t ask you to join because you’re neighbors with Eric Bischoff.” That sounds a little too much like “you’re only in the company because you suck up to the boss” — ironic, considering what happens with Bischoff himself soon — and the whole thing breaks down. What Hall and Nash are actually saying is, “we didn’t think you were good enough to join up before, but we like you now, and we’re trying to pad our roster so we can have our own show.” What Page is saying is, “you guys are *ssholes for waiting this long to ask me to join, and then saying I don’t deserve to be here.” It’s a great, human conflict, and probably way too three-dimensional for an Attitude Era face turn. But hey, guess what? It worked. It gave us a chance to see Page as a human being for … well, arguably the first time. He has a reason to fight these guys, instead of just “WCW!”

WWE Network

Best: Ciclope Is Out Of His Goddamn Mind

Ciclope is a luchador who is also a cyclops. Plus, he’s f*cking bonkers.

Two important things happen in his match with Rey Mysterio Jr.:

1. Near the end of the match, Ciclope tries to go up top. He’s got terrible depth perception, so it doesn’t work. Mysterio counters by jumping onto his shoulders and flipping him upside down off the top rope to the floor. After like 10 seconds of me holding my breath and trying to remember if I’d blacked out an episode of Nitro where Ciclope literally dies, Mysterio rolls him back into the ring, hits a West Coast Pop and gets the win. Ciclope, be careful with yourself. I hope his Halloween poncho’s got air bags.

2. Both Dean Malenko and Psicosis show up to scout the match, and it turns into the greatest Christian rock album cover ever:

WWE Network

Note: I’m going to start referring to Jesus as “I Am of 1,000 Holds.”

WWE Network

Best: The nWo Is Coming For Your Cable TV Awards

The nWo show up to promise an “nWo Monday Nitro” and … shill? the CableACE Awards. The Bullet Club isn’t legit until they’ve gone after a third-tier awards show. I just want Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks to show up and hit Ariana Grande with a triple superkick because the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards are fuh-fuh-fuh-for life.

The best part of this is that it’s the start of the longstanding beef between Scott Hall and Larry Zbyszko. More on that in like, a year. Actually, the best part of this is that it’s the closet Virgil ever came to winning a CableACE Award.

WWE Network

Worst: I Miss You, Early-1996 Lex Luger

We’re already in “hour one of Nitro was great, but hour two blows” territory, suggesting that wrestling shows that aren’t live events or pay-per-views should never be more than an hour long. Lucha Underground is an hour, and it’s perfect. It always leaves us wanting more. NXT is only an hour, and the talent gets rotated out to make sure as many people as possible get over, and you don’t get tired of seeing the same matches and faces every week. Raw is three hours long, and it feels like dental surgery.

Anyway, hour two features Lex Luger vs. Scott Norton, which might’ve been fun earlier in the year when Luger had a personality, and was not just “muscular babyface.” Defaulting Luger to his most basic makes him his most boring, because he’s just Hulk Hogan without the connection to the crowd. They love the Torture Rack, sure, but that’s it. It’s actually more comparable to Randy Orton, who can make tens of thousands of people lose their mind over an RKO setup, but has them sitting on their hands for the other 10 minutes. He’s a less agile, more chill Randy Orton. That might be the meanest thing I’ve ever said about someone.

Anyway, Norton vs. Luger isn’t very good. Luger survives by tucking and rolling out of the way of a flying Norton, then gets him up in the Torture Rack. It’s fine, it’s just that Luger matches without Sting hovering around to do something feel like a waste of time.

WWE Network

Worst: Nasty Booties (And Another Harlem Heat Match)

Speaking of wasting time, here’s Harlem Heat vs. the Amazing French-Canadians. “Harlem Heat Match Finish” kicks in with Sherri accidentally getting rolled into the ring and stomping around like a child for … several minutes, but we miss almost all of it thanks to a super important backstage segment involving the Nasty Boys.

The Nasties are not allowed in the building by security, probably because they (1) sold out WCW to join the nWo, but sucked too much and got kicked out before they even joined, and (2) they showed up a couple of weeks ago to ruin a tag match and more or less declare themselves free agents. As they’re being thrown out, the camera lingers and sees them get pulled to the side by a random crackhead. Sorry, that’s Brutus Beefcake. If you’ll recall, Beefcake is the only other person to try to join the nWo and get turned down. If you’re like, “wow, I don’t remember a Nasty Boys/Booty Man anti-nWo squad,” don’t worry, it doesn’t go anywhere. Maybe Brother Booty pulled them aside to buy some blow.

WWE Network

Worst: Nick Patrick VS. Chris Jericho Is Already So Exhausting They Cut The Post-Match

Hour two really is a mess. The next match is Konnan vs. Chris Jericho, with Konnan at his crankiest and sloppiest and the announce team rambling on about Hogan and Piper. The only point of the match is to get to the finish, which is Jericho narrowly avoiding colliding with Nick Patrick, getting dropkicked from behind so he bumps into him anyway, and Patrick calling for a DQ.

Now, you’d expect some kind of big followup segment where Jericho calls out Patrick for screwing him over, and maybe Teddy Long shows up again to argue with Patrick’s lawyer. Instead, they go to commercial, and when they come back they’re ready to go with the next match. The announce team’s all, “wow, Jericho really wanted to get his hands on Nick Patrick, he wanted his hands on him SO BAD, but I guess we’ll find out what happens there some other time. HERE’S MIGUEL PEREZ, THIS IS MORE IMPORTANT.”

WWE Network

What: Juventud Guerrera Vs. Miguel Perez

Hang on, I think I’ve seen this screencap before.

The Shining

You may remember Miguel Perez as one of “Los Boricuas” in the WWF, or as a catcher for the Cincinnati Reds in 2005. Probably different guys. But yeah, Perez kinda looks like Chavo Guerrero with Prince Albert’s body hair, cosplaying as Konnan.

I’m giving this a “what” instead of a Best or a Worst because it’s so out of left field (for the Cincinnati Reds). It’s not Chris Jericho vs. Mike Enos cult classic good, but for a sub-4-minute Nitro debut in the middle of an hour two, it’s about as good as you can get. To put it another way, the match features Juventud going for a hurricanrana off the security railing and getting POWERBOMBED TO THE FLOOR. Miguel Perez is doing this. Also, a Space Flying Tiger Drop. MIGUEL PEREZ does a SPACE FLYING TIGER DROP on Nitro. He even gets the win by dodging Juvy’s 450 splash and rolling him up. Why the hell wasn’t Miguel Perez a thing? He’s off to WWF before you know it.

Miguel Perez. Huh.

WWE Network

Worst (With A Small Best): The Bagwell Heel Turn Continues

The main event is a total tire fire, but we get another great moment in the ongoing Marcus Bagwell heel turn. Here, Scotty Riggs seems to have the match in hand. He whips Barbarian into the ropes, and Bagwell (trying to be helpful) trips Barbarian up. That causes Riggs to miss a dropkick, which leads to him getting Mafia Kicked in the dome by the homie Meng and losing. Bagwell once again has time to break up the pin, but doesn’t, because he’s a combination of slow on the take and disgusted at his own futility.

But yeah, tire fire. To make things worse, Jimmy Hart gets on the microphone after the match and demands that the Faces of Fear be added to the tag-team championship match at World War 3. The Nasty Boys currently have that shot. The Nasty Boys, the guys WCW wouldn’t let into the building a few minutes ago. Those guys have a title shot, which nobody knew about until Jimmy Hart was like WHY DO THE NASTY BOYS HAVE A TITLE SHOT.

WWE Network

Hilarious Worst Slash Ironic Best: He’s Your man

In a great change of pace from the past two weeks, your main event is a Roddy Piper video and Hulk Hogan talking.

Earlier in the show, a fan named “Ken McDade” jumped the railing and handed Tony Schiavone a mysterious package, saying it would explain how Rowdy Roddy Piper feels about the possibility of wrestling Hulk Hogan in WCW. Zbyszko rightfully asks if the package is “ticking.” Schiavone just opens it anyway, because it was a more innocent time.

It turns out that the package contained a video tape of a music video Piper made 4 years earlier, which was “a hit in Europe.” Here it is, in its entirety. Tell me what you think it means:

1. It means Roddy Piper wants to have monogamous sex with Hulk Hogan, right?
2. Did Piper send this in via a random barrier-jumping fan? Wasn’t Bischoff just in Oregon trying to get him to agree to the match? Couldn’t he have, I don’t know, said “yes” or “no?” Did the answer have to be communicated via early-90s music television?
3. Roddy Piper seems like a great boyfriend
4. For Hulk Hogan
5. So they’re wrestling?

Join us next week, when the Wrestling Boot Band delivers a thinly-vieled threat to Piper.