Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: A fan brought in a sassy Rowdy Roddy Piper European music video from 1992, and we watched it as our main event. That’s not a joke. Also on the show, Sting beat up Jeff Jarrett, the Marcus Alexander Bagwell descent into Hell continued, and I’m pretty sure Brutus Beefcake tried to sell the Nasty Boys blow in the parking lot.
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. Do that. You’re missing a lot of great Jim Duggan jokes.
As for now, please scroll through for the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for Nov. 18, 1996.
Best: Let’s Just Get Right To It, Then
This week’s opening match is supposed to be The Nasty Boys vs. High Voltage vs. Ciclope and … somebody — El Technico, I hope — but it’s immediately ruined by an attack from The Outsiders. When I say “immediately,” I mean it’s a precog attack. The first thing we see is Hall and Nash in the ring with chairs, surrounded by a pile of unconscious jobber bodies. The Nasty Boys look like an unkempt California beach.
I appreciate that we changed up the rhythm this week and got straight to the nWo attack. That’s the money, right? Do we need 10 minutes of Brian Knobbs throwing sh*tty clotheslines before the run-in? Say what you will about pro wrestling becoming crash TV, but it saved us from more bad matches than good.
Anyway, Hall and Nash accost Schiavone and Zbyszko and throw out a challenge to the Faces of Fear, telling the “islanders” to get out here so they can “slap the coconut breath” out of them. Meng and Barbarian respond to this classic heel maneuvering by waiting in the back until Hall and Nash walk by and beating the ever-loving sh*t out of them. They just punch them and hit them with trashcans until they all stumble out of the building. It makes me sad that we can’t go back and restructure the New World Order invasion storyline to actually involve the pre-existing factions of the day, because WCW having to make piece with the Dungeon of Doom and actually utilize a Hulk Hogan-obsessed Satanist’s army of comical super villains and otherworldly monsters as mercenaries would’ve been top-notch. Imagine the Outsiders filming one of those black and white videos in their car, making a bunch of insider jokes and Kliq hands, and all of a sudden here’s a MONSTER TRUCK WITH FANGS driven by a FAT SHARK.
Best: La Parka Is Finally Here
Speaking of otherworldly monsters, this episode marks the WCW debut of La Parka, one of my favorite WCW characters (and pro wrestlers) ever. He’s in that holy pantheon of ’90s favorites alongside Conspiracy Victim Chris Jericho and any version of Ernest “The Cat” Miller.
If you aren’t familiar with La Parka, here’s what you need to know. You know Pentagon Jr. from AAA and Lucha Underground? Imagine if Pentagon was taller and fatter but still a skeleton, and instead of being obsessed with breaking peoples’ arms to please his dark master, he was obsessed with hitting everyone with steel chairs so he could then open the chair and dance on it. That’s La Parka. A weird, chubby skeleton that wants to use seating to murder anything in a 10-foot radius to clear up a dance floor. I f*cking love him.
He debuts here against Juventud Guerrera, and it’s one of about a thousand examples of the WCW announce team whiffing putting over a possible new star in favor of wondering out-loud about nWo storyline minutia. It’s a very good match, although it probably would’ve been helped by being about half as long and letting the guys just go crazy instead of trying to slow down for a local Nitro crowd. La Parka picks up the win, too, which feels weird. As much as I loved WCW La Parka, I don’t ever remember him winning.
Going back through these episodes as an adult, I think my biggest regret is that Mongo had already become a wrestler by the time La Parka came in. God, what I wouldn’t give to hear Mongo trying to explain him. “LEMME TELL YOU SOMETHING BABY, LA PARKA IS A SPOOKY SKELETON MY FRIEND, AND IF YOU GIVE HIM A TRICK INSTEAD OF A TREAT YOU’RE IN FOR SOME SMASH MOUTH LUCHER LIBRE ACTION BABY.”
Best/Worst: Ultimate Dragon Wants All Your Belts, All Of Them
Let’s take a second to point out how dope this episode of Nitro is. There’s a big show-ending angle that matters and changes everything, the opener is LA PARKA debuting, the main-event is Benoit vs. Guerrero and here’s the damn Ultimate Dragon with the J-Crown trying to take Dean Malenko’s Cruiserweight Championship to add it to his accessories harem. I miss you, Nitro.p
But yeah, match two is Ultimo-ate Dragon vs. Malenko. Luke Juvy vs. La Parka, it’s hurt tremendously by the announce team only giving it context in passing while they ask each other what’s up with the New World Order. Dragon has nearly a dozen championship belts, so many he needs an extra guy to walk to the ring and carry a few of them, and he’s returned to WCW to take theirs. It directly parallels the efforts of the nWo. They’re “outsiders” who want to take over everything. Ultimo Dragon is a guy from Japan by way of Mexico who is collecting World Championships like f*cking Funko Pops and they’re just breezing through it.
The match isn’t the best they’d have, but it’s still got its moments. There’s a bonkers reversal sequence near the end that would have Matt Striker on the floor, Fred Sanford-style, that Zbyszko and Mike Tenay are just straight-up ignoring. The finish is a backdrop over the top rope for a disqualification, because we got this deep into a Cruiserweight division in 1996 and still thought, “hey, you know what should be illegal? Going over the ropes.”
Still, there’s probably nothing cooler to me in wrestling than Ultimo Dragon in junior belt armor.
Best: Colonel Parker Becomes A Legionnaire
At World War 3, Harlem Heat is wrestling the Amazing French-Canadians. A barn-burner, I know. If Harlem Heat wins, Sister Sherri gets 5 minutes in the ring with Colonel Parker. In preparation for this, Parker has aligned himself with the Canadians and joined the French Foreign Legion. No, really.
I was trying to put why I love this into words, and I think it’s the fact that if you kayfabe it, it makes sense. Parker is time-displaced, right? He’s an old-timey plantation owner in the 1990s, managing a team of black guys. If we assume he’s from the 1830s, what’s his image of Quebec? The Lower Canada Rebellion. Dude’s done with his same-race interracial relationship and now he’s off to get his Louis-Joseph Papineau on.
I also like that a character who has spent most of the time we’ve known him dabbing sweat off his brow with a handkerchief is now wearing a hat that blocks his neck from the sun.
Worst: The Match, Woof
The Amazing French-Canadians take on the American Males, who are still going through Marcus Bagwell’s slow-burn heel turn and can’t get anything done. The match is terrible because not only is it full of sloppy work and botches, it’s actually written to include them because of Bagwell’s status. So you’ve got situations like Scotty Riggs having to do a big semi-circle to get behind someone just so he can dropkick them in the correct direction to make them bump into Bagwell.
The highlight is this bodyslam, which is the most dangerous unspectacular thing I think I’ve ever seen in wrestling. Jacques Rougeau slams Pierre Oulette onto Scotty Riggs while Riggs is sitting up:
Sorry Scotty, hope you didn’t need your bones and guts.
Worst: In Case You’re Wondering, Sting Is Still Stupid
We’re six days away from World War 3, which is a 60-man, 3-ring over-the-top-rope battle royal that is a great idea on paper but pretty much impossible to watch. They’re building up Lex Luger to be the favorite, putting him over a series of giants (read: fat dudes) and emphasizing how easily he can pick them up. He beat The Roadblock, he beat Scott Norton, and now he’s beating Hugh Morrus. As you might’ve guessed, Lex Luger vs. Hugh Morrus is cold boogers on a paper plate.
After the match, Mean Gene tries to get a word with Luger, which I’m assuming was “AARGHH.” That’s the noise he makes when he punches, or when he’s punched. Before they can say anything, Sting shows up and gives Lex a bat.
Now, the moment itself is pretty cool — it’s the first time Sting’s shown any sort of respect or fellowship since he went Full Mime — but in retrospect it doesn’t make a lot of sense. This whole thing, from Sting’s free agent status to the Crow makeup to the nWo taking over after War Games, is Luger’s fault. Lex is directly responsible. He’s the guy who saw a fake Sting get out of a limo and attack him, and instead of saying, “hey, maybe that wasn’t the real Sting,” threw the real Sting under the bus. When Sting showed up and said YOU KNOW I WAS IN JAPAN, THAT WAS A FAKE NWO STING, Luger called him a liar and told him to f*ck off. The good news: Crow Sting is still Sting, which means he’s dumber than a sack of sh*tty bricks and can’t stop aligning himself with assholes who are about to hurt him.
I kinda wish the next month of WCW was just Luger running around killing people with an indestructible baseball bat.
Best: Foreshadowing
This is super-secretly one of the best segments of the year.
Last week, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash offered Diamond Dallas Page a spot in the New World Order. He refused, offended that they’d waited this long to ask him, and said he had no interest in being the 8th most important guy on the team. They tell him they waited this long to set things up and protect him, because he’s next door neighbors with Eric Bischoff. DDP takes that personally, because he got where he is through hard work (and a great finisher) and not because of his connections. The nWo tell him he doesn’t get it and bail.
This week, DDP gets interviewed again, and once again the nWo show up. This time it’s Hall, Nash, Syxx and The Giant. They make the same offer and Page turns them down again, bringing up the Bischoff comments. Hall and Nash start in again about how he doesn’t get it, and how something big’s gonna happen later in the night. Syxx gets it. The Giant says he doesn’t understand why they don’t just beat the sh*t out of Page like they do everyone else, and they tell him he doesn’t get it, either.
You see — 20-year-old spoiler alert incoming — this is the night Eric Bischoff joins the nWo. Well, makes it official. He’s been working with the nWo all along, which is why they’ve gotten so many inexplicable opportunities, why WCW’s always so disjointed in their fear of invasion, and why everything seems to go the nWo’s way. Hall and Nash weren’t saying DDP got here because of Bischoff, they were protecting the secret. They knew the news was about to drop whether what happened later in the night happened or not, and the timing was finally right to bring him on board. The Giant doesn’t know about any of this, because he’s always been out of the loop. Remember when he joined? He tries to cut a promo about it and Hogan keeps cutting him off. That all comes full circle soon when we find out how unimportant Giant is to the clique, and how they’re just using him because he’s a stupid, gigantic weapon. Hogan always hated him, which brings 1995 history back around.
This is so good.
Worst: That Era Where Ric Flair Was Bizarrely Out Of Touch And Wore Cosby Sweaters
Jeff Jarrett wrestles Bobby Eaton, and it looks like an Afghan hound beating up a manatee.
After the match, we reach the lowest point in Ric Flair’s professional career. No, it wasn’t the Russo era where they were shaving his head and leaving him for dead in the desert. No, it wasn’t his run in TNA, where he was old and bloody and falling down a lot. It wasn’t even drunk old Flair burning bridges at press events. It was here, where he’s in a sling and a Cosby sweater, insisting that Jeff Jarrett’s the sh*t.
Get your life together, Ric.
Worst: Jim Powers And Big Bubba Lose Half The Crowd
I don’t have much to say about Jim Powers vs. Big Bubba, but look at the crowd. Look at all those empty seats. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more unified expression of, “f*ck it, I can’t handle Jim Powers vs. Big Bubba, I’m going to the bathroom.” Everyone in the crowd should’ve left. Bubba should’ve pinned Powers and looked up to see construction crews tearing down the arena around him.
Best: Benoit Vs. Guerrero, As Always
And then, as if Nitro is apologizing to you directly, here’s Chris Benoit vs. Eddie Guerrero.
These two wrestled each other so much it’s hard to differentiate the matches, but they’re always good-to-great. There aren’t two wrestlers in WCW in 1996 (or ever, maybe) who are better at making offense snap than Benoit and Guerrero, and few who could take a beating as believably. The last time they wrestled they were both selling injuries and were on the brink of total collapse, so this one’s back up to full strength. The finish is Guerrero going for a hurricanrana and Benoit rolling through it for the flash pin, and I love that Benoit vs. Guerrero rarely ends with one of them hitting a finisher and winning strong. They always left you wanting more. When they follow Big Bubba vs. Jim Powers, it’s like a personal miracle.
Great stuff. Watch it if you’ve got 10 minutes.
Best: The Road To Roddy Piper’s House Is Swerved
Finally, the big moment arrives.
Remember when Eric Bischoff went to Oregon to try to sign Rowdy Roddy Piper vs. Hollywood Hogan, and had to call in via map graphic to say he wasn’t getting any traction? It turns out he never went out there at all. That’s why it seemed so phony. Remember when a fan had to sneak over the rail and hand off a package with a Roddy Piper music video in it, and how weird it was that Piper couldn’t just show up and say yes or no? It’s because Bischoff was trying to keep him away, to protect Hogan. That’s why the two weeks after Halloween Havoc were main-evented by recap videos instead of any in-ring confrontations or followup. Bischoff’s been with the New World Order all along, pulling the strings, and he’s worked them into such a position of power that they run the show, whether they “run the show” or not.
Before we find this out, Bischoff gets in the ring to assure fans that he’s done everything he can to sign the match, and will keep trying. He’s interrupted by Piper, finally, and Piper outs him as a liar. As Piper’s making his big reveal — “When you come up to my ranch, tell me, is the road crooked or is the road straight?” — the nWo hits the ring. Piper manages to call Bischoff a “piece of sh*t” on live TV, and the Giant kinda nerve holds him while everyone grabs a limb to keep him controlled. Hogan moseys to the ring, hugs Bischoff, reveals the con and calls Piper a coward for not agreeing to wrestle him. A brawl almost ensues when Hogan threatens to “teach Piper some respect” by whipping him with a weight belt, but police and security step in and separates everybody.
As the show goes off the air, Piper swears he’ll be at World War 3, and that he’ll have a contract to fight Hogan in his teeth. That’s how you sell a pay-per-view, y’all.
