The very first episode of WCW Monday Nitro aired on Sept. 4, 1995. That was 20 years ago today, in the latest example of how old you are, how time passes and how eventually everything and everyone you love will be dead.
To celebrate, here’s a dog in a party hat:
So yeah, 20 years ago today, Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling decided to air a live, one-hour wrestling show on Monday nights as a counter to the World Wrestling Federation’s Monday Night Raw. The plan for the first episode was to put Jushin Thunder Liger in a wrestling ring in the middle of the Mall of America in Minnesota, cross-promote everything with Hulk Hogan’s new mall food court pasta chain and hope for the best. Eventually, the show built up enough buzz to defeat Raw in the ratings for 84 weeks in a row, and change the way Vince McMahon — and the wrestling business, by proxy — did business.
As regular readers know, we write a lovingly abrasive recap of old Nitro episodes every Wednesday, so if you aren’t already reading the Best and Worst of WCW Nitro, start from the beginning and work your way up. Fall in love with such characters as Pepe the cosplaying dog, Himalayan ice mummy “The Yeti,” deadbeat dad Glacier and triflin’-ass, cheatin’-ass Jim Duggan.
Happy birthday, Nitro. You died young and left a beautiful corpse.
Well, beautiful in certain light.
