The Best And Worst Of nWo Monday Nitro 12/22/97: Head Game Strong

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Bret Hart finally made his WCW debut, Ric Flair got humiliated in front of his hometown crowd (again), and referee Randy Anderson chokeslammed a fan and tried to rip off their face. It was great.

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.

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And now, the Best and Worst of (nWo) Monday Nitro for December 22, 1997.

Worst: The nWo Jumps The Shark

I’ve been so worried about writing up Starrcade ’97 that I forgot it was prefaced by something even worse: nWo Monday Nitro.

In one of the worst decisions of the Monday Night War — somewhere alongside the fingerpoke of doom, WCW Heavyweight Champion David Arquette and deciding Sable was better than Sunny — WCW transforms Monday Nitro into “nWo Monday Nitro” for the second half of the show. In real time.

Turning the show into “nWo Nitro” should’ve been an instantaneous thing, but we’re forced to watch them physically dismantle the set, hand out nWo “crew” t-shirts to all the NPCs and hang new signage for like half an hour with nothing happening. Nobody from WCW steps in to stand up for the show. Nobody’s brave enough to like, knock the STAFF shirt out of Konnan’s hand. We don’t even have a commercial break for most of it, we just watch a roadie crew take down the set and put up a new one. Like, imagine if you bought a ticket to PWG or whatever and they were like, “we haven’t put the ring together yet, so you’re gonna have to sit quietly and watch us do that first.”

The point of this (for two hours) is that the nWo has “taken over,” which is pretty insane considering they’ve just spent a month building Eric Bischoff vs. Larry Zbyszko for control of Nitro. What’s stopping the nWo from just doing it anyway? Nothing, clearly.

Bischoff gives Hogan a brand new motorcycle with a Hollywood Hulkster face airbrushed on it, a WCW World Heavwyeight Championship replica ring (which reminds me of Cody Rhodes in Ring of Honor even before Hogan declares it a cease-and-desist-avoiding “triple sweet”) and, perhaps best of all, a convertible stretch limousine featuring a butler, a candelabra, and a heart-shaped hot tub with two exclusive “nWo Nitro Girls.”

There are, in total, three lengthy segments about Hulk Hogan getting Christmas presents. And again, just to say it, if the idea behind this was, “get everyone to hate Hogan’s guts and wish he was dead,” and the followup at Starrcade was, “Sting shows up, obliterates Hogan in like 30 seconds, Scorpion Death Drops and pins him to end this nonsense,” sure, it’s purposeful and great. As you know, that’s not what happens. So they give us three Hogan Christmas present segments and tell us how great Hogan is over and over again to set up … Hogan pinning Sting clean, Sting and Bret Hart making up a conspiracy that was supposed to happen but didn’t actually, and everyone changing the channel.

According to reports, about a quarter of the audience changed the channel to Raw while the nWo was calmly redecorating and giving Hogan vehicles, and Nitro lost the hour. During the go-home show for Starrcade ’97, their biggest show of all time. As a whole, Nitro only beat Raw in the ratings 3.5 to 3.1, the closest margin since six months earlier. And wait until you see how it ends!

At the end of the night, Hogan shows up to get one final present … only, this one’s not from Eric Bischoff! So out comes Bret Hart riding in the back of the Hogan Love Machine with the nWo Nitro Girls, and Hogan’s like, “ah! Of course it’s a Christmas present from my good friend and nWo member BRET HART! It’s probably a thank you card for me defending his honor against Yokozuna at WrestleMania IX!” I mean, not exactly. You know how Hogan sounds.

So he opens the mysterious present, and … mysterious present and … mysterious present AND ….

I haven’t seen package this shocking since the last time Alex Wright wrestled.

Hogan’s final Christmas present is a HOLLYWOOD HOGAN MANNEQUIN HEAD, which he sells by like, trotting in place in fear instead of having the normal reaction any dude with like 500 action figures at this point would have: “Is this a big me head? Ha, what? Why?”

The best/worst part here is that Sting shows up on the top of the entrance for the second week in a row, and for the second week in a row is only appearing when there’s like 20 seconds left in the show and he’s not helping anybody. Sting, brother, you wanna show up and do this shit like 90 minutes ago, and save us from nWo Monday Nitro? But yeah, Hogan is frozen in fear, giving Sting enough time to set up a zip-line and slowly, threateningly zip into the ring. He’s moving so slowly the show goes off the air before he’s actually in the ring. Look at this:

I swear, if Hogan had just thrown the head at him as he was gradually zipping in I would’ve lost my shit. Such a missed opportunity. Just bean dorky Sting in the dome with a fake Hulk Hogan head and knock him like seven feet down onto the cement. Starrcade is canceled.

I just want to helpfully remind you that this is like two hours of the final three-hour go-home for the biggest show in the history of the company. It takes two out of three hours for them to change the set, lavish Hogan with praise for three segments, present him with the head of one of those giant action figures they put on the bottom shelf at Walmart that nobody but stupid kids want — seriously, they make a maximum of two wrestlers that size, are you having fun having to move around child-sized mannequins to play wrestling? — and then Vacation Action Sting takes a leisurely zip down to the ring. Nothing happens. And then at Starrcade, something far worse than nothing happens.

Now that I’ve overstated that as much as possible, here’s all the wrestling that happened in that final two hours:

Also Appearing On This Show

Rick Steiner and Ted Dibiase arrive after the set construction sans Scotty, who I’ll assume got misdirected and ended up at a Shoney’s. James J. Dillon is rightfully like, “hey guys, you don’t have to go out there and wrestle, this show is total bullshit,” but Rick says that’s not how he does things and faces Scott Norton anyway. After they somehow manage to blow a belly-to-belly suplex in a Rick Steiner match, Konnan runs out to cause a disqualification.

After the match, Scotty finishes his All-You-Care-To-Eat Family Favorites and hits the ring with Ray Traylor, whom I assume he found crying alone in a Shoney’s bathroom, for the save. This continues to set up the nWo vs. the Steiners and The Big Lost Man for Starrcade, which is very much the Shoney’s of the Starrcade card.

Note: this is probably the best match of the final two hours.

The worst match of the two hours is probably Macho Man Randy Savage vs. Lex Luger. Despite them both being accomplished wrestlers and popular stars with great matches on their resume they never seemed to get anything watchable out of each other, and yet they still wrestled like four times a week. You know the drill with Macho. Luger beats the shit out of him for a while, the nWo runs in, and Savage wins with the elbow.

Just to keep you updated, the past month of Buff Bagwell finding dishonorable ways to win matches and having the nWo run in to beat up Luger all the time pays off at Starrcade, when Bagwell dishonorably defeats Luger after [checks notes] yep, the nWo running in to beat him up. They really thought they’d already won at this point. nWo Monday Nitro is like the guy who starts high-stepping before he actually gets to the goal line.

Speaking of Buff, he defeats Chris Jericho, seen here attempting to have an entrance while Konnan hangs out with the nWo Nitro Girls. Honestly I’m kinda sad they didn’t bring back the nWo beauty pageant contestants from Souled Out.

Television Champion Disco Inferno also loses to United States Champion Curt Hennig due to one of them being in the nWo and the other being the Disco Inferno. The most interesting thing here is Lodi’s Christmas list, which includes a win, more TV time (in which to win, I guess), hair gel, and a Nitro Girl. A Nitro Girl joining The Flock would’ve been a cool idea. Put her in some flannel and a backwards Kangol and Spice goes from cult favorite to cult favorite.

The Flock is actually responsible for the only WCW victory in the final two hours, because they’re in against Members of Harlem Heat and SOMEBODY has to win. I’m surprised the nWo didn’t show up and beat them all up for trying to have a match without a Vincent nearby.

The Flock team here is Scotty Riggs and Lodi, and Riggs actually bails on Lodi and sits down in the crowd to watch him lose to a Big Apple Blast. Whether that’s a Harlem Heat signature move or a flavor of Slurpee I’ll allow you to decide.

So, Uh, What Happens In Hour One?

See how I’m treating this like a 2002 TNA report?

Eddie Guerrero vs. Fit Finlay should be good, and it’s even got an unusual story — Guerrero cheated to help Finlay win last week, but Finlay didn’t ask him to help, so now he wants to kick Guerrero’s ass — but it ends quickly, Finlay doesn’t want to sell shit, and Guerrero loses via count-out when he walks out. This doesn’t go anywhere, even though it should’ve, and really the only saving grace is that Eddie has the “I have a title match on Sunday and this is meaningless” excuse. Although I guess that begs the question, “why are we having a match one of the wrestlers thinks is meaningless and loses on purpose to prove it?”

The best match on the show by a mile (yet not as good as last week’s tag match, and nowhere NEAR as good as the balls-out 8-man classic they have at Souled Out a month from now) is Rey Mysterio Jr., Juventud Guerrera and their naked friend Hector Garza vs. Psicosis, my dude Silver King, and La Parka in his polarized white body suit. That thing looks great until you catch it from the wrong angle (pictured).

Rey puts away Silver King with a poisoned Frankensteiner off the ropes and a hurricanrana through the legs to win the match and get the crowd hype for maybe the only time they get truly hype all night. Then, none of these people appear at Starrcade. Not even Rey!

Also throughout the night they air little highlight videos of all the NFL guys who’ve shown up in WCW so far, from Jim Kelly beating up the Macho Man to Reggie White beating up Mongo. Kevin Greene also gets a mention, and is declared the SACKMASTER. “Our partner is going to sack the world, because he is none other than… The Sackmaster!”

They should’ve given him a blue glittery football helmet. I haven’t seen a man master a sack like this since-

The Chris Benoit versus Everyone In The Flock Except Raven angle isn’t even enjoyable this week because Benoit’s gone through the workers of the group (Kidman, Riggs, Sick Boy) and now must face Immobile Sex Frankenstein Van Hammer. Hammer is what would happen if your junkie uncle traded in the smack for steroids and thought about learning how to play guitar, but never followed through with it. Benoit does well until the Flock beats him up, rinse repeat.

He gets put in the Rings of Saturn and whatever you call “choked out” when someone’s pulling your arms in a direction they normally go. This finally sets up Benoit vs. Raven for Starrcade, which ends up being Benoit vs. Saturn instead of Raven, because your biggest show of the year is definitely not the time to pay off mid-card angles. KEEP THEM GOING.

Last and arguably least is the latest in the Steve McMichael picks a fight with the Faces of Fear series. If you’ve been following along, you know that Meng is locked in the middle of one of his THE MONSTER MENG pushes, signified by how often someone tries to hit him with a flimsy wooden chair that’s NEVER BEEN USED TO HIT ANYONE ELSE EVER. If it’s zero times, he’s normal Meng. One or more times per week, and you’ve got a MONSTER, fella!

Mongo I guess decided to celebrate the oncoming nWo Monday Nitro by completely forgetting everything he learned about wrestling, which is … like, it’s Mongo. I’m not saying he was a little sloppy on his 630 splash, the dude forgot how to hit the ropes and drop an elbow without looking weird. When the wooden chair doesn’t work, he ups the ante and challenges Meng with the deadly Regular Chair.

When that doesn’t work, Mongo scoops him up for the “Mongo Spike” (the Tombstone) and THAT wins. I’m going to guess “it took two chairshots and a Tombstone to beat him” is the story they want to tell, and not what I got from the finish, which was, “having your head sandwiched between Mongo’s nuts and the canvas hurts more than being smashed in the face with furniture.”

And, dear lord, that’s nWo Monday Nitro. A show so unbelievably bad that they reportedly abandoned the idea of giving the New World Order their own show on Monday, necessitating the creation of Thunder so WCW can have a show on Thursdays. There but for the grace of God go we.

Next Week:

Starrcade ’97, the WrestleMania 27 of Starrcades.

Have you checked out the With Spandex podcast with Eric Bischoff?

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