Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Raven and Diamond Dallas Page went to MTV Live to run an angle in front of Caron Daly and the Foo Fighters, Rowdy Roddy Piper’s back as commissioner to call you all a bunch of gays, and Scotty Steiner airbrushed “Big Poppa Pump” onto his singlet for the first time.
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 and all the episodes of Thunder on the Best and Worst of Thunder. 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. These are my favorite things in the world to write, and now we’ve made it to the best promo that isn’t actually a promo of all time.
Up first, let’s make sure we’re covered for our Thursday night content.
The One-Page Thunder Recap For March 26, 1998
In last week’s Nitro column we tried the first one-page WCW Thunder report, to save time by having me not have to write 2,000 words about two hours of basically nothing. Plus, when I get to the end of Nitro, maybe I can go back and write up all the Thunders in full. That would be fun/awkward!
What You Need To Know About This Week’s Thunder
- if you’d like to watch it, click here
- the best story of the week is Eddie Guerrero’s continuing quest to make sure his nephew Chavo loses his mind. On Thunder he finds out Chavo has a Television Championship shot against Booker T (somehow), and since Chavo has to do whatever he says, he takes Chavo’s title shot for himself and subs the poor kid into his own scheduled match with Chris Benoit. Chavo loses to Benoit (badly), then refuses to help Eddie cheat in the TV title match and gets him disqualified. YOU ARE NOT HELPING YOUR CASE WITH GRANDMA, CHAVITO.
- Prince Iaukea defeated La Parka, which I’ll talk about a little more in the Nitro write-up
- Goldberg pinned Jerry Flynn. Who knew he could do THAT?
- We get confirmation that Raven has officially stolen the United States Championship from Diamond Dallas Page — he nabbed it after DDT’ing him through a decorative TV tray at MTV Live — and is declaring himself U.S. Champ.
- the most important thing that happened on Thunder in terms of dragging out the New World Order story forever and ever Amen is more dissension between Hollywood Hogan and Kevin Nash. Nash is increasingly offended by Hogan assuming he’s the leader of the group, when the “heart and soul” is the Wolfpac. Believe it or not, this actually ends up leading somewhere, and continues on Nitro. Here, he teams up with Hogan to take on Lex Luger and Sting, which ends with Mystery Beefcake running in for a DQ and an nWo beatdown. Hope that doesn’t happen two more times this week!
And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for March 30, 1998.
Worst: Rowdy Roddy Piper Is Even Less Coherent Than Usual
This week’s show opens with a real barn-burner: High Voltage vs. Mike Enos and Wayne Bloom. The crowd is chanting “boring” before the opening match even begins, and WCW pulls a 911 — the ECW version, not 9/11 — by having The Giant show up to unceremoniously end the match with a bunch of Aah The Chokeslams. That brings out Rowdy Roddy Piper to cut a promo about the upcoming (nana nana nana nana nana nana nana nana) bat match, and it’s bad, even for a WCW Piper promo.
Instead of breaking this down phrase by phrase, I’m just going to type what Piper says about The Giant verbatim. It’s like he put on a scuba mask and did a bunch of whippets before locking himself in Alcatraz to write this.
“I got me a mean giant now! I got me a giant, I got this guy dating Sweaty Betty, I got this guy going out dancing with polar bears, I got him eating villagers, I got me a mean giant for a bat match!”
I remember when America Ferrera got cast in the U.S. version of Sweaty Betty. I’m glad they retooled that show. And since I’m such a stan for Veronica that I’m gonna start shading Archie Andrews for his ongoing romantic issues with Sweaty Betty. Sweaty Betty? Did Piper get an idea for this promo doing a tarot card reading with a deck of Garbage Pail Kids stickers? Dancing with polar bears? EATING VILLAGERS? Did Piper clear out the rest of Alcatraz by having Big Show and his gorgeous head of hair wander around the island eating people like No Face?
Piper also makes sure to mention that Nash and Hogan had to “sign a prenuptial agreement” to be tag team partners, because they’re “ex-lovers, former lovers, now lovers.” He also wears a Chicago Cubs hat to the ring, so he’s really filling out my Boo This Man bingo card.
Piper’s big announcements are that:
- Sting and Lex Luger will face Kevin Nash and a partner of Nash’s choosing, but the partner can’t be Hogan, because
- Hollywood Hogan will go one-on-one with (get this) Rowdy Roddy Piper
- please don’t try to guess how both of these matches end
- WCW is definitely not feeling any pressure from WrestleMania XIV, nope
He also finally reveals that the mysterious bearded man who keeps showing up to ruin everybody’s matches is the former Brutus Beefcake, and more importantly the former ZODIAC, “E. Harrison Leslie.” Big shock that Piper would put such an emphasis on Leslie. Hogan and E. Harrison show up to explain that um, actually, this man’s name is THE DISCIPLE, the “number one man that worships the ground that Hollywood walks on.” So, you know, Brutus Beefcake.
Kevin Nash shows up looking for a tag team partner, and Hogan, being Hogan, explains that, “you’re not using me, you’re not using any of the other brothers, dig it?” Nash is prohibited from teaming with anyone in the nWo because of Pecking Order, and because Nash accidentally kicked Hogan in the face once and refuses to do what he says. Nash goes into full Shawn Michaels “brother” mode, says he’s already GOT a partner for tonight, and that Hogan should watch his back, because there could be “one or many” people standing behind him right now who are about to stab him in the back.
Just want to pause for a second and point out that the big mystery of this show is who Kevin Nash’s tag team partner will be. Kevin Nash, one half of the current WCW Tag Team Champions.
Best: First Do No Arm-bar
Ladies and gentlemen, the moment when Chris Jericho stops being a weird smark favorite and becomes a true legend. The vaunted “I know 1,004 holds, and I wrote them all down” promo. Jericho opens his segment by comparing Dean Malenko’s career to Hanson — “like the song says, in an MMbop, it’s gone” — then defeats Marty Jannetty so quickly that he’s got time to read every wrestling hold he knows from a handful of still-connected printer paper. Chris Jericho … you just made the list!
If you’ve never seen the promo, you can watch it in all its glory here.
The thing about it is that it’s barely a promo. It’s just Jericho listing off holds non-stop, and the announcers deciding to talk over him and send it to commercial. When they come back from commercial, Jericho is still in the ring reading off increasingly stupid holds, and the crowd is SO MAD. The announcers try to talk over him again and start the next hour, but when the fireworks are done, they cut back to Jericho STILL READING HOLDS. In fact, he keeps reading them until he’s physically forced out of the ring, then wanders to the back holding a giant wad of paper yelling about how he had so many more to read.
Here are all the holds we can make out:
1. Arm drag
2. Arm BAR
3. The Moss Covered Three Handled Family Gradunza, which is a The Cat In The Hat reference that eventually becomes an actual wrestling move
4. Arm bar
5. The Saskatchewan Spinning Nerve Hold
8. Arm bar
9. The Shooting Star Staple Superpress
10. Right handed punch
11. (presumably the left handed punch)
712. arm bar
713. [unintelligible gibberish]
714. The Canadian (something)
722. The Jericho Spike (his top rope Frankensteiner)
723. The Jericho Screwdriver
725. The Super Blizzard
Who interrupts the bit, you ask? Well, that’s its own problem.
Worst: The Prince Iaukea Push Is Ruining Everything
If Prince Iaukea wasn’t bad enough on his own, he spends the week more or less destroying everything I like about pro wrestling. Between the previous Thunder and this Nitro, WCW’s worst wrestler:
- pins La Parka clean
- interrupts Chris Jericho’s 1,004 moves promo and makes him leave the ring
- pins Glacier clean
This is the first time we’ve seen Glacier on Nitro in a while, too, as he’s apparently gotten “more aggressive” (read: turned heel) on the weekend shows. There are entire WCW stories beginning and ending and beginning again and ending again while Nitro does the same thing for three hours every week, and we never hear them. Please enjoy my extensive fan-fiction about the time Doc Dean and Buck Quartermain were forced to travel time and save the world from the oppressive Age of Apocalypse-esque alternate future of The New Breed.
But yeah, Prince Iaukea has started doing a northern lights suplex, and that’s enough to beat everybody, even if their shoulders are up (as Glacier’s were here). I absolutely cannot fathom how someone saw a hilarious lucha libre skeleton who dances and murders people with chairs, a Canadian weirdo doing This Is Spinal Tap bits, and a Caucasian ice ninja who is trying to keep his mystical helmet from falling into the possession of an evil collector and his minions and thought, “let’s push the shittiest Ricky Steamboat we’ve ever seen.”
Best/Worst: The Real Eddie Guerrero Is My Favorite Wrestler Shirt Debuts
After a few weeks of wearing an airbrushed version that looked like he bought it at Myrtle Beach in 1988, Chavo Guerrero Jr. shows up for his Nitro match wearing the official “Eddie Guerrero Is My Favorite Wrestler” shirt we all remember. You can even buy it on Pro Wrestling Tees if you want.
I give this a half Worst because Chavito’s opponent is Kaz Hayashi, a week removed from being taken to a school full of woodsheds by Chavo’s uncle Eddie. If you missed last week’s column, Eddie pulled a Cole/Ricochet on poor Kaz and then hit him with the most gruesome-looking backbreaker I’ve ever seen. I guess Hayashi doesn’t know how to wrestle on Nitro without killing himself yet, so he goes for this:
Good lord, that was almost a pop-up Ganso Bomb. Don’t worry, Kaz, you’ll figure it out. This is only your third Nitro match. It took Chris Jericho like two years to stop almost killing himself every time he wrestled.
Best: Hard Times For DDP
The Chicago crowd loves exactly two wrestlers on this show: Goldberg, because of course, and Buff Bagwell. Bagwell gets treated like Stone Cold Steve Austin for some reason in his match against Raven, and it’s briefly amazing. Unfortunately, Diamond Dallas Page shows up in the crowd a la The Shield about a minute in and chases Raven off, trying to reclaim his United States Championship. Buff wins by count-out, claims that Raven was just scared of him, and that Raven was lucky he wrestled with a shirt on when he’s in the ring with Buff Daddy. Okay, I love you too, Buff. Even if you definitely helped give me an eating disorder.
Page stops at the announce table to explain his actions, and cuts a promo that finally, explicitly ties Raven’s WCW history as Scotty Flamingo (and his WWF time as Johnny Polo) into his lore. He calls Raven “Scotty,” and explains that while Raven complains a lot about having a bad childhood and being ignored by his father, he actually grew up in a giant house with a ton of money and got everything he wanted. He’s just a spoiled rich kid, which we later learn is absolutely true in the legendary What A Mark series of videos. He explains that they used to be friends, both trained under “The Snake” (who is called “Jake” for the first time … don’t worry, he’s not ever actually showing up for some reason), and that um actually HIS life was much tougher than Raven’s. But you don’t hear him complaining!
He also launches into an ersatz Hard Times promo about how real hardships are going to a 9 to 5 job you hate, or being a mom “whose old man ran out on her, and her two three kids.” It’s pretty good, but not even in the ballpark of Dusty, and hurt a little by Tony Schiavone doing the fat guy resting his arms on his stomach stance in the background the entire time.
This Week’s Random Celebrity Guest
It’s none other than IRWIN MANDEL, then-CFO of the Chicago Bulls and the secret weapon of the organization that made sure every second or third Starter Jacket you saw had a Bulls logo on it in the ’90s. He spent 43 years with the organization and signed everybody’s checks, so we can assume he’s here to scout the New World Order and see which color logo Dennis Rodman will be wearing when he shows up again in the summer.
I’m legitimately sad Michael Jordan never made an appearance on one of these wrestling shows. I just want to photoshop him being kissed on the face by a cartoon Hulk Hogan from Rock ‘n’ Wrestling.
Worst: Do You Realize Bret Hart Was SCREWED?
Bret Hart: I’m making 2 million a year, should I be wrestling in matches?
WCW: no, just say you were screwed
Bret: but I already said that
WCW: yeah but do it again
WCW: until we tell you to stop
WCW: which will be never
You know how every WCW show for months has featured the members of what used to be the Hart Foundation getting beaten up by Curt Hennig and Rick Rude until Bret Hart runs down to make the save? And how weird it is that even when Bret’s in the ring with them, they don’t act like they’re friends or know each other? And how Bret doesn’t actually wrestle in matches, he just shows up in street clothes and tells us how the World Wrestling Federation screwed him?
Yeah, we’re doing that again. Still. The highlight is 100% Jim Neidhart selling being choked by Rick Rude’s belt by bugging out his eyes like he’s on Mars at the end of Total Recall. He’s even the same color!
Worst: NOT MY STAGGER LEE
The 1-800-COLLECT road report is long gone, now replaced by the STARBURST FRUIT CHEWS ON THE ROAD report. How dare they? It features, “Scott Hudson, bringing you the great news,” which makes it less of a Lee Marshall local culture plus weasel joke fest and more of a missionary knocking on your door to say Hollywood Hogan has a plan for you. I’m going to start dialing 10-10-220 out of spite.
Also On The Show
If you ever wanted to see Lou Ferrigno smack the holy spirit out of Michael Jackson, El Dandy vs. Juventud Guerrera is the match for you.
Fit Finlay took a hard submission loss to Perry Saturn in one of those hard-hitting mid-card heel vs. mid-card heel matches you think are boring when you’re a kid, but are all about when you’re watching them on the Network 20 years later.
Last week, Chris Benoit and Booker T fought to a television time-limit draw that was supposed to be 10 minutes, but was actually more like 7. They ring the bell for this one just shy of the 9-minute mark. Getting closer!
Like every Benoit feud in WCW, the matches are good, but Benoit never, ever seems to win. They just went through an entire United States Championship feud where Benoit upped Diamond Dallas Page and Raven’s games, and now he’s in here with Booker T, and soon to be Fit Finlay. He’s still not ending up as champion, though. You know, I favor WCW over WWE for most things, but WWE took Benoit’s “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” thing and actually made it part of the story, setting up one of the best pre-Crisis WrestleMania matches and moments ever. WCW got Bret Hart handed to them fully formed on a silver platter and had him complain at the end of a bunch of British Bulldog matches instead of wrestling.
William Scott Goldberg handily defeats Ray Traylor to bring his undefeated streak to 67-0, even though we’ve only seen about what, 20 of them? He’ll be at 52-0 on Monday, and by Thunder he’s 65-0. Brother’s just lining up locals and spearing them to pad that record. It’s not that impressive of an “undefeated streak” if 35 of your 67 wins were against Hugh Morrus at house shows.
Still though; Goldberg.
Worst: Guess How The Main Event Matches End
I TOLD YOU NOT TO
Kevin Nash’s mystery partner turns out to be the Macho Man Randy Savage, aka the other guy in the nWo who has been having problems with Hulk Hogan lately. Scott Hall fell into the Springfield Mystery Hole or something. Surprisingly, the blockbuster tag team match ends with The Disciple running in and hitting Luger with the Stone Cold Barber, causing him to pull an Ariel from The Little Mermaid (pictured). Disciple pulls Nash onto Luger for the pin, and somehow the referee managed to miss like 40 seconds of interference and a seven-foot tall man being dragged across the ring.
In stark contrast, Hollywood Hogan vs. Rowdy Roddy Piper ends with The Disciple running in, causing a disqualification, which is kind of hilarious because Disciple’s out there interfering (or at least trying to interfere) the entire time. This leads to a post-match melee in which Kevin Nash comes to the ring to try to pay his Disciple interference forward (or whatever), and accidentally gets punched in the face by Hogan.
Real quick, I want to show you how funny it looks when a 7-foot tall man is holding up a 5’10 guy and “accidentally” gets punched in the face when the guy moves.
Yep, definitely couldn’t have dodged that one. Too much force in the blow! Hogan was trying to knock a giant hypothetical apple off Piper’s head. It happens. The Giant shows up to clear the ring, and Kevin Nash has to be held back by [trumpet fanfare] The Disciple.
Why watch Stone Cold Steve Austin as WWF Champion when you could watch Brutus Beefcake dress up like Dog The Bounty Hunter and ruin everything? The Monday Night Wars are heating up! It’s definitely D-X in a jeep in the parking lot that’s going to turn the tide here, and not one side completely forgetting how wrestling shows are supposed to work.
Next Week:
- the stars of Toryumon debut, giving teen me a whole new thing thing to get obsessed about via tape trading
- Macho Man Randy Savage is mysteriously attacked! Who dun it? My theory: Lars Sullivan
- Goldberg brings the Hammer down
- Bret Hart has something to say about being screwed
- WCW is definitely not running out of ideas
- shut up
