Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Rowdy Roddy Piper orchestrated a series of increasingly naked, increasingly embarrassing street fights to see which three of six create-a-wrestler templates would be on his team against the nWo at Uncensored. He found a boxer, a kickboxer and John Tenta. The trick to joining was to not wrestle in jeans.
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.
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And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for March 10, 1997.
Best: WOO SPRANG BRAKE Y’ALL
Welcome to the first-ever Spring Break edition of WCW Monday Nitro, coming to you live 19 years ago from Club La Vela, a Panama City drink-and-fuckery advertised as, “the largest nightclub in the USA and Spring Break headquarters of the world.” Once a year it transforms into a wrestling ring surrounded by a bunch of pools and hosts 2-3 hours of televised pro graps centered around (1) wrestlers in Hawaiian shirts, (2) everybody slumming it because they’re either already drunk or about to be, and (3) somebody getting thrown into the pool.
I love these dumb things, and Spring Break Nitro is my dream arena for wrestling video games. Bonus points if it unlocks a Scott Hall palette swap that vomits all over itself.
To show you how ridiculous these Nitros are, this is the opening shot:
Yes, that’s the poster for Double Team, the seminal 1997 Tsui Hark classic in which Bloodsport star Jean-Claude Van Damme and NBA star Dennis Rodman team up to kill Mickey Rourke with a combination tiger/land mine attack in a Roman coliseum and save themselves with a Coke machine. None of that is a lie. It rules.
Here, it’s used as a vehicle to preemptively announce that Dennis Rodman (and sadly not Van Damme, or Mickey Rourke) has joined the New World Order. Presumably this is to top Ric Flair getting a cuckolded football retiree and Big Bob Probert to join the Four Horsemen.
Worst: Hollywood Hogan Is A Dork Who Doesn’t Know How To Too Sweet
They announce that Rodman will join the nWo later in the show, and celebrate with a Too Sweet. You know, that loving gesture where New World Order types (or their Kliq ancestors) make wolf hands and make them kiss another dude’s wolf hands on the mouth. On the snout. You know what a Too Sweet is.
Rodman and Hogan don’t, though, and they do this weird thing where they press the wolves’ foreheads together and kinda interlock their ears. Watch it, it’s the weirdest thing, and my new signature handshake:
We haven’t even gotten to the pool yet. This is gonna be a long one.
Worst: Piper’s Family Tries To Top Last Week’s Segment
Remember last week when it took like 45 minutes for me to explain 20 of the worst minutes in Nitro history? Non-WCW employee Roddy Piper wants a WCW sanctioned cage match against Hollywood Hogan (even though he’s already beaten him twice, and been screwed over twice) so he uses WCW TV time to shootfight other non-WCW employees to build a “family” of jobbers that look like all the guys you can’t name from The Moody Blues. Like 20 minutes later, Hogan called them “a bunch of wrestling fans” and totally (rightfully) buried it. This week’s followup segment is necessary to bring home how truly embarrassing it all was.
The show opens with Mongo McMichael and Jeff Jarrett squashing High Voltage to show that they’re on the same page, which is really only notable for how dangerous is it to have High Voltage wrestle near a swimming pool. After that a white limo arrives — pay attention to the subtle symbolism — and out steps Rowdy Roddy Piper. He’s dressed normally, but his “family” is now decked out in tartan kilts and sashes. WITH THEIR GODDAMN PAJAMAS ON UNDERNEATH.
The boxer looks like he’s wearing a Hans and Franz muscle suit under his sash, or like he’s a strongman in an old-timey carnival. Tenta looks like a giant girl scout. Piper says his mother told him not to come to Panama City, because there’s never been so many pretty girls in one place at one time.
In other words,
Piper explains that he’s here to shoot on the critics because they’re headed into Uncensored, and launches into the most incomprehensibly butthurt promos you’ll ever hear. He also thinks that by yelling “uncensored” at the end of his sentences, it allows him to say anything he wants. That includes:
– a bit about how when he was a kid, “spring break” meant one of the springs in his mattress was broken (please, contain your laughter) and that that’s how he “got six kids.” By having an uncomfortable mattress? UNCENSORED!
– the announcement that he’s got “a lot to say about some critics” who didn’t enjoy his weird underpants and jeans sweat-fights on last week’s show. Piper starts shooting on Howard Stern (?), who he says won’t have him on his show because “he’s afraid,” and that he’s criticizing Piper about “trying to give some guys a break.” Please tell me there was an actual half hour of Howard Stern in 1997 ragging on Luther Reigns getting put to sleep in daisy dukes. Piper confirms that Stern is “hung like a pimple.” Mean Gene says the dick is more like a “wild field mouse.” UNCENSORED!
– commentary on Dennis Rodman, who he calls “Denny.” He goes straight for the gay jokes — “It’s a kilt, not a dress, so don’t be pinchin’ my buns!” — and says the most confused old man shit of all time. I’m typing this verbatim, I swear to God: “He has tattoo parts on him! Me, I’m in the middle, folks, I got metal parts on me!” The hell are you talking about? Rodman should definitely be ashamed of those TATTOO PARTS. UNCENSORED!
– a rant about the WWF, and how they claim they have “no one-hipped wrestlers” on their pay-per-views. You might wanna sit down for this one, guys. Piper says that’s correct. They’ve got no one hip wrestling on their pay-per-views! Then he starts actually screaming about how they’re liars, screaming the actual word liar, because he beat up Goldust on one of their pay-per-views once, so “what about that time, huh? UNCENSORED!”
– the claim that critics “couldn’t put a diaper on if you had to,” which is an … insult? I think? UNCENSORED!
Pretty soon this existential crisis nightmare is interrupted by the Four Horsemen, led by Arn Anderson in his Spring Break attire.
Arn helpfully explains that if Piper wants to defeat the New World Order at Uncensored he should probably team up with actual wrestlers, and not dudes he saw pretend to kick a ninja off a speedboat or whatever in his shitty direct-to-VHS ’90s action tapes. He calls them “amateurs,” and poor Earthquake has to stand back there with his mouth shut pretending he’s a Japanese sumo in a skirt and a 5-XL undershirt who’s never wrestled before.
Piper is like, “c’mon, man, these guys are my FAM’LY, I’ve been friends with them for like a week, look, I gave them all starter kilts,” and Flair gets on the mic and screams borderline sexual shit at him until he accepts.
So now Piper’s Family will be “watching his back” at Uncensored, but Piper’s actual team will be himself, Chris Benoit and two guys who’ve been hitting each other in the face with a briefcase over a beauty queen for the past month. Piper’s Family doesn’t appear at Uncensored at all, so all of this has been for nothing. They don’t end up watching his back, and they aren’t there when Dennis Rodman shows up to interfere on behalf of the nWo. Great job, Rod, you picked three dudes who are worse at pro wrestling and general helping than Dennis Rodman. UNCENSORED!
I think my favorite part of the entire segment is carnie ass Jeff Jarrett trying to Donald Trump his way into the background whenever Flair gets a closeup:
That’s the most terrifying Zaphod Beeblebrox I’ve ever seen.
Watch this entire unedited dumpster fire here, if you want:
We get a little clarification on the stakes of the Uncensored main event this week, which I feel like I have to remind you changes every week up to and including the match itself. Right now it’s “Piper Team” vs. “nWo Team” vs. “WCW Team,” in a three-way match featuring teams of four.
– If Piper Team wins, Piper gets a cage match with Hollywood Hogan
– If WCW Team wins, the nWo and all its members are banned from the sport for three years (!!)
– If nWo Team wins, they get a title shot whenever they want
Look at the nWo setting up some low-ass stakes to make sure they’ll win. They could’ve been like, “Monday Nitro becomes nWo Nitro” like they’ve been trying to do, or “we get six Souled Outs a year” or something ridiculous. “We stay champions forever.” “We have the right to veto any title changes.” WCW might as well have made their stipulation, “if we win, we own the moon.”
Worst: Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here
In a rare moment of logical booking, Squire David Taylor challenges Prince Iaukea for the Television Championship to avenge the good honor of his friend and tag team partner, former champ Lord Steven Regal. Taylor is a Blue Blood again, which means I guess he’s done with his weird winter safari.
If you’re wondering what’s going on in that picture — a fallaway slam, right? Maybe a high crossbody? — here’s the scoop. Pun intended. Taylor’s got the match under control and goes for a slam, but totally forgets what he’s doing in the middle, loses all his strength and just falls backwards with Prince on top of him. Prince doesn’t actually do anything to counter the move, brother doesn’t even wiggle his feet, he just remains still while Dave has a brain aneurysm or whatever and collapses. It’s like somebody flipped an off switch. He retains the TV Championship, because Dave Taylor literally stopped wrestling.
Welp, back to hunting emu with drop toeholds or whatever.
Worst: The Death Of M. Wallstreet
The nWo finally arrive on the scene, dropping their “curves and swerves” catchphrase that never really catches on. As they’re walking into the arena … uh, the bar … they discover that M. Wallstreet has been knocked out and is lying on the ground. It’s just like the Big Bubba attack from a few weeks earlier, so someone should ask sneaky-ass WCW-ass Hacksaw Jim Duggan if Wallstreet is handsome enough for him to “do.”
The nWo just kind of abandons the situation, because honestly, do you care about the health and safety of Michael Wallstreet?
Best: Jerky Eddie Guerrero, Or
Worst: You Know What People At A Spring Break Wrestling Show At A Bar Wants To See? Jim Powers
Up next, Eddie Guerrero faces human M.U.S.C.L.E. figurine Jim Powers. Dean Malenko is on commentary putting over what a secret scumbag Eddie is, which is great given our knowledge that he only becomes a huge superstar once he embraces how much he loves to lie, cheat and steal. Eddie had an awkward finish with Ultimo Dragon last week with his feet in the ropes by accident, and they play off it this week by having him go for a pin with his legs under the ropes. Teddy Long (dressed like Retirement Mark Henry) gets on the apron to complain, so Eddie pushes Powers into him and rolls him up for the win. After the match, Eddie cuts a promo and Powers goes back to doing what he does best, which I imagine is “crying during the bench press.”
Eddie’s promo is honestly pretty great, and points out that while Dean Malenko says Eddie’s the wrestler who’s changed, he’s not the one calling himself “new and improved” or kicking and punching and choking folks uncharacteristically. He’s just sick of how things work in WCW, and is dealing with it. DON’T YOU BRING LOGIC ONTO THIS PROGRAM, EDUARDO.
Best: Larry Zbyszko’s Thoughts On Spring Break
In what might be a perfect moment, Tony Schiavone is like, “go ahead, Larry, tell us what you think about Spring Break.” Tony is secretly savage. Larry’s thoughts: “There’s just too many kids here for my enjoyment, I mean the golf courses are CRAMMED with HACKERS.” Perfect. I know “hacker” is golf slang for somebody who sucks at golf, but I want to imagine Larry not being able to sink a putt because Zero Cool and Acid Burn are breaking into The Gibson between him and the hole. Tony’s like, “LOL, you’re old.” Tony knows what the kids like. Tony likes KISS!
Worst: Club La Vela Gets Overloaded
Diamond Dallas Page defeats Craig Pittman in the Pitbull’s final Nitro appearance — Sergeant Roc, we hardly knew ye — and tries to cut a promo on the Macho Man. If you’ll remember, Savage attacked him from behind two weeks ago and did baby’s first threatening spray-paint on his back. I say “tries,” because somewhere in the middle of it the lights go out and the microphone dies.
IT’S SABU! IT’S SABU! THE … wait, that’s the other show.
Best: Power Rangers In The Loss Galaxy
Welcome back to the homie GALAXY, who gets his second Nitro match following his humiliating loss to Patriotic Cross-eyed Harambe Jim Duggan. This time out he looks a little less like the Megazord, and a little more like Japanese architecture.
If you’re wondering how he does in the ring this time out, here’s another complete list of moves. Galaxy goes for:
1. one (1) full nelson, transitioned into … uh, the same full nelson, countered
2. one (1) hammerlock, also countered
3. one (1) shoulder to the stomach, transitioned into a rope walk, transitioned into him falling onto his own balls
4. one (1) clothesline, successful (hey, congratulations!)
5. one (1) moonsault, missed (aw)
Mysterio quickly shuts him down with a hurricanrana through the legs, and that’s that. This is Galaxy’s final Nitro appearance as well, but don’t worry; he returns in a couple of months as his unmasked and face-painted alter ego, Damian 666. He goes from outer space to Hell. He’s pro wrestling’s Event Horizon.
The Strange Tale Of 1997 Miss WCW Monday Nitro Spring Break
’90s dorky everyman vee-jay John Sencio makes a guest appearance here, introducing 1997 Miss WCW Monday Nitro Spring Break, who Sencio claims was located after MTV “scoured the beaches for three days.” Once she’s in the ring, they stand with their backs to the hard cam and tell us that Scott Hall, Kevin Nash and Syxx will be “guest torturers” on MTV Spring Break Fame Or Shame. That actually happened, and ended prematurely when a drunk beach guy wouldn’t stop throwing rocks at them and Nash decided to kick his ass on live TV.
Amazingly, neither Kevin Nash Beach Justice nor Randomly Occurring John Sencio is the weirdest part of this segment. Take a look at 1997 Miss WCW Monday Nitro Spring Break:
That’s a beautiful woman, right? Certainly a step up from the Large Marges in the Miss nWo pageant at Souled Out. Her name is Pamela Rogers. Sencio explains that she’s a student at Tennessee Tech, studying education.
Spoiler alert: She becomes a teacher.
If you lived in Tennessee in the 2000s, you may know her as Pamela Rogers Turner, the teacher who was charged with 15 counts of sexual battery by an authority figure and 13 counts of statutory rape for molesting a 13-year old student. I’m not shitting you. She was sentenced to eight years in prison, but was only made to serve nine months.
It doesn’t end there. This lady got sentenced to eight years and was only in there for 270 days, right? So after having served less than a year for statutorily raping her student, she gets arrested again for sending sexts, nude photos and sex videos to the same boy. That got her probation revoked, and she was told to serve the remainder of her seven-year sentence plus two additional years.
And it doesn’t end there, either. Via her Wikipedia page:
In June 2015 she was arrested again in a separate case after her release from prison. Allegedly she conspired with two current inmates to send cell phones into the state prison where she used to be housed.
1997 Miss WCW Monday Nitro Spring Break, everybody. Miss Becky the homemaker doesn’t look so bad now, does she?
Best: Watch For Flying Roadblocks
Before they head into the most confusing match in WCW history to not involve two or more cages, WCW Team — Lex Luger, the Steiner Brothers and gung-ho anti-nWo former nWo member The Giant — get a rare warm-up 8-man tag against whichever four jerks on the roster aren’t already booked and will wrestle for drink tickets. That ends up being the all-star squadron of the Amazing French-Canadians, Greg ‘The Hammer’ Valentine and THE ROADBLOCK.
Roadblock spends this match getting more air than Galaxy, missing a splash off the second rope — pretty impressive for a 400+ pounder — and getting fucking EXPLODERED by Scotty Steiner.
Roadblock is legitimately a better cruiserweight than Prince Iaukea.
Giant chokeslams him to clear up the road and win the match. Afterward, they stay in the ring to cut a promo about Uncensored that (1) never features any of them commenting on Howard Stern’s dick and screaming UNCENSORED, and (2) never quite addresses WCW thinking “everyone in the nWo is banned for three years” is an acceptable, enforceable or believable stipulation.
Best: Open The Pool Gate
You’d think Ultimo Dragon vs. Juventud Guerrera would be the perfect time to send somebody flying into those pools, but nope, Booker Man had to go and save that for himself.
Instead, we get about five minutes of a not-happy-to-be-at-Spring-Break Ultimo Dragon taking out his frustrations Alberto Del Rio to Sin Cara-style on poor Juvy. Juvy eats a gruesome corner-to-corner running Liger Bomb that smacks his head against the ground like somebody dropped a bowling ball, takes a spinning backbreaker that nearly bends him in half backwards, and gets dumped on his head again with a Tiger Suplex for the finish.
Thank you for your sacrifice, Juvy. Sorry you didn’t get to take Galaxy’s gentle failures instead.
Worst: Buff Bagwell Hard Gay
Speaking of “scouring the beach for three days,” Buff Bagwell interrupts a Chris Jericho vs. Scotty Riggs match in cutoff hot pants that would make Shawn Michaels be like, “dude, put on some pants.”
Bagwell and Riggs have a strap match coming up at Uncensored, so of course he shows up here with a strap to set it up. Gimmick matches are always a chicken or the egg scenario. Did he end up in a strap match because a strap was introduced, or did he introduce the strap because he knew there was gonna be a strap match?
Aside from basically having to stare at Mark Bagwell’s burnt sienna taint, the strangest part of this match is that Riggs just DOMINATES it. Jericho was competing for a championship at a pay-per-view just a few weeks ago, and now the Marty Jannetty of the American Males — a TEAM of Marties Jannetty, if we’re being honest — is taking him to the woodshed. I don’t know, I just noticed Bagwell’s little perfectly rolled socks and forgot what I was trying to say.
Best/Worst: Hands On A Hardbody
Finally we have our main event of the evening, followed by two additional segments. Sure!
Taskmaster (and Jacqueline, and Jimmy Hart) shows up to squash Hardbody Harrison, whom you may remember as a guy getting kicked in the face by Glacier back in December. It’s your standard Sullivan squash, with him dragging his opponent around wherever they are, punching them a little too hard and throwing them down steps. Here, Hardbody gets dragged over to what looks like a patio and thrown down the stairs. It was pretty close to the beach, so he’s lucky Sullivan didn’t drag his ass out into the ocean and drown him.
There IS watersports-entertainment, however, as Hardbody takes an extremely fit belly-flop into the pool.
We waited all night for that.
As you may recall, Hardbody Harrison parlayed his pro wrestling career into the sex slavery business, and was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of keeping eight women as slaves and threatening to throw one of them out of a window. He brought them to his homes with the promise of turning them into pro wrestlers, then turned them into prostitutes who were also forced to do manual labor to keep his homes nice.
Serious question: did Hardbody Harrison meet 1997 Miss WCW Monday Nitro Spring Break at this show, and if so, which one turned the other evil?
Worst: As The Worm Turns
The nWo show up at the end of the night and reveal that yes, after saying it was going to happen at the top of the show and leaving you in suspense for two hours, Dennis Rodman is definitely joining the New World Order. Now Kyle Petty will have someone to talk to at their weird hotel parties!
The rest of the segment is just everyone in the group seeming smashed and taking turns cutting promos about nothing. The highlight is Sting standing off to the side with a shirt on his shoulder, saying nothing. Don’t be sad, Stinger, this is quality time that’ll make sure they’ve got your back decades from now when you’re having your balls snipped off by Triple H at a WrestleMania.
(Throw Vincent in the pool already.)
Worst: Speaking Of Seeming Smashed
Here’s drunk Madusa again, showing up to passive aggressively complain to Mean Gene about being “part of the scenery,” and how she’s still not wrestling anybody. She challenges Akira Hokuto again and calls out Luna Vachon, who validates her claim that she’s the number one contender to the WCW Women’s Championship by not appearing on the show. Mean Gene will certainly get all this figured out.
Worst: The Main Event Nothing
Finally — Jesus Christ, finally — the show ends with a Public Enemy promo about how since their scheduled opponents for Uncensored are on Roddy Piper’s team now, they’re just wrestling the Harlem Heat instead. This is the MAIN EVENT of this Nitro. It lasts for about 90 seconds before Harlem Heat shows up, a brawl starts, and they immediately go off the air. Did they like, forgot they were supposed to do this and come up two minutes short?
And that’s how Spring Break Nitro ends. Not with a bang, but with a wait, what?
To recap, this episode featured:
– Dennis Rodman
– multiple limo arrivals
– Roddy Piper’s pajama pals getting ditched in favor of the Horsemen
– shooting on Howard Stern’s penis
– Goldust references
– a power outage
– everybody drinking too much before and during the show
– Larry Zbyszko complaining about youths and hackers
– a Public Enemy promo main event
– the world’s tiniest jorts
– MTV’s John Sencio
– an award-winning child molester
– a kidnapping pimp being thrown into a swimming pool
Join us next week when, I don’t know, Desperado Joe Gomez gets hip-tossed into a volcano.
