Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: The Crippler Crossface debuted, Scott Hall got hit in the face with a thrown soda, and Sting confirmed that he’s once again on WCW’s side. We got to see Ultimo Dragon without his mask, Desperado Joe Gomez and The Renegade are breaking up (no!) and the homie BUNKHOUSE BUCK got to wrestle the Tag Team Champions.
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. If you want to check out the Raw that aired opposite this Nitro, click here.
Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. Things have officially gone crazy in 1990s professional wrestling, and we want to write about it at least until Glacier has to sell his mystical armor at a yard sale.
And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for March 24, 1997.
Worst: The Assassination Of The Renegade By The Coward Hacksaw Jim Duggan
This technically doesn’t happen until late in the episode, but it’s been bothering me all week and I desperately need to talk to someone about it. In a hundred episodes of trifling ass, cheating ass Jim Duggan loosely wrapping his hands in tape to gain super punching powers and brutally cheat-murdering people half his size, this stands out as a Hall of Fame moment of assholery.
Jim Duggan wrestles The Renegade, which is already like trying to eat a steaming hot bowl of soup in the middle of a car crash. They do the cruiserweight division Code of Honor handshake at the beginning, and J-Duggs is so impressed that he immediately reaches into his tights and tosses his Dicktape Of Doom into the crowd.
The important question to ask here is why any fan would be excited to catch a roll of tape that’d been playing horseshoes with Jim Duggan’s dong. Bobby Heenan’s call here is amazing. “Wow. I won a roll of tape.”
Duggan and Renegade “wrestle” quotation marks quotation marks, and Renegade manages to take control. He hits a handspring back elbow and some clubbering forearms to Duggan’s back. Duggan’s response as a man who respected this young talent enough to publicly eschew his traditional method of cheating is to reach into his underwear and pull out a second roll of tape.
We know from the previous year’s V.K. Wallstreet match that Duggan always has AT LEAST two rolls of athletic tape in and around his junk. But yeah, patriotic Bloater Jim Duggan punishes an under-undercard talent for trying hard to win a wrestling match by cheating to beat him in a way he socially promised not to. Holy shit.
Heenan: “Clever man. ‘I’ll take TWO rolls of tape with me!’ What a plan!”
After the match, Duggan once again calls out Hulk Hogan. Hogan continues living the remainder of his life never thinking about Jim Duggan. Honestly, I wish there’d been some kind of payoff, whether it was 65 guys putting the boots to Duggan or the nWo enlisting him as their cheat-to-win doomsday device. Imagine how many cans of spray paint he could keep in his panties!
Worst: The Ballad Of Ineffectual Dean Malenko
Dean Malenko’s first task as United States Champion is to build a wall between himself and Mexico. He faces Konnan, on one of those nights when Konnan completely forgets how to wrestle and walk like a human and possibly breathe, and throws missile dropkicks like he’s slipping on a banana peel.
Seriously, tell me when you’ve seen a worse dropkick attempt than this:
It looks like a cat jump fail.
After the match, Malenko continues to hit the competition with lefts and alt-rights by saying Eddie Guerrero’s in the nWo. We find out that the champion of the United States will face the champion of Canada (Chris Benoit) at the next pay-per-view, Spring Stampede, and that when Malenko looks at him, it’s like “looking in a mirror.” The uh, mirror in the pool house.
So later in the night, Benoit gets a match against Hugh Morrus. The Dungeon of Doom interferes and costs him the match, and they stick around afterwards to Clubber and Lollygag him. Malenko runs out and tires to help, and the announce team is like, “he must want his Spring Stampede opponent to be at 100%!” Also, all that shit he just said about mirrors and respecting him. But yeah, Malenko runs out and gets beaten up too.
That leads to one of the very best reoccurring moments in ’90s wrestling:
Best: Nuclear Ric Flair Cock Attacks
Ric Flair has been out with an injury for a while now, and he’s really ever on the show to wear old man professor clothes and/or assistant coach windbreakers and brag-yell at Mean Gene about how many women he nails and how many low quality beers he drinks. He’s ready to go again, though, and he makes this known via the memorial Ric Flair Super Dick Attack.
Here it is in action:
Ric Flair has trouble beating up one person, but if he needs to beat up four or more at once, he’s got it on lock. He’ll start with punches and chops, and when you get too close, he’ll drop you with a nutshot. He’s got three good ones:
1. the back leg raise to the dick
2. the kneeling uppercut to the butthole
3. the straight-up kick to the dick
He’ll spam these until everyone’s on the ground, then dance about it. He’s basically a Dynasty Warriors character. Flair decimates the entire Dungeon of Doom (‘s penises) by himself, moderates a staredown between future Horseman buddies Benoit and Malenko, then sticks around long enough to cut another Mean By God Gene promo about how Roddy Piper’s a goober for having a family instead of being in the Four Horsemen. Woo, et al.
In retrospect, 1997 WCW’s final assault on the nWo should’ve been sending Luger out to get beaten up by 10 guys, Ric Flair showing up to balls-smash them into submission, Piper sneaking up behind Hogan to put him to sleep (which is the only thing that ever actually works) and Sting running interference with bat shots until Luger’s Limit Break kicks in and he’s able to Rack everyone to death. Instead they’re like, “what if none of the good guys ever won and STEVIE RAY joined the nWo! Oh what if JEFF JARRETT joined the nWo too!”
Worst: As The Haliburton Turns
You might be wondering where Jarrett and Mongo were when Benoit and Flair were fighting off the Dungeon of Doom. You really care about Xhamster’s greatest briefcase-centric cuckery, huh?
Well, Public Enemy has a match with Pew Pew High Voltage. The Four Horsemen don’t really seem to care what happens in this WCW vs. nWo war, to the point they were helping Roddy Piper pursue a personal grudge instead of helping the company they work for stay in business, but they care deeply about the Hockey Stoner Nasty Boys not winning a jobber squash. Jarrett and Debra jog out with the Haliburton and bash Johnny Grunge in the back, allowing Robbie Rage and Kenny Kaos and Ernie Electrocution or whoever score the upset.
The best part is after the match, when Mongo wanders out and wants to know why the hell Jarrett and Debra are launching briefcase offensives without him. His actual quote: “WHAT’S THIS PUNCH AND JUDY ACT GOING ON?” Check out fuckin’ Mongo Steve and his knowledge of 16th-century Italian commedia dell’arte.
Best: Horsemen, Get It
Speaking of the Horsemen, they’re the stars of a hilarious Spring Stampede commercial portraying them as actual horsemen, dressed like Bret Hart in that one episode of Lonesome Dove, riding horses around what’s clearly an amusement park cowboy ghost town. If you ever wanted to see Chris Benoit in leather chaps and a neckerchief riding a horse, here’s your shot.
Watch it, it doesn’t make any goddamn sense. YOU PUSH THIS THING TO FAR.
God, I wish this had actually become their gimmick. Stern ’90s syndication frontiersman Arn Anderson and Ric Flair in a white duster. Although I guess bad things happen when you let Mongo near a horse.
Next Week
Next week’s episode is the first and, believe it or not, only episode of WCW Monday Nitro I attended live. I went to a bunch of pay-per-views and a bunch of Thunders, but only one Nitro. And oh my God, it’s terrible. But my only true regret is that Lee Marshall was pretending to be on a payphone in my area and I didn’t know about it until halfway through this episode.
Worst: Mean, Gene, Potatoes, Tomatoes
Flair’s just back from injury, they’re not ready to blow off the Sting angle yet and Hollywood Hogan’s too busy hanging out with Dennis Rodman and/or filming 3 Ninjas: The 36th Chamber Of Six Flags or whatever, so WCW has no idea what to do with the main events of their pay-per-views. Uncensored’s main event was EVERYBODY GO TO THE RING AND DO STUFF, EVERYTHING’S ON THE LINE, UH, BUT NOT REALLY, and Spring Stampede isn’t offering any better ideas.
The proposed main event is, and I shit you not, the Giant and Lex Luger (aka “Giant Package”) vs. Harlem Heat, with the winner — specifically the person who gets the decision — getting a shot at Hollywood Hogan at some unspecified point in the future. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it DOES ask Harlem Heat to cut promos on Hulk Hogan, which you may already know is magic.
So yeah, Giant Package show up to cut a promo, and the Giant’s got full moose-knuckle and a cut up t-shirt that looks like a bib. Luger has apparently gone deaf due to the pyro and leans into Gene trying to hear anything he says. It’s weird. I bet Stevie Ray gets that shot at Hogan!
Harlem Heat follows this up with a mess of a win against the Faces of Fear, making me wonder why WCW patriots didn’t just repurpose the Dungeon of Doom and ride them into battle with the nWo like Tolkein beasts. It’s mostly notable for this closeup of Stevie’s mouth, which has probably already made you spend at least half a minute staring at it and thinking, “what’s wrong with Stevie’s mouth?”
Best: Karate Fighters
Hulk Hogan would put his hand in this blood and say AH IT’S NOT HOT, because Mortis is here and it’s running cold. Radioactive Skeleton Kanyon makes his Nitro debut against the Lightning Feet of Jerry Flynn, which is absolutely the pro wrestling equivalent of those highlights of Chong Li advancing in the kumite in Bloodsport. All it needed was Mortis doing a big uppercut palm strike that misses by 15 feet and Flynn throwing his head back, spitting up a mouthful of blood and falling off the platform.
Flynn gets in way more offense than you’d expect, probably to keep everyone in the crowd from unanimously loving Mortis. Even today, most wrestling fans you meet will say “ugh, Glacier” in disgusted tones but praise the shit out of Mortis. We get a few move debuts from him here including the original version of the Flatliner — a turnbuckle-assisted Samoan drop — and that great thing he does where he puts his dick in your ear and rides your face into the ground. In retrospect I’m sad he didn’t do a Falcon Arrow, which totally would’ve been called the Kanyonarrow.
Best: LA PARKA
While we’re on the subject of awesome looking skeleton wrestlers, check out La Parka’s incredible goth mariachi entrance gear with an enormous golden skull championship belt. BREH.
He gets a great little 4-minute victory over Juventud Guerrera, and I swear, there’s an undercurrent of, “when are they gonna get smart and push La Parka to the moon? Everybody loves him. Is it now? Oh it’s not now. It’s not ever. But wow, they should really push La Parka. EVERYBODY LOVES HIM.” This is going to happen at least six or seven more times before WCW goes out of business. See also: Crazy Chair La Parka at next year’s Souled Out, or even his weirdly racist dub gimmick. Pro wrestling fans love wrestling skeletons. Mortis, La Parka, Pentagon Jr. … one day somebody’s gonna really figure that out and do something with it.
Best: Everything Dangerous
That Todd McFarlane Spider-Man-looking blur in the upper right of the picture is Psicosis, getting MAD AIR for a guillotine leg drop on Super Calo. These are the two most routinely dangerous and suicide-prone luchadors on the roster slash in the world, so I’m surprised Psico’s not diving onto him neck first, and that Calo isn’t like, scissoring a bed of nails while it happens.
It’s sloppy as hell, nowhere near as good as La Parka vs. Juventud and only three minutes long, but Super Calo could ride a bicycle into a brick wall at max speed and I’d probably love it.
Just wanted to take a second to point out that since Nitro’s in Minnesota, wrestling legend and Curtis Axel’s grandpa Larry ‘The Ax’ Hennig is in the front row to watch a sparkly mariachi monster, a crazy man with horns leg-dropping a rap mascot from the ceiling, and Jerry Flynn getting out-karate’d by a fucking skeleton.
Worst: Hey Did You Know We Still Have A Women’s Division
In case you missed it, WCW brought in the WWF Women’s Champion, had her throw WWF’s belt in the garbage and declare that WCW was the revolutionary force in women’s wrestling, then paid her to sit in the back and do nothing except a Las Vegas wedding cheaters angle for like a year. Whoops!
Madusa’s had a few seemingly drunken appearances over the past few weeks, complaining about “number one contenders” in a division that never features actual wrestlers or wrestling matches, but she finally gets to wrestle this week. Foooor 2 1/2 minutes. She faces Malia Hosaka, a USA chant breaks out, Hosaka forearms her in the throat and gets weakly German suplexed with like, Barker’s Beauty display hands (pictured). It’s not much, but hey, it’s wrestling existing.
On next week’s show, we find out that WCW’s introducing a second women’s belt. For a division with exactly one (1) person actively wrestling in it. Then two months later, that one person loses a retirement match. I’m not kidding. WHERE THE BIG GIRLS PLAY!
Worst: The Amazing French-Canadians Get The Boot
The Steiner Brothers are supposed to face the Outsiders for the Tag Team Championship at Spring Stampede, so they’ve got to prove themselves in WCW’s “everybody cheat and do stupid shit and we’ll see who comes out on top” tag team division. Seriously, between the Horsemen, Public Enemy, Harlem Heat and the Amazing French-Canadians, I’m surprised any tag match ever had a clean finish. It’s just like, MY MANAGER INTERFERED, I HIT YOU WITH A FLAG, I HIT YOUR MANAGER WITH A BRIEFCASE, NOW THE SECOND MANAGER IS HERE, I PUNCHED THE MANAGER IN THE NUTS, OH NO YOU ROLLED ME UP AND WE’RE BOTH IN THE ROPES BUT THE REF’S COUNTING ANYWAY BECAUSE THIS IS THE FINISH, OH NO THE ARENA IS ON FIRE, OH NO BUFF BAGWELL IS A CHERNABOG AND HIT ME WITH SOME WEIGHTLIFTING EQUIPMENT.
Anyway, the Canadians lose like stupid idiots because one hit the other with Colonel Parker’s boot. One of wrestling’s weirdest accepted facts is that holding a shoe and hitting someone with it hurts way more than kicking someone while wearing the same shoe.
Worst: UNCENSORED!
Finally this week, the nWo cash in that whole “challenge for a WCW title any time, any place” thing they won at Uncensored by having the Macho Man Randy Savage face Prince Iaukea for the TV title. That’s overkill, right? Couldn’t like, Big Bubba challenge him? Or M. Wallstreet? They’re more on Prince Iaukea’s garbage level. Booking Macho Man to face Prince is like asking Mike Tyson to box a 5th grader.
Macho Man just murders him, and hits him with one of the most gruesome diving elbow drops you’ll ever see. It’s less an “elbow” drop and more of an “entire body to your face” drop. Macho’s like, “hey brother, I’m gonna jump off the top rope and land in your mouth with my pelvis.” Savage won’t go for the pin, though, because the nWo doesn’t actually want or care about the goddamn TV title, and that cues Diamond Dallas Page to jump out of the crowd and start throwing hands at random nWo-ites.
Eventually it becomes too much, and the show ends with Page and Prince Iaukea getting beaten down and spray-painted (again) by the nWo. The crowd is chanting “we want Sting,” which results in no Sting. Being live to see Sting do something on a Nitro in 1997 must’ve felt like winning the lottery. He doesn’t show up here, and he doesn’t show up next week (at the show I was at) either. But he’s on WCW’s side, we swear!
Join us next week, when teen Brandon gets reasonably upset about paying for nosebleed seats and driving an hour just to watch La Parka job to Prince Iaukea.
