Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Kevin Greene finally got his revenge on Mongo, Rowdy Roddy Piper continued to be the worst friend in the entire world and Sting came up through a hole in the ring a la the Undertaker to hit a wrestling move on Eric Bischoff. He could’ve just, like, snuck into the ring behind him, but under the ring is the best place to be during M. Wallstreet vs. Scotty Riggs.
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. Follow along with the competition here.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for May 26, 1997.
Worst: Hulk Hogan Without A Mustache
Nitro returns to two hours this week, and since we’re no longer in those one-hour NBA Playoffs pre-show filler episodes, Hollywood Hogan is back as well. Hogan — who is the WCW and/or nWo World Heavyweight Champion despite not having defended the belt since February — shows up sans mustache but with his stubble blackened, presumably thanks to the same shit he used to fill in Macho Man’s bald spot. The weird part is that I don’t think he shaved it off for movie reasons. We saw him with a mustache for the film we thought he was out shooting, McCinsey’s Island, and he’s got a mustache in everything on his IMDB around it. He has one in 3 Ninjas, in case there were reshoots or the timeline was worked. He’s got a mustache in his then-upcoming Commando ripoff The Ultimate Weapon, so I guess he just wanted to look like Fred Flintstone for fun?
So yeah, Hogan returns with a Homer Simpson-ass five o’clock shadow and both (1) assures us that the nWo has looked all over and couldn’t find Sting, and (2) calls out Sting. It’s the Hollywood Hogan OS. Don’t show up if anyone who wants to beat you up is there, and if they aren’t, show up and call them cowards for not fighting you. It’s the kid faking illness so he doesn’t have to go to school and confront the bully of pro wrestling.
If you’ve missed Hogan, don’t worry; he’ll be back at the end of the episode to cut the same promo, after spending two hours convincing one of the lower-tier nWo guys to dress up as a fake Sting. Note that Actual Fake Sting is somehow not available.
Best: The Opposite Of Hollywood Hogan, Or
Best: Super Calo Is Still Out Of His Goddamn Mind
This week’s opening bout is a lucha trios match between everyone’s favorite fat, chair-swinging, jigging Mexican skeleton La Parka and his cohorts Ciclope and Damian versus Juventud Guerrera, WWF ship-jumper Hector Garza and SUPER CALO, the rap mascot with no bones who wrestles in sunglasses. Juvy appears to have lost his luggage and is wearing a Hysteria mask.
Anyway, you come to these Super Calo match write-ups to find out what stupid thing he did to endanger the safety of himself and others, and this week is one of his greatest hits, so here goes: somewhere near the middle of the match, Calo shoots a topé suicida so hard he flips on impact, nearly smashes his ass (and Ciclope’s spine) on the top of the security railing, bounces off some child’s face and lands in the second row of fans. It’s amazing, assuming you aren’t a child who just had a masked stranger’s taint smash you in the mouth at 20 MPH.
The point of the match is to get over Garza, who has convinced the North American wrestling world that his corkscrew plancha is so cool and revolutionary it’ll make him a fan favorite despite him possessing zero (0) other qualities. Note I didn’t say “likeable qualities,” I said “qualities.” The only thing you’d ever be able to say about Hector Garza is, “he does the corkscrew plancha,” and, “his name is Hector Garza.” Ciclope misjudges a diving headscissors because FFS he’s only got one eye, and Garza’s able to counter into a powerbomb and standing moonsault him for the victory.
Join us two weeks from now for a similar match, but with everyone fucking up and almost dying.
Best: That Might Be The Greatest (And Most Sexual) Screenshot I’ve Ever Taken
It must’ve been the 1997 version of a WrestleCon weekend or something, because nearly the entire first hour of this Nitro is international. After the Preceding Lucha we get Psicosis vs. “Triumph des Genitalien” Alex Wright. Wright is still trying to settle into his heel turn, where he’s still just Alex Wright but he taunts more and his European uppercuts hit harder.
The highlight of the match other than that picture is the moment just after, where Psicosis tries a Whisper in the Wind off the top to the floor and gets whispered into the cement. Wright kinda steps over to catch him but Psicosis mostly just grazes the side of his arm. Maybe it was like at Halloween Havoc 95 when Sabu tried to moonsault out onto Mr. JL and The Sheik and forgot the Sheik was holding a sword. You probably don’t want to jump directly at Alex Wright. Because of his sword.
Psicosis wins clean with a guillotine leg drop, giving da churman a hell of a loss.
Worst: Konnan vs. Villano IV
I don’t have much to say about this match, but I wanted to point out how this picture makes it look like Konnan is executing a single-leg crab on a luchador with huge testes. We’re talking tanuki balls.
After the match, Konnan cuts a Spanish promo on Mean Gene where he calls him “white boy” and says he’s not wrestling for the Caucasoids, he’s doing it for “la raza.” I’m sure tu raza feels empowered by your ability to take advantage of a man’s debilitating hernia and tap out one of like 16 matching Villanos.
Best: The All-Right Muta
Hora número uno de Nitro Internacional continues with Masahiro Chono facing the man Sonny Onoo promised would “make him sweat” and be his “worst nightmare,” The Great Muta. If you aren’t familiar with Muta, he spent some time in the NWA in the late 80s and early 90s, becoming a former TV and Tag Team Champion. He was kind of an evil Japanese Sting who replaced enthusiasm with spastic weirdness and happy shouting with spewing mist from his irritated poison glands like a Dilophosaurus. He was amazing, and the reason I got into tape trading when I was nine. I was like, “oh my God, Japan seems COOL AS SHIT, what is even going on?”
Muta is still active today, continuing an unparalleled career that’s seen him become a 3-time Triple Crown Heavyweight Champion, a 4-time IWGP Heavyweight Champion, and a mystical force powerful enough to create an enormous monster sumo baby by spitting mist into the vagina of an erotic terrorist. No, really.
Anyway, Onoo didn’t get the memo that any Japanese dudes showing up on Nitro going forward are automatically in the nWo, so here’s Muta impregnating his face.
I had a reaction like that to wrestling once, when I accidentally watched Fastlane.
Worst: Steroids Don’t Make Kicks Hurt Less
Here’s a picture of Jim Powers sporting a massive cameltoe. You ever been kicked so hard it gave you a vagina?
After the match, Chris Benoit shows up and tells Jimmy Hart he wants another shot at Death Matching The Monster Meng. Jimmy’s like, “LOL,” and instead sets up a match for next week between Benoit and Barb. Not to spoil you too much, but if there’s ever a moment in a Benoit match where you see his brain irrevocably turn to mush, it’s next week. STOP TRYING TO DEATH MATCH THESE TONGANS, CHRIS.
Best: Bobby Heenan Wishing Death On Lee Marshall Never Stops Being Hilarious
Stagger Lee: “Dayton is also the host of this huge air show, it features the Air Force Thunderbirds, the Navy Blue Angels, the Army Golden Knights, but Air Force officials want fans to know that because of the public’s outcry the stunt team of Crash and Burn Bobby and his Wing Walking Weasels will NOT be appearing this year! That is your 1-800-COLLECT Road Report from Dayton, Ohio, I’m Lee Marshall for 1-800-COLLECT!”
Heenan: “… guy should back into a propeller.”
Best/Worst: I’m Gonna Pal Your Pal, Pal!
The nWo’s started in on this weird narrative that Ric Flair is an “old drag queen,” which has got to be them trying to piss off noted gay-panic monologist Rowdy Roddy Piper. They also call Flair a “fluff boy,” which Urban Dictionary defines as, “the guy who has no game and misses out on a shag to the stunt cock … usually plays the emotionally supportive angle to get in but at the end of the day is average looking at best so can’t close the deal.” Are they getting him mixed up with Mongo?
The Outsiders challenge Flair and Piper to a match for the Tag Team Championship at The Great American Bash. Nash promises to make Piper a man of his word and by retiring him, and says the only way he could get put to sleep again is if Piper tied him up in a recliner and made him watch his next movie. Yeah right, Dead Tides was next, good luck ever sleeping again after watching Piper have stand-up shower sex with Tawny Kitaen. Note: link is NSFL.
Worst: I Would Do Anything For Love, But I Won’t Do That
Almost forgot about this. Before Sonny Onoo earned his Red Wings, he was confronted by Madusa about whether or not she was going to get a shot at Akira Hokuto’s WCW Women’s Championship. She says she’ll “do anything” to get a shot, and Onoo’s like, “ha, she said it, she said she’d do anything,” and Mean Gene briefly tries to make it sexual before Sonny reveals his plan: He’ll give Madusa a shot at Hokuto’s strap at Great American Bash, but Madusa has to put her career on the line.
To clarify, Madusa, the woman who jumped ship from WWF to WCW and threw her WWF Women’s Championship belt in the garbage for “real competition” is willing to put her entire career on the line for a shot at a belt (1) that hasn’t been mentioned on WCW TV in like a year, (2) represents a division including a total of three people, four if you count the one female jobber, and (3) she’s the only one who ever competes for. That’s the “I should get implants four times the size of my head” of career planning.
Best: Blood Runs Red
Not much Blood Runs Cold content this week, but we get a fun video of Ernest Miller knocking people out in his full contact karate tournaments, and Wrath squashing Alex Wright’s British friend Mark Starr. After the match, James Vandenberg displays Glacier’s shidoshi’s mystical helmet and is like, “you want it, come and get it!” Giving this a Best because again, no matter how many condescending WWE.com lists you’ve read about WCW sucking, a Caucasian ice ninja was teaming up with an African-American cat-themed karate champion in a southern pro wrestling promotion to get back a powerful Oriental artifact from an evil businessman, an irradiated skeleton in a cape and a timeless Biblical The Great Wall monster in a steel helmet.
Best: Receipts
The Giant wins a 3-on-1 match against the ultimate WCW Monday Nitro jobber trio of Roadblock, Rick Fuller and Johnny Swinger. Swinger accidentally wandered into the match from Mongo and Jeff Jarrett’s key party. Giant wins easily, because of course he does, and he and Lex Luger cut a logical promo about how Luger earned a title shot he’s never gotten at Spring Stampede, Giant earned a title shot he’s never (really or fairly) gotten at World War 3, and Hulk Hogan, they coming for YOU [indistinct].
Note: Luger also mentions that he’s scouting Dennis Rodman by watching the NBA Playoffs, and now my life’s goal is to watch a basketball game with the Total Package and spend the entire time asking him how he’d beat them at wrestling.
Worst: As The Haliburton Turns
Members of Harlem Heat take on the MMF tag team hookup of Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael, Jeff Jarrett and Debra. If you added Colonel Parker and the Amazing French Canadians to this, it’d be the Triforce of bad Nitro match endings.
Kevin Greene shows up to do color commentary on the match, which eventually draws Mongo away from the ring. They brawl under the watchful eye of Security Santa Claus Doug Dellinger, leaving Jarrett alone to take a leg drop from the Heat and lose. Jarrett responds negatively to being abandoned by Mongo, despite being tossed into the ring BY Mongo at Slamboree, losing the match because of it, then running back out to help him beat non-wrestling-ass Reggie White with a non-wrestling-ass briefcase to the face.
Don’t worry, this angle continues for several more months.
Worst: Fake Fake Sting
At the end of the night, Hollywood Hogan and his perma-stubble show up to once again call out Sting. This time “Sting” answers, but it’s a fake Sting … not THE fake Sting, but A fake Sting, because the nWo did not have a dude they paid to dress up like Sting and follow them around for a year. This fake Sting is Buff Bagwell in a bad wig and a Sting mask, so Hogan spits on the canvas and makes Sting “worship the ground he spits on.” You’re gonna get a staph infection, Fake Fake Sting.
As you might’ve guessed if you’ve ever watched wrestling or been conscious for more than 20 seconds, Actual Real Sting shows up, takes out Bischoff again and debilitates Fake Sting with a bat shot to the hip and a Falling Armpit Hold. Hogan teases getting back into the ring and starting something, but Sting reverses his bungee and zips up into the heavens to avoid further conflict.
The reason I’m giving it a worst is because of how long it all takes. Once Sting drops the imposter, we have to get an uninterrupted tight closeup of Hogan’s horrible ink-stained face for like a minute and a half so the cameras don’t pick up Sting hooking himself up to a harness, checking all the safety features and tugging on the cord multiple times to get someone — the Disciple? I don’t know — to pull him up.
We end the night on a massive upskirt, and that’s your show. Join us next week when Diamond Dallas Page ALSO starts wearing a huge black trenchcoat for a mysterious, definitely-not-bungee-related reason.
