Ideally, Meng selling WCW t-shirts is you reading this report.
Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Sting is back, but nobody knows which side he’s on. He’s experimenting with Crow cosplay, but he hasn’t really gotten into it yet. Also, the major Heavyweight Championship feud heading into Halloween Havoc is Hulk Hogan acting like an a-hole on the set of a 3 Ninjas movie and Macho Man Randy Savage wanting to kill himself over it. Things are great!
Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network, and here to watch Halloween Havoc ’96. You can catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page, and you totally should.
Before We Begin
Here’s what you need to know about Slim Jim’s Halloween Havoc ’96, easily the year’s best pro wrestling pay-per-view named after a small cylinder of meat. I mean, unless you include In Your House: Assembly Line Run-Off.
Dean Malenko Is The New Cruiserweight Champion
If you can’t tell what’s happening in the picture, that’s Stinko Malenko plucking Rey Mysterio off the second rope and gutwrench powerbombing him to f*cking eternal death.
Here’s a link to the complete match, which I’d definitely recommend checking out if you’re in the mood for one of those 20-minute show-opening WCW Cruiserweight clinics. If you need a rundown of the match, it’s Malenko vs. Mysterio, which means it starts really excitingly, ends really excitingly and has about 13 minutes in the middle of Malenko lying on one of Mysterio’s appendages. If you know me, you know that’s my favorite part. Malenko would just straight-up refuse to have a high flying match with you. He’d grab you by the wrist and throw you at the ground and just lie on it and bend it for half an hour. It’s like watching Picasso paint in blue.
The best part of the Malenko/Mysterio rivalry is that for as good as it was, it was never about anything more than having the Cruiserweight Championship. They built it around Malenko stealing Rey’s mask and getting Mike Tenay to write book reports about what that means in Mexican culture, but aside from a fun moment in the middle of the match where Rey gets it back and switches masks mid-ring, it’s just wrestling as hard as possible until the other guy drops. It wasn’t so much about what Mysterio did, but when he did it. You remember what he did BECAUSE of when he did it.
The Outsiders Are Your New Tag Team Champions
The opposite of Rey Mysterio (and somehow still one of my favorites) is Colonel Robert Parker, who teamed with Sister Sherri to make sure that every Harlem Heat match from 1995 until 1997 had the worst finish you’ve ever seen.
At Halloween Havoc, they defended the WCW Tag Team Championships against Scott Hall and Kevin Nash. “Harlem Heat” plus “nWo” equals “Jesus take the wheel.” Booker T has the match won with the Harlem Hangover, but the referee is distracted. Nash steps in to break it up, but Colonel Parker intercepts him. As this is happening, Parker sorta sees the blue of Adriatic Water and the yellow of Algerian sands and realizes he’s toast. Nash makes him hand over his cane, which he uses to lazily hit Booker and cost the Heat the championships.
The nWo now controls the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, the United States Championship (which they just outright stole), and the Tag Team Championships. Things aren’t going to get better for a while. Colonel Parker’s about to get HILARIOUS, though.
Hulk Hogan’s Greatest Moment Happened
The greatest moment in Hulk Hogan’s career wasn’t winning the WWF Championship against the Iron Sheik at Madison Square Garden in ’84, main-eventing the first WrestleMania in ’85, slamming Andre the Giant ’87 or facing The Rock in 2002. The greatest Hulk Hogan moment happened here, at Halloween Havoc ’96.
Hogan shows up for his match against the Macho Man wearing one of his weird, unconvincing wigs from 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain. Early in the match, Savage punches Hogan so hard that the wig comes off. Savage puts it on, looking like Poochie from ‘The Simpsons’ as a giant hamster, and Hogan sells it like he’s in a childhood nightmare and just realized he went to school without his pants on. Keep in mind that Hulk Hogan has been visibly bald as f*ck for like 15 years at this point. His response? To kick the bottom rope in frustration, then run and charge at Savage with the worst double axe-handle in history. Jump to about the 6:00 mark in this video. Heenan’s call of, “HE’S A CONVERTIBLE!” is A+.
THAT, my friends, is the perfect Hulk Hogan moment. Of course, he wins the match via incessant cheating with what looks like a vibrator — no, seriously — and the show ends with like 15 minutes of promos. Take what you can get.
Rowdy Roddy Piper Is Here
So begins my years-long anger at everyone calling him “Roddy Roddy Piper.” It’s WCW’s version of calling Paul Bearer “PAW BEAR.”
Piper shows up to confront Hogan. Hogan almost immediately says, “I know I said I created wrestling and all, but as I remember it, me and you were running neck and neck.” Piper tells him to shut up, then spends about five minutes to get to the point where he says, “you didn’t create wrestling by yourself, I was also there!” From listening to it, Hogan wanted to cut the promo by like 10 minutes and Piper just breezed through it anyway. It’s such a rambling “do you remember WWF” mess that the show actually GOES OFF THE AIR BEFORE IT’S OVER. Piper’s just like, “BLAAHHH MR. T” and they fade the hell out.
And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for October 28, 1996.
Worst: Let’s Open By Firmly Establishing That No Good Wrestling Can Happen
This week’s opening match is Lord Steven Regal (now in classic Bryan Danielson burgundy) vs. Juventud Guerrera. If this had happened on WCW Saturday Night, we’d probably be hailing it as a great, undiscovered gem. Instead, it happens on Nitro — in the opening segment of Nitro, following an already nWo-heavy pay-per-view — so … no. It’s nothing. It’s a wristlock followed by a finish.
Why? Because we’ve got better things to do! The nWo propaganda team starts marching through the crowd, where we find:
Syxx, alongside a guy in an ape suit and Nitro regular Justin Roberts. He’s got a lot to slur about nWo dominance, and makes a plea with free agent Sting to “do the right thing” and join the team.
Wither Sting, you ask?
Why, he’s finally upgraded to his most powerful form — Full-Blown Crow Sting — and makes his first appearance in the “rafters.” He doesn’t say anything, which is great, but allows Larry Zbyszko completely misses the memo and buries the sh*t out of him. “What a pathetic looking soul!” Tony Schiavone tries to cover it up by being all, “I don’t think it’s pathetic, Larry, I think he looks scary!” Larry just steamrolls through it and calls him pathetic like five more times. Imagine JBL and The Ascension, but with the biggest star in your company at the beginning of the biggest and most profitable story in company history.
And, if you’ve already forgotten, a match happens. When Syxx and Sting have had some TV time, Juvy goes up top, misses a 450 splash and taps out to a Regal Stretch. This could’ve been so good, but hey, at least I’ve got a realistic setup for my, “a burnout, a monkey and a ring announcer walk into a bar” gag.
Best: Clenching Your Enos
Welcome back to top secret super-worker Mike Enos, 1996’s WCW MVP. Not only did he have one of the best Nitro matches of the year (out of nowhere) with Chris Jericho, but he was in the ring when Scott Hall debuted and began the nWo story. Is Mike Enos the Forrest Gump of WCW?
Here he gets another surprisingly good match with surprisingly good Diamond Dallas Page, featuring an important plot point: the Outsiders are suddenly in the crowd cheering for Page. If you don’t know where that goes, I won’t spoil it for you, but it turns Page from a guy slumming it in prelim matches with Craig Pittman into a multiple-time Heavyweight Champion. Crow Sting and people’s champion DDP formally start in the same episode, and that’s pretty cool.
As for the match, it’s full of hard work from both dudes and ends with a creative Diamond Cutter spot. Enos tries to powerslam Page out of the corner, but Page hooks his ankles on the top rope. Enos can’t move forward, and when he tries to adjust, Page reaches down and slaps him in the stomach. That causes him to lose his balance and lean backwards, which leaves him wide-open-as-f*ck for a Diamond Cutter. It’s SO easy to cheer DDP at this point. It’s everything good about the RKO without having to pretend that Bob Orton’s preening son with the bad shoulders is literally a snake.
Best/Worst: Jim Powerless
WCW could never commit to making Dean Malenko a thing. He’s obviously one of (if not THE) best wrestlers on the show — and he just tore it up for 20 minutes with Rey Mysterio on pay-per-view and won the Cruiserweight Championship — but they can’t keep him strong. They built to the Mysterio match by having him take fluke losses to meandering nobodies like Alex Wright, and his first match as champion involves him only being able to beat JIM POWERS via referee malfeasance. It’s so weird.
But yeah, Jim Powers wrestles Malenko here, and honestly it’s one of the best Powers matches I’ve ever seen. He’s still all physique and desperate clapping, but Malenko keeps him wrestling and gets something pretty good out of it. Powers hits a big powerslam — Powers-slam? — and seems to have the match won, but Nick Patrick is busy trying to get Teddy Long to stay in his corner. Note: Teddy Long is already IN his corner, has not moved, and is repeatedly yelling I’M IN MY CORNER. Patrick takes forever to count the pin, Malenko kicks out, and a yelling-at-the-ref distraction rollup ends up costing Powers the match.
As for Patrick …
Okay, at Halloween Havoc, Syxx wrestled Chris Jericho. Patrick reffed the match and was biased as hell, because of course he was. On Nitro, Patrick brings out a LAWYER, finally making good on those threats to sue everyone who besmirched his good name as an official, and they all (somehow) blame it on Jericho. This is building to a Jericho/Patrick match, and there are two major problems.
1. Nobody needs to see Nick Patrick wrestle, and
2. Why on Earth would you bring in someone to talk for pre-Kenny Powers Kenny Powers-ass Nick Patrick?
Nick Patrick had accidentally become one of the best promo men on the show, and I can’t help but wonder how much better a Patrick/Jericho feud would’ve been if he’d talked for the entirety of it. One funny note, though: Chris Jericho, most famous for being a crooked “conspiracy victim” during his WCW run, is entering his first actual feud in the company against a crooked ref who says there’s a conspiracy against him.
Worst: I Can’t Wait To Be Alone With My Leader Tonight
Jeff Jarrett wrestles Ricky Morton in a match I would’ve fast forwarded like five years ago, and gets an easy win with the figure-four. After the match, he gets on the mic with Tony and, like Larry, kinda-sorta buries Sting. He says if Sting won’t be WCW’s leader, he’s volunteering to do it himself. Of course, he stumbles over his words in his big declaration of leadership ability and is the living heat equivalent of an unplugged electric blanket, so it doesn’t go anywhere.
These are WCW’s choices. A mopey guy dressed like The Crow, or the dollar store Ric Flair who looks like Edward from Final Fantasy IV fell into a picket fence.
Worst: Nobody Likes The Nasty Boys
The Nasty Boys interrupt a High Voltage vs. Amazing French Canadians match, which is sorta like a power outage interrupting a bout of diarrhea.
If you’ll recall, the Nasties recently tried to leverage a real-life friendship with Hulk Hogan into an nWo membership, but got beaten up for their troubles because nobody wants to hang around with the Nasty Boys. Now they’re out here trying to cut face promos like we didn’t JUST see them get rejected by a squad that accepted Virgil. VIRGIL.
The best part is Knobbs’ reasoning. He says the Nasty Boys aren’t loved, they aren’t even wanted, but they are one thing: nasty. Well, thank God we weren’t calling you The Loved Boys.
Best: Rey Mysterio Clean Up Graffiti
Hey, remember Jimmy Graffiti? He’s back, this time being not a luchador in a match with Rey Mysterio.
For an example of why Mysterio has had surgery *five times in [his] left knee*, check out the finish to this match. Mysterio dodges some stuff, jumps up onto Graffiti’s shoulders knees-first, then flips over all the way and lands on his feet. He transitions that into a mule dropkick, and goes right into a springboard hurricanrana for the win. It’s amazing, but it also might as well be that one scene from Misery. You know the one.
After the match, Mysterio says he’s coming for Malenko, but that’s not happening for a while: Malenko’s moving into a feud with Psicosis, and Mysterio’s on a runaway mine train headed into the cavern floor that is Trying To F*ck With The Ultimo Dragon.
Best: Guerrero Vs. Benoit, In Any Form
Here’s an interesting one: Eddie Guerrero has a match with Chris Benoit, with the story being that they’re both severely injured and shouldn’t be wrestling. Guerrero has busted up ribs and Benoit got jumped by the Dungeon of Doom at Halloween Havoc, so it’s built around both men having great intestinal fortitude, but not a lot of physical endurance. It’s weird. Honestly, any form of Benoit vs. Guerrero is good, and these little anomalies where a modifier pops up and changes the dynamic makes it compelling.
That said, we’re back into that whole “Kevin Sullivan booking his own divorce” story from the late spring. If you aren’t familiar with that, Kevin Sullivan booked a story where his wife left him for Chris Benoit, while his wife was actually leaving him for Chris Benoit. That resulted in a lot of really violent matches full of actual punching and actual slamming bathroom stall doors on each others’ heads, which seemed super cool until a decade later when peoples’ brains stopped working and, you know, murders occurred. It’s the absolute most uncomfortable thing to write about in mid-90s WCW, so I’m just gonna say “I wish we could’ve watched the match instead of devoting half of it to the flaming gun-metal picture-in-picture” and move straight into the “Lex Luger’s an idiot” material.
Note: former NBA star A.C. Green is in the crowd for this, and he earns points for appearing as a notable guest in the crowd for both an episode of Nitro and multiple episodes of Lucha Underground. Celebrities who actually like wrestling and aren’t just there to promote a thing and pretend, y’all!
Worst: Lex Luger’s An Idiot
The main event of the show is Lex Luger vs. Booker T. That’s not really a barn-burner in and of itself, but the finish is Harlem Heat-levels of ridiculous.
Luger has Booker beat, and is about to put him in the Torture Rack. Instead of doing the move and winning, Luger is suddenly struck by feeling that Sting — who has spent the entire show watching from the crowd — is somewhere in the crowd, watching him. Spooky! Luger leaves out through the crowd to try to catch him, but Sting just kinda turns around and leaves and Luger loses by count-out. Great match strategy, Lex.
Worst: Wait, There’s Also This
Finally, we end the show with a recap of the entire Hogan/Piper segment from Halloween Havoc, plus an extra 5-10 minutes of Hogan live in the ring, rewriting history as it happens. He throws the Macho Man under the bus (because they weren’t sure Macho was ever coming back) and says that Piper is afraid of him, and the big payoff is Ted DiBiase giving Hogan permission to “entertain us.” That’s just Hogan posing a bunch, and … that’s it. No Piper, no Sting stepping in, no Luger wandering back in from the crowd, nothing. Just Hogan being Hogan, as if someone watched Havoc and thought, “you know what would make this better? If Piper wasn’t there.”
Spoiler alert: next week’s episode ends with this exact same segment. They show the entire Piper/Hogan promo again, followed by Hogan saying nothing, again. HURRY UP WITH THE STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN STUFF, RAW.
