Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: World War 4 happened, and WCW as a whole decided to tread all the water available heading into Starrcade. Eric Bischoff has been outed as the evil corporate head of the nWo, Diamond Dallas Page is mad that he wasn’t asked to be in the group until now, and Sting’s just hanging out and beating up anybody that tries to sh*t-talk him for just hanging out. Things are great!
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.
And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for December 2, 1996.
Worst: This Episode
I don’t know if you’ve noticed any lapses in the vintage reports posting schedule, but it’s taken me like two whole weeks to come up with something to say about this episode. It’s not that it’s bad, really, it’s just the most jobber-squash repeat jobber-squash repeat thing you’ve ever seen. The story with Sting is pretty great, but that is literally the only thing that happens. Everything else is so filler it makes the sh*t inside Twinkies feel constructive.
Here’s a lightning round to make sure I hit all of it.
Worst: “Worst” meaning “I have nothing to say about it” more than “it was actively bad,” but it’s the Amazing French-Canadians vs. Desperado Joe Gomez and The Renegade. How good do you think that is? Even if Pierre Ouellet coming off the top rope with a controlled, guided senton and crushing dudes’ entire torsos was the dopest.
Man, Colonel Parker in the French Foreign Legion gear never got the play it deserved. WCW should’ve treated every country like they did Japan and England. If you are not built entirely out of that nation’s easiest stereotypes, you don’t exist.
Worst: Check out the f*cking Marty Jannetty Players over here. Robert Gibson and Scotty Riggs decided to team up in the ultimate “my tag team partner was a billion times better” tandem and lose to the Faces of Fear. They should’ve added Stevie Ray and Jim Neidhart to the group and really gone for the gold.
I don’t want to throw too much shade at the Faces of Fear, but come on, how exciting do you think ROBERT GIBSON AND SCOTTY RIGGS are? You could tie a bandana around a loaf of bread and it’d be more charismatic than wall-eyed Robert Gibson and Cinemax reject Scotty Riggs. Meng and Barbarian could’ve had a match against Tonya Cooley and a Big Mouth Billy Bass and accomplished the same thing.
Worst: Guess How This Goes
1. Lex Luger has to have matches so you remember he’s a thing, but Sting’s in stasis and the nWo is worried about Roddy Piper and hasn’t really congealed yet, so he just shows up sometimes and f*cks around until it’s time to Torture Rack people.
2. Every Public Enemy match ever ends with one of them bumping into the other and it knocking them out like Shemp tagging with Second Shemp.
How do you think this match goes? Luger f*cks around until Flyboy Rocco Rock accidentally crashes into Johnny Grunge, and then a Torture Rack occurs. Fans love seeing one guy hold another guy on his shoulders and scream while hopping in place, don’t you forget it.
Best/Worst: Dean Malenko wrestles pre-Crisis Billy Kidman, and it’s one of those matches I should get to say something great about … but I can’t, because the finish is Sonny Onoo distracting Malenko for a moment and taking a picture of him, which causes Malenko to be BLINDED AND KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS.
Kidman goes up top to win the match, and then loses anyway. The booking decision here is that since Malenko’s wrestling Ultimo Dragon at Starrcade, Dragon sent his Breakfast At Tiffany’s-ass manager out to take an EXTREME CLOSE-UP of Malenko that results in NOTHING. That’s this episode. It’s like they threw out the script five minutes before hour one, and were just like, “go out there and do some stuff, we’re have the nWo wave at the crowd a few times, it’ll be fine.”
Best, Maybe?: Kevin Sullivan gets an hilarious squash against “Sexy” Steve Casey, aka KC SUNSHINE, WCW’s second-best jobber with a disco name. Sullivan puts on his Boogie Shoes and stomps Casey as hard as possible in the stomach, and he’s forced to Give It Up.
In a post-match promote, Sullivan does a little dance about Woman’s relationship with Chris Benoit, bemoans the fact that they can no longer make a little love, and promises to get down tonight. Get down tonight.
Nothing: Eddie Guerrero beats Dave Taylor with a frog splash. Guerrero vs. Taylor should be great, but it’s about as interesting as a 1-800-COLLECT road report. It’s actually LESS interesting than this week’s 1-800-COLLECT road report, which is Lee Marshall trying to shame the nWo over the phone.
WORST: Hey, remember when Jeff Jarrett wrestled Big Bubba a couple of months before this and won via dropkicking Jimmy Hart’s megaphone into Bubba’s face?
In this followup pile of suspendered garbage, Jeff Jarrett wrestles Big Bubba and wins via dropkicking Jimmy Hart’s megaphone into Bubba’s face. They really had no idea what they were doing in this episode, did they? Is this a clip show? Was I not paying attention at the beginning?
Best: Arn Anderson
Poor Arn Anderson is our first legitimate best of the night, and he’s doing his damnedest to carry an entire episode of Nitro.
Firstly, he cuts a promo explaining why we shouldn’t be afraid of Hollywood Hogan … he’s all image. The old image of Hogan was that he was unbeatable, but Anderson proved it wasn’t true by beating him twice, in consecutive weeks. Now he has to prove that Hogan is beatable, even if he’s surrounded by a posse of increasingly giant ex-WWF guys. He also puts over Roddy Piper harder than anyone in history by saying Flair told him Piper was his biggest challenge, and explaining how he thought that was a line until he watched Piper closely and saw the passion and intensity he brought to every match. He says that Piper’s supposed to be live on Nitro next week, and since it’s happening in Charlotte — where the Horsemen live and breathe — they’ll be watching his back. Awesome. The Horsemen should’ve always, always been the knights in defense of WCW against the nWo. “Horsemen vs. nWo” should’ve been the story from day one. Have Sting pop in and out as the wild card, and have Sting vs. Hogan still be your ultimate payoff. Because sh*t, who has betrayed Sting more than the Horsemen? That’s an incredible dynamic that sadly never ended up existing.
Secondly, he gets a match with Jim Powers, made slightly better by the nWo sitting in on commentary and making toned down but still pretty funny “Jimmy Powers” jokes. Arn trounces him and DDTs him, and the nWo is forced to take a look at this guy who just called them out. It’s deeply sarcastic, but they still do a good job of putting him over.
Thirdly, Arn is forced to anchor a Horsemen interview featuring three promo wildcards:
1. Benoit, who has the speaking ability of a dumb turnip
2. Mongo, who has a lot of enthusiasm but might literally be a dumb turnip
3. Debra, who SOUNDS like a dumb turnip but could cut a great bossy rich southern lady promo if she could stop listing off her pageant accomplishments
Debra spends forever talking about how “Nancy” is going to ruin everything, which ends up being true, then not true, then kinda still true before their story ends. You’ve got to wonder how much different this would’ve been with Brian Pillman around, or if Flair hadn’t gotten injured and been lobotomized into Jeff Jarrett fandom as soon as the nWo got going.
Best: BODIES RUN COLD
Oh, good news! GLACIER IS COMING.
The homie Glacier makes his first Nitro appearance in October in a quick win over Hardbody Harrison, and the new talking point is how “balanced” Glacier is. They’re dialing back on the snow and mysticism and going for “he’s good at standing.” Got it.
If you don’t know much about Hardbody Harrison, he’s a guy who tried to sue WCW for racism, claiming he didn’t get a push and wasn’t treated seriously as a wrestler because he’s black. The problem there is that yes, he was black, but he was also bad at wrestling. Also, he was into KEEPING SEX SLAVES. So if nothing else, consider this Glacier scoring a victory for women around the world.
Best/Worst: Accidental Blood
“This should’ve been great but it wasn’t” keeps popping up, doesn’t it?
Chris Benoit gets a match with Lord Steven Regal, and it starts off f*cking balls-to-the-wall with them exchanging headbutts in the middle of a test of strength. Regal gets busted open, and WCW’s response is to pull back to the widest shot you’ve ever seen. Look at that picture. That’s how you watch the rest of the match. It’s like trying to watch a main event in one of those gunmetal and fire split-screens.
The match itself is still pretty great, but you can barely see any of it. What’s worse, the wrestling being bad, or the wrestling being great but almost impossible to watch?
Best: Sting Gets Symbolic
I remember talking about this with my friends for months. For MONTHS.
Rick Steiner demands a match with Sting, and Sting obliges … only, he’s gotta be creepy emo Sting about it, so he starts the match by dropping his bat and turning his back. He holds out his arms and gives Steiner a free shot, which pops the crowd SO HARD. Sting was the coolest guy in the world for a while, don’t forget.
So Steiner tries to beat up Sting for a while and it doesn’t really work, and he ends up getting Scorpion Death Dropped again. That sets up a second scenario: Sting gives the baseball bat (capable of cutting a sledgehammer in half, remember) to Steiner and once again turns his back. Rick goes to hit him, and Scott intervenes all, “hey Rick, it’s f*cking SYMBOLISM, chill out.” Not everyone is as smart as Scotty Steiner. Sting then leaves to briefly intimidate/challenge the nWo at the announce table, and disappears into the crowd.
You guys are DEAD. Uh, in a year. If nothing weird happens with the referee.
