no that show was in January
Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Hollywood Hogan dropped a net on Sting and Lex Luger — an actual net — which set up a segment on Thunder, which set up a tag team match for the following Nitro. Also, Hogan hates his tag team partner. When Hollywood Hogan’s not on screen, the other characters should be asking, “hey, where’s Hollywood Hogan?”
Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes of WCW Monday Nitro on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page and all the episodes of Thunder on the Best and Worst of Thunder. Follow along with the competition here.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for February 16, 1998.
Hilarious Worst: Hogan Knows His ABCs
Since Thunder, Hulk Hogan’s been trying to get over a new catchphrase. Scott Hall has his surveys, Road Dogg has his “oh you didn’t know” intro, Konnan’s about to come up with a lengthy threatening Spanglish intro, so Hogan’s like, “what if I read off the ABCs of something on every show?” This week it’s the ABCs of people the New World Order are coming after, and just like a website running stories about Hulk Hogan’s sex tape, it falls apart around the D.
The list:
- A is for “anyone that supports WCW,” which is a pretty lame way to start an alphabetical list with W
- B is for “Bret Hart,” who has pissed off the nWo by staying at home for the past month and a half and not really doing anything
- C is for the “corporate gaga” against the nWo. I’m guessing corporate gag is the reason that Freddie Mercury biopic is going to be so bad
- D is for “dummy,” because Macho Man Randy Savage is a dummy. You can tell Hogan wrote this himself. Only Hogan and maybe Donald Trump could turn a sentence as simple as “D is for dummy” into “Now Mr. Bischoff, as far as the D goes, A, B, C, duh, D, that D stands for dummy.” The more orange your skin gets, the more words you have to cram into a sentence
If I had to keep that going, I’d say that E stands for “every match on the show tonight ends in an nWo run-in.” WWE Network’s match listing has “the entire nWo pours into the ring causing a DQ” as a match result, and honestly they need to be more specific. Let’s just knock these out of the way early.
Worst: E
New WCW Tag Team Champions The Steiner Brothers, stuck in the middle of an angle where Scott Steiner is growing so many muscles it’s killing his brain, defend against Vicious and Delicious. The Outsiders have a rematch for the championship on Sunday at SuperBrawl, in case you’re wondering how foregone a conclusion this match is. The Steiners continue their “we’re winning all the time and we’re SO MAD ABOUT IT” thing, and the Entire NWO Pours Into The Ring Causing A DQ.
Fun fact: This is the last match the Steiner Brothers win as a tag team until they end up back in New Japan Pro Wrestling in 2002. WHITE THUNDER approaches.
Two segments later, Bret Hart shows up to address Hogan’s ABCs Of Death and is interrupted by former WWF Superstar and Racist Motorcycle Gang Head Honcho Brian “Crush” Adams, who says he’s got Bret’s back in the battle with the New World Order. He also asks Bret in so many words to not pay attention to the fact that a tall former WWF heel with long hair and a beard has suddenly shown up to talk about the New World Order while wearing a long trenchcoat that’s closed so you can’t see what shirt he’s wearing. Bret Hart, being the world’s most gullible non-Sting human being, is like, “hey man, sure, this seems like it’s on the level.” And then the Entire NWO Pours Into The Ring, Causing A Swerve.
My favorite part of this is that at best, the crowd’s only going to kind of recognize Crush. Not exactly Diesel and Razor Ramon showing up on Nitro, you know? But the announce team’s like “that’s … that’s BRIAN ADAMS!” It’s very TNA, and that kind of betrayal really cuts like a knife.
Then we have the main event of Hollywood Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage against Lex Luger and Sting, which pretty much starts with the heels jumping the faces before they’re all the way in the ring and turning the hypothetical “match” before the run-in into a walk-around punch-fest. Nothing screams “we don’t feel like working tonight” quite like Hulk Hogan dragging a guy around by the hair, pushing him against a guardrail and then having one of his big punches blocked. You can see it in your brain, I know it.
As soon as the actual match starts a couple of minutes into the “match starting,” Savage forearms Hogan in the back and Hogan’s almost immediately in the Scorpion Death Lock. That leads to — say it with me, everybody — the Entire NWO Pouring Into The Ring, Causing A DQ. Ric Flair and Bret Hart jog out to even up the odds, and we’ve set up everything important from SuperBrawl:
- Sting vs. Hollywood Hogan
- Lex Luger vs. Macho Man Randy Savage
- Bret Hart and Ric Flair staying home, wrestling nobody
- the entire nWo pouring into the ring causing a DQ
Worst: F Is For “Flock Fuck Ups”
In the middle of the show we’re treated to a match that not even WCW Saturday Night would book: Sick Boy vs. Mark Starr. The modern day WWE equivalent of that would be, I don’t know, 5-7 minutes of Curt Hawkins wrestling Justin Storm. If you want to know how good it is, here’s them dramatically botching an Irish whip:
Sick Boy ends up cheating to win (against MARK STARR) and hitting a Pedigree as slowly as possible to less than zero reaction from the crowd. They’ve already given Konnan a lazy Pedigree finish too, so it’s a race to the bottom to see which Jobber To The Stars can claim WWE’s top finishers. We’ve already got Mongo doing the Tombstone Piledriver and Disco Inferno hitting people with the Stone Cold Stunner. Anybody want to call up Jim Powers and tell him to start using the Mandible Claw?
Best: G Is For “George Steinbrenner Is All In”
No, you aren’t hallucinating, that’s former New York Yankees owner and professional baseball super villain George Steinbrenner in the crowd at Nitro throwing up the “too sweet.” He’s actually throwing up a One Sweet, because he’s only half paying attention and thinks the giant wrestling street gang’s doing dainty tea service hands. I’m happy I’ve written like 200 of these columns so I could get to George Steinbrenner being Elite.
MLB Hall of Fame third baseman Wade Boggs is also in the crowd, presumably to cheer Curt Hennig in a timely match against Bobby Eaton and repay repay Curt for giving him batting tips back in the day. I’m guessing Don Mattingly’s up in the rafters painting himself like The Crow for getting shit-canned off the team right before they won a bunch of championships.
Best: H Is For “Humorous”
William Scott Goldberg gets back on the right track this week by starting his streak over from the beginning and squashing The Laughing Man, Hugh Morrus. It’s fun to see how much Goldberg’s grown as a presence since their first meeting in his Nitro debut, and it’s what Humorous deserves after last week’s Worst Moonsault Ever.
Part of me wishes we could go back in time and convince everyone on the roster to treat Goldberg like Lord Steven Regal did, not because I want to embarrass the guy, but because I want him to get forced out of his comfort zone while he’s still green and become American’s Minoru Suzuki.
Best: I Is For “Innuendo”
We get another promo from Diamond Dallas Page this week, and he still hasn’t bought a tape recorder to listen to how he phrases things. This week he announces that he wants to give that young stud Chris Benoit a rematch, and that he doesn’t want him hurting, he wants him ALL JACKED UP. Because you can’t FEEL THE BANG unless you’re JACKED. At some point I’m sure DDP debuts the catchphrase “I’m going to get up in them guts” and convinces 1998 wrestling fans that it means he wants you to be brave.
They announce Diamond Dallas Page and Chris Benoit vs. Raven and Saturn for Thursday’s Thunder, which of course brings out the Entire Flock To Pour Into The Ring. Benoit makes the save in his always weirdly ill-fitting dress clothes, because he’s a French bulldog who got turned into an adult man. As a heads up that includes another D for Duh, the series of tag matches tangentially involving Benoit, Raven and Saturn are the best wrestling parts of the company in a post-Malenko vs. Mysterio world.
Best: J Is For [Checks Notes]
It’s like being a alcomaniac, but for Jericho.
To instantly prove that “best wrestling parts of the company” point I just made, Benoit sticks around to team with future Horseman Bro Dean Malenko to face Eddie Guerrero and Cruiserweight Champion Chris Jericho. I don’t need to tell you that it’s the best match on the show. Jericho shows up in a hockey sweater with a vest over it because he was fashion-forward and weird as shit long before he went back to Japan and pretended to be Joker Sting.
Malenko gets a submission win over Jericho with the Texas Cloverleaf, once again reminding people that he is Serious Business and has Jericho’s number. Jericho as a secondary champion losing tag matches only works because of his hilarious “I’M STILL THE CHAMPION” celebrations when he loses. It would’ve been nice to tie in the Juventud Guerrera luchas de apuestas match coming up, but that’s the beginning of Treasure Hunter Chris Jericho, so I’ll wait until Sunday. 20 years ago.
Best: J Is For “Japan”
And its true champion, Yuji Nataga. He has a match against La Parka, which is one of WCW’s “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” match-building speciality: the submission based Japanese guy against the devil-may-care luchador. It works about 40% of the time. It could be better here, but (1) the announce team won’t stop talking about SuperBrawl and Bret Hart long enough to even acknowledge that a match is happening in front of them, and (2) it’s just a setup for Disco Inferno to show up behind the referee’s back, hit a Stunner on La Parka, and help Nagata win. La Parka hit him with a chair on Thunder, you see, and Disco took that personally instead of doing a basic amount of research and realizing he does that to everyone.
Best: K Is For “Kidman”
Poor Billy Kidman. A couple of weeks ago Ultimo Dragon tries to use him as a suppository, and now he’s out here getting throat-fucked to set up the finish. Next week’s just gonna be Dragon raw-dogging the dude in the middle of the ring.
Anyway, it’s another good effort from Kidman, who’s starting to distance himself from the rest of the Flock by actually putting on good matches on the regular. It doesn’t take long for Raven, Saturn and Kidman to step forward and differentiate themselves from Lodi and the nipple ring that walks like a man, Van Hammer. He loses, of course, but he’s probably the best “loser” on the show right now, and is earning enough good will to position him as an important part of the cruiserweight division despite never having a character deeper than, “I’m off the heroin and remember to wash my jorts now.”
Best: L Is For “La Parka”
La Parka returns to get his revenge on Disco Inferno later in the night, jumping him before a match with Perry Saturn. That sets up …
Worst, Sadly: M Is For “Martel”
Here’s another unfortunately timed tragedy heading into SuperBrawl.
So the match is supposed to be Perry Saturn vs. Disco Inferno, but Disco gets LA Parked and can’t compete. Rick Martel, ever the opportunistic well-meaning babyface, shows up to take Disco’s place. Martel’s still got an issue with Saturn and the Flock due to Saturn throwing him through a glass door several weeks ago, so it makes sense. Of course the Entire Flock Pours Into The Ring, Causing A Distraction that allows Riggs to knock out Martel and Saturn to get the easy submission win.
Later in the night, Martel returns for his actual scheduled match: a Television Championship match against his other, nicer rival, the champ Booker T. It’s a hard fought, back-and-forth match until the ref gets bumped, and Saturn runs out to interfere. Booker tries to Harlemly side-kick Saturn off the apron and gets his leg caught on the top rope, which injures him and allows Martel to lock him in the Quebec Crab and win not only the match, but the championship.
Now there’s an issue: Saturn was supposed to face Booker for the belt at SuperBrawl, but Booker just lost the championship, and Saturn just beat the guy who beat Booker for the championship. Moral compass James J. Dillon presents a solution … at SuperBrawl, Booker T will get his rematch for the Television Championship against Rick Martel, and the winner of that match will go on to defend the belt against Perry Saturn in a second fall. The idea here’s supposed to be that Martel’s going to defend against both guys and continue his spectacular comeback, but it’s not meant to be. We’ll cover that in the SuperBrawl column next week, but peace out to the Model.
Best: N Is For “Nick Patrick, Hero Of The Alt-Right”
Nick Patrick is still very upset that he’s not allowed to referee the upcoming Hollywood Hogan vs. Sting WCW World Heavyweight Championship match because of that whole “joining the New World Order to be their shadow referee” and “ruining two straight Hollywood Hogan vs. Sting WCW World Heavyweight Championship matches” stuff, and is taking a multi-pronged, extremely modern approach to fighting it.
Stop me if you’ve seen this exact argument style on Twitter:
- he’s claiming “character defamation,” comparing it to the character defamation currently being handed out to the President of the United States by America’s greatest villain, the Fake News media
- he believes there’s a political Witch Hunt against him, orchestrated by the people who’ve noticed him doing bad stuff
- he’s going to find a lawyer and sue the people who won’t let him do whatever he wants, and is aligning with racist celebrities to get his message heard
Way to invent 2018 America, evil referee Nick Patrick.
Worst: O Is For “Oh My God How Long Is This Show, Are We Going To Go Through The Entire Alphabet”
If I could type once sentence to explain how much filler is in this episode of Nitro, I’d type, “Barry Horowitz wrestles Mike Enos for several minutes.” BARRY HOROWITZ, legendary World Wrestling Federation jobber whose gimmicks included “Jewish” and “pats self on back.” This is happening for no reason, to set up nothing. But you got to see THE MAULER wrestle for a minute, so go you.
Best: P Is For “Kevin Nash Killing The Public Enemy”
This week’s best “Kevin Nash gets arrested if he does the powerbomb but don’t notice that 15 other guys on the roster are doing powerbombs” content is the Outsiders prepping for their championship rematch against the Steiner Brothers by making an example out of wrestling’s worst tag team, the Public Enemy. Pictured above is Kevin Nash Jackknife Powerbombing Flyboy Rocco Rock over the top rope onto Johnny Grunge and putting both of them through a table, causing a DQ without the entire nWo needing to pour into the ring.
This ups the powerbomb fines to $200,000 per and Nash is “arrested” again, which does seem weirdly personal without anyone at WCW actually regulating the Wrestle Gang that’s been trying to put them out of business for the past two years. At least they’ll get their comeuppance on Sunday against the Steiners, right everybody? Nobody let Scott Steiner look in a mirror for the next six days.
Worst: Q Is For “Quit Using Wooden Chairs On Meng”
Here’s Jimmy Hart using a wooden chair to try to hurt our close personal friend The Monster Meng. Meng is the only person in the history of wrestling to get hit with a wooden chair, and it won’t stop happening to him. Meng must drive a U-haul full of wooden folding chairs with him to every arena. Where do you even GET chairs like that? Did Jimmy Hart not interfere earlier because he had to sit at ringside whittling it?
Once Jimmy Hart’s poured into the ring to cause a disqualification, Meng’s opponent and best friend The Barbarian takes advantage of the wooden chair necklace and hits four Kicks Of Fear to win. This probably should’ve happened at the pay-per-view, but WCW needed more time for their Mongo vs. British Bulldog feud and some Brad Armstrong matches.
Worst: R Is For “Refreshments”
Mongo and Davey Boy Smith get into another backstage brawl, most notable for Bulldog wandering around backstage in a windbreaker suit and fannypack with a Styrofoam cup of coffee like a 70-year old woman planning to hit swim class after church.
Also, I made sure to GIF this moment so you could see Mongo dramatically knocking coffee out of his hand. I’m not sure why that’s so funny to me. I want to make a feature length Western where Mongo puts on cowboy clothes and walks around knocking six-shooters out of people’s hands like that.
Best: S Is For “Snickers”
People who know use Snickers®.
Best: T Is For “Tony Schiavone’s Face Says Everything You Need To Know About This Episode Of Nitro”
S is also for “sigh.”
U Is For “Uh Oh, We’re Out Of Time”
It’s almost time for SuperBrawl VIII, but first we’ve got to recap a Thunder featuring:
- V for “violence,” in the form of another Super Calo vs. La Parka match
- W for “Wayne Bloom and Mike Enos reuniting to probably not beat The Outsiders”
- X for “what the referee’s going to have to hold up because Fit Finlay’s wrestling Goldberg”
- and Y for “why did I expect Sting vs. Macho Man to end without the entire nWo pouring into the ring to cause a DQ”
And just to give you a sense of closure, “Z” is what I’m going to be catching all weekend because I had to stay up writing about this 15-hour-ass 3-hour Nitro. See you next week. Next time, won’t you sing with me?
