The Best And Worst Of WCW Monday Nitro 6/1/98: Build The Walls

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Hip-hop gangsta mack Lex Luger joined the nWo Wolfpac because the red and black is bout it bout it and rowdy rowdy. Plus: Mike Enos nearly killed himself with a powerslam, Macho Man doesn’t want to be called an icon because it reminds him too much of the dodo bird, and WCW invented Gillberg about seven months before the WWF.

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.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. If you don’t tell them how much you like these, nobody’s going to read them. This is when the nWo has splintered, and God help us re: basically everything from now until the end of the company.

Up first, let’s see what happens to Garth Brooks and his wife as the Thunder rolls.

The One-Page Thunder Recap For May 28, 1998

Well, one-page Thunder and WCW Saturday Night recap. You can watch this Thunder here.

The most important thread connecting the prime-time weekly shows to the Gambler-laden weekend programs is the best of seven series between Chris Benoit and Booker T, which happens on both Thunder and WCW Saturday Night. Benoit was able to win the first match on Nitro, but Booker ties it up with a missile dropkick on Thunder. It’s a series of matches that make for exciting viewing, but not necessarily for interesting paragraphs 20 years later. “Oh I really liked how Benoit won the third match on Saturday Night by expecting Booker to counter his finisher, allowing him to counter the counter and hit a normally transitional German suplex for the surprise three. It’s great strategy, from a skilled athlete doing the work and playing the long game. That he, uh, definitely isn’t going to win, because he’s Chris Benoit, and this is WCW in 1998.”

Also on this week’s Thunder:

• the nWo are busy courting Sting, who has to make the tough decision whether to join nWo Always Hated Me or team up with nWo Betrayed Me About A Month And A Half Ago. WHO WILL IT BE?
• Goldberg continued to defend the United States Championship against only the best and toughest opponents; Len Denton, Johnny Attitude, and now Barry Horowitz. If he wins 10 more matches he unlocks a title shot for Hot Bobby Salsa
• oh also Goldberg vs. Barry Horowitz is the main event
• because otherwise your main event is Perry Saturn vs. Barry Darsow
• Thunder is not very good!

The only other thing worth mentioning is that this is the episode where the nWo Wolfpac debut their entrance theme, which for the uninitiated is just a Jimmy Hart soundalike for Militia’s ‘Burn.’ I’d talk about this at length, but we’re still a year away from that conversation coming to WCW.

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for June 1, 1998.

Best: Referee Joss Whedon

Since we’re rolling in straight from Thunder — sorry about your marriage and possibly your life, Garth — we should start off by noting that Benoit beats Booker T with the Crippler Crossface, again, and goes up 3-1 in the series. If you know anything about worked sports odds or the probability of Chris Benoit succeeding in the 1990s in a WCW-written story, you know how it goes. It’s a good match, like all of them.

I do want to take a second to praise referee Mark Curtis again, because the guy made every match he reffed better. There’s something so wonderful about him going up on Michael Jackson toes and firing off a pair of six-shooters with his fingers to call for the bell. It’s a legit shame we never got Mark Curtis and Bryce Remsburg on the same show together.

Worst: I Like To Kick It, I’m A Karate Guy

WCW could never figure out the magical combination to making “martial arts + wrestling” work as part of their show. They’d hire these legitimate black belts and World Karate Champions and train them how to wrestle, but nobody training them was a martial arts guy, and there wasn’t anyone in the back who could say, “you’re good at ninja shit, let’s build the match solely around ninja shit.” Instead, you’d get these four minute Ernest Miller vs. Jerry Flynn openers where neither guy wants to do too much karate because they’ve been trained to murder when they strike, yet there’s still been too much emphasis on the karate parts during training, so they don’t do karate and can’t have a normal wrestling match.

To illustrate, The Cat is agile enough to do a flying spin kick off the top rope to finish guys off, but when you ask him to do something simple like a sunset flip, everyone’s gonna end up fumbling backwards into the ropes like it’s their first time in a ring. The point of the match is for Cat to debut the new, grounded version of the Feliner (that’s basically Kofi Kingston’s Trouble In Paradise), but he’s not every good at it yet, and Flynn has the pro wrestling acumen of a horse apple, so it misses by about half a foot and gets sold anyway. It’s fine.

At least Eric Bischoff’s love of martial arts made him try to make martial arts wrestlers over and over, and didn’t lead to, say, him organizing all his toughest wrestlers into a months-long shoot-fighting tournament that made everyone look weak and bad.

Things Are Still Going Badly For The Flock

Raven and Saturn can’t seem to decide if they’re friends or not, so they team up to take on the WCW team you’d least like to have as friends, Public Enemy. Raven, who is not very good at having friends, decides to punctuate that decision by letting Saturn do all the work and sneaking in at the last second to take the pin. Knowing what I (eventually) know about the character, it’s great to see this mysterious, anarchic Philadelphia-area douchebag from a suspiciously affluent family instantly form a faction of followers built around his terrible attitude — because cult of personality — and then slowly lose them, one-by-one, to that same attitude.

After the match, Raven instantly ignores the bad thing he’s literally just done to cut a promo about how bullshit it is for WCW to fire Mortis, only to rehire him in an attempt to “punish” Raven for not obeying them. It works because it’s roughly 65% in his head, and about 35% obviously true to everyone watching. The psychological equivalent of Ultimate Warrior showing up in Hulk Hogan’s mirror. Also, he’s re-hired the Flock for protection. Also it’s going to be Saturn vs. Kanyon at the pay-per-view because Raven said so, without even asking his friend.

“For good times and bad times, I’ll be on your side forever more, quoth the Raven, nevermore!”

In other Flock news, unfrozen caveman wrestler Reese interferes in Juventud Guerrera’s match and costs him again (more on that in a minute), and Diamond Dallas Page gets his weekly moment to trash the group, pinning Riggs with a Diamond Cutter and then doing the same (sans pin) to Sick Boy. Man, there’s no more depressing alignment in 1998 than, “surprisingly muscular handsome guy asked to put on baggy clothes and pretend to be grunge in the background of Raven segments.”

As for that Juventud match, it’s one of those WCW luchador classics where a guy who normally has perfectly watchable matches makes one or two (or several) mistakes early on and burns the entire concept. For example, here’s Juventud making sure he won’t have a working equilibrium or any kind of offense for the remainder of the match by going for a top rope headscissors and folding himself up with a powerbomb.

Here he is losing his footing and botching a DDT a few seconds later. Not the best outing for either man, or either man’s functioning brains. Maybe Jericho did something awesome to balance it out?

Best: Of Course Jericho Did Something Awesome To Balance It Out

“This week’s episode features one of my all-time favorite WCW Chris Jericho bits,” he typed for like the 15th time in six months of covering 1998 WCW. “He goes to Washington, D.C., to look for the ‘jurisprudence’ James J. Dillon needs to disqualify Dean Malenko as winner of a cruiserweight battle royal on a WCW wrestling pay-per-view, because in Jericho’s mind, all problems in the United States go straight to the top, and you can find the Official WCW Rule Book stored in the goddamn Library of Congress.”

There’s so much gold here, from Jericho wondering where the section on “WCW title belts” is a law book to his visit to the White House where he tries to get in because he heard the President is a Jerichoholic, but for my money, the funniest part (and maybe the most actually funny thing Jericho’s done in his entire career) is him explaining to a random activist on the street why they should care about WCW Slamboree ’98.

This ridiculous human being approaches a woman with homemade signs about how you shouldn’t be a lemming in the face of genocidal weapons — one of those true activism and DIY crafts enthusiasts where you have to spend an hour and a half just reading all the words on their bumper sticker — and is all, “battle royal, and all the guys were listed in the battle royal, but Dean Malenko was not listed in the battle royal, and he was under a mask, and he took the mask off, surprised me, beat me for the belt.” Like they could possibly care. That’s the purest essence of Chris Jericho.

The best part? Jericho is right. More on that soon.

Want To Be Our Nitro Party Of The Week? Create A Creepy Sting Wall

One of my favorite acts of anthropology in these columns is watching the progression of the Nitro Party from a fun cool get-together on college campuses to a collection of increasingly concerning birthday parties, because all the college kids have started watching Raw. This week’s Nitro Party winner drew a big Sting face on their wall, and that’s good enough to be this week’s Mug® Rootbeer “Taylor What The Fuck Did You Do To The Wall, This Is Our DEN” Of The Week™.

Join us next week when Mean Gene and the Nitro Girls head over to H. P. Lovecraft’s house for a Nitro Party and a rousing game of Pin The Grotesque Tentacle On The Disco Inferno.

Speaking Of Grotesque Tentacles

Eddie Guerrero has been emotionally and physically manipulating his nephew Chavo for the past few months, ordering him around, making him take matches he doesn’t want, and basically holding the kid’s grandmother’s love hostage unless he does what he says. Chavo has officially been driven crazy by this, and/or is so done with it that he’s just leaning into the absurdity and ruining his own life to make his uncle miserable. It’s a very healthy relationship from both sides!

This week, Chavo Jr. has a match against Alex Wright, an anaconda of a man whose STF is too strong to stay in for even a fraction of a second. Watch and learn, John Cena:

Eddie tries to explain to Chavo that their arrangement is over and that he’s been “freed” from his grandmother’s judgment (or whatever), but Chavo’s all in. He’s still demanding Eddie punch him in the face to each him a lesson, and even wanders into the ring during Eddie’s TV title match with Fit Finlay to cause a disqualification. By, uh, not doing anything. But he’s weird, and he’s in there, so that’s what we’re going with. It’s an important lesson all wrestling fans should learn: you feel like you wanna be the guy in charge, but trust me, you really don’t. You really, really don’t.

Also On This Episode

Lenny Lane, seen here with Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville, has a new gimmick where he shines up his abs real nice. No word on if his next steps are to turn those sons of bitches sideways and stick them up straight up somebody’s candy ass. He loses to a match to Konnan, who wears the baggiest khaki britches in the world to avoid situations like that.

William Scott Goldberg takes a break from giving the world’s worst wrestlers United States Championship matches to no-sell a chair shot from La Parka and bury the shit out of him. The good news is that there’s no easier wrestler to bury than a skeleton.

Worst: What Else Can I Say? Everyone Is Gay

If it seems like this week’s Nitro recap is a little light on insane people calling everyone else in the world gay, don’t worry; we’ve reached the part of the night where the Macho Man Randy Savage responds to Tony Schiavone’s attempt to recap his past month of story in his signature style.

“There is no question for the Great American Bash, putting the Macho Man and Roddy Piper on the same time is one unlikely duo, now last week Bret Hart came out, heightened the paranoia by saying he had Piper in his back pocket. At first you believed it, but I think really afterward I’m not so sure. Who were you believing last week?”

“You know, Tony Schiavone, If I didn’t know you had a bunch of kids and a wife, I’d think that you wanted to date Roddy Piper.”

fucking why

Savage handles the heavy lifting for the pay-per-view build as well, saying he’s going to, “wipe the floor with you, and maybe other things too, dig?” Roddy Piper shows up and offers a rebuttal, which surprisingly is not, “Tony Schiavone doesn’t want to date me, he actually wants to date YOU!” It’s completely unhinged, though, comparing the New World Order to the Washington Capitals (?) and debuting my new favorite phrase. Look for it in bold:

“Can you not see what’s going on with Bret Hart? Can you not see the con? Listen to me, Bret Hart is the one stirring the – I reversed the decision, I did what was right. Bret Hart is the one stir, he’s conning everyone! He’s conning Hogan! He’s telling Hogan he’s going to take him to the Hair Club for Men, and after that he’s gonna come and he’s gonna beat up you and me, he’s smoother than Marion Barry, okay? I’m telling you what! Does the M stand for ‘madness’ or does it stand for MUPPET AS IN PUPPET because he’s pulling EASY EASY WE’LL FIGHT WHEN IT COMES TIME, he’s pulling on your strings, he’s pawning ya, he’s conning ya … listen to this, the Capitals, the Washington Capitals hockey team? Yah? They all wear uniforms! They all wear uniforms! The nwo they all wear uniforms the nWo, the nWo you remember dont’cha … Bret Hart has never once worn an nWo t-shirt, have you noticed that? And you know why? Because he’s conning you, he’s not on the team!”

Savage’s response to that trainwreck of a paragraph is so funny to me: “I don’t give a damn about Hollywood and I don’t give a damn about the Hitman, and I don’t give a damn about his shirt or his underwear, and right now I don’t give a damn about you. See you at the pay-per-view!” The sound you hear is buyrates EXPLODING.

BUT WHOSE SIDE IS HE ON

Just like Thunder, this week’s Nitro is all about The Decision from Sting. Is he going to side with his best friend who always turns heel on him and a bunch of other guys who’ve turned on him recently, or is he taking his talents to South Beach and joining Hollywood Hogan’s nWo Proper? The actual answer should be, “uh, neither?” but this is 1998 and we’ve got to build the Kingdom Come future that comes to pass at WrestleMania 31, so it’s gotta be one of them.

The Wolfpac’s sales pitch is basically, “hey bro, c’mon!” Luger realizing the nWo Sting is the nWo Sting and not his bigger, better-looking friend who would never actually join the New World Order was a good start, and he and Nash challenge Hogan and the Giant in the night’s sure to not end in disqualification main event. Hogan’s sales pitch to Sting is basically AEW’s current mission statement:

Pretty sure Hogan knows Sting isn’t going to join his team, since they asked him to do that a couple of weeks ago and Sting spat in their faces, but don’t let that get in the way of good drama.

SO ANYWAY

Hogan ends the match early by casually smashing the WCW World Heavyweight Championship into Luger and Nash’s heads, setting up the moment of truth: will Sting join the good guy nWo, or the bad guy nWo? Keep in mind there’s no third option, despite WCW arriving in a limo together (represented by DDP, Booker T, Goldberg, and James J. Dillon). Sting shows up, reveals an nWo black and white shirt, and briefly entertains the choice of the greater of two evils before swerving everyone and revealing he’s chosen the lesser.

That gives us the fun visual of black and white Sting in a red and black Wolfpac shirt, which is a look they really should’ve just kept instead of looking like Silent Bob stumbled into the ending to Hellraiser. We’ve officially reached the era of Dog’s Dick Sting, folks, but don’t worry, they never think to do the same thing to Lex Luger and make him look like the Red Hulk. I guess you can’t do that if you’ve already got an orange one.

Next Week:

• nWo Wolfpac Sting is here
• Dennis Rodman returns, because nWo Hollywood needed another heavy hitter
• Diamond Dallas Page gets beaten up for not picking sides fast enough
• Goldberg dials up the difficulty on his U.S. title run by challenging CHAVO GUERRERO JR.
• The Great American Bash is just around the corner

And more! See you then! If you fall asleep while sunbathing between now and then, just put on a bunch of mascara, nobody will notice.