Who will break their neck first? Lets find out!
Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW: Over on Thunder, things are heating up, if by “heating up” you mean Jim Duggan’s back, Jerry Lee Lewis has joined Raven’s Flock, and Kevin Nash keeps getting arrested for powerbombing people.
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 2, 1998.
Best: All You Need To Know About This Week’s Show Is That Ultimo Dragon Tries To Reverse Birth Billy Kidman By Jamming Him All The Way Up His Own Ass
Welcome to a three hour edition of WCW Monday Nitro live from the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, where the first hour’s almost entirely cruiserweight matches and the Ultimo Dragon tries to tap out Billy Kidman with his asshole. No, not Sonny Onoo, the other one.
It’s arguable that Kidman plateaued as a wrestler shortly after switching to the trailer park couture — and, presumably, after kicking his heroin addiction — so it’s fun to go back and watch him develop from a red-shirt jobber who looked like Paul from The Wonder Years into the Kidman we briefly knew and loved. By the end of WCW’s lifespan his gyroscope breaks or whatever and he stops being able to reliably press the shooting star, and after WWE picks him up he can’t decide if he wants to be a cruiserweight or a heavyweight and turns into hip-hop Bobby Roode. So let us drift back into those halcyon days when Kidman scratched himself a bunch near Sick Boy and nearly got tapped out by a Japanese man’s taint.
After the match, the Flock (minus Jerry Lee Lewis, its most powerful member behind Hammer) hits the ring and lays out Dragon. I really wish this had been in service of giving Ultimo something fun to do at SuperBrawl instead of a dark match with pre-Crisis Kaz Hayashi.
Best: Psicosis Doesn’t Know How Depth Perception Works
This week’s show opener is actually Juventud Guerrera vs. Psicosis, which is the perfect kind of match to open ANY show, especially a 1998 WCW show in south Texas. The highlight here is absolutely Psicosis in the very lucha libre predicament of wanting to dive from the top rope to the floor but being too far away from his opponent to really DO anything, so he just jumps his ass off stomach-first and hopes for the best. Juventud, because there’s still like a human and a half’s length between them, takes him out of the sky with a dropkick. You know what I bet feels good? Jumping ten feet across and ten feet down to cement and a guy jumping and kicking you with both feet in your stomach before you land.
I also want to take a second to show some love for Juvy’s 450 splash. Modern 450 splashes are incredibly impressive, but involve the attacker jumping outward, spinning, and then landing. It’s very controlled. Juventud’s version was practically touching the corner, so instead of jumping he was just spinning himself as fast as possible directly down into your body. THAT is the kind of splash that could knock the wind out of you and win a match. +1, Juvy.
Best And Then Oh No Worst: Chris Jericho Vs. Super Calo In The Battle Of Who’ll Break Their Neck First
The final cruiserweight bout in the first hour is the 1998 Death Match dream match of Chris Jericho vs. Super Calo. If you haven’t been following along, Jericho almost broke his neck so many times he decided to maybe stop doing that and make jokes. See this, or this. Or this. Long story short, the difference between decades of Chris Jericho as one of the best in the world and a really sad paralysis story from 20 years ago is “Mr. Perfect paying attention.” Meanwhile you’ve got Super Calo, a rap mascot who spends most of his time accidentally flying into crowds and pissing off La Parka until his brains fall out. It’s a deadly combination.
They actually keep it together for the entire match, which I’m proud of, and only really slip up during the finish. Super Calo goes for one of his big moves, the Jumping Piledrive Myself Off The Top Rope, and I guess Jericho’s supposed to roll through it or whatever and catch him in a Lion Tamer. Instead of … doing that, Calo starts coming down at the wrong angle and goes face-first into the ground. Watch!
Jericho’s little stutter steps help gently distract from the poor Mexican man who just lost about 20% of his brain cells and is trying to remember why he’s wearing an outer space poncho, silver underwear on his face and glued-on sunglasses in front of 20,000 people.
All These New Wrestlers Are Just Mark Stars
That’s pretty benign (but no less painful) botch for El Ancestro de Sin Cara here, and nowhere NEAR the worst botch of the week. That honor goes to the homie William Scott Goldberg, who does fine in his procedural squashing of World War 3’s own Mark Starr, but he’s stuck in the middle of the very worst week and change of his professional career. I mean, not counting the limo thing.
On the episode of WCW Saturday Night before this Nitro, Goldberg wrestled Meng in what’s probably one of the worst matches I’ve ever seen. Watch it for yourself if you don’t believe me. Goldberg gets blown up about two minutes in and almost cripples Meng AND Jimmy Hart in the span of a single GIF. Behold:
If that’s not bad enough, NEXT WEEK’s Nitro is the infamous Goldberg vs. Lord Steven Regal match that exposes Goldberg as the technical wrestling equivalent of toe cheese and costs Regal his job. You know you’re having a rough go at life when the highlight of your week is, “spent a minute-15 in the ring with a jobber and didn’t completely ruin everything.”
Worst: Mongo Vs. Davey Boy Smith, Part Deux
CAINT GET FOOLED AGAIN
Last week’s Nitro featured Davey Boy Smith’s WCW return against Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael and one of the worst powerslams ever attempted by upright-walking human beings. This week, because they’re in Mongo’s “hometown” of Texas (which is divided into two parts: “Austin” and “Texas”), we’re doing it again, but with no actual match and a Mongo promo that is always a split-second bad turn from “I LIKE THIS PLACE” to “I HATE YOUR FOOTBALL TEAMS.”
They just fight outside the ring until the referee throws it out, and then they fight up the ramp and onto the announce gazebo. Whatever that thing is. My favorite part of this by far is referee Mickie Jay selling a Mongo punch like Shang Tsung just sucked his soul out of his body. I hope I’m never punched so hard I fall in two different directions.
David Boy also shows up to make the save for his old Hart Foundation buddy, Jim ‘The Anvil’ Neidhart. If you asked a thousand people to tell you their two favorite Hart Foundation members out of 5, about 15 would say British Bulldog, and about one who is Jim Neidhart himself would say Jim Neidhart. Even Natlaya’s favorite Hart Foundation members are Bret and Owen.
Neidhart has a HILARIOUS match with Scott Hall, as they’re still trying to get over the fact that World War 3 winner, nWo original, multiple-time Tag Team Champion and nearly 7-foot tall Scott freaking Hall needs Louie Spicolli distractions to help him beat people like Jim Neidhart and he STILL almost loses to them in like ten seconds and is only saved because Dusty Rhodes bails him out and tells him to get his shit together. So here you’ve got Anvil putting a fucking Bugle on his thumb to do an Asiatic Spike and have Hall ready to pass out like a minute into the match, and Dusty has to save him. Look at this:
It looks like he got some water from a doctor’s office water cooler and was like, “hey, I should put this on my finger and try to paralyze someone.” Meng should’ve put on finger cymbals before Tongan Death Gripping people. That would’ve really zilled the deal.
Worst: How They’re Treating Poor Kevin Nash
Nash has a promo early in the show where he talks about the powerbomb being banned, then incorrectly says he saw Kidman do one in the Ultimo Dragon match. He calls it a “Tiger Bomb,” but Kidman actually does the Sky High, which is more like a sit-out spinebuster. Semantics. What he doesn’t point out, though, is how LOTS of people are still doing powerbombs and not being punished for it, including fellow nWo-ite Konnan, who just blatantly counters Hugh Morrus’ No Laughing Matter by powerbombing him off the ropes. I guess since the guy was on the ropes it didn’t count? Anyway, the point is that Nash has a valid point, but nobody (including the people handing out imaginary fines) are paying attention.
Oh, and if you’re wondering how that Hugh Morrus vs. Konnan match turned out — you weren’t — Konnan wins with his new finisher, the Lazy Pedigree. You know what’d make the Pedigree a way better move? If you didn’t hook their arms so they could stop the impact with their hands, there was no build to locking the move in, and it looked like you were smashing someone into the ground by bunny-hopping your ballsack into the back of their head. The Lazy Pedigree, everybody, from the creators of Bad Powerslam.
Best: Booker T Axe Kicks Steve Regal So Hard It Makes Him Look Like He’s In The Ring
Look at that blur!
As mentioned, Bill Regal’s a few days from being completely on the outs with the company, so enjoy the final Lord Steven Regal match from before That Awful Match With Goldberg. Booker T defeats him clean in just a few minutes because one of them’s on an elevator going up, and the other’s on a sad elevator ride down to where they book Real Men’s Men.
Best: Friends With Benefitness
My favorite story and yours continues this week as Scott Steiner once again refuses to tag his brother into a tag team match and still wins it (by himself) because he’s just discovered how cool muscles are, and he wants to wrestle and do muscles with his muscle friends. Rick just doesn’t understand. He’s still so upset that Scotty has gotten OP enough to singlehandedly win tag matches against Buff Bagwell and Kevin Nash, because they’re supposed to be blue collar dad-bod types who work together and have School Spirit. Scott has replaced the hallowed halls of the University of Michigan (State) with eatin’ steaks and clangin’ weights. I hope there are no evil super teams run by the guy who’s never called working out anything other than “hangin’ and bangin’!”
I really don’t remember feeling like this as a kid watching the shows, but as an adult, I can’t WAIT for Scotty to ditch these self-deprecating babyface types for the peaks and freaks.
Best: Match Of The Night Goes To [Checks Notes] Disco Inferno?
gross
Yep, that’s a thing I typed. The best match on the show is a Raven’s Rules match against Raven (well, yes, of course) and a fired-up, semi-serious Disco Inferno. I don’t know if this was the one era in Disco’s life where he decided he wanted to be the shit in the ring or if he just prefers doing that one disco move to wrestling well, but he’s got it TOGETHER right now, and he and Raven keep up a hardcore match pace that’s just absurd for the time and promotion. They’re HUSTLING around the ring. Disco’s taking deep armdrags into the entirety of a chair. He’s diving and leaning into clotheslines. He’s hammering Raven hard enough in the corner that Raven can legitimately do the “smile while experiencing extreme pain” bit he did with Chris Benoit again. Against DISCO.
Raven wins, naturally, but this is a heck of a late show surprise and easily one of the most watchable matches on Nitro in weeks. Not that there haven’t been good ones, but this one just zips by. Very good stuff. I want to live in an alternate universe where Disco Inferno got deep into perfecting his craft and turned into WCW’s Kurt Angle.
Best: The Entrance They Should’ve Done At Starrcade
At Starrcade ’97, WCW’s biggest pay-per-view of all time, Sting — a man who has done nothing but rappel from the ceiling on a bungee cord for like a year and a half — entered the ring by walking out through the entrance normally. He then lost, then lost the rematch and the championship was vacated. Throwing that in there for color, as it’ll become handy to remember later.
At this random Nitro in San Antonio, for a match against the Macho Man Randy Savage that has no real build other than “you beat me up last week and we have complex feelings about the nWo,” Sting gets an incredible, theatrical entrance that seems him descend from the top of big-ass Alamodome with dramatic lighting before being welcomed into the waiting arms of the fans like he’s Mhysa and they’re Yunkish slaves.
This is all a set up for, and hold on to your butts …
Worst: Maybe The Worst Finish They’ve Done Yet
No. Seriously. I can’t believe it either.
It doesn’t have anything to do with the finish, but the first thing you need to know about the match is that Sting apparently lost his gear somewhere and had to wrestle in this plain black leotard that makes him look like he’s about to dance Swan Lake at a recital. He looks like whenever they put AC Slater into tights randomly on Saved by the Bell. But yeah, no, I just needed to share that with you, because it’s weird as hell.
Anyway, Sting is your conquering hero of the aforementioned year and a half of build who got shafted in two consecutive title matches (by Hogan or the mercy of fate, whichever you want to blame) and is about to face Hogan for a third, final, decisive time in the main event of your next big show. Macho Man is not any of those things, and Sting kicked his ass last week. So how do you book this match? By having Macho Man beat the shit out of Sting the entire time and have him cleanly pinned with a flying elbow drop, right? Wait what
Because that’s not enough, Savage only doesn’t get a clean pin on Sting because HOLLYWOOD HOGAN SHOWS UP AND SAVES STING. I’m not kidding. Hogan, the guy Sting is supposed to face and is already supposed to have destroyed, has to push his own friend off this “scary” opponent because HE wants to easily pin him again, not Savage. That’s seriously the story. Hogan wants to beat Sting and would feel bad if someone else on his team also did it. Because Sting just loses to folks. AND THAT IS YOUR MAIN EVENT STORY IN WCW WHILE STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN AND SHAWN MICHAELS ARE THROWING HANDS WITH MIKE TYSON ON THE OTHER CHANNEL. FOR REAL.
[flips table]
Next Week:
Lord Steven Regal misinterprets “lose to Goldberg in 30 seconds” as “stand there European uppercutting the guy and making him look like shit for seven minutes,” the Steiner Brothers FINALLY get that match with the Outsiders they’ve been trying to have for like two years, and WCW makes sure the OTHER guy main-eventing the pay-per-view ALSO takes a pinfall loss. Because reasons!
