The Best And Worst Of WCW Monday Nitro 1/26/98: The Lambda Opportunity

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW: We took a look at WCW/nWo Souled Out 1998, a shockingly great pay-per-view featuring Kevin Nash breaking The Giant’s neck, Chris Jericho becoming Cruiserweight Champion, and La Parka attacking both sides of a lucha libre 8-man tag and becoming king of our hearts.

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 January 26, 1998.

Worst: Nitro Is Three Hours Now, So Get Ready For Some Filler

Yes folks, we’re finally up to the episode where Nitro becomes three hours long permanently. To your left you’ll notice this episode happening after Starrcade but before any major new storylines, meaning they’re adding an hour after they could’ve used it to build up their one important story and don’t have anything to do with it. To your right you’ll notice Lex Luger’s hat, which he seems thrilled by. It’s technically the first appearance of the little flexing “men’s room” guy that would become late-WCW Luger’s logo. Nothing says Lex Luger like “displaying your muscles” and “going to the bathroom.”

Worst: More Of Bret Hart’s Lousy Relatives Are Here

A few weeks ago, Jim ‘The Anvil’ Neidhart jumped ship to WCW. It’s Where the Big Boys Play™! “Jumped ship” is probably a little strong. It’s more like Survivor Series ’97 torpedoed his ship, and the bit where he tried to join the team that screwed his brother-in-law on the same episode where they beat up a Bret Hart midget and then got turned on before the episode was even over destroyed his life boat piece-by-piece until he drowned, and his bloated corpse washed up on WCW beach. Note: nothing good happens on that beach.

This week, Mongo’s cutting an extremely sexual promo about how he sees all the new talent in WCW (like John Nord) and how he “can’t wait to get knee-deep in some of these boys” when he’s interrupted by The British Bulldog Davey Boy Smith. Davey Boy continues making things as erotic as possible by saying he’s “looking for a bone to chew on,” and that Mongo “could be that bone.” Mongo tells him to go “get his little tights on” so Mongo can teach him “some new tricks.” Davey Boy confirms that he’s gonna go put on his tights so a “20-year old veteran” can learn those tricks. If they’d mentioned a B-level celebrity from 1992 I would’ve sworn Roddy Piper wrote this material.

Instead of setting up a very disappointing porno scene, the conversation sets up the British Bulldog’s WCW debut against this early 1998 version of Steve McMichael that forgot everything he’d learned about wrestling over the past two years. Seriously, Mongo’s out here wrestling like one of the Monstars sucked out his talent. Here’s the finish, in which they mess up an Oklahoma Stampede twice in one go.

Fantastic. This is the beginning of the Davey Boy WCW run that would end with one of the Ultimate Warrior’s teleportation trap doors giving him a spinal infection and almost paralyzing him, introducing the addiction to morphine and painkilling drugs that would shorten his life. At least he got that redemptive run in WWF after the injury, where he wrestled in cuffed jeans and got slammed into dog shit.

Can you imagine how different things would’ve been if Anvil and British Bulldog has stayed in the World Wrestling Federation, but Owen Hart had been the one to jump ship? It’s amazing to think how much bullshit everyone involved would’ve avoided, literally and figuratively.

Worst: James J. Dillon Is Very Mad About Powerbombs

The only other major plot point to happen on this episode is James J. Dillon banning all variations of the powerbomb due to what happened to The Giant in his match with Kevin Nash at Souled Out. Dillon gets head-shakingly furious about it, promising criminal prosecution and threatening to just skip human resources and arrest anyone who does a powerbomb. I’m assuming this is like that “anyone who interferes now will be fined” announcement from a few weeks ago, where it’s useful for this one (1) story and will be ignored when, say, 4 out of 6 luchadors in a match Ligerbomb dudes.

The announce team works overtime to justify the decision, talking about how the rules of pro wrestling have changed over time and how the rules set in the 60s and 70s couldn’t predict the SUPER ATHLETE OF THE 1990s. Because when you think of pro wrestling’s Bo Jackson, you think Kevin Nash. But yeah, no, Nash’s first match after the declaration lasts about a minute and ends with him powerbombing nWo punching bag Big Bubber and being sent to Wrestling Prison by top sheriff Doug Dellinger.

Nash screaming “ATTICA!” over and over is, of course, a reference to a classic scene from Spongebob Squarepants. [checks notes] Sorry, “Dog Day Afternoon.” The Internet’s trained me to think everything’s referencing Spongebob. Charles Foster Kane can mutter “Rosebud” on his death bed and the Twitter would be like “rosebud, lol, like in spongebob” with a picture of Larry the Lobster making an angry face. And then they’d tell you what Hogwarts house he’d be in*.

*Slytherin, duh

Best: Your Nitro Party Winners!

After about a year of promises and a handful of very 1990s college types yelling “woo” on VHS tapes, WCW has finally found a Nitro Party grand prize winner: University of Tennessee Chattanooga’s Lambda Chi Alpha. They’re treated to a night of playing “pin the tail on the Nitro Girl” (poster), being threatened with a paddlin’ by Mean Gene, and standing outside in the cold doing the limbo and pumping their fists. Honestly the only thing they aren’t doing here is watching Nitro, which … seemed like the point? It’s all brought to you by Krystal®, the Marty Jannetty to White Castle’s Shawn Michaels.

So What Do We Do For Three Hours?

Let’s lightning round it and find out! Enjoy like 10 pages of “lightning round!”

Up first this week is Ultimo Dragon vs. El Dandy, which in this shot looks an awful lot like Majin Buu giving birth to Nacho Libre. Or like, a really depressed 70s Lou Ferrigno. Regular readers know my undying love for the WCW luchadors who got the “don’t be deceived by their STOCKY PHYSIQUE” talking points, and Dandy — who are you to doubt him? — busts out one of my lucha favorites, the calm walk up the ropes into falling on a guy. Dragon wins a quick match by submission while the entire crowd watches The Flock walk to their seats.

In other luchador news, Konnan ends up injured in a match against Lightning Foot Jerry Flynn because he decided to sell an “over the top rope body block” propelled by LIGHTNING FEET by falling forward instead of backward, then rolling sideways and bashing the back of his head against the ring steps. It’s almost labyrinthine how he got to that point.

He wrestles the remainder of the match in a concussion haze, sitting down for most of it and barely kicking out of things. I’m telling you, we missed out by not having a WCW vs. WWF “Invasion” pay-per-view in 1998 with Konnan vs. Ahmed Johnson on the card.

Brad Armstrong shows up for his match wearing an airbrushed “ARMSTRONG CURSE” sweatshirt — sweatshirt! — featuring, what is that, a Wendigo’s eyes? It kinda looks like a sloth. Nothing says “the Armstrong legacy” quite like a sloth on a sweatshirt. He’s up against William Scott Goldberg and the Viking Death March this week, so obviously he wins with a Russian legsweep or whatever and retires the shirt for good.

Sorry, can’t even do a “checks notes” joke on that one. Goldberg is pretty much at his physical peak at this point, still about two years from punching out the window of a limo for real and zapping his own strength, so you get moments like 1:45 in this video where he goes for a military press, times it wrong (or Armstrong doesn’t give him enough support) and just muscles him the hell up with brute strength anyway. It’s great. He also hits one of the best (or at least cleanest) spear/Jackhammer combs he’s ever done.

You’re gonna have to work harder on your sweatshirt if you’re gonna beat Goldberg, Brad.

More advancement this week in Buff Bagwell and Scott Steiner’s Affair Of The Muscles this week as Buff gets a disqualification win over Rick Steiner thanks to Scott kicking Virgil’s ass so hard on the outside it spills into the ring. The story continues to be that Scott Steiner after like a decade as a pro has finally figured out that if he makes his muscles really big and throws people around, he can easily win wrestling matches. Rick doesn’t know what to do with it since he’s remained more or less the same and the formula they’ve been using as always worked, and Buff’s like, “OH MY GOD THIS DUDE’S MUSCLES ARE CRAZY, I LIKE MUSCLES TOO, WE SHOULD BE FRIENDS INSTEAD OF YOU THROWING ME.” Eventually Scott’s going to figure out the next step in his character’s evolution, which is, “bleach your hair so much it starts seeping into your scalp and makes you legitimately insane.”

After that we get an appearance from a boy we know Mongo wants to be knee-deep in, Wayne Bloom, aka the former Beau Beverly of the Beverly Brothers. The bloom is off Bloom’s rose at this point and he’s about a year from retiring outright, which he shows by losing the worst match on a terrible Nitro to Jim ‘The Anvil’ Neidhart. He’s certainly no Mike Enos, that’s for sure.

They really missed an opportunity by not putting Bloom into a throwaway 1980s “good hand” faction with Enos, Brad Armstrong, John Nord and like the Amazing French Canadians and calling them the New World Older.

The best match on the show is probably Raven vs. Mortis, the beginning of a feud that would turn Mortis into a real boy and turn Raven into a fourth-wall-breaking Jim Halpert-ass preppy smark.

Mortis loses, of course, and when he fails to help Wrath defeated Diamond Dallas Page in the following match, Wrath turns on him. If you’re like me and were hoping you missed a big Blood Runs Cold renaissance at some point, sorry … this is the beginning of the official end of that angle, with everyone (except Glacier, really) moving on to better things. Mortis becomes an arrogant Jersey mark, The Cat turns into a combination of Muhammad Ali and James Brown, and Wrath becomes half a team who ask the question, “what if we’re the APA, but instead of beer we like weed?”

In less positive Flock news, Perry Saturn has a boring match with Booker T that ends the way they’ve been ending for weeks: with the Flock attacking and Rick Martel showing up to be Booker’s friend, because he’s already learned that valiant babyfacing can get him quick Television Championship shots. Saturn’s so mad about it he yells about Rick Martel into the camera at ringside instead of like, turning slightly and yelling at the guy two feet behind him.

Also I don’t know what’s going on with Saturn’s hair right now, but it looks like he “got hair plugs” by sewing a free-standing toupee to the top of his head.

Psicosis defeats Chavo Guerrero Jr. in a rematch from the finish of the lucha libre masterpiece at Souled Out, and it’s good enough to be the Castrol GTX People Who Don’t Know Don’t Use Valvoline® of the week. It’s fun to see Chavito as his own wrestler here for a little while and to wonder what he would’ve become if WCW and WWE hadn’t spent the next decade beginning him to please be like Eddie Guerrero, exactly like Eddie, come on man, please.

Best-ish: Don’t Turn Your Back On The Group To Be Named Later

Finally in our lightning round we have Juventud Guerrera vs. new nWo member Louie Spicolli, which starts with footage of the Macho Man Randy Savage arriving in a rental car instead of a New World Order limousine and ends with him running from the car to the ring to attack everyone. Savage and Hogan have been at odds for weeks about the “pecking order” of the group and who’s responsible for who winning matches via DQ run-ins, so they do that again here. Savage is mad at Hogan for doing a run-in too early in his match with Luger at Souled Out. Hogan is mad at Savage for being Randy Savage, like fucking always. Like even now. Hogan says Savage needed the help and is now “on his own.” Savage makes fun of Hogan for not being champion anymore. The group breaks up, but not really, and we’re left with more questions than answers.

The good news is that this is the formal beginning of the Savage vs. Hogan feud that would splinter the nWo, leading to the creation of the nWo Wolfpac in May. The bad news is that same sentence.

The main event of the night is Lex Luger vs. Scott Hall, which lasts about two whole minutes of a three hour wrestling show and ends with — get this — an nWo run-in.

Savage causes the disqualification by attacking Luger, and Sting makes the save. I don’t want to downplay the “Sting makes the save” part of this, because the dude straight-up dropkicks Savage from the ceiling of the arena in a stunt so spectacular we never see it again, but know in our hearts had it happened on WWF TV would still be part of video packages today.

Sting puts Savage in the Scorpion Death Lock, so Hogan and Hall just wander around the ring like nothing’s happening. Maybe they were worried Diamond Dallas would swoop into the arena on one of those amusement park bungee swings and Diamond Cut one of them into the roof.

Next Week:

Nitro sends three hours of itself to the great state of Texas for a big Steve McMichael vs. The British Bulldog rematch, Super Calo challenging the only guy on the roster who breaks his neck this often for the Cruiserweight Championship, and Goldberg facing his biggest challenge yet in MARK STARR. All this and Hugh Morrus vs. Konnan on a show that’s definitely better than Raw right now! We promise!