Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: The fallout (and brawl-out) from Fall Brawl saw Ric Flair about to die from a face lift, Curt Hennig joining the nWo and wearing Flair’s robe, and Last Horseman Standing Mongo McMichael losing the United States Championship to bring it full circle. A complete and total victory for Hennig.
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. 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. If you’re a fan of the vintage reports AND watching me lose my mind, make sure you check out my brand new (oh God) NWA TNA weekly pay-per-view recap series.
And now, the best and worst of WCW Monday Nitro, originally aired on September 22, 1997.
Up First, Let’s Talk About The Moment In This Episode That Would Change The Wrestling Game And Have A Lasting Affect Well Into 2017
No, not that.
There we go.
At Fall Brawl, “color” “commentator” Larry Zbyszko hit the ring to count the three in the New World Order vs. Lex Luger and Diamond Dallas Page tag team match after Scott Hall hilariously abused all available referees.
There was a Nitro between then and now, but for whatever reason Eric Bischoff opens this week’s show by pointing fingers at Zbyszko and threatening him, telling him to tell his new commissioner “Roddy Peeper” that they’ll pay if something like that happens again. Larry’s response is to show the footage of Bisch getting powerbombed at the Great American Bash in ’96 as evidence of what an “unconscious little jerk” he is, explaining that Bischoff was too weak to fight the nWo himself and will get thrown in the garbage by Hall and Nash and Hogan as soon as he’s outlived his usefulness. Pretty sure Bischoff was revealed to have been in on it since the beginning, but whatever, I get what he’s saying.
Tony Schiavone peaces out during this, and when he returns, Larry, with his trademark grace, goes FULL MELODRAMA shaming him for it. Larry explains that if Walter Cronkite could report on the Kennedy assassination “with a tear in his eye” and Dan Rather could report “when the space shuttle blew up and bodies were flying everywhere,” Tony can “be a man” and not leave him to confront Eric Bischoff with “Ix-nay Tenay.” Tony’s incredible response: “Yeah, and Walter Cronkite never called a cage match, either. So there.”
Worst: Hogan And Piper Want To Eat Each Other Out
Speaking of Roddy Peeper and cage matches, Piper shows up a little later in the episode to make a “major announcement that will have a profound impact on the New World Order and its future,” according to Mike Tenay. A TNA impact, if you will.
It turns out to be two announcements: Piper’s making Lex Luger vs. Scott Hall for Halloween Havoc with Larry Zbyszko as the special guest referee, and WCW wants to ban cage matches after what happened to Ric Flair so he’s definitely having a cage match with Hollywood Hogan. To make things Piper Weird, he reminds us that he spent the week in Alcatraz and promises to “make Mike Tyson look like a vegetarian” by chewing up Hulk Hogan “from head to toe.” He ends the promo by calling the New World Order the “NWA,” because why not.
Hogan’s response, delivered in a now sleeveless Ric Flair robe given to him by Curt Hennig as dowry when he joined the nWo or whatever, is to call Piper a “shoe salesman” (lol), tell him to get a life (LOL), and promises that in the cage he will eat Piper alive and “beat him over and over,” because this is a “full-circle deal here for all of Hollywood’s enemies.”
I think the best part is when he refers to the New World Order as “the patient fishermen.” That’s so funny to me I can’t even make a joke about it. If the Bullet Club can’t say too sweet or do the hand gesture anymore, they should put out shirts about how long the Young Bucks will sit in a boat and wait for fish.
Best: Silver King Is My Favorite Wrestler
Last week I shared this beautiful GIF of Rey Mysterio Jr.’s through-the-legs hurricanrana on Juventud Guerrera and wrote the following:
It’s one of the best moves in wrestling history when the timing’s right and he doesn’t swing into someone’s leg or the height differential doesn’t spike the guy. Sorry, Psicosis.
I should’ve typed “sorry, Silver King,” because guh:
Although honestly, that could’ve been in response to a Silver King superkick earlier in the match that pushed most of Rey Rey’s jawbone through his brain. Silver King’s probably got the best superkick in wrestling history. Oh, and also he kicks out of a fucking poisoned rana off the second rope like a minute into the match. Between that and Juvy powerbombing Rey off the apron to the floor near the start of last week’s match, Mysterio was super into killing the business this month, huh?
The good news is that this is the week when the Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio Jr. program begins in earnest, so living or dead, the business is about to pick up. I am a great writer!
Eddie shows up after the match and gets up on the apron for some reason to have a staredown with Rey. King of the Cruiserweights Mark Curtis gets between them, backs Rey up and talks Eddie down to the floor. Because Mark Curtis is literally three feet tall, Rey JUMPS him, clears the top rope and lands butthole-first on Eddie’s chest. AND IT IS ON. T-minus four-ish weeks until the greatest light heavyweight match ever wrestled on American soil.
Best/Worst: Booker T Is Adjusting To Facehood Nicely
Looking back, Booker T’s face turn is one of the most unconventional I’ve ever seen. He didn’t really do anything to become a babyface, he just was, and everyone was like, “sure, we’re into it.”
Here, members of Harlem Heat are supposed to have what I can only assume is a number two contender match against Konnan and Scott Norton, who I guess we’ll call “Vicious and Suspicious.” The only problem is that according to Booker, “everybody knows” that Stevie Ray is injured — did YOU know? — so he wants a one-on-one match. Norton says Booker signed up for a tag match, so he’s gonna get one.
So it becomes a 2-on-1 handicap match, and Booker hangs with them well enough that like three minutes in, Vincent gets involved and draws a disqualification. Booker gets beaten down 3-on-1, and nobody from WCW runs out to help him because they’re still really terrible about that.
Best: This Week, The Role Of Super Calo Will Be Played By Ciclope
This week’s most lucha-libric affair is an atomicos match teaming La Parka and Psicosis with Dos Villanos against Lizmark Jr., Ground Juvy, Ciclope and, somewhat randomly, the Ultimo Dragon. You’d think Super Calo would be in this match, but judging by how little air and how much ground Ciclope gets on his dive, maybe Calo’s in the pumpkin suit.
Juvy pins La Parka to win the match, and I keep waiting for the huge La Parka push I’ve tricked myself into thinking I’ve forgotten.
Worst: Raven And Stevie Is Going Nowhere
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Stevie Richards gets into a match with a guy way better than him (Macho Man Randy Savage), loses easily, Raven shows up, Raven and the important guy kinda have a staredown to make you think something’s gonna happen, and then Raven beats up Stevie.
Good news here is that we’re only a few weeks away from Stevie bailing, WCW replacing him with The Flock, and Gothy Flamingo actually becoming part of the show.
Worst: Jeff Jarrett Doesn’t Get Beaten Up This Badly Again Until He Runs Afoul Of Toby Keith
I mean, dude told you he would put a boot in your ass.
The main event of the show is Curt Hennig defending his newly-won United States Championship against Jeff Jarrett, because after they ran a United States Championship match last week WCW suddenly remembered they’d just had a pay-per-view with a guy winning a number one contender match for it. Sadly now Jarrett’s challenging a member of the nWo, which means the match ends via cheating and leads directly into like 15 nWo-ites stomping a shit-hole in him.
Jarrett tries to deal with this by spending a couple of weeks wading back into the standing water of the Mongo feud, then says nuts to this and heads back to the greener pastures of the WWF with a pointed message about not pissing him off. Presumably, this is the part that pissed him off.
Lee Marshall Is Definitely The Worst-Chester
Stagger Lee hits up a “combination Nitro and birthday party” in Wooster Mass, which definitely means he approached a bunch of strangers in a bar and started talking to them about wrestling.
He notes that Worcester is the home of the College of the Holy Cross and birthplace of Robert H. Goddard, the father of U.S. rocketry. Funny enough, it’s also the birthplace of “Dr. Jeremiah Pygmy Heenan,” the “father of U.S. WEASELTRY.” Lee is really discounting the contributions women in the advent of weaseltry in the United States, but whatever.
Best: A Night Of Upsets
That’s the theme of this week’s show, and there are a bunch of them.
The first one I want to tell you about is The Faces of Fear pinning the Steiner Brothers clean, which happens because … well, I was gonna type “reasons,” but I don’t think it did. It’s so weird. Meng and Barb beat Harlem Heat last week and beat the Steiners this week, calling those 700 Harlem Heat vs. Steiner Brothers number one contenders matches we’ve been seeing for a year and a half into question. The announce team puts it over, too, saying that you’ve gotta think the Faces of Fear are in line for a title shot.
Only, they aren’t. Harlem Heat obviously never get a title shot, Bavarian jobs hard in a singles match on next week’s show, and everyone just forgets about it until the Steiners get their title shot against not the actual champions in a month. So … cool?
After that we have Disco Inferno of all people defeating Alex Wright for the WCW Television Championship. Alex is such an easy-to-hate heel that Disco is suddenly a SUPER OVER BABYFACE, and he wins (1) with a surprising amount of fighting spirit, and (2) by targeting the center of Wright’s power:
That’s not a top rope Disco’s grabbing, guys.
After the match, JACQUELINE of all people — I’m going to be typing “of all people” a lot in this column — shows up to say she knows why Disco was off television for so long, to which he says, “don’t go there.” Keep on him, make him tell you to talk to the hand!
In a fun and extremely WCW note, this is all building to Jackie challenging Disco to a TV title match at Halloween Havoc, the match being signed, and then it suddenly becoming non-title because the Nevada State Athletic Commission won’t let a woman fight a man in a title match. And then Jackie beats him anyway. So WCW put the TV title on one of their lowest possible mid-carders with the hope of feeding him to one of their female valets, and then had to have him lose a non-title match because nobody checked to make sure it’d be okay.
Probably the biggest upset of the night is Hector Garza pinning Scott Hall, because Hall won’t take him seriously, is weak against enhancement talent, and is suddenly obsessed with picking on Mark Curtis. At Fall Brawl, he gives him an Outsider’s Edge and tells his unconscious little (jerk) body to “suck it.” Here, he rips off his shirt pocket for no good reason, and when Garza steals the match with a roll-up, Hall’s response is to do this to Curtis:
After that Kinshasa and guillotine choke he pulled off on a fan a couple of weeks ago and all the Outsider’s Edges, I kinda wish this had built to a big Scott Hall vs. Mark Curtis blow-off. Instead, Big Scott’s gotta show ass against a color commentator turned referee who looks like all Three Stooges as one dude.
Finally in the night of upsets, we have Hugh Morrus, the Laughing Man, who has been on a winning streak as of late. His opponent, already in the ring, is a weird, stoic, muscular guy who looks like should’ve donned some jean shorts and tried out for Piper’s Family.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at William Scott Goldberg, long before he was WWE Universal Champion, when his disinterested, naked son wasn’t yet a glimmer in his eye.
I remember this as being legitimately enthralling watching it live. When you watch Nitro you get used to these big ass tough looking dudes showing up just to lose. Your Roadblocks, your Rick Fullers, etc. “Bill Goldberg” had a name like an accountant and had gear like a New Japan young boy. Hugh roughs him up and hits him with No Laughing Matter, and you were 100% sure that was the end of the match. Everyone in the universe bought it as a near fall, because why wouldn’t you? But then Goldberg kicks out.
And then he does THIS:
A (very first) Jackhammer later, and it’s over. Bill Goldberg is now 1-0 despite none of the announcers knowing about him and Mean Gene getting completely stonewalled trying to interview him. If you only know WWE Goldberg, the trick to him is that he was the most intense human being in the history of pro wrestling, possibly the world, so much so that he was also kinda clumsy, but with the strength of like 25 men. And he NEVER TALKED. He just showed up, murdered dudes, and left. It was refreshing and brilliant, and even today after sitting through the 20 years of nonsense that came after it, the debut popped me and put a smile on my face.
Nitro needed him, too. The Four Horsemen just died, Page and Luger can’t get their shit together, Sting isn’t talking or wrestling and everyone else is fighting among themselves. It’s a lot of talking, and not a lot of action. Goldberg is the opposite. I’m excited to relive his meteoric rise, its literally shocking conclusion, and that time he almost dismembers himself trying to kill a limousine with his bare hands. It’s the best.
Next Week
Most of the main-eventers absent from this episode like Sting, Lex Luger, The Giant and Diamond Dallas Page return; The Four Horsemen get disbanded via telephone call because of course they do; and Buff Bagwell attempts a primitive version of Joey Ryan’s YouPorn Plex but has no idea what to do with it.
Nitro is pretty rad between Fall Brawl and Halloween Havoc, so enjoy it. It’s all downhill once Piper and Hogan bite each other on the b-hole inside a fake-ass chicken coop Hell in a Cell.
