The Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for September 21, 1998

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: YOU! ABUSE! OF POWER! ABUSE! OF POWER! FIRE ME! I’M ALREADY FIRED! FIRE ME! I’M ALREADY FIRED!

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. It’s almost time for Halloween Havoc, synergistically presented by candy bars.

Up first, let’s see what happened on an episode of Thunder main-evented by an arm wrestling contest.

The One-Page WCW Thunder Report For September 17, 1998

You can watch this week’s Thunder here.

So, the major story following up Nitro’s epic reunion of the Four Horsemen is that Arn Anderson has agreed to arm wrestle Eric Bischoff for … Ric Flair’s ability to wrestle again? Flair’s employed by WCW and they can’t do anything to “stop him from showing up,” but if he wants to actually do his job at his job, his friend with severe nerve damage has to use his nerve damaged hand to win not wrestling against not wrestler. Cool.

Only, whoops, whoopsie, it’s an nWo swerve. Bischoff subs in Buff Bagwell at the last minute, who wins easily because (1) again, Arn has nerve damage and can barely use his arm, and (2) Buff Bagwell’s arm is bigger than Dean Malenko. Arn loses, but promises that the next time he sees Bagwell and Bischoff, it’ll be with a tire iron in his hand. Nothing like ending your weekly primetime television show with a nihilistic bummer! Welcome back, Horsemen!

Also On This Episode

Konann and Kevin Nash win a tag team match against nWo Hollywood because Scott Hall is too drunk to compete and gets himself counted out. Stevie Ray is visibly upset, possibly because he ditched his future World Heavyweight Champion and multiple-time Tag Team Champion brother and partner to be the most important guy on Hulk Hogan’s bench
the Flair segment shown in full, because WCW has completely given up on making Thunder its own thing
Other can-miss matches like Bobby Eaton vs. Wrath, Mike Enos vs. Lenny Lane, and Scott Armstrong vs. nWo Vincent

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for September 21, 1998.

Worst: The Mirror Has Two Races

If you haven’t been following along, someone in WCW creative — presumably Hulk Hogan, orchestrating the stupidest thing he can imagine so people won’t begrudge him getting back his win from eight years ago and pinning a big star straight out of the company — thought it’d be a good idea to turn the Hulk Hogan vs. Ultimate Warrior feud into a weird horror movie. Warrior has begun using his powers of smoke-based teleportation to kidnap and brainwash Hogan’s favorite disciple, The Disciple, and is making Hogan basically run a spooky obstacle course to get him back.

This week’s Nitro opens with Warrior and The Disciple reenacting that Matthew Lillard and Keri Rusell scene from The Curve, but with Hollywood Hogan as the guy in the closet.

Later in the episode, Warrior shows up on the stage and tricks Hogan and Friends into following him back to the nWo locker room, which he’s turned into a haunted house in the time it took them to walk from there to the ring. Inside, Hogan finds the One Warrior Nation sign painted on the wall and on fire, somehow, and expresses his complicated emotions by throwing a folding chair at the mirror. I don’t know what he thinks that’s gonna do, but hating having to look at Hulk Hogan is about as close as he ever got to knowing what it’s like to watch Nitro.

Hogan finds Beefcake laid out by the toilets, and it can’t be the first time. Before he can do anything, they try to recreate Warrior’s smoke teleportation by very obviously spraying a fire extinguisher into the room. Disciple mysteriously disappears again, leaving Hogan to aimlessly kick at the toilet and dramatically stare at himself in the mirror while Bischoff yells, “WHERE IS HE??” Larry Zbyszko nearly saves the segment by asking, “Did they flush him?”

At the end of the night, Hogan gets tired of asking, “where the Beef?” and demands answers. It’s here that Warrior reveals the big twist: Disciple’s been working with him this entire episode, because he’s the second member of the One Warrior Nation. Like all good wrestling reveals, this one is done by showing everybody what logo you have on your clothes. I’ll leave it to you to figure out why the One Warrior Nation had two guys in it, but I guess it technically still only had “one Warrior.” Warrior should’ve changed The Disciple’s name to THE FOREIGNER to make it clear who does and doesn’t live in the Nation.

So there you have it. The A-story of the episode is that Hollywood Hogan is mad that a guy he presumably kidnapped and brainwashed to follow him has been kidnapped and brainwashed to follow some other crazy asshole instead, and he’s either going to destroy The Warrior for his crimes at Halloween Havoc, or die of smoke inhalation trying.

Worst: Let’s Look At A More Realistic Problem

The World Wrestling Federation is doing a terrible thing by giving a man with real-life drug and alcohol abuse issues a, “drunk and on drugs,” character, but we can trust WCW Monday Nitro to take a steadier, more subtle hand. Here’s Scott Hall waving a paper bag full of jangly bottles in Doug Dellinger’s face and telling him to send a clean-up crew out into the parking lot because he just finished driving drunk to Nitro.

Hall is supposed to team up with Stevie Ray to take on Lex Luger and Kevin Nash in tonight’s “feature bout” — AEW really needs to bring back calling main events on TNT “feature bouts” — but decides to reprise his role from Thunder and ruin as much of the show as possible. He stumbles out to the ring during The Cat vs. Lenny Lane, which really takes away from Ernest Miller introducing his, “I’ll give you five seconds to reconsider facing a 3-Time World Karate Champion and leave the ring, thereby saving your own life,” gimmick. Also, from Ernie kicking people in their goddamn throats. Dusty Rhodes has to walk down to the ring and berate-drag Hall to the back.

The Feature Bout sees The Giant sub-in for an inebriated Hall, but Hall still wandering out to commentary and then staggering to the ring to wrestle anyway. He starts throwing punches at Nash but can’t connect (see above), and the match gets thrown out due to Embriaguez Excesivo. In lieu of an intervention, Nash grabs a microphone and announces that the two will fight for money at Halloween Havoc. But then the story of that match ends up being, “Nash doesn’t want to fight Hall,” so [shrug]. I should probably stop expecting WCW stories to make a lot of sense in the era of Ultimate Warrior Mirror Goofs.

Worst: How To Book An Uncontested Hour One

Or, “Jobbers Of The Week.”

Up first this week is an appearance from Depot Man, Barry Darsow. You can tell he’s the heel because he walks to the ring yelling, GET THAT STINKIN’ CAMERA OUT OF MY FACE! and the like. The Jerry Flynn school of unlikable acting. Darsow goes one-on-one against Fit Finlay in a deeply WCW Saturday Night kind of match that gets wrestling fans in 1998 at a live-ass Nitro chanting “boring” like five minutes into the show.

You’d think if you were running an hour of Nitro before Raw started, you’d put some good shit on to make fans at home go, “oh, this is gonna be a good episode,” and stay tuned. I’m a die-hard WCW homer and even I was switching over to Raw to see what Stone Cold Steve Austin was gonna do, because all WCW was giving me was bad, slow arm-bars from 10-years ago’s third-best fake Russian.

WCW follows the star power of Barry Darsow with an appearance from Ohio Valley Wrestling’s Nick Dinsmore. Yes, that’s the same Nick Dinsmore who’d eventually become WWE Superstar “Eugene,” Eric Bischoff’s developmentally disabled nephew who also happened to be a wrestling savant and DEFINITELY didn’t pose any stressful questions about whether or not WWE Superstars should punch a mentally handicapped man in the face with impunity. Next time someone like Seth Rollins talks about how intergender wrestling isn’t “realistic,” leapfrog the “Becky Lynch vs. Seth Rollins isn’t any less realistic than Seth Rollins vs. Brock Lesnar” argument and go straight to, “remember when you booked a drunk guy with a stick versus a special needs guy?”

Anyway, DInsmore loses to Wrath in about two minutes. He’ll round out the month with a losses to The Cat and Scott Steiner before disappearing onto WCW Saturday Night for a few months before heading back to OVW and accidentally ending up in WWE developmental thanks to Jim Cornette buying stake in it in ’99.

Rick Fuller shows up and wets the bed against Rick Steiner. It’s only notable for continuing the Mystery Of The Spooky Laughter from last week. If you don’t know where that’s going, I swear to God it’s worse than you’re predicting.

Hour two keeps WCW’s epic 200-man roster of the most talented wrestlers in the world going with Jerry Flynn, who gets in way, way too much offense against Perry Saturn before losing. Saturn just won a big blowoff match against Raven and The Flock at Fall Brawl ’98 so you’d think they’d keep his momentum going, but here he is getting his ass kicked on Nitro by the Bigfoot Goldberg found, shaved, and taught loser karate.

This match also features that fun WCW thing where they can’t decide if tables are “foreign objects” or not, so they cause a disqualification if you wanna end the match, and don’t if you don’t. It’s made even better by Flynn setting up the table spot by doing the bit where you push a guy up against a post and try to kick him but he ducks and you kick the post, only Saturn forgets the next part of the spot, and they have to do it again. So Jerry Flynn’s dumb ass is out there Yes Kicking the post, waiting for Saturn to remember his lines. Great stuff, and definitely what you want on when Vince McMahon’s yelling at the Undertaker about something on the other channel.

Best: Boys Becoming Men, Men Becoming Wolves

This week’s special guest is Shawn Stockman of Boyz II Men, and the announce team talk about how all the members of the group love the Wolfpac. The guys who sang ‘I Swear’ were nWo Hollywood though, because they were All 4-Life.

Best: You Suck, Pal

Because of a swerved arm-wrestling match, Ric Flair can never wrestle again. Ever! It’s times like this that I wish pro wrestling stipulations weren’t so legally binding, and that we could write around them.

On Nitro, Flair and the Four Horsemen — all five of them, on the same show where the One Warrior Nation has two members — interrupt Bischoff so Flair can scream-ramble at him about the history of pro wrestling. There are few things more up my alley than a screamed Ric Flair promo about tradition, so I’m all about it. Flair puts over every member of his team individually, hip-thrusts at Elizabeth for wanting to ride Space Mountain, and brings up the wrestling tournament that got him suspended in the first place.

“In my proudest moment, in my son’s proudest moment, he goes to school a National Champion to have our next door neighbor tell him that I’M fired by YOU? Is that right, Mr. Selective Memory? You’re talking to ME? Telling me that I haven’t got the story right? The story goes like this; we are too GOOD, you are too bad. So you say, there can’t be Horsemen! They’re too good! Flair’s too old? I say Flair’s too good, not too old!

“No, I didn’t save my money. I spent it! But I made it! Look at me! I made it by going up and down the highways and being the very best I could be every night, [points to the crowd] ask them! You are sitting on a big contract because of guys like me, and him, and him, and Hall, and Luger, and Sting, and Dusty Rhodes, we carried the business you’re living off the top of it. WE made it. We made it. You walk out here … do you think, you think these people here are here because of YOU? Or are they here because they love the greatest company in the world, WCW! And that’s us! Not you!”

It rules. When Bischoff accuses him of not being as important to wrestling as Hogan, Flair shoots back with an hilarious, “Oh my God, do you hear that, Lord? You mean to tell me, a guy that travelled around the country, going on fourth, before intermission to beat the crowd, was really the World’s Champion?” It would’ve been nice if Flair could’ve just kicked BIschoff’s ass instead of losing arm wrestling contests to him or whatever, but I’ll take what I can get. Ric Flair getting scrunchy grandma face and screaming SUCK IT into a microphone is worth your time.

A Night Of Bad Powerbombs

On a serious note, this is the episode where Kanyon and Raven hit Villano IV with a neckbreaker/powerbomb combination, time it wrong, and accidentally break his neck for real.

I’m okay sharing it in GIF form because like when Nash dropped The Giant on his head at Souled Out, Villano eventually recovered enough to get back into the ring. Also, they showed it on slow-motion replay from like four different angles. Watching it back 20 years later, you can see how Raven immediately knows something is wrong — presumably because he had his ear next to Villano’s neck the entire time — and stabilizes his head until EMTs can get out there. The crowd giving Villano IV applause for eventually sitting up and leaving the ring under his own power is nice, too.

On a less serious note, you ever read that 20-year old reference in old wrestling columns about how you, “can’t powerbomb Kidman?” This episode of Nitro is where that starts.

Disco Inferno spends the first two hours of the show trying to drop weight — the scenes have the same energy as Warrior and Disciple in the rafters, by the way — and shows up dressed like the Young Bucks’ dad to challenge for the Cruiserweight Championship. Like all good Disco matches, he does well when he stays serious, but ultimately can’t stay serious while suffering from Disco Fever and succumbs to dumb-shittery. He also becomes the first person to try to powerbomb Kidman, and …

Kidman eventually retains, despite Lodi showing up with a bunch of depressing signs about how he wants to go back to being abused by Raven and distracting him. The match goes well enough that they decide to do it again at Halloween Havoc, and gamble with the idea of two decent-to-good Disco Inferno matches on the same pay-per-view. If need evidence that WCW grew too confident and flew too close to the sun, there you go.

Also On This Episode

WCW’s graphics department was really top of the line. Spared no expense!

Goldberg doesn’t show up on this episode, but his Halloween Havoc challenger Diamond Dallas Page defeats Bálor Club founder Alex Wright. Page wins with a backdrop and then a Diamond Cutter that kinda sorta looks like he was going for a backdrop into a Diamond Cutter, but it works either way.

I’m not sure why I want Diamond Dallas Page to be Teddy Hart with these things, but if he was able to pull it off against Alex Wright 20 years ago, Randy Orton could “invent” it against Ali on some 2019 WWE B-show.

Speaking of things that need to get invented in 2019, want to hear a really great idea from WCW? “Backstage Blast.” It was the version of Nitro shown later on DirectTV with exclusive backstage interviews and other backstage stuff in place of commercials. Plus, that means any matches that had commercial breaks in the middle were shown in full. This was the only place you could see some matches (like the Bret Hart and Chris Benoit “Owen Tribute” match) uninterrupted. How killer would the Hulu or WWE Network version of Raw and Smackdown be if when they archived them, they added in all those Dot Com exclusives with Queen Cathy and the wrestlers getting to improvise where the commercials would be and included full matches? I’d rewatch every episode. Even the bad ones.

WCW only did about 17 of these total (according to any online resources or recollections I could find), so WWE could totally claim ownership. I wouldn’t even be mad at it.

The only other bit worth noting is that Chavo Guerrero Jr. puts on a red bandana and a black poncho and tries to convince Konnan to let him join the nWo. Konnan refuses, so Chavo says he’s going to go over Konnan’s head and talk directly to Kevin Nash. Konnan squashes him about it, but is still Shane McMahon sweaty by the end because doing two forward rolls and sitting on a guy gets your heartrate up to like 190.

Buff Bagwell and Scott Steiner show up demanding to know “where Bret Hart stands.” The announce team is like, “didn’t we get an answer to that last week?” which should’ve been the REDDEST FLAG EVER, but nope, Bret shows up to confront them about it, gets gently beaten up, and necessitates saving by Sting. After like three months of being attacked and maybe two weeks of a face turn, Sting is convinced that Hulk Hogan’s biggest cheerleader is definitely his friend now, and won’t attack and try to injure him for any reason as soon as next week.

I guess when you look at the world through red facepaint, all the red flags just look like flags.

Next Week:

It’s a week of terrible decisions as Super Calo returns to face La Parka, the Jerichoholic Ninja faces his own mortality in a fight against Goldberg, and Sting trusts his good friend Bret Hart as they try to take out Hollywood Hogan. I bet that doesn’t end badly for EVERYONE INVOLVED. See you then!