Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: We’ve got three major stories happening.
1. Miss Elizabeth has agreed to be Hollywood Hogan’s booty call in exchange for small roles in movies
2. A child and a NASCAR driver have joined the nWo and somehow everyone’s still afraid of them
3. Macho Man is threatening to beat up Ric Flair because he’s not treating a Slim Jims sweepstakes with the appropriate gravitas
Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network, and catch up with all the previous episodes on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page.
Please enjoy the vintage Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for October 7, 1996.
Worst: WCW Saturday Night Was More Important Than This Nitro
If you were wondering why WCW would advertise The Outsiders vs. Harlem Heat for the tag team championship at Halloween Havoc — sorry, “Slim Jims Halloween Havoc” — only to give the belts to Public Enemy on a whim, don’t worry … WCW was wondering that, too.
On WCW Saturday Night, Harlem Heat used their SUPER CONVOLUTED MATCH ENDING POWERS to win back the tag straps. Yep, Colonel Parker used his cane to hold Johnny Grunge in place on the ropes, which allowed Stevie Ray to kick him in his injured leg. That also allowed them to just casually walk into the ring with said cane and continue to attack without anyone seeing it, which is sorta par for the course when you originally won the damn belts in the middle of a ring full of cops while your partner held Lex Luger upside down in the ropes with the referee lying between you. You just sorta do whatever you want.
This week’s opener is a “non-title grudge rematch” between the teams, which is spectacularly WCW because the Heat win again, and it just as easily could’ve been for the titles. I dunno. It’s just a huge pile of garbage, too, and Flyboy Rocco Rock has to be the Face In Peril for like a full quarter hour while Nitro catches up with itself. We recap Saturday night, check out limos arriving to the arena, follow Miss Elizabeth backstage as she tries to get into Macho Man Randy Savage’s dressing room, watch the nWo arrive to taunt Harlem Heat from the balcony, the works. So Rocco just kinda gets the Christmas beaten out of him until Johnny Grunge tags in, immediately falls victim to a multi-pronged manager distraction chair attack, and loses.
Things are starting off badly, and then WHOOPS, F*CKING JEFF JARRETT IS HERE.
Worst: The King Of The Mountain
We know who that is, Taz! What is JEFF DOUBLEJAY doing in the Nitro Zone??
Yes, folks, break out the hollow guitars and pull out your slapnuts, because Jeff Jarrett is here. I’ve read that the idea was to put him with the nWo — he was a heel in the WWF, and outed as a musical fraud as recently as “on the other channel this same night” — but that was too obvious. Instead, they made him a “free agent” and had him join the Four Horsemen, which included a brutally extended feud with Mongo over the hand of Debra McMichael. It’s as good as it sounds. He’d leave and come back and end up with four World Heavyweight Championship runs (Jesus Christ), but this first attempt is one of the … well, the most TNA things WCW ever did.
He takes on Hugh Morrus, assumedly to stand up for the honor of the fallen Brad Armstrong, and cuts a fired-up promo about how Hulk Hogan didn’t put any “mills” on his family’s table. He’s vehemently anti-nWo, which causes the crowd to boo him and chant “N-W-O.” Who are you gonna cheer for, the cool, violent, disaffected gang, or this Little Lord Fauntleroy motherf*cker in too many suspenders? He looked like somebody jammed a bunch of bananas into a juicer and it came to life.
I won’t waste all my “what Jarrett looked like in his stupid suspenders” jokes right now because God, we have so much time.
Best: Jim Powers, Now Managed By Mordecai
WCW has a hot act with Diamond Dallas Page, but the nWo hasn’t expanded enough to kickstart their non-WWF recruitment angles, so he’s still stuck on this Lazy Susan of Diamond Cutting jobbers.
This week’s discarded pill bottle nobody removed from the cabinet is Jim Powers, managed by Teddy Long in the biggest, whitest suit you’ve ever seen. He looks like one of the Original Kings of Comedy walking up to the gates of Heaven.
Best: Wenner Wenner Chicken Denner
Speaking of “lazy” and “jobbers,” let’s take a moment to discuss the glory that is MIKE WENNER.
If you aren’t familiar with him, Wenner is a former WCW Power Plant instructor most notable for occasionally teaming up with legendary WCW chump “Iceman” Buck Quartermain on Saturday Nights. Imagine him as a Days of Future Past Scotty Steiner, if Steiner had continued his life as a Steiner Brother and never morphed into Big Poppa Pump. He’s the Steiner skinsuit the Freakzilla alien burst from.
Wenner’s job here is to have a dynamic match with Glacier, who is great at karate kicks but not yet totally sure how wrestling matches are supposed to work. The result is Glacier working in a suplex (!) and a plancha (!!), both of which are notably less cool and effective as him just doing a karate pose and kicking. The match ends with Glacier does a karate pose and kicks.
More like Mike Loser, am I right
Worst: Extremely Thorough NASCAR Updates
Macho Man Randy Savage has a championship match with Hulk Hogan coming up at Halloween Havoc, and just discovered that his ex-wife has more or less sold her body to the New World Order in exchange for movie roles. Instead of addressing any of that, Savage brings out NASCAR driver Jason Keller — again with the f*cking NASCAR drivers — and explains in excruciating detail why Keller’s Slim Jims-branded car did a better job than the nWo’s.
Seriously.
During this weekend’s races, the nWo car hit the wall and didn’t finish. Keller gets braggy as f*ck about it (“come on, Macho”), and instead of just saying where he finished, Savage launches into this “DID YOU FINISH IN THE TOP 20? YOU DID! DID YOU FINISH IN THE TOP 15? HE FINISHED IN THE TOP 15” bit. It’s a lot like One Away on The Price is Right. LADIES, DO I HAVE AT LEAST ONE NUMBER RIGHT? HOOOOONK. LADIES DO I HAVE AT LEAST TWO NUMBERS RIGHT YEAH DIG IT. HOOOOONK.
Worst: High Voltage Is The Sh*ts
If you’re wondering what’s happening in the picture (and can’t see it because of the classic motor-oil commercial-style Nitro splitscreen of doom), that’s High Voltage going for a springboard double-dropkick. On paper, it sounds pretty cool. In practice, what part of Kenny Kaos and Robbie Rage made you think they could pull that off? Kaos jumps first, and despite springboarding from a height above Meng’s head, only gets his legs up to Meng’s waist. Robbie misses completely, so badly that he just springboards into a standing position.
Debra claps about it and is like, “that was good.” That is the darkest shade every thrown on Nitro. That’s like Liger clapping for Sasuke levels of shade.
Best: Arn Anderson, Or
Worst: Eric Bischoff Can’t Believe People Like Arn Anderson
Arn Anderson squares off against his old enemy The Renegade, and it mostly goes how you’d expect. Renegade pulls of a handspring elbow that surprises everybody, but when he goes to the well again, Arn just punches him in the back of the head. The crowd ERUPTS for that, because any living human in a wrestling arena can look at Arn Anderson and The Renegade and figure out which is better, and Arn toasts him with a DDT. The crowd is still so desperate to love the Four Horsemen and support them in a big battle against the nWo, but everyone else (read: Hogan) is like, “nah.”
The best part of the moment is that the crowd’s so into it, Eric Bischoff doesn’t know what’s happening. “Wait a minute, what’s going on here?” It’s the kind of reaction they usually give when Kevin Nash or Scott Hall debuts walking in through the crowd, but for a transitional punch in a Renegade match. That’s the power of Arn Anderson, and a direct illustration of why Bischoff never f*cking got it.
Best: Arn Anderson, Again
Speaking of Arn, he continues to be brilliant into the next match. When he’s done murking Renegade, he ties him in the Tree of Woe (daddy) until Lex Luger makes the save. Not sure what emotional currency Luger has invested in The Renegade, but he’s Good Guy Lex this week so he tries to help. Arn bails, and the announce team puts over the fact that Arn did that on purpose just to get in Lex’s head.
Luger wrestles an unfortunately short match against Squire Dave Taylor, and when it’s done, Arn waits for Luger to slap hands with fans at ringside and blasts him in the back of the head with a chair. It’s GREAT. Arn lured Lex out, made him think the coast was clear and then brained him anyway. The crowd loves it, of course, because Arn, and because Luger hasn’t done anything worth a goddamn since the spring.
Best: Mongo Gets His Comeuppance
As mentioned, the Four Horsemen are starting to become increasingly helpless. They were tough at first, but then the nWo added Cobra dressed as Sting and the 1-2-3 Kid, and the difference was just too great.
In the best match on the show in a walk, Chris Benoit and Rick Steiner go at it again. It’s like 10 minutes of them just hitting each other as hard as possible and throwing each other at the ground. Think Cesaro vs. Sheamus, the 1996 version. And, like the 2015 version of Cesaro vs. Sheamus, it can’t just have a clean ending.
With both men down, Mongo rushes over and is like CHRIS CHRIS USE MY DEADLY METAL BRIEFCASE, IT’S GREAT, I USE IT TO WIN ALL THE TIME BABY. Benoit doesn’t get to it in time, though, and Scotty Steiner (and/or Alternate Timeline Mike Wenner dressed like the leather guy in The village People) wanders over to stop him. Mongo tries to hit Scott, but Rick catches the briefcase and kabongs Mongo with it. The referee is distracted throughout this entire exchange, so Rick plows through Benoit with the briefcase as well and gets the pin. What’s good for the yokel goose is good for the mentally challenged gander, I guess.
Worst: Hope You Weren’t Expecting A Main Event
AS MENTIONED, THE HORSEMEN ARE LOSERS.
Instead of the advertised main event (Macho Man vs. Ric Flair, part the millionth), the nWo jumps Flair backstage and steals the United States Championship. They bring the fight out to the ring and obliterate Savage as well, making sure everyone knows that the guys who didn’t get dressed and don’t care what happens on the show are the only people who matter on the show. This leads to an extremely uncomfortable moment (in a string of them, apparently) where The Giant holds Liz by the face so Hogan can tell her he “owns her body.” You could just get an agent, Liz, I don’t think being Hot Cosbied by Hogan is the quickest path to stardom. What’s he gonna do, get you in with Carl Weathers?
Anyway, Hogan debuts the “crime scene” spraypaint around Savage and adds insult to injury with one of the greatest burns in Nitro history:
Brilliant.
After that comes the announcement that the nWo is going to literally destroy Nitro, as Syxx drives out in a HOLLYWOOD HOGAN MONSTER TRUCK, giving me horrible Halloween Havoc ’95 flashbacks. If the Giant and Hulk Hogan are too close to each other, do they cause monster trucks to appear? Did WCW allot a yearly monster truck budget for Halloween shows, thinking that sumo rooftop battle was gonna redefine the genre?
In case you’re wondering, the monster truck still has arms, and no, they don’t actually destroy anything.
We go off the air with Syxx revving up the truck near the empty table, and that’s that. I was hoping he’d accidentally crush Mike Tenay under one of the tires, and next week’s show would open with Tony Schiavone burying him in a shoebox.
