Week One: WCW Monday Nitro, September 4, 1995
Welcome, one and all, to Pops & Botches: Monday Night Rewind! The main point of this series, which I hope will help it stand out and on its own, is that I didn’t grow up watching WCW Monday Nitro, or even the majority of WWF Raw is War, for that matter. I didn’t even have cable until the summer of 2000, so I was a WWF homer by default, since Smackdown was my only regular source for professional wrestling. Mine will hopefully be a fresh look at the Monday Night Wars. I’m going to do my best to remain neutral and not allow knowledge of future events to color my perception of what I’m seeing. This will, obviously, be a little more difficult when we get closer to certain finger poking events, but bear with me. I’m actually going into the overwhelming majority of this blind. With all of that said, let’s take a look at the very first episode of WCW Monday Nitro, from September 4, 1995.
POP: Nitro’s Entrance
Let me just go ahead and throw this out there: WCW won the war of show openers hands down in the early days. Raw seemed more interested in trying to convince everyone, ”We’re WILD! We’re CRAZY! THE AUDIENCE MIGHT STORM THIS RANDOM ROOFTOP RING AT ANY TIME! WHO KNOWS!?” Nitro was cool with, “Hey, here’s the wrestlers doing some wrestling, here’s a couple of explosions, let’s go.”
BOTCH: The First Nitro’s Entrance
Unfortunately, as soon as that is over, we get introduced to “the newest member of the WCW broadcast team, Steven “Mongo” McMichael. Mongo is, to put it nicely, just the worst. He’s an ex-football player who wants to be known only as a professional wrestler now, except when it’s convenient to his character to reference the fact that he’s an ex-football player. His constant shouting commentary makes me pine for the dulcet tones of Michael Cole. I’m sure my lifelong loyalty to the Green Bay Packers has, in no way, colored my opinion of him.
The only real upside to Mongo joining the booth is the fact that Bobby Heenan is right there with him, already verbally eviscerating him within ten seconds of being introduced: “I was a big fan of yours when you played for Denver! I enjoyed all your games! You were great with the Cubs!” Wrong city, wrong sport. Absolutely beautiful. Long live the Brain.
POP: Wrestling in a Mall
It blows my mind that the premiere episode of Monday Nitro took place in the middle of the Mall of America, and that crowd is HYPED. Wrestling these days (at least from one or two specific companies) is still popular enough to sell out large arenas and stadiums, sure, but it seems relegated to the fringes of pop culture. I can’t imagine WWE even attempting to put on a show in the middle of a mall; not because it would be too small to make enough money to suit Vince McMahon, but because it would come off as more of a sideshow attraction. Can we go back to the days when everyone could just enjoy some good ol’ wrasslin’ without having to feel embarrassed about it? Who knows, it might actually make some of the people involved behave themselves more.
POP: Liger vs. Pillman
To give you an idea of just how blind to the wrestling of the mid-to-late 90’s I am, I saw Jushin Thunder Liger fight Tyler Breeze before I saw him fight Brian Pillman. This match is good, because of course it is. It’s Jushin Liger and Brian Pillman; you could throw a time-displaced Great Khali in there to make it a Triple Threat and it would still be at least watchable. There is some stiffness and a couple of missed spots early on, but that’s easily accounted to nerves. I mean, if it were up to me to have literally THE FIRST MATCH EVER of Monday Nitro, I’d probably still be in the back, puking my guts out, rather than even ATTEMPTING a head-scissors takedown. Pillman eventually gets the win, then helps Liger up and shakes his hand in a great display of sportsmanship. I’m really looking forward to watching how he went from this to waving a gun at Steve Austin.
One thing that will probably, unfortunately, be the same when it comes to general public wrestling (read: any traditionally televised WWE product not aired on a Wednesday) is the “USA!” chant whenever someone’s fighting a foreign wrestler. Liger’s not even a bud guy here; this is a face versus face exhibition match to kick off what is (as far as we know at that moment) going to be a beautiful, decades-long run on top for this great new wrestling show. I guess they’ve just gotta pick sides, and it’s easier to go with the one that looks like them. Never change, wrestling crowds.
(Except, you know…change. Please. Preferably soon)
POP: This Fucking Ad
My source for old episodes of Nitro, which shall necessarily remain nameless, didn’t cut out all of the ads like the Network did (it legitimately look like someone has digitized their VHS recordings of the original broadcasts), so I get to enjoy things like gameplay footage of Batman Forever for the Super NES and Sega Genesis, and THIS amazing ad for what I assume is some sort of space age combination of cologne and sex toy.
That’s literally it. That still image with a sexy lady voiceover. DRENCH YOUR BODY. DRENCH HER SOUL. TURN INTO A LOVE-MAKING WATERFALL.
BOTCHY POP? PASTAMANIA!!!
After that beautiful bit of advertising, we go to one slightly less so: an interview with the WCW World Heavyweight Champion, Hulk Hogan, at his new restaurant. The best part of this is Eric Bischoff introducing the piece by telling us that Michael Jordan may have a restaurant in Chicago, and Don Shula, head coach of the Miami Dolphins, might own a steakhouse, but Hulk Hogan has PASTAMANIA right here in the Mall of America (surely, the most coincidental of coincidences to ever have coincided)! I think we know who the REAL winner is here!
(Hint: it’s not the place that closed after just a few months of serving Hulk-shaped Chef Boyardee)
Hulk proceeds to cut a fiery promo (dare I say, a promo fra diavolo?) on Big Bubba, and I won’t lie, as ridiculous as the idea of a pasta-fueled promo is, and as problematic as Hulk has turned out to be in the modern day, the poppy part of this overall botch is that listening to him scream into the camera about how he’s going to give Big Bubba “a dose of his Hulkeroos” and how “PASTAMANIA’S GONNA RUN WILD ON YOU” is…actually pretty amusing and engaging? I dunno. The kids were super excited, that probably helps.
POP: Invasion 1.0
Even someone who’s barely watched professional wrestling from before the mid-2000’s knows damn well that Ric Flair is one of the greatest of all time, and I’ve read enough about the era to know that Sting was one of his all-time greatest rivals. Unlike Liger/Pillman, this match is already turned up to 11 when Flair and Sting are still making their entrances. The crowd is going crazy for two of their favorite wrestlers and then the roof absolutely gets BLOWN OFF when Lex Luger suddenly appears.
This is definitely one of those moments where I have to put on the old kayfabe glasses. We all know about contracts and behind the scenes dealings now, but at the time, I have to imagine it was absolutely crazy to see Luger show up on WCW television. This is one of those moments that WWE always seems to gloss over during their revisionist history recaps of the Monday Night Wars, but this was the first “invasion.” The crowd is going absolutely NUTS at Luger literally just STANDING there, and that actually got ME hyped, watching it almost twenty-five years after that fact, even more so than Bischoff and Mongo feigning outrage at the sight of him.
Luger disappears into the back again without doing much else (yet), and we get on with what I always think of as the Duel of the Woos. It’s always amused me that two of the biggest rivals of southern wrestling both hyped up the crowd by screaming “WOO!” at them.
Like I said, the atmosphere was already on fire from the point Flair’s music hit, and the two wrestlers feed off of it immediately. Sting is just the best white-meat babyface, grinning like an idiot and tossing the dastardly Flair around like a rag doll, and speaking as someone whose first Sting match was the WrestleMania 31 travesty, dude can fucking GO. Flair throws his hand up to beg off from further beatings and rolls to the outside like the great, classic heel he is.
The modifier of “classic” is very important, too: unlike modern WWE heels, who rely almost exclusively on outside interference and roll-ups via distraction to ever win a match, Ric Flair is perfectly capable of winning a one-on-one match with pure skill, he JUST DOESN’T WANT TO. He’s got better things to focus his attention on than a long, drawn out wrestling match, so OF COURSE he’s going to throw in a thumb to the eye or a cheap shot to Sting’s knee while the Stinger’s distracted by the appearance of Arn Anderson at ringside.
And speaking of Arn: I love that big, burly, middle-aged looking dad of a wrestler, and I’ve barely even seen him in the ring yet. His entire personality and presence just give off nigh unmatchable levels of importance. There’s clearly been some conflict between him and Flair of which I am unaware, having jumped into the WCW storylines right at the start of Monday Nitro, but just this one confrontation has me invested in it, even without knowing the context.
BOTCH: LOUD NOISES
The breakdown of the Flair/Sting match rolls right into Scott Norton physically accosting the announce team over what I can only assume is his lack of a match on the first Nitro card? I don’t know, I can only understand, like, every third word that comes out of his mouth in this bit. Something about a contract, something about Mongo’s “big time career.” Big shout out to Heenan IMMEDIATELY throwing Bischoff under the bus, though. King of the heels.
Anyway, the true king of indecipherable promos, Macho Man Randy Savage, grabs Norton from behind and starts screaming, too. Savage challenges Norton to a match RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, and, in a refreshing change of pace for someone mostly versed in modern WWE storytelling, the authority figures look at that like, “lol, no, wrestlers don’t get to make matches, gtfo.”
I’m sure THAT will last all the way through literally this very same episode.
BOTCH: Old Video Packages Were the WORST
That’s it. Generic ass guitar riffs over weird digital effects, rendering the footage almost unwatchable. Just thought I’d point out how terrible that is real quick. Super excited to see what Sabu actually looks like next week.
POPPY BOTCH? The “Main Event”
After an entirely forgettable pre-recorded promo from Michael Wallstreet, Hulk Hogan fights Big Bubba Rogers in the main event. If you’ve seen one babyface Hogan main event, you’ve seen all of them: he fights, he starts to lose, he HULKS UP, he wins. I’m more interested in the commentary discussion of Hogan’s declaration of “war on the Dungeon of Doom,” because at least I know that’s going to be entertaining in a train wreck sort of way.
As soon as Hogan gets his inevitable win, said Doom-y Dungeon runs in for the beatdown, but WHAT’S THIS, Lex Luger has shown up to back up the champ! The poppy part of this botch is that the Luger appearances actually did serve the purpose well at first. His quick stroll before the Flair/Sting match teased his past with them and helping Hulk could have easily teased a future confrontation. Unfortunately, WCW decides to just forget the “future” part and blow their wad right away.
Lex and Hulk argue in the ring all the way to commercial, and when we come back, Luger cuts a promo about how he’s traveled the same roads and beaten the same people as Hogan, so now he wants to “get it on with the big boys,” and he’ll wait as long as necessary to finally fight the Hulkster. Well, lucky break for Lex, apparently WCW leadership forgot about that whole “wrestlers don’t make matches” thing from, like, fifteen minutes ago, because Hulk tells Lex to “stick that stinky palm” of his out and shake on it, and Lex gets A WCW HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH NEXT WEEK. We of the IWC roll our eyes a lot at newcomers getting automatic title shots these days, but holy shit, at least Brian Cage had to win a ladder match and wait a month for his match with Jon Moxley.
Eric Bischoff confirms the match has been signed as we head off the air, and that’s it for the very first episode of WCW Monday Nitro. I can imagine that wrestling fans all over the world were ridiculously excited after this. I was super hyped for the premiere of AEW Dynamite, and that happened in what could be generously described as a wrestling recession.
1995 was the beginning of the peak of professional wrestling’s popularity in the mainstream, and it could have only looked like clear skies and smooth sailing from there. There’s no way a group of outsiders will eventually become so bloated and ungainly that it drags down the rest of the show, while backstage politics drives all the promising young talent into the open arms of the competition, or that a parade of rotating showrunners will create an absolute train wreck of differing styles of storytelling, all crashing together to destroy the company and create what has essentially been a monopoly of the industry for the last two decades or so.
Nah, that could never happen. See you next week, everybody!
