Mike Reviews WCW Monday NITRO #157

Happy Saturday Everyone!

Seeing as it’s been 26 years to the day since this episode of Nitro aired, I thought I’d review it, seeing as it has one of my favourite ever WCW moments with Ric Flair returning to Nitro after a long absence

You can check the full card for this Nitro below;

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=1672&page=2

Nitro is emanating from Greenville, Horsemen Country on the 14th of September 1998

Calling the action are Tony Schiavone, Mike Tenay, Larry Z and Bobby Heenan

The Nitro Girls Dance. I expect I’ll be typing that a lot today.

The announce team yak for a bit, notifying us that DDP won War Games last night at Fall Brawl, it’s Goldberg Vs Sting in the Main Event, and apparently The Horsemen might reform tonight on Nitro. The crowd has certainly been briefed, as they start chanting for Ric Flair. Mike Tenay is at a local airport hoping that Ric Flair is going to show up at some point. A limo drives by, but Iron Mike can’t work out if Flair was in it, and the pilot of the nearby Lear Jet isn’t talking either. The plot thickens! In all seriousness, on free TV this is the kind of thing you have to do in order to hook people for the rest of the show. I complain about them starting pay per views like this because everyone has already bought the show and just wants to watch wrestling, but TV is different and I have no problem with some chatting at the start of the show in order to set the stage for why the audience should stay with you throughout the night.

On Thunder last week, Ernest Miller interrupted an interview that Mike Tenay was having with Scott and Steve Armstrong. A pretty random feud, but The Armstrong’s did have in-ring experience and Miller needed someone to help him on that front in his matches. Nor-Man Smi-Lay ends up getting into a brawl backstage at Fall Brawl following that after Norman helped out The Armstrong’s, which led to Miller getting a win at the pay per view itself.

Match 1
“Das Wunderkind” Alex Wright Vs “Far Out” Van Hammer

Wright was an arrogant comedy Heel at the time, whilst Hammer had left Raven’s Flock to go Face and become a hippy. Hammer is entering to “Satan’s Sister” as his entrance music here, which doesn’t suit his new gimmick at all and they’d soon switch him to a new theme that fit the hippy character much better. Wright’s wacky German techno dance draws a good Heel reaction from the crowd, with Wright’s joy in inflicting it on the audience helping to make it so entertaining. Wright does some decent wrestling here too, getting some nice suplexes and some snug strikes. Hammer makes a clumsy comeback with some body slam’s, which leads to Ernest Miller heading down to ringside for a kick on Hammer whilst the referee is distracted. The referee calls for the bell and declares Hammer the winner, so I guess the ref saw enough of what went on in order to give Hammer a DQ win.

WINNER BY NITRO FINISH: VAN HAMMER
RATING: *

Thoughts: This wasn’t great, but Wright looked decent at least. The finish was one of the reasons folks were starting to turn on WCW though, as they couldn’t even give us a clean finish in a random Nitro opener, let alone the matches folks actually cared about

Miller is dragged off by security following that, whilst Wright seems reasonably happy at everything, even though the karate doofus just cost him a match.

We get still photos from Fall Brawl and the War Games match.

Mean Gene Okerlund joins us in the ring, although he misses his cue in a classic WCW moment. US Champ Bret Hart joins us to boos, even though Bret was supposed to be a babyface at this stage. It did all end up being a SWERVE in the end, so the fans shouldn’t be blamed for not buying in to the turn. Bret is limping and looks to have an injured right leg or knee, which could have been a work or a shoot that they decided to just use as part of the storyline. Bret says that Hollywood Hogan is scum, which does finally succeed in getting the crowd on his side. Bret says that due to his injury, he won’t be able to defend his US Title, and he doesn’t feel like he deserves to have it anyway. This brings out Rowdy Roddy Piper, who had been trying to get Bret to turn back babyface during this period, and now seems to have succeeded based on what we’re seeing here. Piper gives Bret the big pep talk about how Stu Hart would be proud of Bret for being honest in front of the fans like this, and encourages Bret to follow the straight and narrow from now on. This was a great promo from Piper and Bret held up his end well also.

We get still photos covering Perry Saturn’s match with Raven at Fall Brawl. Saturn is in action next on Nitro.

Match 2
Kendall Windham Vs Saturn

Saturn defeated Raven at Fall Brawl in order to free The Flock. Windham was freshly back in WCW I think, after a period away from the company when a push of his had gotten interrupted by some legal issues that he and his father had found themselves in. For some reason, despite Saturn getting arguably the biggest win of his singles career the night before, they give Windham quite a lot of the match here, even though he wasn’t anything close to a pushed commodity at the time and wouldn’t really be pushed at all until the following year when he was teamed up with his brother, Curt Hennig and Bobby Duncam Jr.

The crowd kind of goes flat the longer it goes on, despite being hot for Saturn’s entrance at first, just because they don’t really care about Windham and don’t want to see him work Saturn over like this. Windham’s work looks okay for the most part, although it’s mostly just punching and kicking with a few rest holds thrown in. Saturn’s work is lacking a bit of snap when he gets a chance to fight back, but his selling throughout the match is decent enough. Saturn makes sporadic attempts a comeback, but Windham keeps cutting Saturn off until Saturn is able to catch Windham with a Spicolli Driver OUTTA NOWHERE for the three

WINNER: SATURN
RATING: *3/4

Thoughts: Nothing actively bad here, but having Saturn give up 65-80% of the match to a lower card guy who had barely been on Nitro previously, and hadn’t been pushed in a national promotion since 1990, was the wrong kind of way to follow-up on Saturn’s big victory from the previous night. If they’d wanted Saturn to put a bit of time in before picking up a clean win then it would have been better for him to either work with someone who the crowd recognised, or someone who could have an exciting match with him. Windham had a serviceable standard punch and kick TV match here, but it went on for too long and they lost the crowd after a certain point, and Saturn’s out of nowhere victory didn’t help with things, as it needed more of a big comeback for Saturn in order to pick the crowd up a bit

Raven’s Flock (Sickboy, Scotty Riggs, Horace Boulder, Kidman and Lodi) come down to join Saturn in the ring. Saturn’s victory at Fall Brawl means that The Flock are free of Raven’s control, but he still stands in the crowd along with Kanyon in a effort to convince them to re-join him. Saturn puts all of The Flock members over on the mic (Lodi aside) and they do all eventually decide to leave on their own. Lodi tries to re-join Raven, but the others drag him away, meaning Raven has now lost his Flock. Saturn’s delivery on the mic wasn’t great here, but the angle achieved what it needed to and Raven was great as he got more and more desperate in trying to stop his lackey’s from leaving his side.

Match 3
The Renegade Vs Wrath

Renegade was one of the sadder instances of the wrestling business chewing someone up and spitting them out. He was supposedly a respectful guy backstage and wanted to improve, but he was pushed way before he was ready in 1995 and never managed to recover from it, leading to some years of toiling in the under card until WCW eventually let him go not too soon after this. He then very sadly took his own life in 1999 due to a combination of losing his job and additional personal issues.

Wrath had initially been in the Mortal Kombat inspired Blood Runs Cold storyline, but with that fading out in late 97 WCW decided to repackage him as a big bloke who wrecked folk, and it was a particularly effective makeover that led to him getting pretty over until they fed him to Kevin Nash and Bam Bam Bigelow in quick succession. Thankfully Wrath’s awesome entrance music is left intact here, which isn’t always the case on the Network/Peacock. Renegade gets basically nothing in here, although he does get a Handspring Elbow at one stage. Wrath just totally no sells that though, and The Meltdown (Pumphandle Powerslam) ends it soon after.

WINNER: WRATH
RATING: SQUASH

Thoughts: These sorts of squashes did a great job of getting Wrath over, and if they’d been smart with it they could have used this push as a way to heat Wrath up for a big pay per view match with someone like Goldberg, Nash, Sting etc that might have actually drawn some money

Hollywood Hogan, The Disciple (Brutus Beefcake), Elizabeth and Eric Bischoff join us for some Nitro promo time. Hogan had quite literally run away from The Warrior back at Fall Brawl, which actually led to Warrior injuring himself in the process, because WCW. Hogan says that Bret Hart and Roddy Piper are sissies, before going on to say that he destroyed everyone in the War Games but Warrior ruined it for him. Well, technically, Hogan ruined it for himself as he could have easily pinned someone after destroying them, but he decided to just stand around taunting instead. Hogan challenges Warrior to face him in an official match, which led to the two battling at Halloween Havoc. Smoke fills the ring at that point, which leads to Warrior kidnapping Disciple somehow. Hogan looks at the camera and yells “WWWWAAARRRIIIIOOOOORRRRRRR” like he’s a comic book villain or something. This was the usual boring Hollywood Hogan promo from this time period followed by some silliness at the end with Warrior using his “magic” to kidnap Dizzy Hogan.

The commentary team tell us that Kaz Hayashi cannot compete for the Cruiserweight Title tonight, so Kidman will be stepping into the contest instead.

Match 4
WCW World Cruiserweight Title
Champ: Juventud Guerrera Vs Kidman

Both of these wrestlers are babyfaces following the events of Fall Brawl, but they were big rivals for most of 1998 prior to that and actually wrestled back at BATB 98, so this will be a continuation of their rivalry. This is an exciting fast-paced match, with Juventud getting the better of things in the early going and bouncing Kidman around like a pinball. Kidman eventually heads outside to catch a breather and that allows him to gain control once he gets back inside. Kidman is kind of working as the defacto Heel in this one, even though he’s now a babyface, doing a lot of stomps and trying to wear Juventud down with holds, whilst Juventud focuses more on doing high flying. Kidman isn’t really cheating in any way though, so it’s less a heat segment when he’s winning and more a control segment.

They get a decent chunk of time to work with here, with the bout even going through an advert break at one stage. The crowd generally responds well to the action, although they’re not a massive fan of Kidman’s chin lock’s. Mike Tenay finally gets back from the airport, and receives some joshing from the other commentators, whilst Kidman gets a very nice sit out powerbomb onto Juventud for a good near fall. Whenever they’ve stuck to high impact and exciting moves here then the crowd has really enjoyed it, although they haven’t been too fond of Kidman’s attempts to slow it down. I get why he is, because they have to put in some time here and you can’t wrestle at a high pace non-stop, but the fans want to see MOVEZ here and don’t appreciate seeing rest holds.

Juventud eventually starts fighting back after Kidman has controlled things for a while, which leads to a really exciting closing stretch were both wrestlers start unloading with the “heavy artillery” as Gorilla Monsoon would say. Both competitors have chances to win it, with the near fall game of both really being on point. Kidman eventually manages to catch Juventud with a spine buster counter to an attempted high flying move from the Champ, which leads to the challenger heading to the top rope and then following with the Shooting Star Press for the clean three count.

WINNER AND NEW CHAMPION: KIDMAN
RATING: ***1/2

Saturn applauds Kidman following that, whilst Kidman celebrates with his new belt.

Mean Gene finds James J. Dillon backstage, but JJ won’t let on to Gene about the whole Ric Flair situation.

JACKIE CHAN is doing a pre-recorded bit here on Nitro, to hype up the fact that Wheels on Meals (the film that features the song that would go on to become Mitsuharu Misawa’s entrance music I believe) will be on after Nitro finishes, along with some clips for the movie Rush Hour, which will be coming out soon. I totally forgot that Chan was on this episode of Nitro. That’s really cool that they left it in. Chan was, as usual, very charming here, even though he was clearly reading off a teleprompter and probably had zero idea what a WCW Nitro was. Chan is a pro though and he got through it.

Eddy Guerrero and Eric Bischoff are arguing backstage, with Sleazy E forcing Eddy to go on a tour of Japan during his kids birthday, just to be a jerk.

Match 5
The Barbarian w/ Jimmy “Mouth of the South” Hart Vs “The British Bulldog” Davey Boy Smith

Davey hurt his back the previous night at Fall Brawl due to landing on a trap door that no one told him about, but he’s out here wrestling on Nitro anyway, because WCW. There was a time when this could have been a fun mean guy power match, and it starts out reasonably well with Davey bumping Barb around and knocking him to the floor. Barb drags Davey out of the ring though and throws him back first into the ring post for the cut off, which gives us some heat when they get back inside the ring.

The crowd doesn’t really care, and neither do the announce team, with them mostly taking about other things. Barbarian’s offence looks decent and Davey’s selling is equally decent, so it works as a match, it’s just not an especially thrilling one. The commentary team do finally start calling the match, and they do an okay job at it. Davey fights back and tries to Powerslam Barbarian, but Jimmy Hart interferes to prevent that, which leads to Barb loading up for the Kick of Fear. Davey is able to dodge that though and gets a weak looking slam for two.

WINNER: DAVEY BOY SMITH
RATING: *1/4

Thoughts: Davey was really hurting here, but he gutted it out and they had a passable quick TV match in the end, although the finish looked pretty weak due to Davey struggling with his injury woes

Mean Gene tries to interview James J. Dillon in the ring, with Dillon being coy about why he’s so dressed up. Dillon then addresses what happened at Fall Brawl, where Scott Steiner pretended to be injured in order to get out of a match with his brother Rick, before then attacking Rick. Dillon says that Scott technically did wrestle for a bit before feigning injury, so they won’t suspend him, but they WILL be booking a rematch for Halloween Havoc. Evil laughing then brings the segment to an end, which was Chuckie the evil living doll in one of the stranger examples of corporate synergy on a wrestling show.

The Nitro Girls dance.

Folks have fun at a Nitro Party. Good for them, at least some people could still enjoy WCW around this time period.

Jim Neidhart joins us in order to have a match with The Disciple, but Disciple is still kidnapped by The Warrior, so the match can’t go ahead. Warriors smoke fills the ring, which leads to Warrior appearing in the ring with Disciple’s limp body. nWo Hollywood of Hollywood Hogan, Buff Bagwell, Vincent, Giant, Eric Bischoff and Scott Steiner head out in an attempt to save The Booty Man. Warrior grabs the mic and accepts the challenge for Havoc, before vanishing into the smoke again, as this continues to get sillier.

Like, if this was real, kidnapping and brainwashing Ed Leslie would certainly upset Hogan, seeing as Dizzy Boulder was his best mate and all. But if you had the power to kidnap someone from nWo Hollywood and essentially turn them into a lackey, wouldn’t you pick someone useful like Giant, or Scott Steiner, or even a walking human brick wall like Scott Norton? I’m just saying that Warrior has powers that allow him to teleport around the building and take over the mind of other people to do his bidding, and he’s using it to turn BRUTUS BEEFCAKE into his chief lieutenant?! What a waste of all that power!

Match 6
nWo Hollywood Vs WCW
“Big Poppa Pump” Scott Steiner w/ Buff “The Stuff” Bagwell Vs Nor-Man Smi-LAY and Silver King

This just chumpafies the Cruiserweight division seeing as Silver King got a Title shot last night and now he’s here to get creamed by Steiner. It also doesn’t make The Cat look too good either that the guy who seems to be his next feud, in the form of Smiley, is also getting destroyed here. If Cat took even as long as 45 seconds to defeat Smiley at this stage then he’s just as much a loser as he is. Bagwell does keep interfering at least, so it’s not entirely the babyfaces getting killed by one man, but it only helps out moderately. The action itself is fine, as Steiner throws the babyfaces around and they take nice bumps for him, until it’s time for them to be stacked up and double Steiner Reclinered.

WINNER: SCOTT STEINER
RATING: SQUASH

Thoughts: A serviceable squash that succeeded in making Steiner look tough, but I don’t know why they had to do Silver King and Smiley dirty like this when they had roughly 75 other people from the weekend shows that they could have stuck in there so that they didn’t have to make a recent challenger for the Cruiserweight Title look like such a loser

Steiner acts like his back is hurt following that.

The Nitro Girls dance to some VERY 90’s sounding music that was probably just generic production music that they’d use for Saturday morning kids shows.

We get clips from Thunder, where Eric Bischoff challenges Arn Anderson to an arm wrestling match (and struggles over pronouncing “benevolent” a few times. To be fair, I could see that being a word that could trip a few folk, especially when you have to say it quickly in a wrestling promo). If Arn wins, then Ric Flair gets reinstated, but he’s got to use the arm with nerve damage in it. But that’s his Glock hand!

Match 7
WCW Vs nWo Hollywood
THE MONSTER MENG Vs The Giant

Meng was a legitimate tough guy, so every three-to-six months or so they’d try pushing him again before inevitably giving up, in what I have cheerfully started referring to as The Cycle of Meng. Meng actually tries using the tactic of sticking and moving to start, and it actually works for him for a bit. Meng using his speed and agility against a bigger man like the world’s scariest version of Rey Mysterio Jr is actually pretty fun to watch, not gonna lie. It soon becomes a back and forth slugfest, with the crowd getting into the fact that Meng isn’t backing down. Giant uses his superior reach to grab Giant in the Choke Slam before Meng can get the Tongan Death Grip though, and that’s the three count.

WINNER: THE GIANT
RATING: **

Thoughts: An incredibly brief match, but it achieved everything it needed to and it gave Giant a clean win whilst still making Meng look tough in defeat, which makes the segment a thumbs up overall

Match 8
nWo Hollywood Vs nWo Wolfpac
Scott Hall w/ Vincent Vs “The Total Package” Lex Luger

This was during the horrible storyline where they made light of Scott Hall’s real life personal demon’s by making him a drunk buffoon who would wrestle whilst smashed off his bonce. Why an athletic commission wouldn’t just immediately strip WCW of their license to promote wrestling for allowing a visibly drunk person to fight on live television isn’t addressed here of course. They try and make it a “worked-shoot” thing, where Luger gets mad at Hall “for-real” due to Hall working whilst drunk because he could potentially injure someone, as I’m sure Vince Russo was sitting at home taking notes. Eric Bischoff, Kevin Nash and Konnan end up coming down to the ring, as the match just kind of ends, with the two nWo factions co-existing for a bit so that everyone can try and help Hall.

SPORTZ ENTERTAINMENT FINISH
RATING: DUD

Thoughts: I hate stuff like this, as it’s basically saying that everything on the show is fake, except for this bit you’re watching now, when really ALL of the show should be real in the kayfabe world, not just the segment we’re currently watching. It’s not as bad as WCW 2000 at least, where they did that in EVERY segment, whereas they limited it to just this one segment on this episode of Nitro. I still didn’t like it though; as it made light of very real issues and it did nothing to make me want to see where the story would go next, nor make me want to see Scott Hall have wrestling matches with people, which is the whole point of this endeavour. It made me want Scott Hall to go away and clean himself up, which he eventually did with help from DDP before passing away, but we were supposed to want to see him wrestle Kevin Nash at Halloween Havoc here and this segment did nothing to help make that seem interesting or exciting

Hall yells at everyone who has come out to help, saying that all of them drink, so they shouldn’t be having a go at him for drinking, as this is now getting very uncomfortable. Trust me, even if every person in an alcoholics life is totally sober, that alcoholic is STILL going to drink. Hall then throws up on Bischoff, as this continues to get even more pathetic. It also highlights even clearer how this isn’t actually “real”, as if Hall was so drunk that he was puking on people, then they wouldn’t be showing it on screen.

James J. Dillon, Arn Anderson, Mongo McMichael, Chris Benoit, and Dean Malenko, all come out in suits one by one to reveal themselves as the new Horsemen unit (well, Dillon isn’t officially part of the group, but he’s certainly friends with all of them). Arn does most of the talking of course, putting over each person that comes out and giving the big inspirational promo about how his in-ring career has ended due to injury, but now he knows that bringing back The Horsemen is the right thing to do. Malenko was the one pushing the most for this thing to happen, so he gets singled out for special praise from Arn because of that. If you need someone to cut an emotional inspirational promo and Arn Anderson isn’t your first port of call, then I don’t think you’re doing this whole Pro Wrestling thing correctly. Arn teases that the segment is over and that there are no other members, but of course he’s just teasing and introduces Ric Flair, to one of the biggest pops in Nitro history. Flair is of course moved by the response (I know, Ric Flair moved to tears on a wrestling show, what are the odds). Flair goes on to cut an excellent promo, but before he can get to the metaphorical fireworks factory with it, Eric Bischoff comes out to ruin things. This leads to Flair going on one of the greatest rants of all-time, telling Bischoff that he ‘s an obnoxious overbearing ass, that he abuses his power, that he sucks, and that he’s an absolute low-life, with the crowd loving every moment of it. Flair finishes it by screaming “Fire me? I’m already fired! Fire me! I’m already fired!!” in one of the more entertaining Flair freakouts on a Nitro, as we head to a break.

What is there to be said about that segment, other than it was fantastic and WCW failing to truly capitalise on it was just one of the many examples of why they eventually lost the war to the WWF. Still, at least we got an all-time Nitro moment here I guess.

Diamond Dallas Page joins us for commentary here so that he can find out who he’ll be facing for the WCW World Title at Halloween Havoc after he won the right to challenge for the belt back at Fall Brawl.

Main Event
WCW Vs nWo Wolfpac
WCW World Title
Champ: “Da Man” Goldberg Vs Wolfpac Sting

WCW were desperate for Nitro to win one week of ratings so much that they were willing to burn off a pay per view Main Event here on free TV, even though the stuff with Flair had already practically guaranteed a victory anyway. Of course these days it’s all about TV rights fees, but back in 1998 the main way a wrestling company made money was from pay per views and house shows, so throwing a big match like this on TV was great for TV ratings but not great for drawing money at the box office. The crowd is very into this, and they just go straight into trading shots at one another in a power match, which is the perfect way for them to work this, seeing as it’s what the fans want to see anyway and it plays to Goldberg’s strengths. Sting does a good job of selling frustration at not being able to get any traction against Goldberg, slipping into the wily veteran role quite well, especially when he tenaciously holds onto a side headlock at one stage.

Sting can’t really get any traction until he manages to counter a Goldberg shoulder breaker into a Tombstone, which leads to some Stinger Splashes in the corner, which finally starts to wear Goldberg down a bit. Goldberg tries to reply with a Spear, but Sting moves out of the way and then takes out Goldberg’s leg in order to put him into the Scorpion Deathlock. Goldberg tries to muscle out of that, but Sting manages to sit down on the hold in order to prevent it, although this means the effectiveness of the hold is lessened. Hollywood Hogan joins us during that, and that leads to Hogan cheap shotting Sting whilst the ref is checking on Goldberg. Goldberg of course has no idea that Hogan got involved, but he sees Sting down and follows up with the Spear and Jack Hammer for the three.

WINNER AND STILL CHAMPION: GOLDBERG
RATING: **3/4

Thoughts: It’s very annoying that Hogan decided to make himself part of that, but there was enough ambiguity around Goldberg possibly being able to get out of the hold himself that he wasn’t too hurt by that finish, although it did take a little bit of the shine off him that he essentially needed help from Hogan to win. By comparison, Sting looked great here, as he weathered the Goldberg storm and had the invincible rookie on the ropes until Hulk Unicron decided to get involved. The match itself lost a bit of steam in the middle, but the closing stretch was really good until Hogan wandered out and the crowd was going nuts when Sting was delivering the Stinger Splashes and Goldberg seemed vulnerable for once

Bret Hart runs down to save Sting and Goldberg from Hogan (because Hogan is so tough and amazing that it requires three babyfaces just to make him back down). The crowd are actually booing here, mostly for Hogan but there was also a bit backlash towards Goldberg for how he won the match. Hogan sure got over his buddy being kidnapped as well huh, seeing as he was happy to stop the search for The Zodiac in order to get involved in the Main Event.

In Conclusion

This was a very 1998 WCW Nitro show, in that we had some good wrestling at points, some decent squash matches to get some newer acts over, and a genuinely great angle involving some of the people that WCW’s fan base liked and cared about the most. However, it all ended up feeling like background noise to what was REALLY important in the eyes of those with decision making power, which was the fussin’ and feudin’ nWo factions and whatever lousy storyline Hulk Hogan had going on at the time. Also, after years of WWE doing it, and AEW even dabbling in it as well, I think we can all agree that 3 hours is just too darn long for a weekly wrestling television show.

If you focus on the positives though (the pushes of Wrath and Scott Steiner being well executed, The Piper and Bret segment being well done, the Cruiserweight Title match being really good, Giant and Meng being very fun for the short run time it went on for, the Main Event being decent for what it was, the Flair segment being one of the greatest moments in the history of the show) and ignore the negatives (the Scott Hall angle, Hogan and Warrior’s silliness, the inexplicable push of Ernest Miller way before he was ready for it, Perry Saturn needing roughly half of autumn in order to defeat an enhancement guy) then this was a decent episode of Nitro and it deservedly won the night, which was pretty much all WCW really cared about that week, so yay I guess?

Nitro comes mildly recommended