The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 04.03.00

The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 04.03.00

OMG THE WWE NETWORK IS FIXED AGAIN IN CANADA! Let’s celebrate with Nitro.

Taped from a dark and empty arena. Must remind Tony of an AEW taping, AMIRITE FELLAS? HIGH FIVE!

Your hosts are Tony Schiavone & Mark Madden

Of course, you may have heard about Eric Bischoff & Vince Russo taking over the show again on the April 10 episode, so they have shut down the show for a week so can continue to fellate Bischoff and Russo from a more historical standpoint.

Tony talks about how he was working alongside Bischoff as an announcer back in 1993 and then all of a sudden Eric was in charge of the company. And Tony thought “This is great!”

First up, we return to the halcyon days of 1994, when Ted Turner announced the signing of HULK HOGAN. And then they interview a bunch of kids who declare that Hulk Hogan is the best, sounding like someone is holding a literal gun to their heads if they don’t play along.

Next up, we continue talking about HULK HOGAN, discussing his stellar movie career and TV career, as he literally conquered Hollywood and taught everyone in Calfornia about the training and the prayers and vitamins.

And did you know he was also a WRESTLER? Yes, we get a montage of Hulk punching bad guys in the head and standing up for the red white and blue of the USA! By god, the longer this video package goes, the more I just want to go out and bomb a foreign country.

Back with Tony and Mark as we finally get to the actual debut of Monday Nitro, 10 minutes into a “Best of Monday Nitro” special. Everything was the plan of Eric Bischoff, who came up with the whole idea and had all the vision, and Madden stresses that only one man has the guts and talent to take on the WWF again and win, and that’s Eric Bischoff!

Onto Tony’s remembrances of the opening episode, and he was so nervous that he walked around the Mall of America and went for food at Hulk Hogan’s Pasta-Mania. Ah so he was probably on the toilet for most of the show then.

Brian Pillman v. Jushin Liger

We get a clipped version of the Nitro opener here, weirdly squished into widescreen but not cropped on the sides, so everyone is short and fat like a funhouse mirror and it’s at a lower framerate, like 20 FPS for some reason. Anyway we get the last couple of minutes, with Pillman winning with a rollup to kick off the Nitro era.

Next up, Lex Luger shows up during a Sting-Flair match, which again gives Tony a chance to put over the greatness of Eric Bischoff for LITERALLY plucking him from the clutches of the World Wrestling Federation. And then they throw to another video package about the first Nitro, which includes the Pillman-Liger match AGAIN, this time in the proper framerate and aspect ratio, and then we briefly see the debut of Lex Luger amidst recapping all the other matches on the show. And of course, we also get a dramatic recap of HULK HOGAN v. Big Bubba Rogers. Like just from a technical standpoint this “Best of” show has been awful so far.

Back at the arena, Tony and Mark discuss how much they loved Eric Bischoff back in 1995 and now he’s back for another home run swing next week!

Off to Memorial Day in 1996, as Nitro expands to two hours and they cut Scott Hall’s debut down to 2 seconds in between recapping the American Males and DDP v. Craig Pittman. Like why are we doing recaps of all the midcard trash from a show that was 4 years earlier?

Next up, they talk about how no other company has ever done more for the cruiserweights, and we get a highlight reel of “the little guys” as Madden puts it, including guys like Jericho and Malenko who were with the WWF at the time that this aired.

Next up, we see the introduction of the nWo and Hulk Hogan “turning bad” according to Madden, and Mark further points out that Hulk “didn’t want to do it”. I can only presume that Hulk spoke to the brilliant mind of Eric Bischoff and got talked into it after realizing that Bischoff was a genius who would save the company.

Back from the break and Eric Bischoff joins the nWo and we recap the disaster that was nWo Nitro, as they destroy the Nitro set and nearly end the 82 week ratings streak months earlier. So let’s talk about Eric Bischoff some more! Madden says that he was a huge jerk on screen and off-screen, but then also kisses his ass and calls him a genius. If they were gonna be pushing Bischoff as the top star in the new WCW in 2000, they’re doing a hell of a job so far making him seem like the biggest star.

Something that also happened in 1997 was the transformation of Sting.

But enough about that! Let’s talk about Eric Bischoff again, and how he was the only person to ever beat Vince McMahon at his own game! EVER! Madden is pretty sure that Bischoff can do it again, because this time he’s got VINCE RUSSO with him. Even though they supposedly hate each other. These guys literally can’t even keep their own bullshit storyline straight for ONE WEEK.

Back to the Sting stuff as this recap show meanders all over the place when it’s not about Tony Schiavone having to shine Bischoff’s balls with his tongue. Also Lex Luger wins the World title from Hogan on the 100^th episode. No context for it or anything of course, but I’m sure it was due to the genius of Eric Bischoff.

It’s been 3 minutes since we talked about Eric Bischoff and all the brilliant things he did, so let’s talk about how he was solely responsible for the creation and ascent of Goldberg. Tony was second-guessing the bosses at the time, but of course they all quickly came to the realization that Eric Bischoff was right, as usual. So we get a montage of Goldberg beating guys, all thanks to the genius of Eric Bischoff.

We’ve talked enough about the amazing Eric Bischoff and now we talk about Vince Russo, who saved the WWF from getting their ass kicked by Nitro night after night. Everything was still great and arenas were selling out every night for WCW, but then Russo took over from Vince McMahon and invented Crash TV, and suddenly things weren’t going so great for Bischoff. So then we recap all the things going wrong for Bischoff, which are a weird mixture of real and kayfabe that make no sense. This leads to Flair having a heart attack and Bret Hart suffering a groin pull.

Tony and Mark discuss how Eric finally burned out, while Russo was doing stuff that was hip and fresh and modern, but stole material from Bischoff and allowed RAW to start beating Nitro. The idea that VINCE RUSSO would take any kind of inspiration from Eric Bischoff is completely laughable to anyone who has heard him, you know, talk before.

I should point out that last week they promised that this show would recap “from the summer of 1999 to present day” and go over everything that went right and went wrong, and we’ve got about 10 minutes left in this two hour show now and have only now made it to 1999. But enough about that, let’s talk more about Eric Bischoff, who was completely burned out and had to step down from burnout because he was making so much money. Meanwhile, Vince Russo literally took RAW to the top of the ratings, and he had nothing left to do and nowhere else to go, so he had to leave the WWF! So Mark and Tony reminisce about Russo joining WCW as the new head of creative, which was like “Babe Ruth stepping aside and Mickey Mantle coming into the lineup”. I swear to god I am not even making that up.

Naturally this leads to a montage of Jeff Jarrett hitting people with guitars and Kimberly leaving the Nitro Girls. This is actually the first time anyone has connected the mysterious “Powers That Be” voice behind the desk with being Vince Russo for those weren’t living on the internet in 2000. So then we get a ludicrious “highlight” reel of Vince Russo bullshit, like the Nitro Girls breaking up and fighting each other, and mudpit matches, and various women in bikinis. Also we get a highlight package of new stars like the Artist, the Wall and Vampiro, all of whom have been pushed in the months AFTER Russo was fired originally. But hey, might as well have Russo take credit for them, too. Also, they never explained how or why Russo was supposed to have left the company in the first place, again assuming that everyone was just following everything on the internet I guess.

Tony then points out that the last three months have been “terrible”, filled with people “throwing things at the wall and nothing sticks”, until finally Russo and Bischoff agreed to come back and save the company. “Leadership!” declares Tony. Madden calls it the single biggest announcement in sports entertainment history, and we talk with various wrestlers before Mark and Tony wrap it up as Madden notes that the potential for disaster is there and it could go bad.

Nah, how likely is THAT? Really, what’s the worst that can happen?

So just to sum up this look at everything that went right and went wrong on Nitro, basically everything was great because of Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff for many years, but then they made too much money and had too many celebrities on the show and Eric got burned out from making so much money, and he voluntarily stepped down. Then Russo came in and everything was even greater than it was under Bischoff, but for some reason everything then got terrible for a few months and now Bischoff and Russo are back to save the company again and they’re going to work together even though we were hearing about how much they hated each other last week. I think I’ve got it straight.

Anyway, this is not only one of the worst episodes of a wrestling show I’ve ever seen, it might be one of the biggest wastes of two hours in any form imaginable.

NEXT WEEK: It’s a new era of Nitro! And it’s a doozy.