From The Other Side of the Guardrail – The nWo

For those that missed the debut episode of From The Other-side of the Guard Rail, have a read here. I discussed how I got into the business, and all the highlights I had during that first year, including the massive low of learning Diesel & Razor were headed to my sworn enemy down South, WCW, and that’s where we left off….

There I was. Sitting in my bedroom watching Nitro, a particularly boring episode. Steve Doll vs the Mauler was going on. I was flipping through the latest issue of The Source that I got, when I glance up, and lose my fucking mind. I immediately run out to the TV in the living room and change it while yelling to my mom “MOM! MOM! LOOK!”. Razor Ramon, or as I’d soon know him, Scott Hall, came through the crowd, dressed in a Canadian version of his ring-gear, and grabbed the microphone.

“You know who I am…but you don’t, know why, I’m here….”

I honestly can’t really describe how I felt in that moment. Wrestling was my life at this point, my biggest love in the whole wide world. My least favorite aspect of it was WCW, because it was fake and phony, with my 2 top favorites being Diesel & Razor.

Heart-broken they left me, suddenly, it all made sense. Because keep in mind, at this point, I convinced myself wrestling was just about 100% legit. Suddenly, it all made sense. Of course, OF COURSE. How….how could I have EVER doubted my boys? How could I have EVER assumed the worst?! How could I have ever thought for a second that these brave, tough, bad-ass dudes would work for a clown operation like WCW?! No, they weren’t working for WCW, they were there to DESTROY IT! It was like a dream. My hero, Razor, was on WCW TV, telling them that the shit was about to go down. WCW was soon to be dead in the water.

What began in that moment, for the next 2 years, was the happiest I’d ever be as a wrestling fan, at least when WCW was concerned. What happened with me and the WWE at the same time, we’ll save for the next article.

After that, I NEVER missed a second of Nitro. When Nash showed up, I literally jumped up and down. I watched The Great American Bash 1996 scrambled, because I had to see what my guys were going to do, and they didn’t disappoint. Nash gave Bischoff the Jackknife! THROUGH A TABLE! They really were here to wreck shop! Although there’s a great moment here where we see Nash powerbomb the head of WCW through a freaking table, meanwhile, Hall has a microphone and places it on the ground very carefully. I just thought the difference in their actions was hilarious. Watching them, week after week, beat down, intimidate, and over-power all of WCW was such a delight. My dream of dreams was coming true. Of course, the question remained, who was the 3rd man? I had no clue. It honestly didn’t matter too much to me, because I knew Nash & Hall could beat the entire WCW. Again, there I was, watching a WCW scrambled PPV, because I had to know, right then, who was the 3rd man. The second Hogan came out, just like everyone else, I assume, I knew it was him, and I was DELIGHTED. Even though I hadn’t grown up with Hogan, I still had a soft-spot for him, and man, Hollywood Hogan was too damn cool.

My mom use to like to give me shit about wrestling being fake, but I had all the answers;

“If they didn’t work for WCW, why wouldn’t they just call the cops and have them thrown out?”

“Mom, they HAVE called the cops! But the nWo are usually gone by the time they do, and even then, they don’t call most of the time because they KNOW that the nWo are ratings! And they need them!”

“So then who’s paying them?”

“Duh, mom, Trillionare Ted.”

The commercials, “the following announcement has been paid for by the New World Order” was so fantastic. Having the empty arena matches on Saturday Night or Nitro worked brilliantly, and gave even more credence to the fact they didn’t work there. It was around this point that I fell in love with my favorite aspect of wrestling back then: Wrestlers jumping ship. Nowadays everyone knows, but back then, at least for a while, no one knew when people were jumping, and it was so exciting to see someone jump ship, especially when it came to the nWo. Watching The Giant turn on the Dungeon of Doom also sparked my love of turns, which was basically like jumping ship. You never knew when it could happen, things like that were so exciting. I also stand by the fact that Giant in the nWo is the best he ever did. He was funny, entertaining, and about as great a heavy as you could get.

To this day, even though they ruined it as only WCW could do, Sting vs the nWo is the greatest angle in wrestling history. It’s funny, as a kid, I remember the clip of Sting stepping out of the limo and pummeling Lex, along with the others. In my memory, as it was for decades, it was the actual Sting who stepped out of the limo. I figured they used the real Sting for that part, just to confuse people even more. However, looking back, it’s clearly not, heh. Funny how the mind’ll do that.

I loved Sting at that point, because I was also a huge Crow mark. They did everything perfectly with Sting, resulting in some of my all time favorite moments.

When at the beginning of a Nitro, “Sting” came down from the rafters too fast and the nWo “broke” character, only to reveal it was a dummy, which they beat around for a few. Later that night, they did the same thing, and the dummy fell through the ring. They pulled it out, smacked it around, only for it to come to life and reveal the real Sting! That was so fucking brilliant, and so fun. You had an army of fake Stings coming down to the ring, getting dispatched 1-by-1, until Buff Bagwell decks one of’em, and it doesn’t move an inch, as Buff celebrates, only for Sting to finally move that inch, and drop Bagwell, along with the rest of the nWo. It was so damn exciting. There was nothing like it. And I honestly thought the Scorpion Death Drop was the DEADLIEST move in the wrestling world. Such a perfect finisher for Stinger.

Like everyone else, I could not wait for Hogan vs Sting. I even had a Tale of the Tape poster on my wall that I got from PWI, which I fucking loved growing up. When the day came, I even got the PPV. Yes, THAT’S how bad I wanted to see this, that I paid for a WCW PPV. Yeah, I had to pay for it. I got like $20 a week for allowance, and I had to give up 2 weeks worth for this so I could finally see Hulk vs Sting. Now, to be honest, I don’t have much memory of the match, other than thinking it was a massive let down. I mean, is this classic WCW or what? Over a year of build up, and they absolutely blow it in spectacular fashion. The biggest problem was this: Sting was booked too strong, Hogan was booked too weak. Hogan sold everything, and was a complete chickenshit heel. Sting sold nothing, and was a literal Superman. The match with Hogan should have been 30 seconds long. It should have been a massive squash match. Or, they should have been booking Hogan as strong as he was as a face. Make it like a Brock Lesnar situation, where there’s only one hope, and it’s Sting. Or, at the very, very least, a Game of Death situation where Sting had to fight 5 people that night before getting Hogan. Whatever the case, they fucked it up royally.

It’s at this point my love for the nWo started to ween. However, they fixed that right quick with the nWo Wolfpac. I thought the Wolfpac was as cool as the original nWo. I still mark out for the Wolfpac. I thought the red & black looked great, they had all the coolest members [except for Konnan. I’ve always thought he was super corny, and a wannabe studio gangster]. Their theme song was awesome, and because I was one of those cats who grew up loving rap, their image vibed with me too. However, it definitely just delayed the inevitable, as around November/December 1998, I was back to being WWE, and WWE only.

Of course, there was one last major moment, and that was the Finger Poke. I remember that night quite vividly, because I had the TV in my bedroom on Nitro, and the living room was for Raw, and I was legit running back & forth watching both main events. I marked out big time when the nWo got back together. Looking back, I’m not sure why, because I was pretty much over them, however, I was interested to see where it went. It didn’t go anywhere except Hogan wearing JNCO and looking like a dorkus malorkus.

After that, WCW was never able to get me back. I returned to my roots, as did they; a terrible wrestling company that couldn’t touch the WWE. But I freely admit that WCW in 1997 is my all time favorite year from any company. Everything from top to bottom was GOAT status.

Alright, that wraps it up for this week’s edition. Tune in next time when I flip the channel and discuss having the time of my life with the WWE during the Attitude Era.

Thanks for reading, buckshots, and for no reason, here’s my all-time favorite shot of any woman that’s ever been in pro-wrestling, the hottest woman in wrestling of all time, Trish Stratus circa 2000-2002.

Any questions, comments, drunk-ramblings, feel free to send them my way, I always dig hearing from you, the beautiful people.

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