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The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro–01.29.96

The SmarK Rant for WCW Monday Nitro – 01.29.96

OK, let’s see how long I can alternate before the schedule gets all crazy again for these things.

LIVE from Canton, OH

Your hosts are Eric Bischoff, Bobby Heenan & Mongo

Hulk Hogan v. Ric Flair

Man, they’re really just throwing the big guns out there now. Hogan brings out his harem, including Debra, Elizabeth, Linda Hogan and Woman. Who could seriously buy Nancy as a babyface? It must have been bizarre for Liz to escape to the real world for a few years and then get yanked back into the insanity of her former life again. No wonder she ended up so messed up. Hogan overpowers Flair and no-sells the chops, but Flair pokes him in the eyes on the floor. Hogan no-sells that as well, because he’s got the eye of the tiger or something, and he continues beating on Flair in the corner. Flair finally clips the knee as we take a break. Why do they leave the commercials for WCW magazine in the show, I wonder? Back with Flair working on the knee, but he goes up and gets slammed off. Back to the knee, however, and then Hogan makes the comeback as they brawl on the floor. Jimmy Hart gets a cheapshot and Flair takes over again, because god forbid Hulk ever put Flair over in any fashion but he’s fine with selling for JIMMY HART. Back in the ring, it’s time for the figure-four, but Hulk reverses to escape. Hulk up and he walks into an elbow in the corner and Flair gets a backdrop suplex. Bischoff notes that Jimmy is like “the mean little kid who taunts the gorilla at the zoo”. That’s a pretty specific childhood memory, Eric. Hulk makes another comeback and looks to finish with the usual, but it’s the Horsemen run-in, as Arn STEALS ELIZABETH’S SHOE, Flair hits Hogan in the eye with it, and a thousand jokes were born at 13:36. Yes, Hogan jobbed to a high heel shoe. I’d say that drops him out of contention for the World title, so Savage can rest easy. To their credit, the WWF side of the War wasted no time in mocking this mercilessly. Match got pretty good once Hogan started selling. ***1/4

The Faces of Fear v. The Road Warriors

I believe this would be the Nitro debut of the FOF, actually. Animal attacks Barbarian, but walks into a big boot and the heels take over. Meng tries a piledriver on Hawk and that of course goes nowhere, but Animal gets caught in the Faces corner and worked over. Bischoff notes that these aren’t “a bunch of RuPaul wannabes”. That’s a bit homophobic, no? The FOF work on Animal’s back and Meng gets a dropkick for two. Barbarian with a powerbomb for two and he goes up for a clothesline where they completely blow the spot and then need to repeat it. So the second time, Animal catches him with a clothesline to counter, and it’s hot tag Hawk. He cleans house, looking as bored as humanly possible, but Meng breaks up the Doomsday Device. And then they blow ANOTHER spot, as Barbarian was supposed to piledrive Animal and have it broken up by Hawk, but Hawk was way out of position, like off in another state, so Barbarian just hits the move. And then they reset and do it again, with Hawk actually hitting the flying clothesline this time to finish at 9:01. Holy god did the Warriors look terrible here. ½*

Kevin Sullivan rants and raves about the Horsemen, which brings out AA and Pillman. Arn promises some tough love and takes off his belt, and Sullivan and Hugh Morrus take the opportunity to attack, but Arn lays them out with a DDT while Pillman cowers on the floor.

Madusa v. Sherri

Sherri was actually doing an interview with Gene in street clothes, and Madusa attacks to start the match. OK then. Madusa with a suplex on the floor, and back in for some kicks, but Sherri takes her down and goes up. Madusa slams her off, but Sherri rolls through for the pin at 1:52. Madusa lays her out with a german suplex and slaps her around afterwards to continue the wedding angle. ½* There was actually all kinds of weirdness with this one, as Sherri basically refused to do the job, so Madusa knocked her out with the post-match suplex in a shoot of sorts, as Sherri wasn’t told it was coming. Crazy.

Randy Savage v. The Giant

No match, as Savage attacks Giant with the belt right away and it’s immediately thrown out, so Ric Flair runs out and we get a beatdown. Finally, months later, Hogan makes the save with a chair, but the Dungeon overwhelms the Megapowers and Flair heads to the desk to cut an awesome ranting promo on Savage and finish off the show.

The Pulse

Pretty angle-heavy this week and not much for wrestling, but god knows that’s more interesting than most of what RAW was pumping out at this point.

Comments

  1. With all the dream matches they threw out there on a weekly basis... you'd think they would have given us Sting/Luger vs Mega Powers....


    Also, I kinda like the WCW commercials, reminds of watching the shows originally.

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  2. If Sherri and Medusa got 10 minutes, that would have been an awesome match

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  3. Based on a post I did earlier today (or yesterday, I don't remember for sure), I was looking up wrestler ages of the "big stars" of 1997 in WCW (Hogan,Piper,Hall,Nash,Sting) vs those in WWE today, and came up with a disheartening question:


    Who the hell ARE the big stars in WWE right now? Cena, sure... but who else? Has anyone but him been given enough of a run at the top to be considered a "big name"? Every time I think of current WWE, the names Cena, Kane, Undertaker, and HHH are the first ones that pop into my head, but that can't be right... this is just weird.

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  4. Was the deal here that Hogan was getting sensitive to the criticisms that he never jobbed so he did a bunch of jobs for a month to shut people up?

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  5. It's true about Nancy. She just couldn't make the ropes in time.

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  6. Also why was gene in street clothes? That's almost as weird as him interviewing Kimberly in a towel.

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  7. Virgil's Gimmick TableDecember 17, 2014 at 11:19 PM

    HHHogan?

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  8. I don't recall hogan ever really using the knee. Or having sex with Stephanie.

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  9. Off topic - Kudoh vs Shark in her retirement match might be the sickest thing I've seen. Tell me that off the apron bomb wasn't flirting with disaster.

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  10. It must have been bizarre for Liz to escape to the real world for a few
    years and then get yanked back into the insanity of her former life
    again.
    -------------------------------
    Details please?

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  11. I'd make a King Lear joke right about now....

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  12. Details on why Brock Lesnar is a lazy fuck first.

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  13. Wouldn't you say Brock Lesnar is a big star?

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  14. Bad timing for the Billionaire Ted skits--on that night's Raw, they had a line from the Huckster talking about how in his contract with Billionaire Ted, "I never lose!" Whoops.

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  15. Arn Anderson 2: Hulk Hogan: 0

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  16. IIRC, Liz had actually done a little commentary work on ESPN (for boat racing I wanna say?) before managing a boutique in Miami Beach for several years. I think she was engaged to a real estate developer at the point when WCW came calling and that fell apart I think durin gher tenure there.


    You can't help but think it might have worked out better for her not to go back into wrestling, but who knows?

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  17. Wow, according to IMDB it looks like she was actually married to him for most of her WCW run:

    Cary Lubetsky 6 December 1997 to 19 April 1999 (divorced)


    So I guess it was sometime around then that her and Luger got together.

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  18. Yes, Bischoff talks about this in one of his shoots. He said Hogan basically felt that he was losing respect in the locker room and so he volunteered to job for Flair and Arn consecutively so that there would be less heat on him going forward.


    I guess he made up for it at Uncensored in March -- although funny enough looking back -- is there a more appropriate bookend for the sad, waning days of the initial Hulkamania run?



    I believe that was his last TV appearance until he showed up at BATB in July, no?

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  19. I have a double standard against women's matches that involve shitloads of bleeding. Except Hokuto vs. that chick at DreamSlam. That was fucking awesome. Table Tombstone, motherfucker!

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  20. Cena and an ever-circulating array of guys who are randomly built-up to the World Title level, then brought back down. Lesnar is I guess for now. Orton still is, despite being treated like a tool while The Authority were in charge. Rollins is supposed to be, but really isn't getting the reactions. Bryan was, and will be when he comes back, but the company resists it a lot.

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  21. It was more about "who do I immediately associate with WWE in this era"... Lesnar was one of them, but it was weird that I actually had to THINK about it.

    Any other wrestling era, the names just COME.


    Rock N Wrestling? Hogan, Piper, Savage, Andre...
    New Generation? Shawn, Undertaker, Bret, Diesel, Ramon...
    Attitude Era? Rock, Austin, Undertaker, Foley
    Hell, even POST-Attitude Era: HHH, Brock, Edge, Angle


    But now? There's Cena, maybe Orton, and then a bunch of guys that are used a bit, but kind of become a muddled mess. There's good names in there, but nobody that I immediately think "Hey, that's WWE!" outside of Cena


    For frick sake, when it's easier to associate names with TNA (at least before housecleaning) than it is with WWE, then you know you've got a problem (BTW, the names everyone just thought about were AJ, Daniels, Joe and Jarrett)

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  22. ehhhhh Madusa could be pretty awful quite a lot of the time. People like her & Sherri were kind of relics, wrestling an old '80s still in the '90s. Women's wrestling in the States is usually 10 years behind the men (they wrestled like big dumpy '70s wrestlers in the '80s, for example). Oddly, the opposite is true in Japan.

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  23. My favorite Nitro commercial was the one where they describe pro-wrestling as "man against myth and art painted with rage"

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  24. I was looking at my list below, and this is exactly like the Hogan era, but without a compelling mid-card. The same thing happened with Hogan (bring someone up, and then they go back to the mid-card) but back then, the mid-card wasn't completely ignored after Hogan was done with them

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  25. Yeah, the Hogan Era was a bit odd. You had #s 1, 2 & 3 Babyfaces (usually Hogan/Savage/Duggan or Roberts), with a new big heel created every six months or so to either work his way up the tiers, or feud with Hogan immediately, then fall back down. But they'd still shake it up- Savage was WWF Champion for a whole YEAR. Andre was treated like a God even while he wasn't in the Main Event.

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  26. I can only ever think of this as the "WWE Universe" era -- which was always ironic to me, because they've made the world of pro-wrestling feel smaller than ever for me.

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  27. *sniff*... That's poetry, man...

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  28. Aye, they were both married at that point when they got together weren't they? Those crazy kids.

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  29. In fairness, getting hit in the eye with the spike of a high-heeled shoe would hurt like hell.

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  30. The 'sex with Stephanie' guy was the other half of the Mega Powers!

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  31. Faces Of Fear against the Road Warriors sounds like a hard hitting match

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  32. I find Joshi to be pretty awesome/dangerous in general but Kudoh in FMW was always crazy. The commentary on those Tokyo Pop DVD's is horrible but man that action is crazy.

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  33. Buddy of mine has a glass eye because he was hit with a rogue high heel at a nightclub.

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  34. Was he in a towel or was she in a towel? Important details.

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  35. That's one of the few ultraviolent matches I've seen, actually. I love hardcore wrestling, but something about deathmatch wrestling doesn't sit right with me.

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  36. I'm not really sure WCW does actually take womens wrestling more seriously than the WWF did. Wonder if Madusa can fish around in the garbage and get that belt back.

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  37. You'll have to speak up, I'm wearing a towel.

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  38. He managed to fit in one final handicap match on Nitro afterwards where he singlehandedly beat Arn and Sullivan in about 3 minutes on Nitro before he went on holiday. Story is that he was supposed to be stretchered out, but at the last minute changed things and decided he needed to be kept strong. My hero.

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  39. Cena and Orton. There are other guys who float in and out, but right now it's just Cena and Orton. A year ago it was Cena, Punk, Orton, and Bryan, but we all know what happened there.

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  40. Bowling show ugly.

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  41. MMMMMMM... The Faces of Fear!

    I don't know who wrote that on a thread awhile ago( Biscuit, maybe?), but I laugh about it every time I see one of their matches now.

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  42. Is is just me or was Miss Elizabeth hotter in WCW? I was never really a fan of her anorexic look in the WWF, but as soon as she gained a few pounds and became a part of Flair's entourage, she was way sexier.

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  43. She wasn't anorexic in the 80s, she was "Cocaine Thin".

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  44. Elizabeth bouncing down the aisle was definitely one of WCW's highlights.

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  45. She was hotter in WCW, but much more beautiful in WWF.

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  46. She wasn't meant for wrestling.

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  47. Just a lot of hair-mares.

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  48. correction TWO "of WCW's highlights."

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  49. RuPaul wannabes = Goldust.

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  50. "There's a storm brewing, pushing the limits...THUNDER!"

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  51. I do agree. I remember salivating over her WWF magazine phot. She was gorgeous, but not someone I wanted to have sex with.


    In WCW, she was a MILF (Manager I'd Like To Fuck).

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  52. Biscuit on a Chris FB review. I laugh every time I think about it.

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  53. The WCW Magazine commercials may have been inserted at the truck on site as part of the program rather than at TNT master control, so they'd be on the master tape and it's just easier to leave them on there than having to go in and splice out.

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  54. That was me trolling Jesse Baker, but I agree. Do people outside of WWE know who Seth Rollins is? Prob not

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  55. Because if he tried any, he would shatter the poor bitches bones. He dat strong.

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  56. Hogan vs Macho in a "I had Stephanie first" feud whilst in WCW would have been amazing.

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  57. Daniel Bryan, Cena... Miz... they're really trying with Rusev... Big Show?

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  58. Who shouted more unintelligible gibberish in matches, Meng or Ahmed Johnson?

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  59. Miss Elizabeth from Megapowers thru 1992 was flawless. And don't you guys ever forget it.

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  60. So Hogan jobbed...on account of the eye?
    (There's a low-percentage reference.)

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  61. Vince vs Macho in a "I had Stephanie first" match for WM22 would have been even better.

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  62. "...god knows that’s more interesting than most of what RAW was pumping out at this point."
    And at THIS point.

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  63. She was in a towel. And nothing else. Bash at the Beach '96 I do believe.

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  64. The extra work and the leather skirts... yup.

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  65. CruelConnectionNumber2December 18, 2014 at 6:42 PM

    FYI, it takes approximately 15 seconds to remove a portion of the show (click in, click an out, hit delete, drag the file together) and then save the new file. They keep the commercials for the authentic original viewing experience.

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  66. CruelConnectionNumber2December 18, 2014 at 6:43 PM

    Her debut at the Clash she looked kinda... old. But once she gets to be a heel and rockin' the skirts and boots she's awesome.

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  67. CruelConnectionNumber2December 18, 2014 at 6:43 PM

    Mania 7 was not a good look.

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  68. And yet I bet he still gets tears in his eyes while watching Bret Hart.

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  69. Yeah they do feel kind of one step removed from just throwing everyone on a tour bus together.

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