Rewatching WCW

[Kamaras-Tash]

I'm sure it started on TNT over here even before the NWO formation I remember seeing the advert for it in the WCW magazine. Was a bit gutted when we swapped over to Sky Digital in the Summer of 99 as it meant I lost access to TNT, not that I was missing much in WCW but I lost DSF etc as well. 

From then i just kept up with bits on channel 5 till they landed on Bravo

[BomberPat]

34 minutes ago, Liam O'Rourke said:

TNT started showing Nitro over here in March or April 1996.

That'll be it then, at the height of my first wave of fandom, it wasn't on TNT yet. So "Other Wrestling" just remained an unknowable void.

My first exposure to WCW proper wouldn't have been until 2000, when I got back into wrestling after having dropped off watching it in 96/97. Then it would have mostly been through books, magazines and eventually the internet, as I only watched the odd bit on Channel Five, and never enough to have any idea what was going on. Other kids at school having the video games definitely helped flesh out some understanding of what they were about, though. I remember playing one - it may even have been Backstage Assault - at a mate's place, and him absolutely losing his shit that Hulk Hogan was back in yellow trunks.

[Merzbow]

1 hour ago, Liam O'Rourke said:

TNT started showing Nitro over here in March or April 1996.

Yeah that sounds right, I didn't know it was on the channel until my dad came home telling me that a workmate told him Razor Ramon was on this WCW show. I had to tune in then.

[Your Fight Site]

4 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

Yeah that sounds right, I didn't know it was on the channel until my dad came home telling me that a workmate told him Razor Ramon was on this WCW show. I had to tune in then.

Did TNT show “classic” Nitro after the Cartoon Network switchover? Because I didn’t start watching wrestling until 1999-ish, and I definitely remember surfer Sting & Lex Luger vs. Ric Flair & The Giant from 1996 being shown, and not anything “modern” featuring Lance Storm or Goldberg. Because I remember being utterly confused as to why Sting was being al jovial whilst wearing a pirate jacket and not sulking about in black and white face paint and his scorpion singlet.

Edited January 18, 2022 by Your Fight Site

[garynysmon]

1 hour ago, Kamaras-Tash said:

I'm sure it started on TNT over here even before the NWO formation I remember seeing the advert for it in the WCW magazine. Was a bit gutted when we swapped over to Sky Digital in the Summer of 99 as it meant I lost access to TNT, not that I was missing much in WCW but I lost DSF etc as well. 

From then i just kept up with bits on channel 5 till they landed on Bravo

Yeah. I immediately regretted bugging my parents to get Sky Digital when I realised the German softcore porn and WCW, Smokey Mountain and ECW were all gone forever.

An hour of World Class from the late 80's on Bravo during the afternoons wasn't quite the same....

[Merzbow]

2 minutes ago, Your Fight Site said:

Did TNT show “classic” Nitro after the Cartoon Network switchover? Because I didn’t start watching wrestling until 1999-ish, and I definitely remember surfer Sting & Lex Luger vs. Ric Flair & The Giant from 1996 being shown, and not anything “modern” featuring Lance Storm or Goldberg. Because I remember being utterly confused as to why Sting was being al jovial whilst wearing a pirate jacket and not sulking about in black and white face paint and his scorpion singlet.

99? I think I was pretty much done with WCW by then and don't remember that at all.

Was this when they lost the current product and it went to Bravo etc?

[Jazzy G]

I don't know whether they're fake memories, but for some reason I seem to recall watching the Sting promo where he had the red paint on and was talking about nobody trusting him on TV. My Steodad and i used to watch Nitro on a Friday night while my mum was at work. I definitely saw some of the DDP Raven feud. I remember the bit with the stop sign inside Lodi's sign. There was a Goldberg Giant match I remember seeing, but then I also remember Raw being shown on Fridays around that time as well, and getting really caught up in the build to the 98 Rumble. 

[Merzbow]

3 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

I don't know whether they're fake memories, but for some reason I seem to recall watching the Sting promo where he had the red paint on and was talking about nobody trusting him on TV. My Steodad and i used to watch Nitro on a Friday night while my mum was at work. I definitely saw some of the DDP Raven feud. I remember the bit with the stop sign inside Lodi's sign. There was a Goldberg Giant match I remember seeing, but then I also remember Raw being shown on Fridays around that time as well, and getting really caught up in the build to the 98 Rumble. 

I distinctly remember a show ending with Goldberg lifting him up for the jackhammer and the commentary going fucking nuts over it.

[Chili]

WCW on Nitro started with whatever Nitro has a Macho Man/Finlay match on it, think its a week after Uncensored 1996 or on some delay. It was still on TNT in 1999 because I'd TRY and sit through the Raw/Nitro and Thunder blocks. 

[The Gaffer]

Really enjoying the last few pages of nostalgia chat. 

I always struggle with watching the PPVs back. I think that's near enough on point with the general idea that WCW was more of a TV company. In fact it's their boom years I struggle with most. The PPVs are produced in such a way that there's usually little to no backstage cuts, feud packages etc. It's just match after match with the exact same camera cut and replay structure for years which can make it all feel a bit samey and saps my attention span. 

I imagine if you were following at the time, that's exactly what you wanted though. Big time, big match pay offs to the TV with no frills. 

Pre and post nWo stuff I find the most entertaining to watch back these days. The early 90s product is just completely off the wall but still cozy, still 'rasslin. And the 2000 LOLRUSSO! era has become so overdone and talked about online that it's almost overrated at this point. It really is complete and utter shite. But the early 00s Sullivan stuff I enjoy watching the sheer desperation of. And once Russo fucks off again around October of 2000 the product slowly evolves into being quite a logical, decent TV show. Albeit with a massive exodus of anyone the audience actually wants to see. And it shows. 

You'd think by today's standards a 2001 Thunder taping would be full of only the most hardcore of the hardcores, but in WCWs dying days the make up of the crowd really was - to quote Foley in one of his books - "People who were either too old to enjoy our product or too young to be allowed see it." 

Here's my theme shout out. Luger's 2000s Vangelis music:

 

[Kamaras-Tash]

11 minutes ago, Chili said:

WCW on Nitro started with whatever Nitro has a Macho Man/Finlay match on it, think its a week after Uncensored 1996 or on some delay. It was still on TNT in 1999 because I'd TRY and sit through the Raw/Nitro and Thunder blocks. 

April 5th 96 it was, managed to find the WCW magazine cover with Hogan & Macho on the front saying WCW coming to the UK. Could only find tiny pictures of it online though 

[air_raid]

31 minutes ago, Chili said:

WCW on Nitro started with whatever Nitro has a Macho Man/Finlay match on it, think its a week after Uncensored 1996 or on some delay. It was still on TNT in 1999 because I'd TRY and sit through the Raw/Nitro and Thunder blocks. 

Weirdly enough that episode ended up being repeated one Friday over a Christmas period in (IIRC) 1998, I remember because I saw it despite not getting into WCW until 97, presumably because either the actual show was pre-empted that week, or the tape got lost by FedEx.

Edited January 18, 2022 by air_raid

[BomberPat]

I can't bring myself to re-watch much late WCW; very little of it is "so bad it's good" (though I'll make exceptions for anything involving Terry Funk, Norman Smiley in the Hardcore division, and that episode of Nitro where Jeff Jarrett is booked in a gauntlet against three "Legends", none of whom are the "Legends" he's feuding with, and, because it's Russo and he has no knowledge of wrestling outside of New York, they're all ex-WWF guys who never worked for WCW), most of it is just genuinely awful, unwatchable television. And by the time you get post-Russo and into a bit of an attempt at rebuilding before they went under, it's just sad to watch. That said, New Blood Rising manages to be one of the worst PPVs ever, and something of a sentimental favourite of mine because of it. In my time at CIWW, I think we actively ripped off almost every match on that card.

Whereas some of the jankier early '90s "different bloke running the company every week" is really, really fun to revisit. There's always something worthwhile on even the worst of those shows. It really starts going downhill when Hogan comes along, but the undercard is still mostly really strong, although even my love for Colonel Robert Parker is stretched pretty thin by every tag team title match ending up involving him and Sherri, and the most convoluted finishes imaginable.

When I recently went back and watched the formation of the New World Order across their first couple of PPVs, the main thing that stuck out to me is how quickly the wheels fall off the whole thing once you strip away the sense of "anything could happen". Nash and Hall feel genuinely both cool and dangerous in the beginning, and for a few weeks after Hogan's involved, but Hogan just never fits with them. Nash and Hall both have that sense of being above taking part in a wrestling show, being too cool for the whole thing, whereas Hogan's still cutting shouty '80s promos and it just makes him feel desperate for validation, in comparison. Once The Giant is involved, it loses any sense that they were an outside organisation, or invaders from the WWF, and starts to feel just as much as a Jobs For Hogan's Boys project as the Dungeon of Doom was.

It's funny - some matches or shows are vastly improved by going back and watching them without the context of the time; I find Triple H vs. Sting at Wrestlemania a ridiculous fun clusterfuck, while watching it at the time I was getting angry at the booking. When none of that day-to-day stuff matters, some stuff is a lot of fun. The nWo, for the most part, go the opposite direction - without the sense of seeing the story develop and not knowing what's going to happen next, you're just getting all the bullshit finishes, overbooking, and Hogan. 

[Chili]

My favourite WCW is being booked bad period is the slightly forgotten May-June 1999 which has some of the weirdest, shittest, half baked weird nonsense. Like the Flair goes to an asylum. That's just the tip. That era os amazing. Bischoff is absolutely fucked, Savage is having a crisis on national tv and nobody has a single solitary clue where the booking is. 

[DavidB6937]

I honestly don't remember a whole lot of WCW outside of random things like seeing Ron Simmons win the title. I don't really even know why that stands out to me so much.

WCW to me always reminds me of one of my best friends from school who was Team WCW through and through. He was always trying to convince me that it was the better show that WWF and forever going on about Sting and Flair and Luger and Vampiro in later years. He was really the only reason I ever knew what was going on, beyond my initial purchases of some old VHS from Woolies. I'd always just go by whatever was looking good on the covers.

He just looked so fucking cool didn't he? Look at him. I even had figures of him that I'd use with my WWF collection because he just looked so amazing.

I will say for all their faults (and I was far less picky back then), I did enjoy going to the later WCW events they had over here. Much for the same reasons I'd end up enjoying WWA live events or TNA when I went to Florida. It was just a mental mix of old school guys I'd watched when I was younger, some new guys who would go on to bigger and better things, and then a few shit ones in between.

The cards in the final years were certainly something.

March 11 2000, London

• Norman Smiley defeated Brian Knobbs
• Bam Bam Bigelow defeated The Wall
• Dustin Rhodes defeated Terry Funk
• Jim Duggan (c) defeated Fit Finlay to retain the WCW World Television Championship
• The Mamalukes (Big Vito & Johnny The Bull) (c) defeated The Harris Brothers (Big Ron & Heavy D) to retain the WCW World Tag Team Championship
• Vampiro defeated Jeff Jarrett (c) by DQ to retain the WCW United States Championship
• Booker & Curt Hennig defeated Team Package (Ric Flair & The Total Package)

Bad news - The Harris Brothers

Good news - Dustin Rhodes and Terry Funk

Bad news - Brian Knobbs in solo action

November 13 2000 - Nitro in London

• CW Hardcore Title Match: Crowbar (c) defeated Big Vito (7:24)
• London Lethal Lottery Tag Team Tournament Semi Final Match: Scott Steiner & Sting (w/ Midajah) defeated Bam Bam Bigelow & Mike Awesome (3:38)
• London Lethal Lottery Tag Team Tournament Semi Final Match: KroniK (Brian Adams & Bryan Clarke) defeated Booker T & Lex Luger (4:39)
• Three On One Handicap Match: Kevin Nash defeated The Natural Born Thrillers (Chuck Palumbo, Sean O'Haire & Shawn Stasiak) by DQ (5:10)
• Singles Match: The Cat (w/ Ms. Jones) defeated Elix Skipper (3:27)
• Two On One Handicap Match: Goldberg defeated The Boogie Knights (Alex Wright & Disqo) (1:48)
• WCW United States Heavyweight Title Match: Lance Storm defeated General Rection (w/ Major Gunns) (c) (3:48)
• London Lethal Lottery Tag Team Tournament Final Match: Scott Steiner & Sting (w/ Midajah) defeated KroniK (Brian Adams & Bryan Clarke) (5:38)

Good news - I saw Scott Steiner twice in one night.

Bad news - I saw KroniK wrestle twice.

Good news - Kevin Nash was there too so nothing else mattered.

So yeah, my time with WCW has this weird element of me being interested when I was first getting into wrestling via the tapes etc, then I never really watched it religiously over the years but still got dragged along to the dying days of live events which are just as fun as you make them really.

In recent years I've made an effort to watch WCW in order and gained a whole new respect for guys like Flair, Dusty, Sting etc because I'd always been told or heard they were legends etc but never really followed their journeys as a whole. Even guys like Luger. A lot of my wrestling love was tunnel vision towards WWF/WWE and then dipping in and out of other things like WCW, ECW, ROH etc. Funny how things have ended up now though.