nWo 2026

[TheScarlettChad]

Sting being the third man would've been such a bonkers idea. I don't know if it'd have worked. 

[BarryOVega]

3 minutes ago, TheScarlettChad said:

Sting being the third man would've been such a bonkers idea. I don't know if it'd have worked. 

The frightening thing is if/when Hogan would’ve slaughtered them all, the whole deal could’ve conceivably been over by Starrcade ‘96

[Callum1993]

On 7/10/2026 at 2:52 PM, Chico Torres said:

The WWE version was obviously complete shite but for a great shite NWO we should give a shout out to the legendary nwo B team which was masterfully led by Stevie Ray representing all the fruit booties and yaks out there.

Any group with the big man Scott Norton is obviously great and then you throw in ol’ big ‘ead Horace, Crush, the main man Vincent, it’s quite the crew. 

Genuinely don’t remember Perfecto being a part of this but it’s late 90s WCW so he probably was.

 

Great jazzy theme too

 

There was a god awful match at Uncensored 1999 between Stevie Ray and Vincent to be the leader of the NWO B-Team. Probably sums up WCW at that time. 

[westlondonmist]

2 hours ago, TheScarlettChad said:

Sting being the third man would've been such a bonkers idea. I don't know if it'd have worked. 

I think it would have been cool but quite a short term idea. Who chases? Hogan? That probably wouldn't have been as good as Sting dropping from the rafters hitting the nWo with baseball bats and Deathdrops. 

[TheScarlettChad]

As Barry said, it'd be over by Starrcade 1996. Hogan would just bury Sting. Who knows what WCW would've been like? Its a very interesting what if. The nWo would've died far too early, unlike in reality when it was begging to die by '99.

[Slapnut]

Maybe this is the place to ask this, but why on earth did Larry Zbyszko call Hogan "Edward Hulk Hogan" for a number of weeks after the heel turn? I watched through 1996-1998 Nitro recently and couldn't wrap my head around it, and can't find anything on Google.

Please tell me I've not misheard that.

[Chili]

54 minutes ago, Slapnut said:

Maybe this is the place to ask this, but why on earth did Larry Zbyszko call Hogan "Edward Hulk Hogan" for a number of weeks after the heel turn? I watched through 1996-1998 Nitro recently and couldn't wrap my head around it, and can't find anything on Google.

Please tell me I've not misheard that.

Some reference to Ed Wood? I have no idea with Larry Zbyszko, his references and little ramblings at the start of Nitro's would sometimes seem to only make sense to himself.

[BomberPat]

I was never a WCW guy, so the nWo completely passed me by, and it's all stuff I watched after the fact.

I think everything leading up to Bash At The Beach '96 really holds up. It feels as real as TV wrestling can feel, there's a genuine effort made to present Nash and Hall as people who don't work for the promotion, and their segments have a chaotic energy to them where it feels like things could fall apart at any minute. That's what was ultimately lacking in the WWE run, and it's down to how WCW was formatted (pre-Russo) vs. how the WWE TV was formatted; WCW shows felt like a live event where the wrestling was the focal point and anything else that happened was, in kayfabe, unplanned - the nWo would interrupt other people's segments, and commentary would act annoyed that they were disrupting the show - whereas in the WWE of 2002, they were just characters on the show, and it's a case of "now it's time for the nWo backstage segment, now something else, now it's time for the nWo match", they never felt like something outside of the show in the way they did in WCW. And of course that didn't last in WCW either, but the fact that the WWE never meaningfully tried to present them in that way was as much an indication that the WWE never "got" the nWo as having them help Sting against Triple H at Wrestlemania, and equally it was an indication that in WWE, the WWE way of doing things is the only way, and they're not going to change that for anybody.

Back to WCW, the nWo obviously never would have become as important as they were without Hogan and his heel turn, but it was pretty clear from the early going that Hogan being the third man also kind of baked in the seeds of what was going to ruin them. By the end of the year, it's Hogan and lackies, and it's Hogan fighting the guys Hogan wants to fight - what should have always been a story about guys who were intrinsically WCW fighting against invaders from the North, instead it's Hulk Hogan fighting Roddy Piper, The Ultimate Warrior, and Randy Savage, at least as much as he's fighting the Ric Flairs and Stings of the world. Strip away the novelty of the heel turn, and it's as much a Hulk Hogan ego trip as the Dungeon of Doom, just another vehicle for him to do whatever he wants against the opponents he wants to wrestle.

 

And back to WWE again, it always amazes me how absolutely untouchable they must have thought they were in 2002, and how much they clearly thought they would have all the stars aligned forever. That, before the Hogan/Rock match at Wrestlemania, they just did Hollywood Hogan, Kevin Nash & Scott Hall vs. The Rock & Steve Austin as a TV main event is wild. And in the weeks after Wrestlemania, they do Hogan & Rock vs. Nash & Hall the next night on RAW, Nash, Hall & X-Pac vs. Hogan & Rock a week later, and Nash, Hall & X-Pac vs. Rock, Hogan & Kane on Smackdown that same week. That they didn't think that the nWo vs. Rock & Austin, or following up Rock vs. Hogan with Rock & Hogan vs. Nash & Hall, warranted a PPV match, is a wild indicator of where the WWE saw themselves and saw the nWo at the time.

That alone shows that they didn't see the nWo as a unit as being the draw, that it was just a group of singles stars - the nWo never had a pay-per-view match in WWE as a team, not even when it was down to the dregs of Big Show, X-Pac, and Booker T and Goldust knocking about. The closest they came was Big Show & Ric Flair fighting Steve Austin in a handicap match, and I don't think that counts because I don't think Flair ever officially joined the group (though Ric Flair being aligned to the nWo feels just as egregious as the nWo being Sting's mates against Triple H).

[BomberPat]

looking back on that stat about the nWo never teaming together on WWE PPV. And while I realised that run was cursed between Scott Hall's issues, them turning Hogan at the first opportunity, Nash's injuries, them worked with a completely checked out Steve Austin, and WWE basically turning them into a midcard novelty act in record time, it's still mad to consider that not only did the nWo never get a pay-per-view match, Kevin Nash didn't even wrestle on pay-per-view for WWE until after the nWo broke up, and X-Pac's only PPV match during the nWo run was a UK only Insurrextion. Booker T never had a PPV match during his brief time in the nWo. Hogan and Hall got one match apiece. With two matches, Big Show had the most PPV matches of anyone in the faction. Madness.

 

The other point I was going to make and forgot was about Bash At The Beach '96. When I first saw it, I hated Bobby Heenan's "whose side is he on?!" call, because I thought even someone who hated Hogan would never believe that he was going to turn, and that it gave everything away. But the last time I watched that match I was struck by how well worked it is by all of the babyfaces. There's enough distrust and miscommunication between all the babyfaces - and some spots they genuinely fuck up, which just plays into the chaos of it - that you genuinely could believe that one of them was going to turn and join the Outsiders; was Sting's "missed" Stinger Splash to Luger really accidental? And if it was on purpose, was the error Sting's in hitting Luger, or did Luger put himself in harm's way to get taken out of the match on purpose, to come back and cost them later? Savage, meanwhile, is just all over the place and could believably have his own agenda. If you can find a way to put the finish out of your mind, it's just a brilliantly structured match to keep you guessing right up until the reveal. Even when Hogan comes out, normally I'd hate it because it's a babyface giving his team the numbers advantage, but they started with that advantage and he only comes out once Luger's out of the picture, and once Nash has cheated, so it does feel like it could be a genuine redressing of the balance. It's brilliant.

[tiger_rick]

17 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Hogan and Hall got one match apiece. With two matches, Big Show had the most PPV matches of anyone in the faction. Madness.

Hall had two, he also worked Backlash against JBL. 

[Ironic Indie Lad]

29 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

Hall had two, he also worked Backlash against JBL. 

I saw the rematch of this at a house show in Glasgow not long after. Hall (obviously) did nothing and Nash did a run in where he didn't even get in the ring. Absolutely classic Outsiders. 

The nWo passed me by somewhat at the time. I think I only watched wrestling in 90, 91 and 92 and then didn't come back properly until 1998. Kids in my primary school were all getting into it again in 1997 but I had no means of watching either WWF or WCW at the time. Actually now that I think about it, I felt quite left out because of this which led to me renting WCW World Tour on the N64. I remember wondering what the nWo was, why Hogan was in black now etc. I really liked the game but I barely knew who any of the wrestlers were.

By late 1998 I was in high school and a guy in my class used to tape Nitro and Thunder so I did see a lot of convoluted black and white / Wolfpac rubbish. It didn't really seem like that big a deal to me at the time and we were way more into other characters.

It wasn't until I received THIS glorious Video as a gift that I saw the Bash at the Beach 1996 angle.

To this day I still think the build up and pay off is just beat by beat perfect. 

[Your Fight Site]

23 hours ago, Slapnut said:

Maybe this is the place to ask this, but why on earth did Larry Zbyszko call Hogan "Edward Hulk Hogan" for a number of weeks after the heel turn?

Was it not a play on Hogan starting to call himself “Hollywood”?

[BomberPat]

2 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

Hall had two, he also worked Backlash against JBL. 

ah, I forgot that one happened - can you blame me? The first Bradshaw singles push, as the Beefcake to Austin's Hogan, doesn't exactly stick in the memory.

[Chico Torres]

When we look at the most important matches in wrestling history - Gotch v Hackenschmidt, Lewis vs Londos, Shikat vs O’Mahoney, Rogers vs O’Connor, Hogan vs Andre etc… - that included in that list is Blake Beverly (the better half of the Beverly Brothers) vs Steven Dunn (arguably the superior member of Well Dunn?) and that when the revolution started also in the ring was southern legend Colonel Robert Parker. 

[garynysmon]

One thing I’ve never agreed with is this argument that the nWo became watered down once they started to add new members.

I remember feeling at the time that it was rather far fetched that three wrestlers could take down an entire company, so it made more sense when it was revealed that Ted DiBiase was funding it all etc.

(And also a nice piece of cross referencing his WWF gimmick).

If anything, having DiBiase as the money man or brains behind it all made much more sense that Bischoff being the mastermind.

Turning DiBiase face to manage the Steiners was just strange.

Edited July 14 by garynysmon