On this day – thirty years ago, to be precise – the very first episode of WCW Monday Nitro took place at the Mall Of America in Minesota. It was a sixty minute episode where, among other things, a former WCW champion made his return to the company shortly after his run in WWF, another Ric Flair vs. Sting match took place, and Hulk Hogan sold Hulkaroos to the few Hulkamaniacs who weren’t booing his ass at WCW shows.
WWE launched a WCW Youtube channel earlier this year, which featured uploads of WCW Monday Nitro. So we’re gonna watch these as they go up and for the rest, I was provided with some recordings thanks to a buddy of mine. These aren’t full-blow reviews or anything like that – you can get those anywhere – just some mild observations. If you’ve read my 21 Years Ago In TNA project that I did a while back, you’ll have an idea of what this will be about… although unlike those early NWA-TNA runs, I don’t anticipate hating these. In fact, a lot of these I never got to see, so it’ll be a genuinely fresh experience.
So right off the bat, I’ll comment on the brave choice of holding the first episode of your new weekly primetime Monday night wrestling show in the middle of a mall. I wonder if people paid to see the show or if they got in for free. The world probably figured this out and the answer’s out there somewhere, but I’m far too lazy to look it up. Either way, I’m not complaining. It’s a pretty unique visual and one thing I can appreciate with WCW is that they’re not afraid to hold shows at unique locations that are drastically different from their usual set-ups. It makes for more unique atmosphere.
Your commentary team for these early episodes consists of Eric Bischoff, Bobby Heenan, and Steve “Mongo” McMichael (RIP). I’ve heard people rag on the commentary on these early shows, but I thought they did fine. Bischoff does well enough to sell you on the action and is no more bombastic about stuff than, say, Vince was on commentary. Heenan, of course, is always excellent. And even Mongo comes across as somewhat passionate and decent at times. Sure, he has his quirks and his occasional shots at Heenan come across as mean-spirited regardless of whether Heenan is supposed to be the heel color guy or not, but other than that, I didn’t mind him whatsoever.
As for the matches… well, we open with Brian Pillman and Jushin Liger putting on a good match, we later get Ric Flair and Sting in another one of their usual great matches, and Hulk Hogan gets a big win over Big Bubba Rogers… but not before promoting his short-lived Pastamania venture. And of course, the big moment of the show is the return of future WWE Hall Of Famer Lex Luger – fresh off his run in the WWF and almost immediately following a house show appearance over the weekend. He’d walk up, they’d never mention him by name until he shows up against at the end of the show to challenge Hogan, and no doubt, people had no clue what was going on. It was a bold move at the time, because it showed that Nitro was the place where anything and everything can and would happen and I don’t think I’ve abused the word “and” enough in this run-on sentence.
All in all, a very easy hour of wrestling to watch. A fun throwback of sorts. I actually liked this more than I thought I would. Let’s do more of this, I guess.
Right now, the plan is to watch the rest of the 1995 episodes of Nitro and if this ends up being a thing that I’d like to do on a regular basis, then we’ll give it a few more months until we eventually get around to mid-96 when the nWo stuff begins to take shape. As a general rule, I’m probably going to stick with these until Nitro makes the move to two hours.
In any case, I’m excited. I’m looking forward to giving these a fresh new watch and we’ll see what comes of this afterwards.
dtm666 