A bit of a historical record breaking moment.
Oh, I’m not talking about Nitro, although I will say that this is probably one of the better episodes I’ve seen in a while as far as general interest goes. But with this post, we have officially surpassed the NWA-TNA run from a couple years ago, when I dropped off after 21 weeks due to the debut of “OH SHIT! IT’S VINCE RUSSO!” and that’s when I decided, “Nope. Not for me.” Fortunately, Russo isn’t anywhere to be found here in 1996, but we are a couple months away from the end of the road when Scott Hall shows up and Nitro expands to two hours. I’m still on the fence as to how to proceed beyond that, but we’ll cross that bridge eventually.
Right now, let’s talk about this Nitro show…
…which opens with Chris Benoit defeating WCW World Champion Macho Man Randy Savage in the non-title opening contest that included lots of outside Horseman interference and Savage being choked by Woman with a scarf… and suddenly, I have this odd sensation that isn’t sitting too well. Anyway, until the finish, the match was more or less fine.
There’s an Arn Andeson/Brian Pillman vs. Kevin Sullivan/Hugh Morris tag match that ended in a DQ due to a strap being involved, Ric Flair making short work of Marcus Bagwell. Both matches were fine, but the former had an odd finish and the latter had Bagwell getting the better of Ric Flair, who is supposed to be eventually challenging Savage for the title… unless we want to swerve the audience and give the title shot to one of the AMERICAN MALES.
In the main event, Sting and Lex Luger retain their tag titles over the Road Warriors with Luger whacking Animal with a metal thingie for the cheap win. The Warriors want a rematch, of course. This was a fun match for what it was.
All in all, I rather enjoyed this episode of Nitro. Not much of note happened to move things forward, but it was a nice, breezy hour of wrestling that went by rather quickly. That’s a positive in my book.
In conclusion, I’m liking WCW Nitro 95-96 moreso than I did NWA-TNA… which is not much of a shock.
dtm666 