Opening match see Sting defeat Big Bubba (a.k.a. the former Big Bossman is he big, Ray Traylor) with a crossbody in a pretty fun opening match, which is followed by the Road Warriors challenging Sting and Lex Luger to defend their titles in a Chicago Street Fighter at the upcoming Uncensored PPV… which is in Tupelo, by the way… the farthest thing from “Chicago” as you can get. For those who have seen the Monday Night Wars DVD, this is where the clip of Eric Bischoff giving away RAW results is taken from. You’ll note that I don’t make mention of these happening all that often because I try to blank out on commentary… and part of that has to do with Mongo, who started off tolerable and sometimes even good, but had since degraded into unintelligible twat that it’s almost sad. It’s probably for the best that he eventually transitioned to wrestler in a couple months.
Lex Luger defeated THE RENEGADE via Torture Rack with an assist from Jimmy Hart, which causes Sting to come out and cry foul. The Renegade is no longer wearing any facepaint, but still maintains some Warrior mannerisms. It’s too bad the guy stuck with this Warrior rip-off gimmick and never bothered to remake his image because I’d imagine he would have had some modicum of success for being his own man rather than being a rip-off… maybe he wouldn’t have taken his own life as a result… yeah, I’m being grim here. Sorry.
Road Warriors defeated Harlem Heat to cement their status as challengers for the tag titles. Good match for what it was and this is followed by our main event, which features Hulk Hogan, Macho Man, and the BOOTY MAN (Ed Leslie’s 48,882,802th gimmick change after being Zodiac… his sudden turn from the Dungeon Of Doom being explained that he was actually a SPY for Hogan… so that whole thing with Starrcade ’94 and them fighting for the World title was a ruse? My brain hurts more than it deserves to be hurt – why are you stupid, Nitro?! WHY?!! Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah…) facing off against Ric Flair, Kevin Sullivan, and Arn Anderson – the last one being the recipient of a Hogan legdrop as the Huckster gets his win back, JACK!
The show ends with Hogan helping Liz put handcuffs on him so that he can get pummeled by Flair and friends. An absolutely wretched main event to close an otherwise serviceable Nitro.
So quick note before we close up: there’s no Nitro Musings next week because Nitro didn’t air next week, so we’ll be continuing two weeks later. However, Nitro musings will resume on Wednesdays rather than Thursdays for the simple reason that 1996 was a leap year (every fourth year, February has 29 calendar days) while 2026 is not. That way, we can continue the gimmick of “On This Day 30 Years Ago…” that these Nitro posts have adopted.
With that said, there is going to be something to fill the void, but you’ll have to wait and see…
dtm666 