By Coach B

WCW Nitro
September 25, 1995

Thanks to the magic of the internet, I asked it to pick one random-ass episode from the 90s for me to review. I asked for it not to be a well-known episode of early Nitro, because this was intended for fun and to avoid an episode with 79 fucking NWO members. That’s not even a made-up number like most of the ones I fudge for student grades and government forms.

For whatever mixed bag of buttons, kitty litter, and pubes WWE is offering us these days, I do have to shout out whoever is in charge of the WWE Vault YouTube channel. It’s really good if you haven’t seen it.

That is the end of my endorsement for a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate.

Intro

• Steve “Mongo” McMichael is here, strangely holding a little dog, and I am immediately in. I have several Mongo stories, mostly because my buddy had Grand Rapids Rampage season tickets in the 2000s and Mongo coached in arena football long enough for us to become a recurring problem.

• The great thing about arena football was there was absolutely no barrier between you and the people involved. The only thing separating my drunk ass, my drunk friends, and a future Hall of Famer was maybe six feet and our complete lack of shame. We said everything. Mongo gave it right back.

“Shut the fuck up! Look at the scoreboard, motherfuckers!”

A beautiful cultural exchange. Anyone reading that and thinking, “That sounds horrible,” is insane. He laughed while he did it, and we have all lived on that story countless times since.

All-time Mongo guy. Glad he’s here.

• Mongo, to Bobby Heenan, upon seeing Alex Wright dancing out in a leather jacket and banana hammock:

“My man is ready to saddle somebody up himself, Mr. Brain.”

Alex Wright “Das Wunderkind” vs. Disco Inferno

• This is REAL early Nitro. That just clicked in. This is going to be shitacular.

• It takes you a second to realize, “Holy shit, this is super corny and shtick,” but it’s also pretty well done. Whatever can be said about Disco Inferno, he believes in this gimmick and sells the hell out of it. I feel like this is some meta shit where it’s actually a brilliant performance because it’s terrible intentionally. Probably like Tommy Wiseau in The Room, which no one has actually seen. It’s something people claim to watch ironically while mostly scrolling porn.

• Between you, me, and the fencepost, Alex Wright had a harem of rats, right? Right.

• Less significantly, he took a suicide dive over the top rope that looked shaky enough to feel real, like it had not been perfected in a foam pit.

• Once you get past the weird gimmicks, it was a very solid match. No crazy spots, but I especially liked Wright’s dropkick to the lower back finisher, which made me feel unsafe.

• Fortunately, I am sure all the douche cringe is over and it’s clear sailing…

Score: 6.0

Hulk Hogan Promo feat. Jimmy Hart

• So we are immediately effed in the A. The first image is Jimmy Hart holding the WCW World Heavyweight Championship behind Hulk Hogan while Hogan is bent over doing neck raises in a full neck brace. This feels like something that should come with a warning before it just appears on your television.

• Jimmy Hart is, of course, wearing a full airbrushed Hulk Hogan jacket, because I’m not convinced Jimmy Hart owned clothing that wasn’t either promotional material or evidence.

• Hogan is cutting a promo about The Giant, the snap-crackle-pop of his neck, and then suddenly he starts talking about building a bigger monster truck.

I need to sit with that for a second.

I had somehow forgotten WCW built toward a monster truck fight on a roof. We all participated in this. I am not pointing fingers. I remember watching it. There is blood on my hands too.

• Just when the promo reaches maximum 1995 WCW, Hogan says he is going to bury The Giant in Detroit like he “buried his father.”

They are invoking Andre the Giant, who did not work for this company, to build a match involving Paul Wight, who had not wrestled a single match yet, after a promo involving neck rehab, monster trucks, and Jimmy Hart looking like a walking airbrush booth.

I don’t usually score promos, but…

Score: 7.0

So weird it totally worked for me, brother.

Macho Man / Lex Luger Promo feat. Mean Gene Okerlund

• This is a promo of two stories: Macho Man cuts an interesting promo people seem to enjoy. Lex Luger also speaks.

• In lieu of mentioning any unpleasant history between these men, it should be said Randy Poffo batted .344 in rookie ball for the Gulf Coast League Cardinals in 1973. He was legit. Also, based on available evidence, at least part-time employed in the field of mustache transportation. Enterprising young man.

• They are really pushing this MACHINE VS. MACHINE monster truck match/fight/race hard. We were all dumb as shit, right? I watched this. I am guilty too. Blood on my hands. But this is a turd salad.

Score: 5.8

Sgt. Craig Pittman vs. Kurasawa

• Craig Pittman’s gimmick appears to be “Marine, but louder,” which is honestly more than some people got in the 90s. Plumber. Hockey player. Drill sergeant. Alleged son of Andre the Giant. The creative process was apparently just looking around a strip mall and writing down nouns.

• Pittman also wrestles with his shirt on for one obvious reason: he got titties. Which is fine. Many brave men do. 

• They are absolutely selling the shit out of this Hogan/Giant monster truck thing. Mongo says Hogan’s monster truck is going to be unlike anything we’ve ever seen, which feels technically true of almost everything. I had never seen my current coffee mug until I saw it. Still feels like an aggressive sales pitch.

• Bobby Heenan has some good lines here, because of course he does, but you can feel his heart packing a suitcase. I just finished Brian R. Solomon’s Irresistible Force, the Gorilla Monsoon book, and there’s a lot of Heenan in it. Great book. Buy it if you care about this stuff. 

Coming soon: Pillman, Kevin Sullivan, The Beach, and Brutus the fucking Barber Beefcake.

I should not have looked ahead. 

Score: 5.9

Brian Pillman and Arn Anderson Promo

• I’m still basking in the afterglow of a Kurasawa-Craig Pittman classic when this promo comes flying in from fucking left field and knocks my socks off. Pillman and Arn are cutting full-on heel promos about turning on Ric Flair, and holy hell, this is great.

• Saying Pillman is good on the mic is like saying fire is warm. That voice sounds like he gargled razor blades his entire life, but everything he says feels completely believable. You can already see the beginnings of the Loose Cannon. Crazy Like a Fox, the Brian Pillman book, is excellent and absolutely worth reading.

• Then Arn starts talking. This is 1995 Arn Anderson. Peak Arn. He tells Flair he knows his playbook because he stood beside him for ten years. Jump on one, jump on them all. Those were the rules then, and guess what? The rules still apply.

• Then he turns it around on Flair. What’s wrong? Can’t find a partner? Wonder why. You walked through everybody. You used everybody. Now you need help and nobody wants to answer the phone. It’s everything everyone already knew about Ric Flair, delivered by the one man qualified to say it.

• Pillman sounds dangerous. Arn speaks with a certainty that makes the whole thing feel real. Whatever professional wrestling may or may not be made of, you believe Arn Anderson. You listen when he talks.

Nobody handed these guys a script. Nobody with a writing credit on Gilmore Girls pulled Arn aside and said, “So, Mr. Lunde, we were thinking, you know how you and Ric are friends?”

No. Of course fucking not.

Mean Gene stands there and lets professionals work.

Score: 10.0

I needed this to be a 10. It was.

Macho Man Randy Savage vs. “Taskmaster” Kevin Sullivan

• This kicks off with Macho Man benching what they claim is 295 pounds on the beach. He has a spotter, which is smart, but no clips on the bar, which is less smart. I’m going to say it probably isn’t really 295, although when Sullivan rolls it down, it looks heavy enough to make the whole thing uncomfortable. At about 26:30, that bar is sitting deep enough across Savage’s throat that I know professional wrestling isn’t real and all, but Kevin Sullivan is absolutely choking the shit out of him.

• Shout out to the three obvious *Baywatch* women standing nearby for the crossover synergy. WCW was nothing if not committed to making everything look like it had been booked during a cocaine lunch. Still, Sullivan attacks Savage on the beach and gives us an actual reason for the match. Novel idea. Show people why two guys want to fight instead of just telling us they have “issues.”

• I’ve heard “Pomp and Circumstance” at enough weddings to instinctively want to stand up and yell “OH YEAH,” which may explain why I’m divorced, single, and no longer invited to many weddings. It’s also funny that Savage ended up in WCW partly because Vince thought he was too old. Look at the current WWE roster. Half those guys are the same age Savage was then, if not older. Different time. Also, bullshit.

• The match itself is solid. Nothing flashy. Nothing it isn’t supposed to be. Just two guys who had already been wrestling forever and knew exactly what they were doing. I assume they had wrestled each other before. Probably plenty of times. I could research that. 

Somebody should. It will not be me.

• Then WCW reminds me Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake is here. Not Brutus the Barber Beefcake, though. He’s The Zodiac now, wearing sideways face paint that looks like someone described Crow Sting to a police sketch artist two years early.

• In roughly one year, Ed Leslie went from The Butcher to The Man With No Name to The Zodiac, then emerged in early 1996 as The Booty Man. Hell of a range when your primary skill was being friends with Terry.

• I will say this for the man: he is the reason I will never go parasailing under any circumstance. The ocean had enough chances. At this point I’m basically a pool guy. Maybe a lazy river if I get a wild hair up my ass.

• Anyway, Brutus starts barking in Sullivan’s face, and I’m still calling him Brutus. The match turns into a full WCW schmoz. Savage goes up for the elbow with Sullivan stacked on top of Brutus, but Sullivan bails at the last second and leaves his own guy behind to eat it. Classic Sullivan. Get out of the way and let somebody else die.

• Then The Giant comes out, and in a pre-internet world, the whole “Andre’s son” thing absolutely passes the eye test. Black singlet. Curly hair. Enormous human being. Nothing against Paul Wight’s mother. I’m sure she is a lovely person. I’m just saying WCW’s evidence was visually persuasive.

• Young Paul Wight, I forgot how big and lean he was. He chokeslams Savage, then WCW starts feeding him bodies. Some guy in red comes out. Chokeslam. Another guy in red comes out. Chokeslam. They do not even bother telling us their names. They are just emergency meat.

• Alex Wright runs in and gets planted. The bell is still ringing. Nobody has control of anything. Then Lex Luger arrives with the urgency of a man who may have left the oven on and gets chokeslammed too.

• Now Sullivan is furious because The Giant was not supposed to do that to Luger. He starts hitting him in the chest and screaming at him, and suddenly the monster they brought in does not appear especially interested in taking orders.

This is great.

Score: 7.8

Then, because WCW accidentally remembers how episodic television works, Luger has to wrestle Meng immediately afterward.

Meng vs. Lex Luger

• Luger just got choke-slammed by The Giant and now has to wrestle Meng, which feels less like matchmaking and more like an insurance dispute.

• Bobby points out that he managed Andre during the height of his career, and even Andre never did this much damage in such a short amount of time. Heenan is world-class. I love Mongo, but he is young, excitable, and clearly learning on the air. Bobby is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.

• The match is mostly Meng putting the boots to Luger. Lex gets a little offense, but this is basically an ass-kicking with occasional administrative pauses. It tells the story that Luger is already hurt, but it is still an odd way to present the guy you brought in three weeks ago. Nick Patrick backs Meng out of the corner, which also raises the question of whether he was the only referee working tonight. He has been everywhere.

• Lex finally starts making a comeback, and then Meng pulls out the spike. I was way too excited to see the fucking spike. Boom. Right in the throat. One, two, three. Thanks for coming.

• Now Lex is laid out in the middle of the ring by Meng, who I will continue saying absolutely nothing disrespectful about for obvious personal safety reasons. Yes, Meng cheated. No, it was not clean. But you still put him over your newly arrived Lex Luger on your new television show.

Honestly? I respect the confusion.

Score: 4.8

It was a Meng-Luger match. It did what it did, but I loved the spike ending.

Final Thoughts

I came into this expecting shitacular early Nitro. It wasn’t. I enjoyed myself. This is not good in the way people usually mean good, but that almost undersells it. It is entirely watchable, and more importantly, it has a feel to it.

The show is corny. The Hogan monster truck stuff is insane. Brutus Beefcake is barking in face paint. They are clearly still carrying around some stale pre-Nitro WCW baggage, and there is plenty more stupid shit coming.

But it moves.

The matches are short. People have reasons to fight. One segment flows into the next. The whole thing feels less polished, but also less sterile. There is actual chaos. The Giant comes out and starts murdering unnamed men. Luger gets chokeslammed, then immediately has to wrestle Meng. Arn Anderson and Brian Pillman cut a promo that reminds you what professional wrestling sounds like when the people talking actually believe what they are saying.

That promo alone was worth the hour.

Ask the internet for a random episode. Go in blind. Sit down and watch the whole thing.

You may not get great wrestling.

You might get something better: an hour of wrestling you actually remember.

Overall Score: 7.1/10