This Nitro has an actual match card of any value. That pretty much instantly makes it better than RAW. I’d say let’s skip the formalities and just award the warscore now, but that would be depriving you people of a review of a (hopefully) good show, so I won’t.
I’m just letting you know that every time Steve McMichael’s face appears on my monitor it takes about 20 years off of my life. Either way, Ric Flair comes out and steals Bischoff’s headset to yell about Arn Anderson for a little while and we recap Macho and Luger yelling at each other. Here’s one thing I didn’t mention about last week’s ending – the timekeeper did not relent with the ring bell. Seriously, someone take that bell away from him. The Giant was beating people up and all you could hear was DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING
Ahem. Er, where was I?
Oh yeah, the timekeeper is stupid. Don’t ring the bell constantly after an interference happens, it distracts from the action and it’s obnoxious as all hell.
LEX LUGER vs. RANDY SAVAGE
Oh hey, an actual match of any interest! If you call the WCW hotline you can hear about what’s going on on RAW from Mike Tenay, apparently. Huh. Since Luger has anything to do with this match we get constant pissy little cheap shots towards the WWF at the commentary desk. Once they’re done with the pointless WWF cheap shots, we get 5 minutes of Steve McMichael bashing Bobby Heenan. I don’t know how they managed to get worse than the RAW ’93 McMahon-Savage-Bartlett commentary desk, but they managed to do it with one man alone. Eric Bischoff is inoffensively stupid and Heenan is Heenan but my god is Steve McMichael a hack.
Either way, we immediately get a commercial break and Luger smacks Savage across the face. Soon, they go to the outside and weirdly fight over a suplex for a while. Lex eventually reverses it and hits a neckbreaker on the floor, and we hype up Hulk Hogan being on Nitro. Yeah, apparently Hogan doing TV is a rare enough occurrence to hype the hell out of it every time it happens. Ain’t that something. Savage goes for a backslide, which fails because of course it does. I don’t know why he even tried. They do the stupid spot that happens on every Nitro where they run into each other followed by the stupid spot that happens on every Nitro where someone gets thrown into the barricade.
Good god, you guys have run this spot into the ground. It’s not interesting anymore. When you do the same thing over and over and over again it loses its power. We get a ref bump and as is required by law Savage immediately hits his finisher afterwards. The Giant comes out, as expected, and drills Savage with a chokeslam. As the followup, Lex picks him up for the Torture Rack, which ends the match and gets him immense heat, even though I’m not 100% sure whether he’s even supposed to be a heel or not. Steve McMichael gives us some great insight after the match as per usual, and Heenan predicts that Giant is going to wreck Hogan.
Apparently Guerrero vs. Malenko is scheduled, but Disco Inferno is coming out. Wow, what a bitter disappointment. Guerrero comes out to yell at him and chase him off the stage. What in the hell was the point of that?
EDDIE GUERRERO vs. DEAN MALENKO
We start off the match with a shoving match and a kip-up, which isn’t exactly what I expected. They do some weird chain wrestling which ends with an Eddie hammerlock while Steve McMichael talks about a hundred and one sex positions. I think he’s trying to make a joke about Dean Malenko but he isn’t funny or talented so he can’t. We interrupt the match with Hogan driving into the building, which actually illustrates perfectly most of the problems with WCW. We come back to more weird uncallable chain wrestling and Eddie jumps over the top rope to the outside because of course he does. Bobby Heenan tries to cover for the dead crowd by saying they’re really shocked that Eddie jumped over the top rope, and out of nowhere he gets the cover with a rollup.
They shake hands and agree to a rematch after the fact, Steve McMichael calls it “the WCW” again, which makes me hate him even more, and we get a live interview with Hulk Hogan. Wow, they must be paying him big time to bother being here. Hulk Hogan is bringing it live in the arena, not via satellite, brother! Mean Gene takes my annoyance to a whole new level by calling it “The World Championship Wrestling” and Hogan cuts a promo about a kid getting a double lung transplant who told him to beat up Giant. Yup, that’s pretty much what I expected. The Taskmaster disguised as a fan at ringside beats up Hulk with a cane, which Steve McMichael is apparently excited by.
Giant and Zodiac come out, Giant snaps Hogan’s neck again and the commentators pretty much sell it like they just literally killed him. They also shave off his moustache, but that’s not really so much of a worry when they just broke his neck. For a second there I actually thought they were just going to shave it into a Hitler mustache, which would have been pretty great. The Nasty Boys and the American Males both try to beat up the Giant and all fail miserably while the commentator team sells the mustache shaving like a school bus driving off of a cliff. Seriously, calm down guys, it’s just a mustache.
RIC FLAIR vs. ARN ANDERSON
Here’s our Fall Brawl rematch, I guess. We talk about why Lex Luger wasn’t trying to save Hogan’s precious mustache (which is apparently a higher priority than his neck being snapped) and Arn hits a BAAAAAACK body drop on Flair. I’m still not entirely sure who the heel is supposed to be here, but maybe that’s just me being stupid. The commentators continue to talk about Hulk Hogan and pretty much ruin yet another classic. Yeah, if you’re going to watch this, watch it on mute. Ric flips over the top turnbuckle and they go to the outside and use the barricade because of course they do. Arn hits another BAAAAAACK body drop, this time on the floor, and smashes Flair’s throat into the barricade in a kind of nasty looking spot. In the fabled WCW tradition of nobody selling anything, Arn hits a spinebuster on Flair and he’s already back up with the momentum within a few seconds.
Arn locks in an armbar, which is VINTAGE! Arn according to Bischoff. We get a few reversed sleepers and a side suplex from Flair while Steve McMichael babbles about RAW not being live or something. Ric locks in the Figure Four far too close to the ropes and hits the third BAAAAAACK body drop of the match on Arn on the outside. Out of pretty much nowhere, Arn misses a flying nothing and gets locked in the Figure Four for the win. That was pretty okay for how short it was but yet again it felt like a ripoff of the original match. Brian Pillman comes out for the beatdown after the match and the commentators keep calling him Pittman. Guys, what drugs are you on?
We end the show by mentioning that we’re going to have a cage match next week between Ric and Arn.
Nitro pretty much won effortlessly this week, as expected. The only real problem with the show was that Hogan was relentlessly shoved down my throat, while RAW had many, many different problems. Point to WCW.