Arn Anderson Doesn't Like It When You Ogle the Women - WCW Monday Nitro 8/26/96
Arn Anderson says that now's not the time for ogling, but idk Double A, this *is* a 1996 episode of Nitro.
We’re a few weeks away from one of the more consequential beats in the nWo storyline, where Sting, feeling betrayed by his friends and partners in WCW, retreats to the rafters. In theory, this is exciting — we’re dealing with the fallout of Sting and Lex Luger bumping Chris Benoit and Steve “Mongo” McMichael from the WarGames cage match, what the Four Horsemen call a gut check — but this episode of WCW Monday Nitro feels like a real who’s who of who showed up. Between the cold (but good!) opener of Juventud Guerrera and Billy Kidman, a Cruiserweight Championship match that’s booked around pre-tapes of the nWo spraypainting stuff, and a veritable banquet of stilted or outright bad promos, it’s an off night. All wrestling shows are going to have episodes like this five episodes into a run, let alone 50. The big problem is that the original one-hour Nitro format of four or five matches with short promos between is kind of exhausting over a two hour stretch. By the time Chris Jericho hit the ring to C’MON BABY everyone, I was begging for the show to end. It would not.
Colette Arrand
UP NEXT: It’s WCW Month at BIG EGG, so I’m putting the 288-sided die away and hand-picking some highly regarded Nitros for a moment. First up, episode 178, from January 25, 1999. The nWo is reunited and fans aren’t happy about it, so they book a PPV-level card in Dallas’ Reunion Arena, one of the cradles of American professional wrestling, and mostly follow through. Bam Bam Bigelow and Scott Hall in a ladder match, Bret Hart vs. Booker T, Goldberg vs. Scott Norton, the Four Horsemen vs. the nWo — it’s a stacked card!