Sometimes Nitro Just Happens | WCW Monday Nitro 11/24/97
Not every episode of WCW Monday Nitro can be the greatest night in the history of our sport. Many of them don't even try. Here's one of those!
When I decided to do this project, I figured that WCW Monday Nitro, a show that ran 288 episodes (including a few retrospectives) of varying lengths, I figured I'd be in for something like 1,000 match reviews. A ridiculous number, but as anyone who has devoted even a brief stretch of their lives to writing about wrestling can tell you, a number you're bound to hit if you keep at it long enough.
I was wrong about how many matches the MONDAY NITRO MASTERLIST would comprise, to say the least.
This week, I hit the 200th match of this project, an Alex Wright vs. Prince Iaukea barnburner that, peeking behind the paywall a little, I call "appropriate for such a meaningless milestone." I am, for the record, 27 episodes in, and will probably pass the 1,000 match mark well before I'm even a quarter of the way through Nitro.
It's a lot, which I bring up here not in an "ugh, wrestling takes up too much of the time I voluntarily give to it" way, but to just denote the depth and breath of this long-dormant show. This week's edition, airing from Saginaw, Michigan the night after WCW's World War 3 PPV, is nothing special, though it is kind of crazy that Saginaw got a Hulk Hogan world title match. No matches crack the top 10 or score ***, and nothing on it is particularly memorable.
You know what, though? That's fine. I know it's never been this way in my small slice of the great sport of professional wrestling — fans and critics have likely asserted that every segment on every show ought to have a purpose or really a story forward or have meaningful action for longer than I've been alive — but I like the pace and rhythm of an episode like this, where things just kind of happen until the show's over. On the other end of the dial the World Wrestling Federation is trying really hard to make hay out of the Screwjob by having DX mock Rick Rude, Jim Neidhart, and Bret Hart, but it's a real casual evening for WCW, who are hard at work figuring out how to fumble both Bret Hart's pending debut and the Hogan/Sting match they've built to for over a year. They deserve a night off. Here's one.
Colette Arrand
UP NEXT: The 288-sided die has landed on #103, which means I'll be in 1997 for another round of the WCW MONDAY NITRO MASTERLIST. Airing September 1, 1997 from Pensacola, Florida, this episode of Nitro has a bit of everything: Benoit/Mongo vs. Guerrero/Jarrett, Ultimo Dragon vs. La Parka, Buff Bagwell vs. Glacier, Hall/Savage vs. DDP/Luger, and, if you can believe it, seven other matches!