Hour Two Commentators: Eric Bischoff, Larry Zbyszko, and Tony Schiavone
The entire Outsider’s angle was well done. It literally stopped the show for half an hour, and the rest of the show had to be 'improvised'.
Match Three: High Voltage vs. The Steiner Brothers
Rick Steiner is mostly distracted during this match. He's pacing around the ring, and keeping his eyes on the entranceway. Despite being tagged in, Rick still isn't his usual self, and is being manhandled by High Voltage. He does get the hot tag on his brother Scott, who comes in like a man on fire. He hit’s a piledriver on Rage and gets the win.
Winners by pinfall The Steiner Brothers
*½ for a squash
Larry, Eric, and Tony try to hype up the rest of the show.
Match Four: Big Bubba w/Jimmy Hart vs. Eddie Guerrero
Eddie has the advantage in the early going, but Bubba is able to use his size and weight to control Guerrero. Despite Bubba working over Guerrero’s body for several moments, Eddie was able to get a quick pin on Bubba!
Winner by pinfall: Eddie Guerrero
** Eddie got in some nice offense, and Bubba wasn’t all bad.
THE FOLLOWING ANNOUNCEMENT HAS BEEN PAID FOR BY THE NEW WORLD ORDER
It’ll be a bit difficult to run down their first announcement, so I’ll just link to a video of it (the only one I could find, strangely enough.)
For a basic synopsis of what was stated, Hall, Nash, and Hogan put over the nWo talked about their matches at Hog Wild, and said that there may be a fourth or fifth man, but ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you.’
For those that want to see the entire thing, since I really can‘t give this justice:
THE PRECEDING ANNOUNCEMENT HAS BEEN PAID FOR BY THE NEW WORLD ORDER
Eric Bischoff is no long announcing with Larry and Tony, so it’s just those two men again.
Main Event: Greg Valentine vs. The Giant© w/Jimmy Hart for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship
Valentine puts up a valiant effort, but he is destroyed in minutes by The Giant.
Winner, and STILL WCW World Heavyweight Champion: The Giant
Squash match.
Giant cuts a promo, sounding very Hogan-like. I knew he did that in the WWE, but I didn’t know he was doing it four years earlier in WCW! Giant says he’ll destroy Hogan. Hart says Hogan will pay. We end Nitro with footage from the attack, specifically when Nash threw Mysterio like a dart into the building.
Wrestling wise, this wasn’t the show to watch, but angle wise, very effective. The nWo is put over as the monster heel group that’s destroying everyone in their sight, while WCW is trying to band together to go against them. The Mysterio spot was insane, as I’ve stated earlier. Very good Nitro, despite the lack of wrestling. 8.5/10
TV Rating: 3.1
Other Nitro Notes:
1. The entire bit with the nWo attacking people to the next match on the card took twenty minutes of airtime, plus three commercial breaks, or about thirty minutes. This may not seem bad for the people at home, but the people in the crowd didn’t see any of the attack. There was no tron that would show everything. Of course, WCW at the time didn’t have a tron even for regular TV shows. PPVs were a different story, though.
2. For some reason or another, Rick Steiner was wearing two different colored boots. One white, one red. Scott’s boots were both white. I’m not entirely sure what was going on there.
3. It should be noted that the paid advertisement was the debut of several nWo related material, including the theme song, the logo, and Hogan’s now famous ’spray painted’ black beard. The shirts and catchphrase have yet to be seen.
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