They refer to it as “running him over,” but Bubba just sorta drives at him and Hugh jumps into Bubba’s shoulder and falls backwards. This match’s final obstacle stage collapse is Big Bubba driving a motorcycle into Hugh Morrus. How many rounds are you watching before you say f*ck it? Now imagine if all of those rounds were absolutely terrible leading up to that stage collapse. Imagine if American Ninja Warrior was three hours long and had the contestants get to the very last obstacle only for the whole stage to collapse and then lose at the very end, every single time. Now imagine how frustrating that is in a match between BIG BUBBA AND HUGH MORRUS that relies on a referee to make 10-counts to build drama.
Even in the matches where this doesn’t affect the finish, it happens. A WCW guy does well, Nick Patrick refuses to be a regular referee and causes a distraction, the nWo guy capitalizes. What should’ve been a rare occurrence of cheating turned into a nonstop LOOK AT NICK PATRICK schmozz-fest, and it just dulled the colors of everything.Įvery match on the show has the same outline. Not only did it kill the drama by making WCW victories impossible without interference and nonsense, it sorta neutered the nWo guys by making them look like they couldn’t win without a crooked ref. Nick Patrick is great, but by this point they’d just started putting him in an nWo shirt and making it very obvious that he was actively working to cheat the WCW guys out of victories.
Not to jump the gun too much on my analysis of one of the worst shows ever, but part of the problem with the upcoming nWo Souled Out is that Nick Patrick referees every match. I hope Chris Jericho’s amazing heel run beginning at the end of ’97 came from a contract negotiation where Jericho wrote NEVER WRESTLE CHONO AGAIN on a piece of paper and slid it to Eric Bischoff. Chono gives up and shoves him off instead, Jericho crashes through the table and that leaves Chono open to … uh, hit a Yakuza Kick and win. The only problem is that the physics don’t really work out, so Chono ends up Yakuza Kicking Jericho in the chest and Jericho just kinda holding on to the top rope. They fight for a while until Jericho ends up on the top rope, and Chono’s supposed to Yakuza Kick him off the top and through the table. Chono heads out and grabs a table from under the ring, and it’s one of those weirdly skinny Japanese tables.
I don’t think they care that Chono is from Japan and Jericho is a naturalized Canadian citizen, they’re just wondering why they’ve sat through almost three minutes of wrestling without Jim Duggan showing up and pulling magician scarves of athletic tape out of his bulge to punch somebody in the face.įor an example of how smoothly this match goes, consider the finish. The crowd is chanting “USA” about two minutes into it. Remember when Masa MY HERO Chono joined the nWo on Nitro and beat the piss out of Chris Jericho, refusing to sell anything and then losing the match by DQ because he wouldn’t stop beating his ass? That epic feud continues here, with exactly the same thing. Worst: Chono Breaks Out The Japanese Table When Hogan turned, it was less “gasp,” and more, “ah.” There was gasping too, mind you, but the entire crowd was already ready to say f*ck that guy.
#Wcw souled out 1997 scott norton ddp tv#
So, most people’s view of the nWo, at least when it started, was, “WWF guys have shown up on WCW TV to destroy it.” Getting Hulk Hogan on the team only furthered that narrative, because despite him being the focus of everything WCW did for two years, he never really felt like he was “ours.” He was just a WWF guy slumming it on the other show because the WWF didn’t want him anymore. Worst: Everything About The Set I Didn’t Mention It’s not the same old same old and is absolutely worth watching for anthropological reasons, like the Sturgis pay-per-views or horrible car accidents. They had a condescending beauty pageant (more on that later) (much later). A wrestling faction got its own pay-per-view, they got a light-up staircase and a trio of screens so Hogan, Hall and Nash could each have one to themselves, they had two heel announcers and an nWo voice-over guy insulting WCW wrestlers during the matches. Okay, so no review of nWo Souled Out is complete without pointing out that hey, it’s different.