The WWE Championship match that went into the Mississippi river.

This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel which can be found here: https://youtu.be/nIsLQJurbMU

The Hardcore championship had come to exist as a gift from Vince McMahon to Mankind in November 1998,  as a way of keeping Mankind happy to do the corporations dirty work. It was really just the old winged eagle version of the WWE championship given a trashy late 90's makeover, but Mankind loved it dearly for the month he had it. Following Vince's turn on Mankind at Survivor Series, Mankind would lose the title to Vince's new corporate enforcer, the Big Bossman, and so the championship became a regular title.

Starting in early 1999, hardcore title matches began leaving not just ringside, but the arena completely. On the January 4th edition of Raw champion Road Dogg defended the title against Al Snow in a match the left the building resulting in the two men brawling in a blizzard. Road Dogg would retain his championship on this night, but would fail to defend the title in February, and would be stripped of it. Therefore a new champion would be crowned at St. Valentines Day Massacre from Memphis Tennessee, but Snow would have to fight his former ally.

The man formerly known as Herman 'Sparky' Plug, Bob Holly was not yet ready to take his 'Hardcore' moniker yet, but he had spent the previous year as a member of the Job Squad with Al Snow, along with Too Cold Scorpio. The whole idea of the Job Squad being an inside joke on the term jobber, now more respectfully known as enhancement talent. Now looking for a new direction, Holly would have many battles with Snow over the Hardcore title, including two other fun ones being at Wrestlemania 15 and Backlash the following month.

On this night, Snow and Holly would battle to the outside of the building as had happened before. The two would brawl across the street. As it was mid-February the production team had a hard time keeping the action lit, but they did a decent enough job of it. The two battled into the woodlands, before eventually making it onto the bank of the Mississippi river. Both men end up taking a fall into the river, which at that time of year had to be freezing cold and no fun. Holly chases Snow away from the river, braying him with a tree branch. He then see a roll of chain link fencing, and wraps Snow in it to pin him and win the championship. Poor Al Snow is seemingly left out in the cold, soaking wet and still wrapped up in the fencing, as Bob Holly jogs all the way back to ringside to claim his decaying prize, the WWF Hardcore Championship.

Holly would go on to win the championship again at Wrestlemania 15 in a triple threat match with Snow and then champion Billy Gunn. After many failed attempts, Al Snow would finally win the title from Holly at Backlash in April, and would dominate the division until the 24/7 rule was created the following year.

The night Sting wrestled two matches on Raw, and a look at his entire WWE run

This is a script for my YouTube channel, the video version can be found here: https://youtu.be/qksFUuZ5ePE

On September 14th 2015 WWE presented Raw from Memphis Tennessee. On this night, Sting would wrestle his first and last match on WWE's flagship show, something even I an avid Sting fan, had completely forgotten about. But first, a brief history of how the Icon came to join WWE after many years of doubt and speculation.

Throughout Stings entire run with TNA, which started in 2005 on a full time basis and ended in 2014, he had been signed to one year contracts that expired around December time. Because of this every December there would be speculation that Sting might not renew his contract, and would go to WWE and have his much wanted clash with the Undertaker. Behind the scenes Sting was very concerned about how WWE would treat him, for reasons I explained in an early video on this channel (https://youtu.be/nr7Xx62f6jE), and put it off for many years. In 2014, Sting left the now renamed Impact Wrestling having lost a title vs career match to then champion EC3. This was likely due to Impact trying to cut their costs, as AJ Styles also left around this time due to being offered a new contract with insultingly less money on the page.

Throughout 2014 Sting began appearing in WWE through, but not directly. He appeared in a documentary about the recently passed Ultimate Warrior, who Sting was a tag team partner with in their early careers. In September WWE released a DVD called 'The Best of Sting.' Before the WWE Network best of and documentary DVD's were monthly releases, but they became irrelevant as the library on the network gradually grew. In October, 2K released WWE 2K15, in which Sting was a pre-order bonus. Despite all of this interaction between Sting and WWE, it still didn't feel like we would ever see the Icon in a live WWE setting, but that would change at Survivor Series.

In the main of Survivor Series 2014, a group of heroes aligned to face the evil Authority, led by Triple H and Stephanie McMahon. That feels like a weird thing to say aloud in 2022. If the good guys won the Authority would lose their power having terrorised Raw for over a year at this point.By the end all that remained was Dolph Ziggler against the Authorities chosen one, Seth Rollins. Dolph got so close to winning that Triple H who wasn't in the match got involved, hitting Ziggler with a Pedigree. Just then the lights went out, and after a few tense seconds we hear a crow, and see the familiar pained face of the the man called Sting.

As much as I love the way Sting made his WWE debut, I don't like to complain but there is one thing that has always bugged me about this moment. Stings appearance was supposed to be a complete surprise, and Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler on commentary do a good job of presenting this, but everyones best mate JBL launches into a long list of Stings World championships, reeling it off as if reading a script. Sadly this kind of hurts the shock of this moment for me, despite everything else working so well. Triple H sells his surprise extremely well also, despite behind the scenes having been a key figure in bringing Sting in.

Alas, the Icon enters the ring to a deafening pop from the crowd, and stand up to the Game. Triple H attempts to strike first, but falls victim to the Scorpion Death Drop. Sting then pulls the apparently dead Dolph Zigglers arm over the apparently deader Seth Rollins, and a referee enters to count the three. On his way out of the ring, Sting gives a fallen and soon to re-employed Triple H a glare, and takes his leave. Over the following weeks Sting would be rebranded with a new nickname, "the vigilante", playing off his history of being the man who turned the tide for WCW against the nWo back in the 90's,

Stings debut eventually leads to a match at Wrestlemania 31, where Triple H would defeat Sting. At the time I loved this match purely because I was thrilled to see Sting at Wrestlemania, but looking back I can't abide it. The seeds were planted when promotion for the match kept harkening back to Stings WCW days a bit too much. They put a little too much effort into turning the story into WWE vs WCW, 14 years after that company folded. You could argue that they did this because Sting was the last of all the main event wrestlers associated with WCW to join WWE, with most arriving throughout the early 2000's to very mixed results. Some fit in perfectly like Booker T and Rey Mysterio, and some were dealt a raw deal like DDP and Scott Steiner. The match between Triple H and Sting became the final nail in the coffin for WCW. Part way through the match as soon as Sting locked in the Scorpion Deathlock, D-Generation X's music hit, and Road Dogg, Billy Gunn and X-Pac hit the ring. Soon after the nWo's music plays, and Hogan, Hall and Nash run in to help Sting. Any long time WCW fan would point out that while Sting did have a run in the red and black version of the nWo, it was the original version led by Hogan, Hall and Nash that Sting rebelled against, so it felt jarring that the nWo were even involved. Once Triple H had won it seemed like Sting might be done, until he made a surprising return.

On the August 24th 2015 Raw, The Authorities chosen champion Seth Rollins demanded a statue be made of him similar to the ones to honour Andre the Giant and Dusty Rhodes among others. That statue was due to be unveiled on this night, celebrating his victory over John Cena at Summerslam on the previous night. When the curtain was raised however, the statue wasn't there. Sting was. Triple H and Stephanie acted like they had seen a ghost while Sting went after Rollins, and then raised up the WWE championship belt. This led many to question what had happened to the statue, which WWE eventually addressed on the September 7th Raw, when Sting destroyed the statue by pushing it into a trash compactor. This would lead to Stings final WWE match against Rollins for the WWE title at Night of Champions, but before that Sting would wrestle on Raw, remember what this video was originally about...

On the September 14th Raw Sting was due to face the Authorities hired gun, the Big Show. This felt like a fitting pairing, as Sting and Big Show would have known each other since Shows early days in WCW as the Giant in the mid 90's. The match would last about a minute though, as Seth would run in to attack the Vigilante. Technically Stings Raw in ring debut would last just over a minute, and he would win by DQ, before John Cena would run in to save Sting. Not content with this development, Triple H would book a tag team match with Sting and Cena facing Show and Rollins right now.  Most of this fairly short TV main event is John Cena playing good guy in peril, trying to make the tag to Sting. This match was the final build before the Night of Champions pay per view, where Rollins was due to defend his US title against Cena, then the World title against Sting later on. At the time WWE caught a little bit of flask for this, as this was the exact same storyline that Ring of Honor was doing its World and Television champion Jay Lethal, although the details of both stories were slightly different. The Big Show would make a crucial error in this match, going for his Vader Bomb and missing, allowing Cena to tag in Sting, who runs wild. He quickly runs through his trademark moves, before making Seth tap out to the Scorpion Deathlock.

Sadly Stings WWE career would begin with a bang and end with a whimper, as during the match with Rollins, he took a powerbomb into the turnbuckle that would injure the Icon, so much so it looked like he would never wrestle again. That would last until December of 2020, when Sting would make his surprising debut in All Elite Wrestling. By February Sting along with his new protege Darby Allin would be taking part in cinematic matches, and would later take part in live in ring matches, always teaming with Darby to take the pressure off him a bit. At the time of writing this, Sting last competed at All Out 2022, and there seems to be no clear end in sight for the Icon that has transcended generations.

TNA/Impact wrestling's only ever five star match.

On September 11th 2005 TNA Wrestling presented Unbreakable from Orlando Florida. TNA now known as Impact had a rough year in 2005, losing their TV deal with Fox Sports Net in Spring, they ran their Impact show online for months until a deal was eventually made with Spike TV. Impact would imminently debut on Spike on October 1st, and big changes for the company would come along with it, but TNA still had to produce its monthly pay per views to stay alive. On this night, TNA earned its to date one and only five star rated match by Dave Meltzer, a triple threat match for the X Division championship, between three of TNA's greatest wrestlers ever.

During the Summer of 2005 as I've covered on this channel before in more detail, Impact had no TV deal,  and was airing on TNA's own website. At this time TNA decided to book a champion that the online fans liked, and they went with Raven, who would lose the title title back to Jeff Jarrett right before Impact reached its new home on Spike TV in October. Ravens title reign didn't exactly set the world on fire, but it wasn't there to. It was there to give the fans a fresh champion to tune into tnawrestling.com to see. As a result, the world title scene often had some unusual matches for a while. At Unbreakable, Raven would defend the NWA world title against Rhino in the semi main event. Rhino had entered TNA in July by attacking Raven following another hardcore battle over the World title, defeating Abyss. By October Rhino would luck into a short NWA title reign himself when Jeff Jarrett's original opponent Kevin Nash was not medically cleared. In the main event on this night Christopher Daniels would defend the X division championship against two men he had a lot of history with, Samoa Joe and AJ Styles.

At various points in TNA's history the X division had main evented their weekly pay per views. Some of the early Ultimate X matches were main events, as well as entire pay per views were themed around X division tournaments like the World X cup. In fact on TNA's second ever show, AJ Styles became the first ever X Division champion in the main event slot.

AJ Styles participated in NWA TNA's first ever televised match, in a losing effort teaming with Jerry Lynn and Low-Ki against the Flying Elvis's. I will take any opportunity given to me to remind you that TNA had a trio of Elvis impersonators... Styles would soon after become the first ever X Division champion, and went to to pioneer the style, the same way WCW had with the cruiserweight division in the 90's. Styles had already been world champion, but the move from weekly pay per view to television in 2004 had Styles re-inserted in the X-Division. At that time especially the X-Division is what set TNA apart  from WWE, and so Styles became one of the figureheads of that distinction. He wasn't like anyone you would see in WWE at the time, and that was played to TNA's advantage, but Styles wasn't alone in being an alternative trend setter.

In the early 2000's wrestlers would occasionally find an opponent that they had amazing chemistry with. In the early days of the internet these matches wouldn't be as widely available as they would be today, so these wrestlers would sometimes tour their match, sometimes even internationally. Feuds would sometimes transcend the promotions they began in. As a result some pairings would be as much of an attraction as the individual wrestlers themselves, as everyone wanted to see the hot match they had heard about come to their town. This became known as the 'touring indie match'. The concept still works a little today, with promoters wanting to book their version of Will Ospreay vs Ricochet for example, but not like it used to. One of the most famous touring indie matches in the early 2000's was the feud between CM Punk vs Raven. The feud originally began in Ring of Honor, but would heat up in TNA and MLW, even continuing in the FWA based in England. This doesn't even include all the smaller indies they worked together at. Rumour has it that Raven would often get annoyed at Punk for not listening to his advice. Imagine that, CM Punk not taking advice from a veteran...

Another famous touring match around this time was AJ Styles vs Christopher Daniels. Unlike Punk and Raven, Styles and Daniels were said to be close friends, with Daniels naming one of his children after AJ. Styles and Daniels wrestled all over the United States, but would also wrestle in Canada, Italy, England, Ireland, Australia and even South Korea. Cagematch lists 37 singles matches between the two, and again that might not be an exhaustive list, just the indies that are documented on that site.

Christopher Daniels at the time had vastly more experience than either of his opponents. Styles made his in ring debut in 1998, and Joe did in 99, but Daniels had been wrestling since 1993. Comparatively though it took Daniels a lit longer to find his feet, maybe due to the indie scene of the 90's not being what it would eventually become. Daniels did wrestle for ECW several times, and much like Styles, was wrestling for WCW at the time that it closed its doors, but both men were very low on the card at that point. He had also done several tours with New Japan as Curry Man, a colourful character that he would eventually bring to TNA, and likely couldn't be done in 2022.

At face value, one of the three X Division wrestlers at Unbreakable was not like the others. Samoa Joe had arrived in TNA at Slammiversary, TNA's three year anniversary show. He remained dominant over every opponent, going into Unbreakable undefeated. He would remain unbeaten for another 14 months, where he would be defeated by the debuting Kurt Angle. TNA's tag line for the X Division was that it wasn't about weight limits, but no limits, meaning anyone would be part of it. Occasionally TNA would remind us of that by booking a larger wrestler in the division to mixed results. The man known today as PCO had a brief X Division run in 2003 as the masked man known only as 'X'. Joe would be the latest of these wrestlers, and maybe the best of all the X Division big men. His in ring style seemed to mesh with the smaller guys, maybe because of his Ring of Honor roots.

Just because Joe was undefeated himself, that didn't mean he hadn't lost, just that he hadn't been pinned or submitted. On this night AJ Styles would recapture the X Division championship for the fifth time. A running pattern for TNA at this time was that during any major change for the company Jeff Jarrett would usually be the NWA world champion, and Styles would claim the X Division prize. On this night AJ would win in a 23 minute classic that would earn TNA its first ever, and to date only ever five star rating from Dave Meltzer.

There are several moments from this match that are still etched in my mind to this day, with my favourite being the springboard shooting star press AJ performs on his two opponents. The reason this match is so famous though is how the three came up with intricate three man spots. Three way matches of the time and since have developed a reputation, perhaps unfairly, of just being a series of singles spots with one man sitting out until another is ready to leave the ring. Styles, Daniels and Joe clearly tried to avoid this, leading to it being one of the fondest held matches in TNA or Impact's history.

The three would go on to have rematches in TNA, eventually culminating in an ultimate X match between the three, but that is not as well loved, as the story became more about could Samoa Joe scale the above the ring cables like the smaller wrestlers can. Of all the three way matches these three had, their match at Unbreakable still holds a special place for all TNA fans of the time.

Looking back at the first ever WCW Nitro - September 4th 1995

On September 4th 1995 WCW presented the first ever episode of Nitro, from the Mall of America in Bloomington Minnesota. In November of 1998 Jim Crocket Promotions was bought out by media mogul Ted Turner. I won't go into details here as that deserves a whole video another day. In 1993 after a series of failed leaders, Turner promoted Eric Bischoff from his on air role as an announcer to be an executive producer. By 1997 he would be the president of the company. The way Eric tells the story, he was summoned to a meeting at CNN centre, and expected a brow beating as WCW had been a consistent money loser even before Turner bought it. In the meeting Turner asked what they could do to compete with Vince, whose flagship show Raw had begun two years earlier. According to Eric, he pitched the idea of going head to head with Raw, but airing live as opposed to Raw which was pre-taped at the time, coning up with the idea on the fly, which Turner went for. According to Wrestling Observer's of the time the meeting took place on June 5th, not at that time no details were available. In the July 24th edition Dave Meltzer reported that TNT would air a show called "something like Wrestling Nitro" starting on September 4th. Nitros lead in was scheduled to be reruns of Thunder in Paradise, an action-adventure show from the creators of Baywatch starring Hulk Hogan as Randolph J "Hurricane" Spencer. Being an early 90's kid I saw this before I even knew what pro wrestling was.

In the first ever WCW Nitro match, Flyin' Brian defeated Jushin Liger. How fitting that Nitro would begin by featuring two future legends. According to edition of the Wrestling Observer from as early as July, WCW had plans to start Nitro every week with a strong wrestling match, inspired by Raw having wrestlers like Bret Hart putting on good matches. This was not actually the first time that Pillman and Liger had met in the ring. In 1991 when Liger first came to WCW, he defeated Pillman for the WCW light heavyweight title, a championship that was only active for just shy of a year. Brian would win it back from Liger two months later. In 1992 the two would actually team up in an NWA tag team championship tournament where they would make it to the second round and lose to Nikita Koloff and Ricky Steamboat at the 92 Great American Bash. Here in 95, the two would meet in the Mall of America, in a really fun match that holds up even today. Post match the two shake hands and show respect to each other.

Heres a trivia note for you, despite Liger and Brians reputations as being legendary cruiserweight wrestlers, neither actually held the WCW cruiserweight championship, which wasn't introduced until 1996. However if you look at the titles history on WWE.com you'll find that the first two champions are Pillman then Liger. Thats because WWE recognises the Light Heavyweight title I mentioned earlier as part of the cruiserweight titles lineage, so Pillman is retroactively the first cruiserweight champion, and Liger the second.

In 2019, 24 years later during Ligers retirement tour that lasted almost a year, he would share the ring with current AEW wrestler, and Flyin Brians son, Brian Pillman Jr. On March 7th 2019 Liger in a press conference announced that at the following years Wrestle Kingdom he would retire from in ring competition what would end up being a 36 year career. The following day Pillman Jr tweeted about how it would have been an honour to share the ring just once with one of his Dads famous rivals. Thanks to Defy Wrestling, this would happen as part of a six man tag on August 23rd 2019.

In my research for this topic I couldn't find in any definitive reason why the first Nitro emanated from the Mall of America, but the gaudy video package on the show for Hulk Hogans 'Pastamania' restaurant in Mall might have had something to do with it. If you're curious, Hogans pasta venture opened in June of 95 and wouldn't last one year in business. This isn't the only culinary failure in Hogans past. If you lived through the 90's like I did, you will likely remember the George Foreman Grill, which launched in 1994 and was promoted by the boxer, earning him an estimated two hundred million dollars over its lifetime. Legend has is that the endorsement of the grill was originally offered to Hulk Hogan, who turned it down in favour of a meatball maker that failed to reach the same success. This story did come from Hogan himself though, who also claims that he was almost in Metallica.

Next on Nitro we would see history play out, as Ric Flair would wrestle Sting. By this point the two had been rivals for years, with their first famous match taking place at the Clash of the Champions 1 in 1988. That match would end in a 45 minute time limit draw, something we clearly weren't going to see on this one hour edition of Nitro. In 96 Nitro would be extended to two hours, then to three in 1998. By 2000 they went back down to two, who knew a weekly three hour show might not do as well in ratings? At the final ever Nitro on March 26th 2001, WCW saw no better way choice for WCW's final ever match than to harken back to one of their hottest feuds, as Sting and Flair would wrestle one last time. They would actually wrestle once more for TNA in 2011 but we don't talk about that one so shush...

There is another reason for this match being famous though, as on the opening bell, the WWF's Lex Luger would enter ringside. Flair and Sting reacted like they had seen a ghost, and with good reason. Twenty four hours earlier Lex had been in New Brunswick Canada wrestling on a WWE house show. he would team with Shawn Michaels in a winning effort against Owen Hart and Yokozuna, but a day later had shown up on the rivals new show. Very few people knew Luger would be making an appearance, and what better way to do it than have him walk into such a public place like a mall. For all anyone knew he might be there to get his shopping done.

Given the constraints Flair and Sting faced here that they didn't in their world title matches, this was never going to be the a classic like they had before. They wrestle a very enjoyable abridged version of their previous matches until Arn Anderson, who has split up with Flair at this point, comes down the aisle. The dynamic of Sting vs Flair matches usually was that Sting completely outmatched Flair physically to the point of no-selling Flair at some points, but Flair would find sneaky ways to get back in control, while often cowering away from Sting. They wrestle for about 10 minutes, until Flair cheats by locking in the figure four and pulling on the ropes for leverage. This causes Arn to enter the ring and the referee calls for the bell. The official decision is a no contest as Arn and Ric brawl to the backstage area, or whatever you would call that in a mall.

Before this segment can end there is a commotion at ringside. Scott Norton returns to WCW, fresh off a tour with New Japan. Norton has a heated argument with Eric Bischoff which Mongo tries to cool down, eventually Randy Savage runs in and challenges Norton to a match, which would take place on next weeks Nitro. During the commotion Eric Bischoff is referred to on air as the 'GM'. I'm not sure if it was public knowlege or not that Bischoff was WCW's president at the time, much like how Vince McMahon would lead commentary while not publicly being presented as the owner until some miscommunication that might have happened in Canada once.

Next we see a highlight video for Sabu. I knew he had a brief run in WCW, but seeing him in that ring is still a bizarre thing to me. He would have three Nitro matches with two being victories over Mr. JL, later known as Jerry Lynn, and his final WCW match would be a win over Dicso Inferno. In April of 1995, Sabu had double booked himself for ECW and New Japan and chose the latter. Given that Sabu was booked for a big tag team three way dance that had been built to, Paul Heyman got in the ring and fired Sabu publicly, and cut a firey promo about how Sabu had let the fans down. This is likely why Sabu had his short WCW run, but he and Heyman apparently made up as Sabu returned to ECW by the November to Remember event, and shortly after left for another New Japan tour. His entire WCW tenure lasted about 9 weeks.

At this point in the show they are showing the crowd while the commentators plug upcoming

events, and I spotted his monstrocity. He is known as Wildcat Willie, and he was served as a mascot for WCW on both Nitro and WCW Saturday Night. According to the internet the man in the costume is a man named Gary Hedrick, who also played Jeeves, the butler of the Blue Bloods. On his 83 weeks podcast in 2019, Eric Bischoff explained that Wildcat Willie was created to hype the crowd up during dark segments, but occasionally would be seen on television. He was an invention of a man names Bob Due, who head of love events when Eric when he joined the company. The inspiration was based on sports team mascots, the greatest of all time being Kingsley, the Partick Thistle mascot. Google image him please. Eric also notes that the idea behind Wildcat Willie was similar in concept to that of the Nitro Girls who came around in 1997. Similar in concept, but galaxies apart in presentation...

Mascots in wrestling come around every now and then. In 2007 TNA brought in a Kangaroo called Stomper, for reasons that I cannot find anywhere in the internet. Stomper looked a bit like a Crash Bandicoot ripoff, and didn't last all that long. In the early years of Raw they would have ring girls similar to boxing and later UFC, but that felt out of place as there were no rounds to hold the cards up for. I can't talk about mascots without mentioning perhaps the most famous one of all, the Gobbeldy Gooker. The man sized Turkey hatched from a giant egg at Survivor Series 1990, the same night the Undertaker debuted. The original plan for the Gooker was that he would be a mascot, but would also wrestle, so they needed a trained wrestler in the suit. As a result Hector Guerrero, brother of Eddie danced with Mean Gene, once and only once.

Eric Bischoff throws to the introduction of another returning wrestler, Michael Wallstreet formerly known in WWE as Irwin R Shyster, IRS. Wallstreet was Mike Rotundo, who had previously in WCW as a member of the Varsity Club led by Kevin Sullivan. He returned looking like a clone of his former tag team partner the Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase, and even referenced the IRS in his promo.

We now come to the main event,  a match between Big Bubba Rogers and WCW world champion Hulk Hogan. Bubba was Ray Traylor, known to WWE fans as the Big Bossman. Hogan had a reputation for bringing opponents he liked and friends of his to the company he was with at the time, so we saw the likes of Jimmy Hart, the Nasty Boys and many others follow him to WCW. Traylor had many main events with Hogan, including a famous cage match in Madison Square Garden in 1989. One of the ways WCW was able to lure Hogan to sign with them was to offer him creative control of his matches and storylines, effectively allowing him the power to veto anything he didn't like, but also giving him a say in who he wrestled. This would come back to bite WCW many times, such as in 1994 when their biggest event on the calendar Starrcade was main evented by Hogan vs Brutus Beefcake of all people.

Early in the match Eric Bischoff notes that Hogan spent a lot of time in Minnesota and so has the fans support. This is a reference to Hogans time in the AWA, where he started to make waves before joining WWE. Hogan leaving the AWA is regarded as one of its promoter Verne Gagne's greatest mistakes, as legend has it that Verne didn't want see the benefit in Hogan appearing in Rocky 3 as Thunderlips. Let me run that back, Verne didn't see the benefit in Hogan appearing in the world famous $270 million dollar grossing Rocky 3. Give me one more try. Verne didn't see the benefit in Hogan being associated with Sylvester Stallone and Mr. T... I could go on but you get the point by now.

Can you tell I don't to talk about this match? Its fine and all but after Pillman, Liger, Flair and Sting this feels like a massive gear change. It's a typical Hogan TV match, with him winning using his moves of doom sequence John Cena style. Post match Hogan is attacked by the Dungeon of Doom, who he has been feuding with. Lex Luger comes out to help Hogan, but the two back into each other leading to a confrontation between the two. This is interesting historically, as when Hogan left the WWE in 1993 Luger was the man chosen to take his place. Actually Sid was, but for some bizarre reason he turned down the chance to be the next Hulk Hogan. Luger got his chance at Summerslam 1993, following the now infamous Lex Express bus tour, so its interesting to see the two share the ring here. Luger would eventually defeat Hogan for the WCW title in 1997, in a match famous for how popular Luger was on that night.

Randy Savage and Sting come back out to try and cool things down to no avail. After an ad break Mean Gene comes out to interview both men, building to a match next week between the two, which in true WCW fashion would end in a DQ.

You likely don't need me to tell you this, but despite its legendary fall from grace WCW Nitro was a net positive for the entire wrestling business. It may have taken a while, but it eventually caused WWE to up their game, leading to the most lucrative era in pro wrestling history, when wrestling found a new attitude.