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  • 1 month later...

Tony: "How many times have you seen a man run into a gorilla press slam to get out of the way of a fruit tray?"

 

Larry on Mongo: "You shouldn't insult his face. He just has a scar. I know he has a weird face, but he loves to fight."

 

What may get forgotten is that before the big angle, these guys were having a great match. The crowd was very into it and all six guys were working really hard.

 

But if the match was great, this angle was a home run. I tend to think this is the best angle in WCW history. During the match, Jimmy Hart runs to ringside freaking out because "The Outsiders are in the back."

 

The camera starts falling all over the place trying to chase him backstage and you see Arn Anderson and Marcus Bagwell laid out while Hall and Nash throw down baseball bats. Scotty Riggs comes out to check on Bagwell and Hall knocks him out. Rey tries to jump on Nash, and in a super famous spot, gets thrown like a dart into the side of the trailer.

 

Savage starts chasing them away and jumps on top of the limousine as the NWO speeds off, which was a nice bit of attention to detail, as Savage didn't need to be part of the aftermath. Rey starts screaming that he saw four guys. Woman is screaming and crying and embracing Arn. Benoit is in tears. Emotions are high and the Horsemen and Dungeon of Doom start to get into a brawl, but get separated.

 

The show stops dead in its tracks. Arn Anderson and Rey Misterio were both scheduled for matches later on the show that can't happen now. Bobby Heenan is hysterical and refuses to stay around, fearing for his own safety.

 

And in the final touch, which I LOVE, Marcus Bagwell and Arn Anderson are taken away in the same ambulance. Sting and Flair, top rivals in WCW for years, find themselves in an unlikely alliance. They hop in the same ambulance to attend to their friends and that's the final scene.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 6 months later...

Not much to add that hasn't been said yet, def agree that they were having a damn good match before the big angle went down.

Yay for Mongo not screwing things up as much and actually looking kinda decent this week, even his nutty rope running fail didn't seem so bad.

 

We all know Evolution was HHH's attempt to copy the Horsemen but it suddenly just now dawned on me that they were a total rip off or atleast most similar to this version of the Horsemen.

 

Mongo = Batista :)

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  • 1 year later...

My favourite part was the Heenan thing. I love how real he was selling it.

 

I also remember the Macho Man jumping on the speeding car being the first time I'd heard wrestling talked about the next day at school (middle school) in years.

 

Also the fans chanting boring and the announcers acknowledging it was pretty funny, in retrospect.

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  • 1 year later...

Okay. Let's pick apart the greatest angle in WCW history. Two incoherences : there's no way Scotty Riggs could have been injured that bad, he only took a garbage can shot. And I don't see how Rey could see four guys, as he litteraly jumped out of the trailer onto Nash's arms and was launched like a dart. Or maybe he saw the two other guys looking on from the limo's window just before he jumped. Also, Eddie's acting is not too good, honestly. I wonder why they'd have Alex Wright there, as he was not a good promo either. Bu I'm nitpicking, it's still totally awesome for all the reasons mentionned before.

 

Giving it time was very important. They didn't rush through a two minute match to move into the angle. And they sold it as the show was really dead in its tracks like Loss said. The one great thing too is that we don't actually get to see the attack with the baseball bat, so it's left to the imagination, which makes it better. Jimmy Hart was great and the perfect choice because it could look like a ploy from the Dungeon. The fact that Luger listened to him first was a nice detail too. Benoit & Rey were excellent backstage. They made a big deal out of Rey having his mask removed while being attended too. Woman was great, crying and acting motherly toward Arn, awesome selling of the angle. Heenan's promo was perfect. The announcers all did a top notch job. Yeah, total home run.

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  • 1 year later...

Yes, welcome to the best angle WCW ever executed. It's useless to recite all the neat touches they got right here because they've been gone over, but the match really *is* good until it stops in its tracks. The biggest thing about this is WCW intentionally sabotaged their own second hour just to get this angle over. The main event of Giant vs. Arn Anderson turned into the Giant squashing Greg Valentine--they deliberately put on a shit show to get over the chaos the company had been thrown into by the Outsiders. This is some of the ballsiest, most daring booking of all-time, and proof of just how bulletproof Nitro was as their winning streak had already started. Even with the card being ruined, they threw in just enough "hooks"--who's the 4th man? Where did Savage go? Will anyone be coming back?--to keep viewers wanting to see if anything more would happen.

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  • 4 months later...

Jimmy Hart was great and the perfect choice because it could look like a ploy from the Dungeon. The fact that Luger listened to him first was a nice detail too.

 

I actually came back to comment on that. For months, Luger had been straddling both sides of the fence. He had switched allegiances many times in his career, and was now doing it so frequently and with such blatant disregard that it had become self-parody. Jimmy Hart is screaming to everyone that Hall and Nash are in the back, and Luger knows this guy well enough to know when he's lying, since they have schemed together many times before. He could tell that this was no setup based on their history and told the others to go to the back. Still, the viewer might even be thinking briefly that Luger is setting everyone up based on his wishy-washy history in the months leading to this.

 

Luger's redemption arc was such a great part of the NWO. He spent years switching philosophies and desperately trying to make something stick to get him to the level that had always been predicted for him. Nothing quite worked, in some ways probably because of character flaws regarding his maturity. Then he finally made one mistake too many a little while later when he refused to trust the best friend that had trusted him so many times when all evidence pointed to the contrary that he should. So now, Flair was down with an injury and Sting was on the sidelines. Savage had been neutralized. Luger was the unlikely hero. The NWO made him finally grow up and get his shit together after a decade of erratic behavior.

 

I've decided there's no way all the details, subtleties and clear motivations of this particular angle (and in some ways, the NWO at large) were on purpose, because time has proven that most of the people involved just weren't quite that sharp. But I'll be damned if the viewing effect, regardless of the intent, wasn't some seriously captivating wrestling television.

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  • 1 month later...

This may be the greatest wrestling angle of all time and this watch really shook my ranking for wrestling matches to the core. That may sound smarky and trivial but in the past four years I have watched A LOT of wrestling and tried to put some sort of guidance on where things stand historically. I have always argued that if the principals of the match are involved in the angle afterward, then that should count. That certainly happens here. That doesn't take away from the match as well which was a ton of fun and mixed in food spots, quick action, and old rivalries rekindling.

 

However, this reaches another gear when Jimmy runs out and the scene crafted with everything from Rey, Eddy, Flair, Sting, Bobby, Bischoff, Tony, Luger, Larry Z was just so above and beyond what we have seen from a storytelling standpoint. Whether everything was on purpose or not, the majestic way that everything blends in creates a gripping picture that is unparalleled. This match and scene is art and my current MOTY. *****

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 years later...

This is my first time watching this whole angle and it is for sure a masterpiece. Everything was executed perfectly and the level of realism is probably unmatched in any other wrestling angle. The whole show felt like it flew totally off the rails in the most unexpected way possible. Such a sense of chaos and a lack of clear knowledge of what happened. Great performances from everyone, no one overacted and everyone got over the situation. You even had the big bump with Rey so that, even though we miss most of the beatdown, we do get a visual sense of the brutality the NWO is now capable of. The fact that last week was sort of a lull in the NWO story makes this an even bigger exclamation point. Strong contender for best wrestling angle ever.

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  • GSR changed the title to [1996-07-29-WCW-Nitro] Sting & Lex Luger & Randy Savage vs Ric Flair & Chris Benoit & Steve McMichael
  • 3 years later...

The famous Backlot attack angle. Serious question is there any time a human says "Lawn Dart" besides when describing Kevin Nash & Rey Mysterio in this attack. 

I think it was smart that they did during a major match where 4 of their biggest stars were out because it showed the Outsiders to be cowards and only attack when the big guns were busy. This also dispels any rumors of Flair joining (he had missed last week's show where he was supposed to team with the Horsemen vs Team WCW). I knew Chad went the full Monty, glad to see you come back down to Earth. I don’t rate matches without finishes but this was in ***1/2-***3/4 range for me. Flair, Savage and Benoit give all-star performances in the match proper. My favorite part was the epic Scotty Riggs: “Marcus!” Eats a trash can lol. That was the original Oh Hi Marc! Lol. Food is out diving back in!

 

 Rey saying there was four but when he leapt out onto Nash there was only two. It felt weird that he was the one to say there were four. Woman was the MVP for me. 

I liked how the four guys attacked where all in matches later. It went from Steiners vs American Males, Rey Rey vs Eddie and Giant vs Double A to Steiners vs High Voltage, Rey Rey vs Big Bubba and Giant vs Greg Fuckin Valentine. They torpedoed their own show to get this angle over. This was the best venue to do it since it was a free audience.

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