[1998-09-10-WCW-Thunder] Arn Anderson and Eric Bischoff

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Tony Schiavone is in the ring to interview Arn and Malenko. The NWO has started attacking guys associated with Arn to send a message and Arn gives a great fired up promo in response. He says Dean has proven that he's Horsemen material whether the group gets back together or not. This brings out Bischoff who says it's not Arn's call, it's HIS call on whether or not there will ever be a Four Horsemen reunion. He tries to bully Arn into saying he works for Eric Bischoff and pulls out Arn's book, pointing out that he never gave him permission to write the book. He also calls Arn on saying that everything the NWO did, the Horsemen did 10 years earlier. Bischoff said he may have done that when putting 1200 people in a 15,000-seat arena while Jim Crockett went bankrupt while Bischoff made WCW the #1 wrestling company in the U.S. Ouch. Bischoff is AWESOME here and provokes Arn to the point that he starts choking him out! The name RIC FLAIR gets namedropped for the first time in months, with Bischoff saying he'll be happy to sue Arn the same way he's suing Flair if he ever touches him again. He says he and Arn can arm wrestle (with Arn's bad arm) on Thunder next week and if Arn wins, Flair can get back in the ring. Something changed between Thursday and Monday to make that a no-go, but this is a great segment all the same, and hopefully Flair returning can breathe some life into WCW for a while.

[soup23]

It did feel like the jump started the Flair return to Monday but this was a great return to form for Bischoff playing his best heel role as a power hungry fool that has disregard for people beneath him because he can. This evokes so much more natural emotion than the too cool for school Bischoff persona over the summer. I loved the little jab of them arm wrestling with their left hand

[PeteF3]

Hey, what do you know...WCW just decided to prove my point in the Duggan thread for me. Let's piggyback of a real and emotional cancer diagnosis announcement with a phony neck injury angle.

 

Okay, that bit of cynicism aside I have one more major gripe with this angle: NO ONE IS CLUED IN THAT "LEFT-HANDED" MEANS ARN'S BAD ARM. We have to figure it out for ourselves because Schiavone, Heenan, Marshall, Bischoff, and even Arn himself all have simultaneous brain farts and fail to get that part of the stipulation over, when that should have been a major plot point to plant doubt in the fans' minds as to if Arn can win or not. Okay, enough negativity: everything else about this was terrific, especially Bischoff, who is back to playing a cocky little prick but not drowning in ego, either. That it plays on real-life events and emotions and plays on the feelings of many, many WCW viewers is icing on the cake.