[1998-12-14-WCW-Nitro] Ric Flair and Eric Bischoff / Bam Bam Bigelow, Scott Hall & Kevin Nash and Goldberg

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Bischoff says the difference between himself and Flair is that Bischoff is living for the future (is he now?) and Flair is living for the past. He points out that he's a "trained killer" and spent seven years studying martial arts. Flair comes out and chases him all over the ringside area and wow can Flair run. Flair debuts the mat elbow drop, along with the knee drop. Flair cuts an awesome promo talking about the history of Florida since they're in Tampa. He also does a picture perfect Flair Flip. He gets so worked up in this promo that he starts clutching his chest. He ends up collapsing in the ring and oh yeah ... this is sold as Flair having a heart attack. This was such a tasteless desperation tactic to score a quarter hour. Flair's acting was a little too convincing here. Tony Schiavone has no idea what to do or what to talk about since Flair is still in the ring. A stretcher comes out to art Flair out.

 

There's an angle that looks like it's thrown together on the fly purposely where Bigelow attacks Scott Hall at a vending machine. Nash comes in to break it up and ends up having to be restrained from Bigelow. Goldberg follows suit.

[tim]

Flair's wild promo was great but the heart attack angle was silly. It was an interesting transition into the Bigelow/Nash/Goldberg stuff though. It continues to be a very interesting dynamic and I really want to see Bigelow/Goldberg. They probably should've made Starrcade a triple threat and had Nash pinning Goldberg if Nash HAD to go over.

[soup23]

I was so into this and then so out as soon as Ric collapsed. Him bringing up past history without seeming old and dated was great. The heart attack stuff was awful with people like Tony and Gene trying to manufacture sympathy.

 

I did like Doug Dillenger insisting in the back that Arn was riding in the ambulance.

 

Hall and Bam Bam get into it backstage. Nash really wanted everyone to get a shine off of Bam Bam.

[Loss]

From Dave's Today In Wrestling History:

 

 

 

As the WCW booking team came to Tampa for Nitro, they heard about football coach Dan Reeves having a heart bypass operation. To be topical, they booked Ric Flair to suffer a worked heart attack on the show and Eric Bischoff tried to play it off with one of those infamous "working the boys" angles that killed his credibility as a company leader. For the night, Raw drew a 5.16 rating to Nitro's 4.23. The Flair heart attack quarter drew a tremendous 5.9 number, the highest of the night, but to show nobody believed the heart attack, the number immediately dropped to a 3.7 the next quarter as people turned to Raw rather than were curious about the condition of Flair.

[PeteF3]

Any chance of having people believe in the heart attack was killed with the rather hokey transition to Bigelow, Hall, and Nash, with Schiavone going right back into Wrestling Announcer Voice when Bigelow attacks Hall. I still can't decide if this is as bad, not as bad, or worse than the Hawk TitanTron angle, but it's definitely comparable.