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[1996-11-18-WCW-Nitro] Interview: Roddy Piper


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  • 2 months later...

The big angle.

 

Eric Bischoff comes out and says they've been trying to reach Piper through all of his contacts and have had no luck, but they would keep trying.

 

Piper comes out to set the record straight and calls Eric Bischoff a liar. He asks if the road going to his house was straight or winding, if he flew first class or coach, what airline he used. Good stuff.

 

The NWO then comes out to restrain Piper and Hogan gives Bischoff a hug. Eric Bischoff has joined the NWO. Piper tries to lunge at Hogan while the ring is filled with the NWO guys and security, which is quite the visual.

 

The show closes with Piper saying he'll be at World War 3.

 

I guess you could call this the point when the NWO started getting a little big, even if in the short-term, it was a well put-together angle.

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what the hell a personal story as an aside.

 

the Friday after Survivor Series 96 and this show I developed a sore throat. I thought it was just going to lead to a cold but holy shit was I wrong about that. The sickest I've been in my entire life until that point. Turned out I had a severe sinus infection and ended up having to be hospitalized with pneumonia a few weeks later. So it started on November 22 and I wasn't fully recovered till about a few days before Christmas. I missed around 4 weeks of Senior year.

 

I loved Survivor Series and was psyched about this angle but the next month is a real blur. I did order Starrcade that year and attended the last Raw taping of 1996 that had 4 weeks of shows leading up to the Royal Rumble

 

So yeah I always associate this great angle and Survivor Series with feelings of near death!

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 year later...
  • 1 month later...
Guest Andrews

Good angle but it really didn't make sense to me at the time. I mean, Hall and Nash powerbombed Bischoff through a table and he got no revenge.

Taking your lickings for the team!

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  • 1 year later...

Money angle. Bishoff is again excellent here, feeling totally uncomfortable. You can cut the tension with a knife and then the nWo shows up and the shit hits the fan. I like teh fact the nWo didn't beat up Piper yet, they just held him back. Uncle Eric immediately acts like a punk, throwing fists toward Piper from afar. It should be always remembered that Bischoff excelled in the "evil boss" role that would be such a stamp on those new hot years for wrestling more than one year before McMahon did it. And just in a snap, DiBiase becomes irrelevant and useless. The only thing that could have been better is I think Schiavone was sorely missed at the broadcast, Heenan & Tenay just weren't able to convey the drama of the situation to me.

Sullivan said that it was actually Hall & Nash's idea to make Bischoff part of the nWo. "Make the boss part of the angle. Hum.. I dunno how you can lose with that one…"

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  • 1 year later...

Great atmosphere and a great chaotic scene at the finish, but there were parts of this that fell flat to me. Both at the time and now. I won't really get into it all because it's late, I'm tired, and it's all nitpicking anyway. But the big Bischoff turn is somehow sort of lost in the shuffle between more Piper rambling, Tenay and Heenan not being able to get the appropriate points over that needed put over (and they were just as likely not clued in on what was going on), and more Kevin Sullivan vagueness. This is an instance where it needed to be spelled out crystally clear that Bischoff was lying and had been found out, and that really didn't happen, again forcing viewers to sort of connect the dots themselves. Bischoff is fantastic from Piper's entrance up until the turn, though.

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  • 6 months later...

Great atmosphere and a great chaotic scene at the finish, but there were parts of this that fell flat to me. Both at the time and now. I won't really get into it all because it's late, I'm tired, and it's all nitpicking anyway. But the big Bischoff turn is somehow sort of lost in the shuffle between more Piper rambling, Tenay and Heenan not being able to get the appropriate points over that needed put over (and they were just as likely not clued in on what was going on), and more Kevin Sullivan vagueness. This is an instance where it needed to be spelled out crystally clear that Bischoff was lying and had been found out, and that really didn't happen, again forcing viewers to sort of connect the dots themselves. Bischoff is fantastic from Piper's entrance up until the turn, though.

I actually really like that Bischoff's turn is kind of lost. Like the camera isn't even necessarily centered on Bischoff, and there's so much going on, it feels more real. It really comes off like Heenan and Tanay don't know what's going on. It's rare when wrestling assumes intelligence in their audience, and while this was more likely just poor execution and production, I'd like to think this is one of those times.

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  • 1 year later...

I see both sides in the argument of how this angle was presented. I did think the actual turn was nonchalant and required the viewer to connect some dots but everything felt really frantic and big time with Piper being restrained by the cops and the NWO knowing they got their point across and just retreating from this dangerous animal. The stage is set even more for Hogan vs Piper and this was much better than that awful video from the week before.

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  • 9 months later...

Wow! Piper is crazy over. Bischoff's turn does sort of seem lost in all the chaos of everything else in the segment and by itself doesn't feel as significant as it might have if revealed differently. The focus of this angle is still very much Piper vs. Hogan, and man does that feel like a big match right now.

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  • GSR changed the title to [1996-11-18-WCW-Nitro] Interview: Roddy Piper

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