April 26, 2009
Matt Peddycord
The Powerdriver Review

WCW Monday Nitro
March 18, 1996
Chattanooga, TN
UTC Arena

The current WCW champs were as follows:
WCW World Champion: Ric Flair (2/11/1996)
WCW U.S. Champion: Konnan (1/29/1996)
WCW World Tag Team Champions: Sting & Lex Luger (1/22/1996)
WCW World Television Champion: Lex Luger (3/6/1996)

Your hosts are Eric Bischoff, Bobby Heenan, and that Emmy-award winning Steve “Mongo” McMichael.

Right after the intro, we see Giant beating the crap out of Loch Ness in the aisle way with Jimmy Hart cheering him on. Wasn’t Loch Ness a DOD guy like two weeks ago? I guess he shouldn’t have went against the family.

WCW World Television Champion Lex Luger vs. Loch Ness
No match. Luger comes out like nothing is happening to Loch Ness and wins via countout. Why would the ref even signal for the match to start without Loch Ness being in the ring? Why not just call it a forfeit or something? Whatever. (0:13) Luger celebrates with both belts and appears to be pretty proud of himself. Afterwards, Lex goes over to the announce table to talk about what a roll he’s been on the last few weeks. He just had the fastest TV title defense ever! Heenan is the only one who takes the high five from Sexy Lexy.

Apparently, Gene Okerlund is out sick tonight with the flu, so Tony Schiavone interviews the Mega Powers. The words ‘Mega Power’ is plastered all over Savage’s attire. Hulk just sticks with his old Hulkster shirt and bandana. The interview to hype the Doomsday cage match and tonight’s main event gets booed by everybody in Chattanooga. It’s so loud and unmistakable too.

Rick & Scott Steiner vs. Public Enemy
Because this show is totally live and unexpected, Bischoff treats this like a standby match. As is the norm in WCW, Public Enemy bring a table with them to ringside. Rocco counters a tilt-a-whirl into a LUCHA-style armdrag, but can’t counter a second one as Scott gets the slam. After a press slam, Rocco Rock rolls out of the ring and onto his own table. This crowd is SUPER hot for the Steiners, by the way. Before anything can happen, Rocco gets off the table and gets nailed with a double sledge off the apron. Back in, Grunge and Rick tag in. Meanwhile, Bischoff tells us Dennis Rodman got suspended for six games, so there’s possibly at some point in time a slim chance of an opportunity that’s still plausible for Dennis Rodman to show up at UnCeNSoReD this coming Sunday. In the ring, the Steiners clean house and do the dog thing where Scott treats his brother like a pit bull. After that’s over, Rocco nails Rick and dumps him out for Johnny Grunge to slam his head on a plastic chair. Back in, Rocco hits a moonsault headbutt and a DDT. He heads up again, but this time gets caught in mid-air for a powerslam for two. Tag to Scott, he comes in and gives Rocco a T-Bone Superplex! That gets another two. Rocco comes back with a quick quebrada for two. Tag to Grunge, Scott fights off a superplex and levels Grunge with an overhead belly-to-belly suplex. Also, Bischoff says that somebody from the 1992 Olympic winter games is coming to WCW. Hmm. Hot tag to Rick, it breaks down into a pier six brawl. Rocco puts Rick on the table and knocks Scott out to the floor. The somersault plancha through the table fails to wipe out Rocco Rock. That leaves Johnny Grunge to be put away with the STEINER BULLDOG. (7:03) If you were to judge by this crowd, the Steiners are the hottest tag team in WCW since they left in 1992. Not perfect, but another good tag match for the Steiners. ***

The Booty Man vs. Arn Anderson (w/Woman)
Oh man, I know where this is heading. You know, when Booty Man was Zodiac in the Dungeon of Doom and was supposedly reporting everything to Hogan, don’t you think Zodiac should have known that Jimmy Hart was going to turn on him at Halloween Havoc and cost him the WCW world title and then told Hogan about that? The whole “he was a spy in the enemy’s camp” concept is so…completely…retarded. Arn takes about ten turnbuckle smashes and goes to the floor. Back in, Arn begs off to sucker Booty into the corner. Booty Man turns things around on him, so Arn ducks out to the floor again. I can’t believe I’m actually typing the words “Booty Man”. This time, he stops Booty Man with a knee to the gut. Back in the ring, Arn goes into ’70s heel mode and begins choking and gouging Booty Man. Hammerlock slam connects, but then Booty Man catches AA with a shot to the gut as he comes off the middle rope. Woman starts to take her shoe off as Kimberly comes down to get another look at the Booty Man. Woman tells her to GTFO, but then Booty Man gets in between them. Arn lowers the boom on the Booty Man much to the crowd’s approval. Back inside, Booty Man catches Arn with a High Knee to the head as he steps in between the ropes for the 1-2-3. (5:42) This wasn’t quite as bad of a squash as Arn’s matches with Hogan though. It just wasn’t interesting. After the match, Booty Man takes Kimberly with him to the back. ¾*

WCW Saturday Night! Watch it! 6:05PM eastern! TBS! The Road Warriors take on Public Enemy! Sting versus Earl Robert of Eaton! WCW TV Champ Lex Luger battles Brad Armstrong! Eddie Guerrero meets Alex Wright! And the WCW world champ Ric Flair shows up to wrestle…Sgt. Craig Pittman? It’s the MUTHASHIP, IF YOU WHEEEEELL! PAY WINDAHS, CLUBBERIN’, and PLUNDAH, BABY!

The Road Warriors vs. The Nasty Boys
This is the match scheduled for last week, but the Steiners decided to come back instead. Still no answer as to what happened to the Nasty Boys. Why can’t they just say it was the Steiners? That’s the only thing that would make sense. Why make the speculation bigger than it needs to be, WCW? The Nasty Boys are all taped up, which can’t possibly be legit. At least not in Brian Knobbs’ case. He’s got his belly taped AROUND his shirt. It’s a real “Katie, bar the door” fight to start. And then we go to break. We come back to see the Nasties getting heel heat for double-teaming Hawk. Animal saves the day, but it’s Hawk knocking Knobbs off the apron with a forearm to send him into the guardrail. Animal starts to rip off Knobbs’ rib tape until Sags comes over and nails him with that blue plastic chair from the earlier tag match. Animal gets the chair away from Sags and hits him in the face. SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT, JERRY? In the ring, LOD begin working over Knobbs and his hurt ribs. How hard would you have to beat Knobbs in the ribs to actually REACH his ribs? Now the Steiners are here, they really should just turn the Nasties heel again. Too many face teams in WCW. Animal hits a powerslam, but a running splash hits knees. Tag to Sags, he tries to clean house on the LOD. Big mistake. Everybody comes in to fight as the Steiners come down to interfere. While the ref pays attention to all that, Animal nails Knobbs with his wristband. Now ref Nick Patrick turns around and counts 1-2-3. LOD wins. (5:56 shown) Pretty fun little brawl. I know Luger is part of the Doomsday cage match now, but where is Sting and Harlem Heat at? Sting and Booker T are supposed to fight the Road Warriors at UnCeNSoReD. Other than for the obvious reasons, are they ever going to pay off why Luger was so scared of LOD? Ahh, who knows what’s going on here. **

Hulk Hogan & Randy Savage vs. Ric Flair & Kevin Sullivan (w/Woman) – Texas Tornado Match
It’s another big brawl between these two teams. Everybody fights out to the floor where Hogan puts a Randy Savage foam hat over Flair’s face and beats him up. Things start to look up for Flair until he climbs to the top rope. Sullivan and Savage are fighting, it’s just the director keeps the camera on Hogan most of the time. Flair takes a clothesline off the apron as he tries the Flair Flip. That leaves Sullivan alone with the Mega Powers. According to Savage’s tights, it’s just ‘Mega-Power’ though. With both guys fighting on opposite sides around the ring, they pull up the split-screen. After Flair beats up Savage, he goes over to help Sullivan with Hogan and they wind up taking a double noggin knocker. Bischoff makes another Dennis Rodman plug. Can you imagine WWE saying that now in 2009? That’s like if a wrestling fed decided to bring in Danny Bonaduce or somebody like that. It’s ridiculous! The heels FINALLY gain an advantage after Flair dumps Hogan. He grabs a FIGURE-FOUR on Savage while Sullivan attempts to keep Hogan on the floor. Instead, Hogan puts Sullivan in the figure-four. And THAT RIGHT THERE is what makes Randy Savage better than Hulk Hogan. Savage does reverse the Figure Four, but then again who hasn’t? Flair loses a shoving match with ref Randy Anderson and then takes a clothesline from Hogan. Meanwhile, Sullivan takes Savage to the floor and atomic drops him on the railing. In the ring, Flair catches Hogan with an elbow and hits him with a back suplex, but he NO-SELLS. More mindless brawling. Flair gets Woman’s shoe because apparently a pump in a size seven is the only way to stop Hulkamania! WHAM! Hogan gets nailed and everybody cheers because they think Hogan is beaten again, but nope. The Hulk Up cues Arn Anderson. Hogan hits the Big Boot and goes for the LEGDROP, but Arn hooks his leg. Hogan goes out after AA when we see BRIAN PILLMAN attacking Randy Savage! And the referee calls for the bell? No contest, I guess? (10:09) But it’s a Texas Tornado match? I thought that anything goes? If anybody thought what Pillman was doing was a shoot at this point, they are certainly fooling themselves. Booty Man joins the bunch. The brawling continues until we see Z-GANGSTA and the FINAL SOLUTION heading out to the ring with Jimmy Hart to scare off Hogan and friends. Yes, Z-Gangsta is ZEUS from 1989 WWF. The Final Solution is some really big body builder type who is another one of Hogan’s buddies. Wikipedia says he played Bane in Batman & Robin. Does Tony Lister have freakin’ breast implants? Geez. ½*

Tony Schiavone joins all the bad guys for a word. Pillman is already gone because he’s such a loose cannon! After Kevin Sullivan and Jimmy Hart introduce the two new guys in the ring and say what they’re going to do to Hulk Hogan at the PPV, Flair says that after UnCeNSoReD and Randy Savage is in the hospital, he’ll bring Elizabeth to see him…AFTER SHE RIDES SPACE MOUNTAIN ALL NIGHT LONG! WOOOOO! Best part of the whole segment. And for the 1339893951st time, Bobby Heenan thinks Hulkamania is finished. AND WE OUT! UNCENSORED 1996 IS NEXT!