The SmarK Rant For NWo: Back In Black (DVD)

The SmarK Rant for nWo: Back in Black (DVD)

– Hogan and Hall discuss advice from Jay Strongbow (you can make friends,

or money) and the influence of the nWo on WCW.

– We head back to May 1996 and clips of The Bad Period for the WWF to

establish the scene. We establish that Hogan was the big superhero of the

80s (complete with all the clips). He talks about the shorter attention

span of fans.

– Next up, Scott Hall, complete with the original Razor Ramon intro

video! Sweet! Clips of him beating Martel to win the IC title for the

first time, plus clips of Diesel, Adam Bomb and Goldust (looking far

porkier than today). Good to hear the theme again, at least.

– Onto Kevin Nash and his entrance as Diesel, and the rare I-C title win

against Ramon in early 1994. Plus the Backlund title switch, in its

8-second entirety. Clips of Wrestlemania XI establish the Michaels feud.

– History now says that Diesel & Ramon “succumbed to more money down south”

and left for WCW. We see the MSG Incident, as Hall claims that they had

the best of intentions.

– From Nitro Hall jumps the guardrail and interrupts Mike Enos’ match, and

delivers the famous “You want a war?” speech. Hall says he didn’t think it

would take off the way it did. Later that night, Hall mouths off to Eric

Bischoff, saying that “we” are sick of WCW and Bischoff’s big mouth. “Who

is
‘we’?” asks Eric. “You know who.” Says Hall. And they wonder why the

WWF sued them? He was totally doing the Ramon character there.

– The next week, Big Kev debuts to further verbally punk out WCW. Nash’s

line about needing a dialysis machine for the main eventers is pretty funny.

– From Great American Bash, as Hall & Nash formally deny working for the

WWF to head off that potential lawsuit. Hall & Nash press for the names of

the opposing team, so Nash powerbombs Bischoff through the table when that

answer doesn’t come.

– From Nitro in July, the Outsiders nearly get into a brawl with the WCW

team. Hall talks about how people thought Vince sent them to WCW to kill it.

– Onto Bash at the Beach and the fateful six-man, as Luger gets KO’d and

Hogan comes out to make the save, but turns on Savage and changes

history. It still boggles my mind to see all this stuff on a WWF

release. It should be noted that Heenan’s “but whose side is he on?” line

is cut out of this. Hall talks about being the ring when the garbage

started flying. He doesn’t approve of that sort of thing, of course,

mainly because it’s wasting perfectly good beer. Okay, I made that last

part up. Back to the footage, as Hogan cuts one of the greatest

money-drawing promos in history, telling the fans to “stick it” and coining

the “New World Order” name.

– Still in July, as Hogan debuts the black look and the nWo do their first

beatdown: Big Bubba. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Hogan challenges

the Giant for Hog Wild and offers to beat up the whole promotion right there.

– From Nitro, as the infamous baseball bats make their first appearance

during a beatdown of Marcus Bagwell. Rey Jr. takes the famous “lawn dart”

bump into a trailer.

– From Nitro, Hall & Nash beat the crap out of Sting in a poorly-lit

parking lot that makes it look like a bootleg camcorder shot.

– Off to Hog Wild, as Hogan wins his millionth World title from the Giant

with the usual nWo shenanigans. Hulk talks about being a bad boy.

– From Nitro, the first nWo finish in August as they clean house on the DOD

and Horsemen. The Giant appears to save, but then does the first-ever

non-sensical nWo heel turn. Ah, those were the days. Carnage follows.

– Hogan thinks that Hall & Nash and their “gangster rap” sensibility made

them too cool at times, but he was the sole bad guy because the hicks hated

all things WWF-related.

– Another nWo beatdown of the Horsemen.

– Hogan talks about the group getting watered down by all the scrubs, but

maintained that adding that shirt made stars out of whoever wore it. Yeah,

just like Bryan Adams.

– Back to the WWF for a moment, as we get the Attitude stuff and suddenly

skip ahead 6 years to Flair making his return to the WWF. Vince does his

creepy “Poison” promo, which indeed proved prophetic as the WWF became WWE

a few weeks later.

– From No Way Out, the poison is injected. It’s really weird because JR

talks about how they destroyed WCW, but we didn’t really see anything in

the previous clips to show WHY they did. It was all the upside, none of

the downside. Later, they give Austin a six-pack and Rock verbally

dismantles them. Later, Austin fights off the three nWo guys but still

loses to Jericho. Austin’s non-cooperation during the resulting beatdown

turned out to be all Austin’s doing, and more I’ve learned about his

behavior in the past year, the more I side with the creative team in their

dispute.

– We cover the Austin-Hall feud and the less-than-thrilling buildup.

– Rock and Hogan exchange verbage and the nWo runs him over with a

truck. That skit looks stupider and stupider as time goes on. And they

show it in full here, complete with replays.

– From Smackdown, Rock lays the smackdown on Scott Hall but gets attacked

by the nWo.

– From Wrestlemania: Austin squashes Hall to end that and send Hall

packing home. Of course, little did we know that Austin would be joining

him on the unemployment line soon after.

– From Wrestlemania: Hogan and Rock steal the show. Showing the important

portions in widescreen makes for a nice touch, too. Hogan talks about

completing the circle and all that crap. In this case, it’s more like

completing the circle jerk.

– From Smackdown, Rock and Kevin Nash put on a stinkeroo and Hogan

completes his face turn.

– Hall talks about how tough it’s gonna be to kill off the WWF. Or

vice-versa in his case.

And that’s pretty much it.

Easter Eggs: Go to the chapter selection menu, highlight “next” and press

right for a mini-video to promo No Way Out. Move down to “resume”, press

right, and get another video. Go to the second chapter select screen,

highlight “Back” and press right, and get a third mini-video (featuring the

Fingerpoke of Doom), and finally move down to highlight “resume”, press

right, and that’ll show you the first Nazi-ish propaganda piece done by the

original group (“WHADDYA BENCH, LEX, WHADDYA BENCH?”). What, no “BUY THE

SHIRT!” bit?

Extras: You get the original Bash at the Beach match, Wargames ’96 (with

fake Sting joining the group and the real one making his exit from WCW),

Nash v. Goldberg from Starrcade ’98 (the match that buried WCW for good),

both No Way Out commercials, and the Hogan/Hall v. Rock/Austin match from

RAW. About 90 more minutes worth of stuff there, most which you’ve

probably never seen because the buyrates were so bad. Okay, that was a

cheapshot.

The Bottom Line:

Given what they COULD have done, this is a pretty disappointing DVD in some

ways. There’s lots of WCW footage, but it’s all of the original three and

there’s no real context given for any of it. It’s like “Well, they

attacked a bunch of guys, and then suddenly it was 6 years later and

they’re all older and back in the WWF”. And when you watch those original

beatdowns and interviews and then watch them half-ass it with the brutally

bad material they had to work with this year it’s night and day and makes

the second half of the DVD into a real chore to sit through. Plus there’s

other problems, like Hogan talking about the watering down of the group,

but that’s never explained or touched on aside from a quick clip of the

B-Team from Fall Brawl ’97.

Still, if you’ve never seen the original original nWo, there’s tons of

classic Nitro material on here so you can see what the fuss was

about. However, don’t expect this DVD to actually TELL you what the fuss

was about, which is where I think it could have stood some major improvement.

Mildly recommended for the footage and the extras, though.