When World Wrestling Entertainment purchased World Championship Wrestling in the spring of 2001, it signaled an end to the Monday Night Wars. For six years, both WWE (then WWF) and WCW went head to head on Monday nights with each muscling for superiority. In 1996, WCW would begin an impressive 84-week streak where its Monday Nitro program bettered Monday Night Raw. However, two years later the World Wrestling Federation would begin its Attitude Era, a three-year period that began with WrestleMania XIV and ended at WrestleMania X-Seven.
But this review isn’t about the Attitude Era; it’s about The Very Best of WCW Monday Nitro. Diamond Dallas Page is our host and the former WCW World Heavyweight Champion is good in a limited role. Unlike other WWE DVDs, where the host typically sets up why a specific match or segment was chosen, DDP only appears sparingly (no less than fifteen times), so viewers are left to wonder why certain segments and matches are worth best of WCW Monday Nitro consideration. And because it goes in chronological order you are essentially watching how the program (and also the company) made its ascension to the top of the ratings game only to see them crap it all away in its final years.
It’s rather intriguing when you think about it. To go from Kevin Nash and Scott Hall invading as The Outsiders in 1996 – which led to the formation of the New World Order – to see them again in December 1999 forming “nWo Silver” helping Bret Hart win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship against Bill Goldberg. Chalk that up to Vince Russo booking. And I thought the “Finger Poke of Doom” was bad – it to is highlighted on this set at the start of disc three.
What the hell are The Diamond Studd and Vinnie Vegas doing back in WCW?
A majority of the first disc is devoted to the creation of the nWo, so you get a number of run-ins during matches that are pretty much irrelevant. Honestly, people may remember Scott Hall coming out of the crowd wearing blue jeans with a matching sleeveless blue-jean jacket, but do they remember he interrupted a match featuring Steve Doll taking on Mike Enos (aka The Mauler)?
One of the problems you run into by not having DDP give a small introduction for each segment or match is that there’s no frame of reference. For instance, the New World Order grew to become such a large faction that the question wasn’t who was in the group, but rather who wasn’t? So it may seem strange to see “Macho Man” Randy Savage get attacked by the nWo only to see him as a member of the group in the next segment. How about a little explanation to let viewers know why wrestlers gravitated to the New World Order, as well as give some information on its various incarnations (nWo Hollywood, nWo Wolfpac, nWo Elite/Reunion, and the “B-Team” of nWo Elite for starters). Maybe we’ll get that when WWE decides to make a comprehensive New World Order DVD compilation.
Still, no lead up to set the scene is just lazy on the part of WWE. Granted, people who purchase the release no doubt have fond memories of the Monday Night Wars, but even they can’t remember all the details of the show’s run on TNT. This especially holds true of the last few years where it appeared the storylines were written by a crash-test dummy.
The remaining discs in the set give us the TV side of WCW’s rise and fall from 1998 through 2001. One of the telling signs about the company’s instability was a revolving door of WCW Heavyweight title changes in 1999 and 2000. In 1999 the company had eleven men – technically seven since four men won the title twice – win the Heavyweight title; seven of the switches occurred on Nitro (three of the matches are included in this release). The title was also vacated on two occasions. The following year makes that number of switches look tame. For 2000 was the year where nineteen champions were crowned, the title was vacated five times and as a tie-in with the comedy release Ready to Rumble, David Arquette won the title only to lose it in the main event of the Slamboree pay-per-view telecast twelve days later!
The amount of outside interference or cheating ran tantamount with Vince Russo taking command of the booking. Thought of as the savior of the World Wrestling Federation with its Crash TV style during the Attitude Era, in the WCW environment he made it so much easier for fans to want to change the channel and see what “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and The Rock were doing.
With the final disc I was basically watching the last few segments cold with no prior knowledge. I vaguely remember the storyline involving the New Blood vs. the Millionaire’s Club but Russo’s decision to deliver a reboot to all the championships, declaring all of them vacant, it again was another bad decision during his reign as booker. Which reminds me, did Russo ever make a good decision?
Chris Jericho reads off his Christmas list. (The Ready to Rumble cage is not one of the items listed.)
Judging from the second to last match included on the last DVD, I’m going to say no. It was a triple cage match – the same type of set-up from Ready to Rumble – that involved the following superstars: Sting, Goldberg, Kevin Nash, Scott Steiner, Jeff Jarrett, Booker T, KroniK (remember when they bombed against The Undertaker and Kane after the Invasion angle?), the Harris Brothers (aka The Blu Brothers, aka two members of the Disciples of Apocalypse in WWF/E) and finally…Vince Russo. I’d rather be blinded Slumdog Millionaire style than watch it in its entirety again.
I can distinctly remember when the first episode of Nitro premiered on TNT, emanating live from the Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minn. In the pre-Internet days and not knowing what a “dirt sheet” was, Lex Luger’s appearance threw me for a loop, though not as much as Rick Rude defying the laws of physics when he appeared on both Monday Night Raw and WCW Monday Nitro on the same night- Raw was a pre-recorded broadcast; Nitro was live. Because DVRs didn’t exist back then, I wore out the “previous channel” button on my remote control flipping back and forth between programs. Good times.
Though you have wonder, what would have happened if the Attitude Era didn’t take off for the World Wrestling Federation? Had they not secured Mike Tyson as the special guest ring enforcer for WrestleMania XIV, thus missing all that national exposure on outlets like ESPN, would Steve Austin becoming champion have been as big of a turning point? World Championship Wrestling had the talent and a hot angle, but couldn’t create new superstars – aside from Goldberg – and took the nWo storyline and ran with it for so long that it became a caricature. It was parodied in ECW with the Blue World Order and even inside its own promotion with factions like the lWo, the Latino World Order. To WWF/E’s credit they were able to take WCW’s castoffs and make them legitimate stars and shook up the main event scene for years to come. Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, and Rey Mysterio, who appear in cruiserweight action in this collection, would go on to hold world titles in WWE.
Diamond Dallas Page may be Mr. “Self High Five,” but Vincent Kennedy McMahon has the last laugh.
Getting back to the DVD, it’s a worthwhile Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of release. It starts out so promising with its debut from the Mall of America to the ultra-hot New World Order angle. But then you get to that third disc and Dr. Jekyll has been replaced with Mr. Hyde, and you see how quickly WCW went from good to atrocious in less than two years.
The Very Best of WCW Monday Nitro‘s discs come housed in a gateway fold out Digipak. Once again, WWE omits an insert that lists all the content of the three-disc set. Luckily, printable custom inserts are available online (here and here). Also, they list the approximate running time as eight hours, but the combined times of all three discs is closer to eight and a half hours.
One of the biggest pet peeves I have with WWE DVD titles of late, going as far back as the Ricky Steamboat release, is the damn pillarboxing for the matches and segments. It retains the original 4:3 aspect ratio from the TV broadcast, but instead of leaving the sides black, they add some wallpaper artwork that can be distracting. For the Nitro release they’ve decided to have steel grating wallpaper (which you can see from the screen grabs above). What’s worse is what they do to the footage in the little vignettes with DDP. They stretch it to make it look like it’s presented in HD.
Aside from those quibbles, the audio and video presentation is fine.
Considering that the matches and segments are the main feature, as opposed to being supplemental to a documentary, there are no special features included with this release.
The Very Best of WCW Monday Nitro is far from perfect. And it’s really hard to say that this is the very best that Monday Nitro had to offer from 1995 through 2001. The stuff from 2000 is uber bad. But its release is a long time coming, if only for the fact that WWE has devoted eight of its DVD releases to flagship program Monday Night Raw (this includes the rare Raw Homecoming DVD). If you’re feeling nostalgic for the Monday Night Wars then definitely seek out this collection. The biggest highlights, for me at least, is the parking lot brawl between Lord Steven Regal and the Belfast Bruiser (Fit Finlay); The Outsiders attacking the WCW superstars (poor Rey Mysterio thrown like a dart into the side of a trailer); Ric Flair returns to the Four Horseman (great promo shown in full with Arn Anderson introducing all of the Horsemen, including Chris Benoit!), and the Sting vs. Diamond Dallas Page match for the WCW Heavyweight Championship from April 2009 (the best match on the set by a wide margin).
WWE Home Video presents The Very Best of WCW Monday Nitro. Featuring: Diamond Dallas Page, Sting, Ric Flair, Hollywood Hogan, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Rey Mysterio, Chris Jericho, and Eddie Guerrero. Running Time: 8 Hours and 30 Minutes. Rating: TV-PG. Released on DVD: June 7, 2011. Available at Amazon.com.
