83 Weeks - Highest Rated Nitro Watchalong [Show Notes] (Patreon)

Today we’re going to be watching the most watched Monday Nitro in the history of the show. Think about that…25 years ago the most watched Monday Nitro took place on August 31st, 1998 from Miami, Florida.

We are 3 weeks out from Road Wild which we have covered in the archives so be sure to check that out at 83weeks.com or 83weeksonyoutube.com - where you know Jay Leno whipped your ass and we are 2 weeks removed from Warrior’s WCW debut - which we again covered in the archives.

This is also the day after SummerSlam 1998 and the reason why this show is the most watched Monday Nitro in the history of the show - is that Raw is preempted because of the US Open…so here is the WWF coming off Steve Austin retaining the WWF Title over Undertaker at Madison Square Garden when the company is super hot - here you are with an opportunity to knock it out of the park and take advantage of the chance…right?

Well…

From the Observer

“Nitro on 8/31 in Miami drew a sellout 12,481 paying $286,018 for another atrocious show.

The show opened with Hogan & Bischoff doing an interview with them saying Stevie Ray would be the third man on their War Games team. Bischoff said he was going to force Eddie Guerrero to wrestle on the show. Hogan mentioned something about Ultimate Warrior but they edited out Ultimate and called him a coward and asked for him to come out. The show is on a seven second delay so no naughty words like Ultimate air since the wrestlers are having a hard time these days not saying naughty words. Then came all the special effects and Hellwig showed up. Then as the rest of the NWO showed up for the ambush, they did the special effects and he disappeared, which is the best use of him because we didn't have to listen to him talk. He got a huge pop the first time he came out and in his case when it comes to drawing money, they've figured out correctly that less is definitely more. I'm still trying to figure out how Bischoff is running WCW when Harvey Schiller didn't even want to hear about him even taking a leak in the mens room.”

The push for Stevie Ray here…and the build for Fall Brawl & War games…has been called into question a lot and here we are discussing it 25 years later. Why Stevie Ray in the nWo Hollywood and making him a focal point? Did you see a future where Stevie Ray was in the main event mix?

This story you had with Eddie Guerrero - and considering later on we’ll discuss the other storyline you’re featured in - do you think it was helping Eddie at all? What was the thought process behind it?

What say you about that line from Meltzer with Harvey?

How hard was it for everyone to stop saying Ultimate when it came to the Warrior? Was it a major legal issue?

Speaking of legal troubles…

From the Observer

“Lots of front office dissension even more than wrestling dissension which may account for the poor product quality. Nick Lambros, whose official title was Vice President of Business Affairs, left the company basically after losing a power play to Bischoff.

Officially, since Lambros has a contract with Turner, he has been moved to an Executive position with Turner's attempted new football league venture.”

So much to unpack there Eric - what was your relationship like with Nick Lambros at the time? Why was there a falling out?

What was the power play he pulled that Meltzer is talking about?

Did you ever hear anything about a Turner football league?

“They showed a clip of Goldberg at the Miami Marlins game hanging out with Mark McGwire. And yes, WCW is interested in having McGwire wrestle after the season is over although that deal is probably not even in the preliminary stages.”

The summer of 1998 was more well known for the epic home run race between McGwire & Sammy Sosa at the time chasing Roger Maris’ home run record. But this just didn’t seem like it was made to be a too big a deal…but in reality you’re talking about the biggest name in sports at that time…do you think this was a missed opportunity to give Goldberg more name recognition?

Were there ever any discussions or conversations about having Mark McGwire be in the ring?

“Wrath beat Jim Powers with the pump handle powerslam, also known as the Melt down in 3:14. Powers appeared to injure his knee in the match.”

There seemed to be some real momentum behind Wrath at this time - and it is not far from the Goldberg formula. Was that the reason behind it - building a big dude killing small dudes to eventually step across from Goldberg and make it a big deal? What did you think of Bryan Clark?

“Scott Norton power bombed Norman Smiley in 1:28. During all the NWO B&W matches, Hellwig was on the ceiling doing last year's Sting routine. So much for creativity, but be thankful doing that gimmick you don't have to watch him wrestle on TV or hear him talk on TV.”

Was Warrior being up there too much Sting like - and too soon considering that was the story for 18 months before?

Then again Meltzer has a point about him not cutting promos…

Did you already know the Warrior experiment was an issue by this point?

“Mike Tenay interviewed Perry Saturn & Lodi coming to the building with Saturn acting as Lodi's slave until 9/13 with Saturn saying he's a man of his word and would live up to his word and then uttered the line, "Pain is temporary and pride is forever." Man, that line was brilliant. Where the hell did he ever come up with that? I swear I've heard it before but maybe it's that vivid imagination of mine. Luckily for the five people left in this world who thought Saturn wasn't a ripoff of the ECW Taz character, well, the argument is done now.”

Taz at the time long said that Saturn was taking from his character in ECW and Meltzer reflects that in his write up of this segment…but that had to be Saturn’s doing not WCW’s right?

Speaking of booking issues…

“Terry Taylor was told to stay home on 8/31 due to heat between he and TV producer Annette Yother on 8/24. Taylor & Kevin Sullivan have been basically taken off having any real input on either Monday or Thursday, and now are just putting together the Saturday Night show. Bischoff is booking Monday and Thursday, largely on the advice of Hogan and Nash.”

What were the issues between Taylor & Annette Yother? Do you know that story?

Why do you think Taylor was always up and down in his backstage career?

Why was Kevin no longer involved creatively at this point?

What were the roles of Nash & Hogan contributing to you? Was anyone else helping out?

“Wolfpac came out for an interview. Did you ever seen the movie Groundhog Day? It's like I wake up every Monday morning and keep hearing the exact same interview. The cities change every week but the interview stays the same. I know that you repeat all your catch phrases because that's how to get over. Anyway, Nash said the Wolfpac drew straws to decide who would be in War Games which was a very nice way to protect Konnan from being portrayed as the weak link of the team.

He then challenged Piper and brought up they

had a problem outside the ring once and told a story in regards to Hellwig about a guy who fell asleep for years and when he woke up he was surrounded by wolves, one of which he thought he knew and that one bit his hand and the others had a feeding frenzy with him. Actually this was a pretty good interview.”

This is the infamous meme interview where Kevin does the eyebrow - and its just tremendous. But was this too much inside baseball?

Do you think Kevin gets the credit he deserves as a promo guy because I don’t…

‘In the only highlight of the show, and it's bad when the highlight of the show is a J.J. Dillon interview, Dillon, the undisputed world champion of the coin toss, called out Arn Anderson. They aired an interview from I'd guess 1985 from Alabama that Anderson gave when just before he first came to Mid Atlantic. Although he's tons better now, the guy cut a great promo even back then. Dillon said he wanted an off-the-record conversation with Anderson. How can something be off- the-record when it's being viewed by six million people?

There was a huge "We Want Flair" chant. Chris Benoit and Steve McMichael showed up. There was a second huge chant for Flair. Anderson walked out and Dillon said that Anderson was afraid of something.”

This is just a tremendous way to build up Flair’s return - and were just a few weeks from it happening - did you already know you had a deal in place at this point?

Who’s idea was it to show that old promo and footage of Arn?

Any hesitancy to reform the Horsemen instead of just bringing back Flair?

Were there people excited to see Ric back?

Also with Flair’s return - this note in the Observer:

“Vampiro was originally scheduled to debut on 8/31 in Miami, but his ring costume isn't ready due to problems with him getting it done by the same people who do the costumes for Maralyn Manson and WCW wanting their own people to make the costume. Anyway, the latest word on his debut is 9/14, although that could change since it would be lost in the shuffle if it's the same night as Ric Flair returns.”

It would take months before Vampiro would debut - in fact not until March 18, 1999. What were the issues with him and getting him started in WCW?

“Eddie Guerrero did an interview and said he was going to wrestle because he didn't want to get sued by Bischoff, in reference to the Flair deal. He then did a match with Brian Adams where he laid on the ground and covered up and basically did nothing and began the systematic destruction of the TV show as he got pinned in 2:23. The crowd live hated this.

But it got worse.”

I mean - this isn’t far off some of the stuff Vince Russo would do years later that you would take him to task for - so what do you say to this?

“Ernest Miller pinned Scotty Riggs in 2:38.

Fans were booing this bad, especially when Riggs was selling kicks that were badly missing. The finishing kick was so bad that Riggs was smart enough to kick out and they went to the same move about 15 seconds later for the pin. Miller's new gimmick as a heel is dying.”

Look - this obviously isn’t working - but I don’t think it was because of Cat do you?

What was the miss here do you think?

“Konnan, in his home town, beat Jannetty in 9:07 with the Tequila Sunrise. Konnan sold almost the entire match. The only thing notable is Jannetty got his first haircut in 18 years and looked like a new person. The problem is nobody recognized who this new person was and the fans who were really into Konnan were not enjoying this aging gigolo David Cassidy at 40 looking pretty boy whipping on their guy in a match that felt like it lasted six weeks.”

Pretty cool to see Marty Jannetty back in the ring - why Marty at this time?

You gave these guys 9 minutes, which is pretty long for a match on Nitro and the third longest of the show. Does being in Konnan’s hometown have anything to do with it do you think?

“Saturn & Lodi beat Voltage in 5:14 when Saturn used the death valley driver on Rage and Lodi wanted to tag in to get the pin. No heat at all. Show was already killed by this point although Saturn did a good job in the match.”

This - is what you present to an audience that doesn’t have the WWF on the other channel? I mean…this show seems super underwhelming for having an opportunity this big…

“Page did an interview and called out Piper. Piper ripped on Bret Hart until Giant came out and destroyed both Page and Piper. Piper doesn't need any help in looking bad but they gave him lots of help here. Giant was handcuffed and taken out by security.”

Was Piper cooked by this point do you think?

“Scott Steiner did the interview with Hawk's drug doctor and Bagwell came out as a Jamaican doctor to heal him. Rick Steiner showed up and everyone ran away. I hope somebody out there thinks having Scotty go out there and do these lengthy poorly delivered Superstar Billy Graham mid-70s interviews is entertaining because the crowd was booing this in a bad way, and that wasn't heel heat they were getting, it was this show rots heat.”

So this guy was just at Starrcast Eric!

“Guerrera retained the cruiser title beating Kourageous in 9:30 with the Juvi driver. There were either one or two blonds in the audience teasing they were going to take off their tops, one of which did, and that's why nobody in the crowd was paying attention to the match. Kourageous

earned his title shot I guess by losing 45 straight matches on WCW Saturday Night, but he whipped Juvi like a dog most of the way anyhow. It would have made a great story with all the near falls and this big upset on the verge of happening except nobody cares about Kourageous, the only announcer picking up on the story was Heenan (the others were probably horrified that Juvi might actually drop his title to the guy), the match blew, and the blonds killed the crowd anyway. You could see in Juvi's face how pissed he was about all this. Probably thinking something like even though there's no money in Mexico, at least wrestling is fun there and somebody respects his ability.”

It feels like at the time the cruiserweight division was floundering…was it just too much of the same stuff over and over again?

“Jericho kept the TV title beating Disco Inferno in 3:16 with the Lion tamer.”

Man you can just see how good Jericho is and how much confidence and charisma is coming out of him…Jericho - Goldberg really could’ve been a thing couldn’t it?

The week before on Nitro there was a tease of sorts during a match with Curt Hennig & Jericho where Jericho was portrayed as possibly joining the nWo - do you think that would’ve helped or hurt his time there - and do you think it was ever seriously considered?

Speaking of Goldberg…

“Goldberg retained his world heavyweight title beating Al Greene, who Kevin Nash on commentary acknowledged as his first tag team partner (as The Master Blasters way back in late 1990). Anyway, Greene earned his title shot by winning a War Games in the local pool hall, certainly not by not wrestling for the past decade, and Goldberg jackhammer'd him in 2:17.”

I mean…hard to disagree that the World Title is being defended against someone who was barely on TV…was this the hard part of putting the title on Goldberg?

Also there’s an incident in the Observer that we should discuss around this time:

“In regard to Goldberg and the 8/25 show in Terre Haute, IN, here's the story. Goldberg

vs. Giant was advertised as the dark match main event in both Terre Haute and Peoria. Some time back, Goldberg had asked for those two days off and J.J. Dillon gave him the days off. Somehow, with the typical great communication internally, the promotions department never knew that and continued to advertise him. Nobody even knew there was a problem until the day of Terre Haute when they realized the only match advertised was Goldberg vs. Giant and Goldberg wasn't there. The Providence deal turned into a disaster as the original thinking was that maybe 40 percent of the 7,000+ who paid would actually go to the box office the week after the show and ask for refunds, but as

it turned out, all but 1,800 got refunds so the idea of doing what they did in Providence was ruled out although WCW again didn't do itself any favors by never booking a firm return date to Providence that fans could use those tickets for instead of refunding them.

So instead, the decision was made to not inform the crowd in Terre Haute about Goldberg not being there, and to basically warm up the cars and all sprint out of the building like Earl Hebner in Montreal the minute the Page-Hennig match was over and before anyone in the crowd realized what was up and started throwing furniture. Basically, Goldberg had to be practically begged to appear in Peoria but he did come but wasn't happy about it, made doubly screwy for him because WCW had booked him for the main event in Peoria at the end of a four hour taping and for all sorts of media appearances in New York City early the next morning as part of the Nassau Coliseum ticket sale kick-off, and to get him to both places required chartering a jet for $11,000.”

What a mess this is Eric - are you aware of this? Does someone bring this to your attention? How badly does this hurt future business do you think?

Was Bill becoming difficult to deal with already at this point or was this just him being annoyed at the office?

Before we get to the main event…let’s discuss the ratings of the show since this is the highest rated Nitro ever - and with one of the biggest main events in Nitro history - and that’s not from Schiavone talk…that’s legit.

“It was expected that going unopposed during the period where pro wrestling interest is so high that WCW would set record ratings on 8/31 with Raw preempted due to the U.S. Open, and even putting on atrocious television which saw, even unopposed the audience drop during the third hour, it wasn't enough to prevent all-time records from being smashed.

Nitro set an all-time Monday night ratings record with a 6.03 rating (5.08 first hour; 6.62 second hour; 6.39 third hour) and 9.27 share in an average of 4,485,333 homes per average minute, making it the single most watched pro wrestling television show in the history of cable.

This breaks the complete show record set by Raw on 4/27 when Nitro was moved from its regular time slot due to the NBA playoffs with a 5.69 rating and 8.18 share in 4,188,000 homes headlined by a Steve Austin vs. Goldust WWF title match.

It is not the all-time cable ratings record as cable ratings for pro wrestling shows were much higher in the early and mid-80s, but more homes themselves are hooked up to cable than ever before, hence record audience numbers being broken so consistently.”

I mean that is an astounding number is it not Eric?

“The previous all-time TNT record was set on 3/16 for the Spring break-out Nitro which went unopposed due to "Moby Dick" and drew a 5.58 rating and 8.48 share headlined by Sting & Luger vs. Hogan & Savage.

Realistically, had the show been even average, the rating overall would have probably been in the mid-6s as it had already reached the 6.8 level by the end of the second hour and wrestling shows by tradition usually grow until the finish. However, because of the nearly unwatchable nature of the second hour and much of the third hour, the rating was hurt a little.”

As we’re watching this - I don’t think Meltzer is off base here do you?

“The general rule has been that when one wrestling show gets pre-empted, the remaining show usually draws about 62% of the total pro wrestling audience from the previous week, which in this case would be a 6.03 rating or exactly what the show did.

The replay, which aired from 2:07 to 5:15 a.m. drew an 0.3 rating.

Due to going unopposed, as it turns out, the show contained five of the ten most watched matches ever on cable and none were matches you'd expect since the lack of competition eliminated the usual channel surfing that goes on Monday nights.

Lodi & Saturn vs. High Voltage match became the second most watched pro wrestling match ever on cable in 5,035,000 homes or a 6.77 rating, trailing only the Hogan vs. Bill Goldberg title change on 7/6.”

ERIC - WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?

“The show actually peaked in the following quarter with the Diamond Dallas Page & Roddy Piper interview with a 6.83 rating in 5,082,000 homes making it the single most watched quarter hour in cable wrestling history.

The Hogan & Bret Hart vs. Sting & Lex Luger match that would have been expected to set the record, did a 6.21 rating.

By all rights, the numbers should be similar next week since Nitro again goes unopposed.

Anyway, as things stand now, the top list of the most watched matches ever on cable are all WCW matches. Behind Hogan-Goldberg and the Lodi match are an unopposed Sting & Luger vs. Hogan & Savage on 3/16 which drew 4,840,000 homes, the Konnan vs. Marty Jannetty put the audience in a sleeper match in 4,835,000 homes, the Hogan & Rodman vs. Page & Malone in 4,789,000 homes, Hogan vs. Savage title change on 4/20 in 4,774,000 homes, Juventud Guerrera vs. Evan Kourageous in 4,758,000 homes, Hogan & Giant vs. Goldberg & Nash from last week in 4,757,000 homes and both Eddie Guerrero vs. Brian Adams and Ernest Miller vs. Scotty Riggs in 4,756,000 homes.”

It is insanity to think how high the ratings were, the viewership of this show, and this is the show that was put on.

“Finally Sting & Luger beat Hogan & Hart via count out in 11:19. Match blew chunks. No heat. They had long since lost the crowd by this point and Hogan throwing stomps like a guy in his first day of training school and scratching guys backs wasn't going to get it back at this point. Schiavone at this point said that everyone knows Hogan is one of the hardest hitters in the sport and also said that when all this is done and the history books are written, Hogan will be viewed as the greatest of all-time. Only if Hogan writes those books himself.”

Do you consider Hulk the greatest of all-time?

“Hogan was whipping Sting with his belt and Hart took the belt away. Hart walked out and Hogan argued with him for the count out. They continued to argue because Hart claimed Hogan broke a promise to him. That's a first. A bunch of steam came out so Warrior was supposed to come, but the steam got out too fast. The NWO guys came out and right before we were going to see the Hogan vs. Hart showdown, more steam came and when it cleared, Adams, Ed Leslie and Vincent were all on the mat asleep. Hart had disappeared, probably to either Oz or Scottsdale, AZ, or wherever it is that Greene and Hellwig have been sleeping for the last three years figuring it got them main events. Hogan was crying for his mommy in the corner, saw Hellwig and ran away as the show went off the air.”

My goodness Eric - I know I say sometimes creative is subjective…but this is just one of those WCW moments where you wonder - what could’ve been? A home run show here and next week and does the WWF continue their streak?

Lets talk about this. You have four of the biggest stars in professional wrestling HISTORY in a tag match, one of the biggest stars from the late 80s early 90s being involved in Warrior…and this is how you book it? Were you stuck with trying to get out of a finish?