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Post by The Dark Order Inferno on Dec 31, 2014 9:37:53 GMT -5
Another vote for Starrcade 97. Hogan's loss should have been the beginning of the end for the NWO, with factions forming within the NWO itself, with the Outsiders either turning face, or taking out Hogan leading to an eventual face turn for him.
I had no problem with the size of the NWO, the Horsemen were a faction, the NWO were an army and armies tend to have a mix of big guns and cannon fodder. I don't think the NWO as a takeover would have worked with 7 guys and Bischoff against a 100 strong WCW roster packed with former world champions like Luger, Flair, Hart, Sting, Savage and so on and so forth.
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Post by aliciafoxfan on Dec 31, 2014 15:48:16 GMT -5
When they started adding random people like Stevie Ray
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Post by chazraps on Dec 31, 2014 15:55:01 GMT -5
I don't think the formation of the Wolfpac, but rather right around August/September 1998 when Wolfpac guys started facing Goldberg with there being no discernible difference between nWo Wolfpac and WCW. Were they trying to take over and establish dominance or were they just anti-Hogan? nWo could have existed a while longer as a strictly Hollywood vs Wolfpac feud, given the talent something to do and allowed WCW to get back on track with rebuilding its roster for a post-nWo world. War Games could have been the loser-must-dissolve nWo Hollywood vs Wolfpac showdown, and then Goldberg vanquishes whoever Hogan/Nash leading their nWo subsect was, making him the guy to destroy the nWo and WCW to begin business as usual.
You then logically have former nWo alumni conspiring to be the one to take down Goldberg, and we all move on from there.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2014 16:42:22 GMT -5
I enjoyed the whole red&black vs white&black stuff, but the it jumped the shark when Sting joined the Wolfpac for me.
This guy had been fighting against the nWo. It was his whole thing and for no real reason he joined up with guys who had ganged up on him for years.
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Post by BlackoutCreature on Dec 31, 2014 19:39:27 GMT -5
I would say the Nitro the week before Starrcade 97. Basically the nWo came out and "took over" Nitro. It was pretty much the exact same angle that the nWo did more then a year earlier, only instead of guys like Hall and Nash doing it, it was guys like Vincent and Scott Norton. Then they spent like twenty minutes showing the new set being built in real time and another hour and a half just giving Hulk Hogan gifts. It was at that point that I think the world realized that there was nothing else for the nWo to do other then go away.
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Post by thelonewolf527 on Dec 31, 2014 20:29:33 GMT -5
nWo and pretty much the rest of WCW in 97/98 has aged horribly. I can't watch any of that crap nowadays because of how awful it seems nowadays. The nWo doesn't even look cool looking back at them, they come off as surfer dudes wearing dark shirts and jeans. Not to mention how much more fake and scripted WCW seemed to look when compared to WWF at the time
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2014 22:10:45 GMT -5
WCW always has odd booking choices, but I never had a problem with NWO going past Starcade 97, even someways Finger Poke of Doom.
Starcade should have been the beginning of the end, I feel Hogan should have somehow ended up back with the title, and still lost it to Goldberg. I would have still had the Wolfpac form in the early spring. But after Goldberg wins the title, I would have Luger and Nash turn, reforming black and white NWO with Hogan and Hall, keep Sting a face, and eventually Hart turns face returning to WCW.
So at Fall Brawl (where all these guys were heathy and on the card) in a winner take all Wargames match.
Goldberg, Sting, Hart, & DDP, vs. Hogan, Hall, Nash, & Luger
Have Piper be the special guest referee, and that's where Warrior debuts to side with WCW. You have the original NWO together one last time, no Stevie Ray scapegoat, and of course Luger would have turned on Sting one last time before the PPV. NWO ends. Hogan can face Warrior at the next ppv, and it lets everyone reset for World War 3
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2015 14:41:05 GMT -5
The whole point of the nWo was it was a separate entity from WCW. If they just limited it to 6-7 guys, it would have been a stable. They needed growing numbers of members to give off the impression that they were a completely different organization than WCW and were going for a hostile takeover. So in that respect, the amount of people in the group wasn't the issue.
Sting should have beaten Hogan at Starrcade, and then the in-fighting should have happened. Nash/Hall turning on Hulk while Hogan tries to keep things together, etc. In theory, the Wolfpack was a good idea, just the execution was lacking (especially with Sting joining later on).
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Post by ________ has left the building on Jan 1, 2015 14:56:16 GMT -5
The moment they did the open recruiting drive. You went from having people who were main eventers or at least power players to having folks like Micheal Wallstreet, Horace Boulder, and Brian Adams in the group. I get you need cannon fodder but they brought in way too many at one time and it watered down the effectiveness of the NWO.
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Post by Wolf Hawkfield no1 NZ poster on Jan 1, 2015 15:01:14 GMT -5
Pretty much by mid 98.
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Post by Bub (BLM) on Jan 1, 2015 15:04:28 GMT -5
When Hogan politicked to beat Sting clean as a sheet at Starrcade, then had Bret Hart come out and claim it was a fast count (it wasn't). That match should have been 15 minutes of Sting bouncing Hogan around like a rubber ball and winning the title. Everything they did with the nWo past that night was just overkill. The group should have died that night.
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Post by Joe Neglia on Jan 1, 2015 18:47:49 GMT -5
Starcade 97. Everything built up to it and...
I enjoyed the chaos they had been causing. I was okay with each and every single addition (though I still admit I'm flummoxed to this day why Savage ever joined to begin with). They were shock value but they made sense. Even guys like Bubba (Hogan's old WWF running buddy), Bagwell (brash, somewhat narcissistic kid in a going nowhere tag team sees bright lights, big city with the jump) and Crush (gang member gimmick was ready made for it).
Everything should have built up to that show. Everything.
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Post by "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay on Jan 2, 2015 20:59:11 GMT -5
Sting beating Hogan should have been the turning point where WCW started to turn the tide. You could even have ridden that train all the way to the following December, but then it could have been a triumphant champion Sting or Goldberg defending against the best the nWo had to offer and destroying them once and for all and then 1999 would be a clean slate.
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Post by HMARK Center on Jan 2, 2015 22:07:54 GMT -5
I agree with people saying that the excessive number of nWo members wasn't a problem: as previously stated, it was meant to be an invading WWF army, not a small gang of troublemakers. I do think it got silly when a bunch of guys who had been WCW through and through joined, but I had no problem at all with guys like Wallstreet, Bubba, and other guys most known for their WWF runs joining (it's why Savage probably should've joined pretty early on, if he was going to join at all).
But yeah, the issue with an army/angle like that one is that it's not meant to last. The Four Horsemen were an ever-present threat; if one member got too old, he'd be replaced, and with only four members it meant they could thrive and adapt in any era. The nWo wasn't meant for that; it was a product of its era, and was built on the idea of the WWF coming down to take over WCW; you can't turn that into a stable with a shelf life beyond a couple of years.
Put another way: the Horsemen were like an Injustice League, a villainous stable always around to wreck havoc on the good guys. The nWo, meanwhile, was a Crisis-level event: it encompassed nearly the entire company and put its future at risk, it was meant to permanently change many well-established characters (just look at pictures of Hogan and Sting in early 1996, then look at them in the Starrcade '97 main event), and it should've been a source of a ton of storylines and character arcs that would carry WCW over another couple of years just based on its fallout.
I always bring this up, but I would've been fine with the nWo surviving Starrcade '97, but it had to be clear that Sting was victorious, and that Hoga was losing his grip, and that the nWo had clearly been shaken and could be destroyed. I love the idea of Nash and Hall ditching him to form the Wolfpac, and Hogan getting increasingly paranoid and angry at everyone around him, confiding only in Bret Hart, his hired hitman...just to set up Hart leading a mutiny against Hogan and forming a new faction out of the ashes of the nWo, and being there as a foil for face champion Sting and up-and-coming Goldberg (and DDP and others). Nash and Hall would come out of the nWo with WCW's locker room not trusting them, hence the Wolfpac would be stuck as tweeners and have to prove themselves. Sting could reclaim some of his old personality, but the scars of the war would stick with him. Hogan would have to do soul searching, and much could be made of him realizing his sins and working toward redemption. The options are pretty limitless.
Unfortunately, we know what happened: Bischoff wasn't looking far enough into the future, and was only concerned with whatever he could do to take down McMahon. If he had used longterm vision, he'd have known that the rise and fall of the nWo could give WCW enough creative fuel to run well into 2000 based on its fallout, but instead he couldn't resist sticking with what he knew, for fear of ever falling behind in the war. It's too bad; so much of the stuff from the Wars era looks awful when I look back on it, and much of that was because of the ratings war atmosphere of the era (on both sides); I think it deprived of us infinitely better stuff.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2015 22:28:48 GMT -5
Hall and Nash ditching Hogan after Starrcade 1997 had a ton of possibilities, especially with Bret in the fold. If they wanted to do some insider stuff, they could have had Bret side with Hogan due to Nash/Hall's friendship with Shawn Michaels, but at the same time make it clear that Bret did not like Hulk either, which could have planted seeds for an inevitable Hogan/Bret match down the road, in addition to whatever else they could have thought of with Goldberg. While Hogan jobbing to Goldberg was a huge ratings success, I think Sting having a year long run with the belt and then losing to Goldberg at Starrcade 1998, or half a year run and dropping the title at Bash and the Beach, could have had drawing potential as well if they kept Sting looking strong the whole time. Of course, a huge lengthy title reign 1997/98 with the ratings war hot and heavy was unrealistic (both companies had to outdo each other every week), but there were so many directions they could have gone. It's a shame they had so much talent but did not progress.
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Post by Cry Me a Wiggle on Jan 3, 2015 0:59:57 GMT -5
1999 with the Fingerpoke. Yeah, there seems to be a bit of historical blindness to how over and successful the Wolfpack was. Having a face nWo was basically giving the fans what they wanted: An excuse to cheer an nWo faction. However, there was also the feeling that it was leading somewhere, and that it would result in the death of Hogan and Bischoff's nWo. When the Wolfpack turned heel and Hogan joined it, it was all over. That's about the point the nWo concept started to rapidly collapse. It went from being the lifeblood of WCW to essentially non-existent in four months.
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Post by Oh Cry Me a Screwball on Jan 3, 2015 3:59:29 GMT -5
I would say Spring of 98 was when it should have been clear that they had no clue what they were doing, as there were a ton of guys who changed factions/alignments that just didn't make sense.
The Giant joined nWo Hollywood to oppose Kevin Nash after the infamous botched Powerbomb, even though it was Hogan who originally backstabbed him when Giant tried to invoke his WW3 title shot a year ago. Lex Luger and later Sting joined the Wolfpac, because f*** the last year of storylines. Bret Hart aligns with Hollywood Hogan, but doesn't really join the nWo, sort of. Curt Hennig and Rick Rude originally join the Wolfpac even though they don't fit the Wolfpac at all, but then swerve Konnan and reveal they were Hollywood all along. Scott Hall and Dusty Rhodes were off TV when the nWo split, presumably due to Hall's personal demons. They show up to defend the tag titles against newly nWo Hollywood Giant and not yet Wolfpac Sting, but SWERVE, Hall and Dusty screw Nash, even though Hall was a perfect fit for the Wolfpac concept. Did I mention that this led to Sting and The Giant competing for the Tag titles in a singles match, because Sting joined the Wolfpac instead of nWo Hollywood?
There was just no thought to how the pieces of the puzzle of the nWo split would fit into place, so you had seemingly random people changing alignments on a weekly basis, so you had natural anti-heroes like Scott Hall not in the anti-hero Wolfpac faction, while guys like Curt Hennig who worked best as full on heels, were awkwardly being used as tweeners.
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Post by Mozenrath on Jan 3, 2015 4:18:09 GMT -5
Only somewhat on topic, but I love the Wolfpac theme, even if a bunch of white dudes in their 30s and 40s, outside of Konnan, coming out to it was kind of hilarious.
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Post by Oh Cry Me a Screwball on Jan 3, 2015 4:23:00 GMT -5
Only somewhat on topic, but I love the Wolfpac theme, even if a bunch of white dudes in their 30s and 40s, outside of Konnan, coming out to it was kind of hilarious. It fit for Nash and Hall as well, seeing as they kept it for the remainder of his tenure, but seeing Luger or Sting come out to it was wrong, not to mention in the post-Fingerpoke nWo when you had Hogan himself using the Wolfpac theme. The opening howl was a genius touch, as it's up there with Glass Shattering in terms of generating that initial pop.
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Post by Mozenrath on Jan 3, 2015 4:27:39 GMT -5
Only somewhat on topic, but I love the Wolfpac theme, even if a bunch of white dudes in their 30s and 40s, outside of Konnan, coming out to it was kind of hilarious. It fit for Nash and Hall as well, seeing as they kept it for the remainder of his tenure, but seeing Luger or Sting come out to it was wrong, not to mention in the post-Fingerpoke nWo when you had Hogan himself using the Wolfpac theme. The opening howl was a genius touch, as it's up there with Glass Shattering in terms of generating that initial pop. I actually tend to think of it as Nash's definitive theme for me, even moreso than the Diesel one.
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