WCW Fall Brawl '97 Main Event

[clifford]

So I'm rewatching Fall Brawl 1997 last night and the main event is the NWO (Nash, Syxx, Konnan & Buff) vs the Horsemen (Flair, Mongo, Benoit and Curt Hennig)

Hennig is apparently taken out by the NWO near the beginning of the event but shows up in a sling during the main event apparently to be the 4 Horsemen's last participant to enter the cage....

EXCEPT NO! HE'S GOT HANDCUFFS AND HE'S NOT INJURED AT ALL! HE'S WITH THE NWO THE RAT BASTARD!!!

They handcuff Mongo & Benoit to the cage and lay the mother of all beatdowns on Flair, including two monster Jacknifes from Nash, all the while asking the Horsemen do they quit. The Horsemen are defiant until they threaten to bash Flair's head in with the cage door. Mongo finally says enough is enough to save his leader....

AND THEN HENNIG BASHES FLAIR'S HEAD IN ANYWAY, THE DIRTY SON OF A BITCH!!!

The NWO stand tall, gloating in the cage as the Horsemen lay broken and beaten.

Damn, I thought this was an awesome angle. I know that your PPV main event shouldn't be an angle, but this was awesome, watching it 21 years later it felt like Game of Thrones and the Red Wedding or something. I thought it was amazing!

I know at this stage people were probably sick of people turning to join the NWO, and it probably was really obvious, but it didn't take anything away for me from the fact that it was an awesome moment.

[Jedi-El of Tomorrow]

I think it sucked. The nWo had done the Horsemen parody on Nitro, and nobody stopped them, so you'd figure the Horsemen would get revenge in this match, nope, the nWo once again wins. It just continued the constant stream of the nWo running over WCW with no comeuppance. That's just my opinion.

["Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay]

In isolation, a lot of the mid-to-late-era NWO stuff is very good. It's just that nobody ever got over them, including the Horsemen. You build to a no-DQ match against heels so that the heel's cheating is legal, but they can't get DQed, so the babyfaces can go over on a level playing field... not so that the heels can cheat even more and not call it cheating.

[HMARK Center]

So much of this stuff would be a lot fonder to look back on if Hogan had just jobbed clean to Sting at Starrcade.

[Toilet Paper Roll]

Having it be such a heated angle having one of those guys turn just seemed lazy. Honestly it wouldn't have hurt the nWo to take an L here and have the Horsemen celebrate like WCW just had a huge victory, even if the next night nWo beat the piss out of Flair or something.

[chronocross]

I remember being pissed as they did the whole mockery of the Horsemen a few weeks before and then they get beatdown and have Hennig join up with the nWo.

[cabbageboy]

It was a great angle that had no real payoff to it. I think Flair got hurt or something in late 1997 so the Starrcade blow off with Hennig never really happened. By the time Flair got back in Jan. 1998 Hennig had lost the U.S. title and all momentum. If Flair had simply gone over at Starrcade for the U.S. title it would have been at least better remembered.

[clifford]

Completely agree with all of you guys saying a lot of went before and after it sucked, but this specific angle in isolation I think was fantastic. Coming out of it you just wanted the Horsemen to get their revenge, ultimately with Arn returning and kicking all kinds of ass. I know nothing came of it but in isolation, it's a really well done bit.

[willywonka666]

I was furious with Curt that next night and with Schiavone walking off it really added to it. I can't go back to those days now and look at it the same way.

[Deleted]

May 21, 2018 7:13:26 GMT -5 HMARK Center said:

So much of this stuff would be a lot fonder to look back on if Hogan had just jobbed clean to Sting at Starrcade.

That, and aside from Luger winning the title, it felt like the babyfaces never got any revenge for what the nWo did to them. By the time Goldberg beat Hogan it was too late. That’s why DDP faking out Hall and Nash and running into the crowd was an amazing moment. Those moments were so few and far between that it made you appreciate them.

[BlackoutCreature]

I always felt this was a missed opportunity. Have Hennig fake that he was gonna turn on the Horsemen for the nWo, then double cross the nWo and help the Horsemen win. Then you start a long-term Horsemen-nWo feud. The Horsemen win some, the nWo win some, but you start to see cracks in the nWo's previously unbeatable armor. When they finally seem vulnerable, then Sting returns to finish the job and beat Hogan.

But no, the nWo had to always be super strong and nobody could ever look like any kind of threat to them ever.

[Citizen Snips Has Left]

Weird that Mongo was still a player in late 97. He was also Goldberg's first real feud as well.

[hulksmash87]

I wish that they would have let Curt be a horseman have them win the wargames and at least have a competitive feud with the nwo

[Ryushinku]

On its own, yeah. It's The Horsemen basically getting back on them what they'd done to other opponents so much.

As part of the bigger picture, it killed off a lot of their remaining badass persona in favour of yet another boost to the nWo, apparently really hurt the market in that area, and fed into the larger narrative that in the end it would always be the nWo coming out on top and screw you idiots for expecting otherwise.

[El Cokehead del Knife Fight]

May 21, 2018 7:13:26 GMT -5 HMARK Center said:

So much of this stuff would be a lot fonder to look back on if Hogan had just jobbed clean to Sting at Starrcade.

This is absolutely the case; if Hogan had jobbed clean to Sting then we would be going 'well some workers were sacrificed to build the NWO but Sting beat them in the end and he's a bigger star than ever before' and we'd all be a little annoyed but ultimately accepting. But it was just the NWO getting one over on the faces yet again when it was something that they could have lost without it really hurting them.