"The Old World Order"
Originally published: October 5, 1996
Pro Wrestling Torch Weekly Newsletter #409
By Bruce Mitchell, PWTorch senior columnist

A Parable: The Old Woman and The Snake

An old woman was walking down the road when she saw a gang of thugs beating a poisonous snake. She rescued the snake and carried it back to her home where she nursed it back to health. They became friends and lived together for many months. One day they were going in to town and the old woman picked him up and the snake bit her. Repeatedly.

"Oh God!" she screamed, "I'm dying! Why? I was your friend! I saved your life! I trusted you! Why did you bite me?"

The snake looked up at her and said, "Lady, you knew I was a snake when you first picked me up."

- From "Better than Sex," Hunter S. Thompson

Within the hottest storyline in the history of World Championship Wrestling hides a dirty little secret.

The New World Order is a shaggy dog story, a reflection of the complete contempt of three people for the company they work for and the fans that follow them.

That dirty little secret began to dawn on the fans in the Lawrence Joel Coliseum at Fall Brawl during the main event. You could see it in their faces and hear it in the confused, demoralized buzz that enveloped the arena.

That dirty little secret is also the source of tremendous anger, frustration, and denial within WCW's front office and dressing room.

The secret is a simple one. The New World Order will not lose to WCW.

Ever.

And not only will they never lose, they'll never even be scored upon. Ask those fans in Winston Salem, who comprised the single hottest live wrestling crowd I've seen, after they had the air let out of them by War Games. They had the look of Florida football fans after the Fiesta Bowl last year, the look of fans who've seen a highly anticipated match-up for their team turn into a wholesale slaughter.

For that's exactly what happened to Team WCW at Fall Brawl. They didn't just lose the match. They were demolished by the NWO and shown up for a pack of losers. For instance:

Sting, the cornerstone of the promotion since Ted Turner bought the thing in 1988, acted like a petulant child when he quit. And he quit not only on his team, his best friend, and his employers, but also on his fans when they needed him the most.

Worse, to make up for ruining the persona of the only babyface the fans cared about in the whole promotion, Sting was given Kevin Nash's retread "You're either with me or against me" gimmick that fizzled in the latter days of Nash's tenure in the WWF. The problem is that Sting isn't a renegade who lost because he lost his edge. He was just another selfish quitter. Judging by the reaction at the following night's Nitro Sting is less a Free Agent than a guy who the fans just want cut from the team.

And then there's poor ol' Lex Luger, whose character is so stupid he can't tell the difference between his best friend and a guy six inches shorter when he's standing face to face with him. It's bad enough the whole promotion was tricked, but then on top of that Lex gave up - to the Discount Sting, no less - during War Games.

And how about the baddest boys in the bunch, the Four Horsemen? After all, in Ric Flair's words, "Winston Salem is the home of the Horsemen." WCW sold a bunch of Horsemen merchandise before the cage was taken down that night. Both Flair and Arn Anderson got a thunderous reception from the sellout crowd. This was the night for WCW to ride the momentum of Nitro, put the Horsemen over, and finally reestablish the area as a profitable market.
But it was not to be. As rumors flew the week before that the WarGames finish would have either Flair or Anderson submit to Hulk Hogan in front of these hometown fans, Anderson claimed on TV that "Hulk Hogan always wanted to be a Horseman."

And if you can't join 'em, beat 'em. Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and Terry Bollea were more interested in sticking the Horsemen concept up the ass of everyone who still cared about it than making money for the company that pays them millions of dollars.

Yeah, Bollea, in his infinite mercy, decided to ease up on the Horsemen submissions after both guys balked, but what then happened may have done more damage to the Horsemen, not coincidentally the most over non-NWO gimmick in the company.

The head Horsemen turned their back on their own to get outsmarted along with Lex and Sting. Can you imagine a championship team that goes into the big game a man short? Remember, no one knew what Sting was going to do. What do you think Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls would have done if Dennis Rodman had gone AWOL a week before the NBA Finals?

You can bet at the very least the Bulls sure as hell wouldn't have played four on five. Chris Benoit was the most over guy on the card who wasn't in War Games. Unlike every fan in the arena Flair and Anderson forgot about him. Of course, with the NWO, as we've seen on Nitro, four guys can beat up and chase off a dozen WCW fighters at a time.

Ric and Arn cheap-shotted the NWO for a while before being totally dominated in the latter part of the match. They attacked the NWO after the match, got nowhere, then finally just walked off to leave another of their own, Liz, to be symbolically raped by Hulk Hogan.

Some gang.

Ric Flair has acted asleep during this whole angle anyway, screaming the same old catch phrases during his interviews like he was fighting some stiff like Nikita Koloff back in 1986 instead of watching his all-time biggest rival destroy his home promotion before his eyes in 1996. Flair used to do serious babyface interviews better than anyone. Now, apparently, he can't be bothered.

And how about Sad Sack Randy Savage, who after spending months being played for a sap by his ex, now gets to be punted around like a sack of bad hair by the NWO? How does a guy who loses the fall in every big pay-per-view match he's in get the first title shot against Hulk Hogan anyway?
Yeah, he slammed the Giant, which would have meant a lot back in the '70s. But then he was played for a chump like all of the rest when Hogan came out and lured him into yet another ambush by Hall and Nash leading to still another win by the NWO.


How can anyone take Savage's chances seriously in the title match when he goes on television after this shellacking and talks like he's some kind of homeless bum? I don't even want to begin to think about why Liz all of a sudden ran to his rescue after giving away all of his money and screwing his most bitter enemy just to get back at him (in the storyline, you gossips...).

So the good guys are a pack of quitters, suckers, and losers. So what? After all, this is one cool set of kick ass bad guys. Hulk Hogan has borrowed or stolen the edge of Hall and Nash to revive his character from the dregs of that outdated red and yellow into one that some of the hipper fans enjoy.

And a lot of thought and care has gone into making the NWO a '90s study in aggressive anarchy. Eric Bischoff was ready production-wise to execute every creative idea the NWO brought him. Those black and white spots sometimes out-Extreme ECW. The NWO has made for wild, wooly, and compelling (albeit incoherent) television.

Bischoff has also brought in state of the art talent to fill the undercard. The Rey to Konnan to Benoit triple play at Fall Brawl was as fine of a sequence of wrestling work as I've seen. If Bischoff can drag his announcing crew and audience into the current era he may actually have his company ready when his current crop of main eventers move on to the AWF.

Bischoff, for whatever criticism he deserves after the fact, has shown a talent for getting the deals done that his predecessors only proposed. He has pushed WCW to make quantum leaps in their production capabilities. He has signed deals with New Japan and AAA that have improved the available talent pool. He pushed through the one, and then two, hour Nitro live show that no one initially believed could come close to Raw's established rating.

But to get the juice he needed from the North Tower to do all of that, Eric Bischoff had to pick up a poisonous snake. He had to sign a deal with Terry Bollea.

Hogan may have shed his yellow and red skin, but he's still the same old viper. Whoever cut Terry Bollea from his Pop Warner football team has a lot to answer for, because Hulk Hogan may be showing even less vulnerability in this role than before.

The NWO aren't really heels at all. They said they'd beat everyone up and they did. They said they'd surprise everybody and they did. They said they'd outsmart everyone and they have. They said they'd take over.

They have.

And without breaking a sweat, or more tellingly, taking a bump.

Hogan may resent the fans who booed him and the wrestlers who criticized his selfishness even more than that long ago coach since he has no intention of giving back any of the heat that has been put on him. He's going to keep playing Superman Badass for as long as his insecurities exist despite that cracks are beginning to appear in the concept and that those cracks could cause great damage to the company.

The problem is simple. No rivalry can stay one-sided forever and keep people's interest. If Auburn beat Alabama 50 to 0 ten years in a row you can bet that their football attendance would crash. Why do you think no one cares about TV jobbers? The ratings for Nitro were actually slightly down after the pay-per-view instead of getting their normal boost. The ratings breakdown from the previous week's show indicates the Sting turn prompted millions of viewers to switch channels in the middle of the show. And the Fall Brawl buyrate is not expected to reflect the previous hot Nitro ratings. Fans around the country may be starting to realize what the Winston Salem crowd brutally discovered.

And if Hulk Hogan thinks he can end the angle when some kiddy begs him to come back with bobo Ed Leslie by his side and legdrop the entire NWO, thereby beating everybody at once, well, maybe he ought to consider the following:

Scott Hall and Kevin Nash have the big head as least as bad as Hogan does. They made it clear to Eric Bischoff when they came in they weren't losing to broken down ol' Hulk Hogan. Why do you think Hogan turned bad in the first place? Unlike the Horsemen, Hogan couldn't beat the Outsiders, so he joined them.

It's unlikely that Hall or Nash will back off that position since Hall turned down a lucrative deal with New Japan in large part because he'd have to do a job to IWGP Champion Shinya Hashimoto. Clearly ego comes before money for these two - if reports of constant whining about having to take bad bumps are in any way accurate.

One can only imagine the chaos behind the scenes when Eric Bischoff finally decides it's time for someone, anyone, to do the job. By then the damage done to the rest of the characters and to the company's image in the eyes of the fans may be too much. Unless he finds a way to make his top wrestlers change their motives, Eric Bischoff may learn the same lesson the old lady did.

Bruce Mitchell of Greensboro, N.C. who attended Fall Brawl live has been a columnist for PRO WRESTLING TORCH since September 1990.

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