25 YEARS OF BRUCE MITCHELL – DAY 13 (2002): The flop that was the NWO invading WWE

This month marks the 25th Anniversary of Bruce Mitchell becoming a Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter columnist. No single person has influenced the editorial tone and direction of the Torch brand over the years than Bruce, who brought a hard-hitting, supremely well-informed, speak-truth-to-power approach to his writing. He went after sacred cows out of the gate, such as the beloved among “smart fans” (today’s “Internet fans” or “IWC,” I suppose) Eddie Gilbert and Jim Cornette. He also went hard after people in positions of authority and power who were abusing or misusing that power, or just not delivering a worthy product. He has also applauded and paid tribute to the greatest moments and movements in pro wrestling over the last 25 years, with a style of writing that has yet to be matched anywhere, I contend (despite Bill Simmons’s arrogant and uninformed contention last year that no one wrote at a high level about pro wrestling until his “Masked Man” columnist came along).

To celebrate and highlight Bruce’s stellar 25 years of influential and eloquent truth-telling about this fascinating industry, we’ll be featuring a single column from each of the last 25 years each of the first 25 days this month. His long-form columns were a pioneer approach to pro wrestling journalism, and the next 25 years you’ll experience a slice of what it is that has earned Bruce Mitchell widespread recognition within the industry over the years as being “Pro Wrestling’s Most Respected Columnist.” We began on Oct. 1st with his very first column, from Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter #89 (cover dated Oct. 5, 1990).

Today we feature his column from the March 9, 2002 edition of the Pro Wrestling Torch Weekly Newsletter (#695) where titled “Hung Over” in which Mitchell examines the NWO invasion of WWE, the supposed sure-fire, can’t-miss hotshot angle that, well, flopped.

NOTE: VIP members can access hundreds of Mitchell columns instantly in the BRUCE MITCHELL LIBRARY here, part of the massive unmatched online archives of insider wrestling coverage from over the past 28 years.

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HEADLINE: Hung Over
By Bruce Mitchell, Torch columnist
Originally published March 9, 2002
Pro Wrestling Torch Weekly newsletter #695

“I’m not an alcoholic. I’m a drunk. Drunks don’t go to meetings.”
– Jackie Gleason, the original Great One

The results are in.

The Return of the NWO, the latest Sure-Fire Can’t-Miss Hot-Shot Angle, is a failure. This time the WWF didn’t even get the benefit of the traditional two week ratings boost based on morbid curiosity.

It wasn’t sabotage or a lack of understanding that messed things up the way it messed up the WCW Invasion, either. Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and Hulk Hogan had the key people on their side that could make sure the Outsiders made the same impact in the WWF that they made on the entire wrestling business five years ago.

Finally, the big dogs would eat…

Things were different, this time. The NWO Trinity had the support of the major hitters in the WWF – the putative son in law Hunter Hearst Helmsley, the princess prodigy Stephanie McMahon, and most importantly the god of wrestling Vince McMahon.

There would be no institutional doubts about putting over another brand name, as there was about the newly acquired WCW mark.

There would be no WWF dues paying like there was with Radicals (and Tazz and Rob Van Dam and Booker T and virtually every other wrestler who has joined the federation since then).

The NWO Trinity may have been three of the most burnt out in-ring workers this side of Buff Daddy but nobody worked the political spots better than Kevin Nash and, anyway, who’s paid more dues in the WWF than Hulk Hogan?

Naysayers pointed out the sure effects of putting those three ahead of an entire locker room of harder working, younger wrestlers (akin to tossing in a canister of poison gas) and of giving Scott Hall – an admitted alcoholic/drug addict – a chance to put the publicly traded company in the crosshairs of another public scandal.

Vince McMahon, though, was bored from the pitiful competition he was provided by the likes of Andrew McManus and Jimmy Hart. He wanted this particular Can’t Miss Angle to Not Miss in the worst way. A confident McMahon, who gets off on turning mistakes into storylines that illustrate his genius, wrote the objections into the angle.

So the WWF started the slow build, eschewing the Big Surprise that trades shock for pay-per-view money and/or ratings points, making sure that every fan knew the time and place these three WWF legends would make their return. The company was in position to take full financial advantage to the answer on the question on every WWF fan’s lips: When are Kevin Nash and Scott Hall coming back?

WWF Creative put Ric Flair, their best non-wrestling communicator, and Vince McMahon himself in the foreshadowing to signal to fans this would be done the right way. After all, if the Great Man Vince McMahon himself was in the middle of it, how could it fail?

Yeah, it was a year late and a football league short for that particular signal. Still, the WWF built anticipation show after show with those unique black and white NWO clips, and after a no-frills debut at the No Way Out Pay-Per-View (spray painting Steve Austin) the WWF pulled out the best that wrestling minds such as Hall, Nash, Hogan, and McMahon could conceive.

Hulk Hogan, who for all his selfishness and old age, is one of the two or three biggest stars in the businesses history, teamed with the Rock for the best interview segment in either’s illustrious career. The telling part of the segment was the When Worlds Collide quality of the encounter, not the Cool versus Cool quotient. Fans were more interested in Hulk than Hollywood.

The WWF followed this all-time interview segment – which seemed to be enough on its own to ensure a special WrestleMania – with a slice of Crash TV at its all time over-the-top expensively wildest. For all intents and purposes, the NWO murdered the Rock, literally running him over with a Mack Truck. The NWO debut was one of the best Raws ever and the NWO angle was the most memorable. The main event between two of the best, most over wrestlers in the Federation, Triple H and Kurt Angle, seemed like an afterthought.

Then the ratings came in.

The Next Sure Thing wasn’t even a short term boost. (Quick, call Bret Hart…) The next two weeks, except for a single Smackdown increase, showed an audience that was either staying steady or dropping slightly. The Crash TV stuff was a bad miscalculation of what today’s fans want, leading to the equally ludicrous sight of Austin pulling a pop gun on Hall and Nash. Almost immediately the confidence in the NWO Trinity on-air waned.

It didn’t help that Scott Hall got lit up his first night in and started shooting his mouth off.

For me, Scott Hall has been the most fascinating figure in wrestling this year. Kevin Nash’s disaffected cool lost its fascination years ago (and I’m even hearing complaints that his long. shiny, beautiful hair has lost its luster.) Nash has lost whatever connection to wrestling fans he ever had. Hulk Hogan is pro wrestling through and through, so completely phony that he can’t even muster his trademark fake sincerity, much less the real thing anymore. He looks uncomfortable playing Hollywood heel, clearly marking his time until he can play Legend in his red and yellow.

On the other hand, Scott Hall is miserable. His sallow face, with those gray beard sprouts threatening to pop out at any minute, betrays his sole thought: God, I hate this. The WWF may have made him stop wearing that Aunt Jemima style do-rag but his languid movement and dead eyes still tell the tale.

Scott Hall’s first words back: “Hey, we’re just a bunch of marks.”

Any fan watching this bony wastrel or who remembers Hall only for his Hey Yo heyday would never suspect that Scott Hall has gone through a remarkable metamorphosis in his near twenty year career. Scott Hall started off as one half of the forgettable American Starship tag team with Danny Spivey, then went on to rival Hulk Hogan at his waterlogged buffest as “Big” Scott Hall in Verne Gagne’s rapidly shrinking AWA. He was a wrestler as dull as his nickname, with no idea how to get over his personality. Amazing to think his partner from that era, Curt Hennig, made it back to the WWF at the same time. The two came up with many of the same lessons.

Show today’s fan a picture of this long ago lummox with his big cheesy mustache and western wear vest with matching boots and he would never make the connection with today’s half-sized Outsider.

“Big” Scott Hall was a flop, and not for the last time. The guy changed hair colors, ring outfits, diets (now a diabetic), and even once tried wrestling alligators, but nothing worked until someone looked at this over-sized Tom Selleck look-alike and saw Al Pacino in “Scarface.” Hall as Razor Ramon, The Bad Guy clicked, and he finally learned how to get across a marketable personality with catch phrases, facial expressions, and body language. He even had some great matches with the ’90’s best in-ring performer, Shawn Michaels. He caused trouble behind the scenes with his Clique buddies, Michaels, Nash, Sean Waltman, and Triple H.

He then joined his Right Place At The Right Time buddy Nash in ATM Eric Bischoff’s WCW, igniting a wrestling boom and a torrent of money, drugs, car wrecks, and enough arrests for drunken driving and vandalism that Charlie Sheen would have been embarrassed. He engaged in an ugly, public battle with his wife over the care and custody of his children, a battle that he won but fueled the despair that fills him to this day.

Those who know Scott Hall say he is one of the smartest, funniest guys in the profession, that for all of Kevin Nash’s showy reputation as the Smartest Guy Next to Triple H in the Biz, Hall is the one who actually knows…

But knowing the nature of what and who you are, and what and who you do can be a crushing burden. Intelligence is no protection from oblivion; sometimes it just brings the nothingness into sharper relief.

Scott Hall looks haunted by something he can’t express. He resembles nothing more now than the dissipated Dean Martin on the last Rat Pack tour: plenty of money, sick of the cheap hustle, just wanting to go home and chase oblivion in peace. Ol’ Dino flipped a lit cigarette into the crowd one night and Frank Sinatra, who actually cared, kicked him off the tour. (I guess that makes Hogan Ol’ Blue Eyes, Nash the desperately-wants-to-be-cool Sammy Davis Jr., and X-Pac, uh, Liza Minnelli… )

Hall got roaring drunk the first night in, surprising even the most cynical observers, who thought he’d wait at least until the weekend. (Of course, Hall didn’t have to work that first night, he was just visiting, he had a couple of beers to relax, things got out of hand, it’s not easy fighting an addiction, he’s back on his medication, blah blah blah…) One of the smartest, most caustic locker room jockeys of the modern era, with the entire roster eyeing his every move, Hall immediately started in on jerks such as Bubba Ray Dudley whose own reputations for arrogance are considerable. Hall’s friends always point out that he only goes after the ones who deserve it.

The only problem is, who in wrestling doesn’t deserve it?

Now Hall, who doesn’t want to be there in the first place, is being punished on national television, like Big Show, Tazz, and Diamond Dallas Page before him. The only problem is, it punishes the fans who watch it and the wrestlers who could put that valuable airtime to better use. The WWF ought to punish wrestlers with fines, unpaid suspensions, or firings and leave the innocent viewers out of it. Does any wrestling fan miss the Tazz short joke squashes, enjoy the B.S. Fat Boy losses, or care if Dallas Page ever shows up on their TVs again?

What’s Hall being punished for, though? Being himself or not drawing a rating? As wrestling irony would have it, he’s being punished by none other than the sport’s only other gimmick drunk: “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

Austin, like no one else on TV including Cedric the Entertainer, cheerfully puts over drinking in all its marvelous forms: vodka, margaritas, bourbon whiskey, and most especially his beloved Budweisers (and hey, like Scott Hall, I understand. Nothing beats a cold, clean Bud on a hot day…Aah, those were the days…). Cynical observers have noted what seemed to be Austin’s own on-air inebriation from time-to-time over the years. (And what about Mr. Not-So-Perfect, who seemed like he got into the stock at WWF New York a little early at the pay-per-view, and got a stink face squash for his indiscretion the next night on Raw?)

Alcohol is the Rattlesnake’s fuel, like spinach is Popeye’s. You haven’t made it to the big time in the WWF until Austin shares or pours a brewski over you at the end of the show. The Redneck bastard can outfight and out drink anyone in the house.

Especially Scott Hall. Austin, who like Hall has had his drinking and driving publicly documented (in a Rolling Stone profile), spent the past two weeks of television kidnapping and torturing Hall, including pouring beer over him while he was on his anti-alcohol medicine. (Nash rightfully objected to this particular blurring of the reality/work line.) The Austin/Jim Ross contingent, who despite any gaga you may have read on the Ross Report, would just as soon Hall, Nash, and Hogan piss off and go away. They justify their emasculation of a WrestleMania heel main eventer by claiming it laid the logical groundwork for writing out the erratic Hall and replacing him at Mania with, uh, Kurt Angle. (Nobody dead or alive wants to have a crappy match with Nash at Mania.)

I guess Austin regained confidence in Hall when he stayed sober and quiet for an entire week (in public, at least; and isn’t that what counts?). He let him “destroy his knee” with a cinder block the same believable way Hogan murdered Rock.

The biggest difference between the two characters on television is Austin can, like any real man, handle his heavy drinking. Hall, the wuss, can’t hang. Even his buddies in the NWO wag their fingers disapprovingly at him when he mentions his thirst. If Austin really wants to twist the knife, he ought to challenge Hall to an on-air drinking contest and show wrestling fans once and for all the Bad Guy is a lightweight.

Somehow WWF fans are supposed to get excited about this sad eyed man with the pasty face fighting their hero at the biggest show of the year. Whether Hall succumbs to his addictions or makes it through this latest stint in the wrestling road wars still matters, though. Nash has no chance to get over again without the charisma and chemistry of his partner. The domino falls next to Hogan, who needs the two to stay over until he can start the Retirement Tour.

In the meantime the WWF is stuck with the old Eric Bischoff mind set, that the only way to spark a boom is by bringing in a star of the past, no matter how screwed up the star may have become. It’s stuck with a roster of hard working wrestlers who find their sacrifice rewarded with less chance for advancement. It’s stuck with an aging roster of main eventers who are slowly and not so slowly turning into the Hulk Hogans of their generation. It’s stuck with a bunch of feuding management factions with their own cross agendas. It’s stuck with a fan base that doesn’t believe anymore that the WWF can pull off the spectacular angle to match the spectacular pyro and production values. It’s stuck with Bill Goldberg as the last Can’t Miss Angle that will.

The WWF ought to ask Steve Austin himself what to do about their creative hangover. Austin, Hall, and dozens of other wrestlers could tell them you can try all the hotshot cures and panaceas you want, but the only thing that really eases the pain of a hangover is time….

Unless you’ve been too drunk for too long.

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