10 Worst WCW Nitro Moments

While WCW Nitro produced many amazing moments during the Monday Night Wars, it was also equally responsible for some of the worst content ever broadcast on mainstream American wrestling television. 

Embarrassing, infuriating, or otherwise insulting and hard to sit through, watching these moments certainly won’t leave you longing for the 1990s. 

These are the 10 Worst WCW Nitro Moments. 

10. Scott Hall Bins The WCW World Television Title

One of Vince Russo’s most annoying traits as a booker was the poor way in which he handled championship belts, which he dismissively referred to as ‘props’. 

You can argue about the value of titles all day long, but if you treat them like garbage, well, the fans are going to view them as garbage, too. 

Leave it to Russo to literally throw an active title in the trash, which is what Kevin Nash and Scott Hall did with the WCW World Television Championship belt on the November 29, 1999, episode of Nitro. 

Hall had been gifted the belt after Scott Steiner became injured and made it clear in a backstage segment with his best buddy that he didn’t see the point of having it. So into the bin it went.

The TV Title may not have been the most important thing going on in WCW at any given time, but the likes of Chris Jericho, Booker T, and William Regal had fought hard to elevate it to the point it meant something, only for the company to treat it like a joke. 

The punchline? Janitor Jim Duggan ‘found’ the belt in the trash a couple of months later. 

9. Roddy Piper's Tryouts

After being screwed out of a victory over Hulk Hogan at Superbrawl 1997, WCW granted Roddy Piper a future shot against The Hulkster inside a steel cage on the condition he won a tag team elimination match at Uncensored. 

So, on the March 3, 1997, episode of Nitro, Rowdy set about putting his squad together. Holding official tryouts for the chance to be on his team, Piper got to choose from four random talents without names (one of whom would go on to become WWE’s Luther Reigns) and John Tenta. 

Fans quickly turned on this interminable, 20-minute segment, which saw Hot Rod wrestle in mini-matches against people who were supposedly practised in different disciplines. In reality, many of the wannabes were either WCW Power Plant trainees or stuntmen that Piper had worked with on straight-to-video movies.

Fans were meant to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to determine who would make the cut, but they ended up booing the whole thing out of spite because it was so bad. 

In classic WCW fashion, Piper reneged on his promise to never turn his back on the misfit crew he had assembled by ditching them for Four Horsemen members a week later.

8. The Ultimate Warrior Appears In The Mirror

You can see what WCW were thinking when they signed The Ultimate Warrior in 1998 but it seemed like everyone stopped thinking when material was written for the former WWF Champion. 

Creatively speaking, Warrior’s short-but-lamentable WCW run was a total dud. From his overly long and rambling initial promo to the catastrophic Halloween Havoc encounter with The Hulkster, there was truly nothing to celebrate as far as matches or moments. 

But the very worst bit of Warrior ‘creative’ took place on the October 5, 1998, episode of Nitro.

Hogan was shown retreating backstage to a dressing room with Eric Bischoff when, all of a sudden, Warrior appeared in the mirror. Hulk could see him. The commentators could see him. The fans watching on TV could see him. Bischoff claimed that he couldn’t see him. 

This was as hokey as anything ever seen on WCW TV, as the promotion rapidly began to lose its reputation as being cutting edge. 

7. The Debut (And Death) Of Seven

Soon after Dustin Rhodes left WWE in the Summer of 1999, vignettes began airing on WCW television hyping the impending arrival of Seven. While some fans may want to blame Russo for the new controversial character who was shown watching children through their bedroom windows, it was, incredibly, the brainchild of the artist formerly known as Goldust himself. 

Per Dustin, Seven was supposed to be a character that would play mind games and was not meant to be some sort of child abductor. Someone in Turner’s standards and practices department watched the vignettes showing a creepy bloke in white makeup acting like a Peeping Tom around minors and thought differently. 

The end result was the character had to go, but rather than go quietly, Seven went out with a terrible worked-shoot promo. On the November 9, 1999, edition of Nitro, Seven made an elaborate entrance complete with smoke and pyro as he floated to the ring, only for Rhodes to commence cutting a promo deriding the stupidity of the character and how he wouldn’t play along with the writers backstage in a reference to Russo and his writing partner Ed Ferrera.

6. The Fat Ladies Sing

At the 2000 Bash at the Beach pay-per-view, a notorious incident unfolded that resulted in Hulk Hogan leaving (and then suing) WCW. On the go-home edition of Nitro before it, though, there was an equally ugly moment that played out in front of fans. 

Since he was going to end The Hulkster’s career in six days’ time, Jeff Jarrett thought it was appropriate that the fat ladies would sing on Hogan’s career. Literally. 

After talking about how, as a little Slap Nut, Jarrett and his Grandslappy Nut used to watch Hogan wrestle, Double J brought out the fat ladies - dressed as Vikings - to sing. 

After taking an age getting into the ring, the ladies proclaimed that Jarrett would win the WCW World Heavyweight Title match before singing horribly. 

The payoff was Gaylen Chandler from Turner Standards and Practices coming out and eating a guitar shot (which the camera crew missed) after The Chosen One had run down the ladies for being overweight.

5. Chucky

WCW were no strangers to a little Hollywood cross-promotion. We all remember that time Robocop made the save for Sting, and who could forget Ready to Rumble? 

Given their affinity for the motion picture industry, it wasn’t much of a surprise to see killer doll Chucky from the Child’s Play films show up on Nitro. 

For weeks, the sound of strange, maniacal laughter had played during WCW broadcasts, with some fans speculating that it was a tease for a new wrestler who was about to debut. 

However, on the October 12, 1998, episode of Nitro, it was revealed that the source of the laughter was actually the killer ginger puppet. 

Chucky (via satellite) interrupted Rick Steiner in a really bad segment that fans didn’t care for at all, attempting to both plug the upcoming release of Bride of Chucky while furthering the feud between Rick and his brother Scott. 

Adding insult to injury, the segment completely tanked in the ratings when going head-to-head with an Austin/McMahon duel on Raw.

WWE later brought Chucky back for NXT Halloween Havoc, where he met the Dog Faced Gremlin’s son Bron Breakker.

4. Ric Flair Has A Heart Attack

Ric Flair is rightly remembered as one of WCW’s true greats. As a multi-time world champion, The Nature Boy was responsible for some of the promotion’s most legendary matches and moments and was beloved by WCW fans.

However, during the last couple of years of Slick Ric’s WCW career, the powers-that-be seemed to revel in putting him in unfavourable situations. 

He was carted off to a mental health facility, had his head shaved and was subject to other assorted indignities, but there was something altogether more tasteless about the fake heart attack angle he participated in on the December 14, 1998, episode of Nitro.

Flair was cutting an impassioned promo against Starrcade opponent Eric Bischoff when he fell to the mat clutching his chest and left arm. Arn Anderson and various other WCW personnel came to check on him before he was stretchered out. 

Though WCW dropped the heart attack angle cold soon after, some people who Flair knew that were watching on television were genuinely worried about him and some media outlets initially reported that it was real.

3. Torrie Wilson Appreciation Night

When WCW decided to hold Torrie Wilson Appreciation Night on Nitro it was far from a loving affair. Wilson was in the middle of a lamentable storyline with Billy Kidman and Shane Douglas at the time, a storyline that would produce the infamous Viagra on a Pole match. 

That was bad, but this was somehow just that much worse. After being beaten in the Viagra match (though he was able to have a Nitro Girl foursome due to the defeat), Kidman hosted the ‘appreciation’ night, which consisted of him showing a video of a fat-suit-wearing Wilson devouring a feast on her 16th birthday as her distraught mother tried to stop her before dropping thousands of flyers featuring Torrie’s purported yearbook picture from the arena ceiling. 

This wretched segment continued with Billy, who was supposed to be the babyface, shoving his former flame down to the mat.

It was an all-time terrible segment made worse when you realise that Wilson legitimately suffered from eating disorders during her youth.

2. San Francisco 49ers Match

Vince Russo’s lack of care for WCW titles ultimately extended to the company’s top prize and that was on full display on the October 2, 2000, episode of Nitro when Booker T and Jeff Jarrett competed over the vacant WCW World Heavyweight Title in a San Francisco 49ers Match.

The title was only up for grabs because Vince Russo had vacated the belt and Booker T and Jeff Jarrett had to face off in what Russo’s favourite stipulation, a pole match. There were four poles with boxes suspended above them on each ring post. One of the boxes contained the WCW World Heavyweight Championship belt, while the others had a blowup doll, a coal miner’s glove, and a picture of Scott Hall. 

Jeff Jarrett had the match won at one point, only for Beetlejuice – the member of Howard Stern’s Whack Pack who had been laid out with a Jarrett guitar shot earlier in the evening – came out to cost him the victory. 

1. The Fingerpoke Of Doom

This has been covered extensively in the past – including by us here at Cultaholic – but the fact remains that the legendarily awful Fingerpoke of Doom is still, over 25 years later, the worst thing that ever took place on Nitro. 

To recap, Goldberg was supposed to face Kevin Nash in a WCW World Heavyweight Title rematch from Starrcade 1998, but was sent to jail instead after Miss Elizabeth made some very unsavoury (and false) allegations about the former champion.

Hulk Hogan stepped into his place and fans looked forward to seeing Hogan take on Big Sexy, when a simple poke to the chest revealed the ruse and handed Hogan the title once again. 

Yes, the nWo Wolfpac and nWo Hollywood were back on the same side, but the bigger story was that the blatant swerve upset the near 40,000 fans inside Atlanta’s Georgia Dome (who wanted to see Goldberg get his revenge) as well as millions watching on television.

Many of these fans had been burned one time too many and simply tuned out, with the January 4, 1999, episode of Nitro seen as a major turning point in turning the ratings war in WWE’s favour, as well as the beginning of the end for WCW as a company.