ARN - Arn vs. Hogan 02.12.96 Nitro [Show Notes] (Patreon)

Not much on the build from Meltzer except for this from a few weeks before...

In something people thought they would never live long enough to see, Hulk Hogan put Ric Flair over for the first time on the 1/29 Nitro show from Canton, OH. The match finish saw Arn Anderson get one of Elizabeth's high heels and give it to Flair, who hit Hogan in the eye with it. Hogan juiced (and they showed a close-up of it so they must have gotten TNT to alter its standards) and laid down for the three count in 14:09. The match itself (*1/4) wasn't good at all before the surprise finish, consisting of the same Hogan-Flair spots mainly built around Hogan's pitiful clotheslines. The result probably stemmed from all the noise Flair had been making about wanting to quit over the past week because he didn't like them taking the title off him so quickly and that he felt he was again going to be used as Hogan's stepping stone. The match was originally booked for a Hogan legdrop finish and Flair had agreed to it, but as happens on a fairly regular basis, Hogan showed up on Monday and changed the booking around. It is believed nobody in WCW had any advanced knowledge of the implications of the McMahon skit going on head-up so Hogan doing a job was just a weird coincidence rather than a response. After the final match on Nitro, a Randy Savage vs. Giant match that went :28 with Savage DQ'd for hitting him from behind with the belt, Flair came in and with Giant they destroyed Savage. This lasted several minutes before Hogan came in, all taped up, and clocked Giant and a series of fall guys (Meng, One Man Gang, Kevin Sullivan, Hugh Morris) with chair shots to the head.

Observer Match Report:

Arn Anderson pinned Hulk Hogan in about 9:30. Same old stuff but it had a good storyline and finish. Woman came out with Anderson. Flair and Elizabeth came out midway through. Hogan put Anderson in the figure four which saw Flair get upset and do a run-in but Hogan cradled him. I'm not exactly sure why a DQ wasn't called for Flair's interference since it was right in front of the ref. Woman threw powder in Hogan's eyes, and then Elizabeth gave Anderson her boot and he hit Hogan in the head with it and scored the pin. Can you imagine seeing Hogan do pin jobs two times in three weeks on television? I never thought I'd live to see that. Of course, he'll more than get it back at the PPV in four cage matches. The remainder of the show saw Hogan & Savage and Flair & Anderson issue challenges back-and-forth for Hogan vs. Anderson and Flair vs. Savage for the title on 2/19 from Salisbury, MD. Flair did an interview with Woman and Liz coming out in a hospital bed. It's almost hard to take the change in Elizabeth from the demure virginal type to someone playing the vengeful ex-wife pretty much intimating sex with Flair was so wild they put Flair down for the count. I guess that's what they were intimating because she didn't seem to get the message across on the interview other than saying she was tired of having to stand behind Savage for seven years and when she left, she took half of everything.

With no competition from Raw and with current product (as in both products) interest way up, the show set a record doing a 3.7 rating and a 5.3 share with the replay doing a 1.3 rating and 3.8 share. Other weekend numbers saw Saturday Night do a 3.0, its best mark in more than one year, Sunday Main Event with the PPV prelim matches did a 1.9 and Pro did a 1.2.

It's hard to believe after all the times Flair has been killed off, or at least written off and attempted to be killed off, that he's, a few weeks before his 47th birthday, the hottest he's been as a heel in years and easily the hottest heel in the United States (which is not nearly as big a compliment as it sounds on the surface)

WhatCulture.com wrote this about the match:

Arn Anderson beating Hulk Hogan may sound kind of like Bob Backlund showing up on Raw to put away Brock Lesnar with a sloppy O'Connor roll, but it happened. But there's a very good reason that the immortal, invincible, holy Hulk Hogan was able to be pinned by WCW's under-the-radar workhorse.

You see, the Four Horsemen had stumbled upon the Oxygen Destroyer of wrestling foreign objects: the ladies' shoe. Arn managed to hit Hogan in the eye with one of Elizabeth's heels and that was enough for the win.

Fear not, though, Hulkamaniacs: there's still an absurd amount of humiliation for Hogan's foes to endure. Hogan kicked out of Double A's spinebuster hard enough to send him sailing across the ring. He the forced Arn to submit to a figure four leg lock, but the ref was distracted. Because, you see, Ric Flair had wandered into the ring to get pinned by Hogan.

Yes, Hogan got to simultaneously pin Flair and submit Anderson. If you're wondering, yes, of course Ric Flair was World Champion while he was getting cradled for a 12 count in his khakis. Hogan came back out at the end of the show to beat up all the Horsemen and the Dungeon of Doom simultaneously. Yup.

The next week on Nitro…

YOU BEAT HOGAN AGAIN!

Nitro on 2/19 from Salisbury, MD drew a sellout 4,700 (3,800 paying $41,000) as Arn Anderson beat Hulk Hogan via DQ in 6:38. Hogan had Anderson in the figure four, when Sullivan did a run-in and Savage ran down for the save. Since Savage runs so much faster than Sullivan, he made it to the ring first, the ref saw him, and even though he didn't touch anyone, he DQ'd Hogan giving Anderson wins over Hogan two weeks in a row. The match was much worse than it sounds as Hogan's blows were missing by a mile and Anderson was selling them anyway. I guess he has no choice. (-*)

All of this was building up to….

Uncensored on 3/24 in Tupelo, MS. The scheduled card headlined by a Doomsday match which will be Hulk Hogan facing four men in four different cages (as opposed to the Triple Tower of Doom) with the four being Arn Anderson, Kevin Sullivan, Ric Flair and finally The Lochness Monster (Luke McMasters, a wrestler from England in his mid-50s who is horrible, about 6-7, 475 who will be brought in as the latest monster heel foil for Hogan).

We’re going to cover THAT trainweek in March on ARN! But...here’s a spoiler...it was the worst match on the card and it was one of the lowest rated PPVs the Observer has done a poll on.

(If you want it...here’s Meltzer’s review):

7. Hulk Hogan (Terry Bollea) & Randy Savage (Randy Poffo) beat Meng (Uliuli Fifita) & Barbarian (Sionne Vailahi) & Ric Flair (Richard Fliehr) & Arn Anderson (Marty Lunde) & Kevin Sullivan & Lex Luger (Larry Pfohl) & Ze Gangsta (Tom Lister) & Ultimate Solution (Jeep Swenson) in 25:16. Hogan & Savage worked with Flair & Anderson on the top level, and threw powder at them to go to the middle level. There they faced Sullivan, Luger, Meng & Barbarian. They locked Meng & Barbarian in half of the middle level cage, and then the other four wound up in the wrestling ring. Finally Jeep & Zeus, who weren't even there at the beginning (Schiavone kept asking where Jeep, Zeus and Pillman were, still hinting that Pillman would be there even though he wasn't, taking the bait-and-switch well past any point of sensibility), showed up. They dragged Hogan & Savage into the bottom level of the cage and it only got worse since they can't work. Somewhere while all this was going on, Meng & Barbarian were let out of their cage and simply walked backstage. Finally Sullivan, Luger, Flair and Anderson were in the bottom cage so it was six-on-two. Jimmy Hart gave Luger a loaded black glove and he went to hit Savage, who ducked, and then he held up, then changed his mind and KO'd Flair for the pin. -***