83 Weeks - Spring Break Nitro 03.10.97 [Show Notes] (Patreon)

This week Eric we’re talking about the first Nitro from Club LaVela in Panama City, Florida. Now the week before this show was the last show at the Omni and it featured the infamous Roddy Piper angle that dragged on FOREVER. Be sure to check that out in the archives at AdFreeShows.com!

Let’s get your cock out to season 3 episode 10.

Who’s idea is it to go to Club Lavale?

From the Observer: “Dennis Rodman became the latest media star of the moment brought into pro wrestling as a publicity stunt in an announcement made by WCW over the weekend.

Rodman, the regularly suspended current leading anti-hero of the NBA's Chicago Bulls, who has a movie coming out this week, will be part of the NWO group and appear on the WCW Uncensored PPV show on 3/16 in Charleston, SC and make what is believed to be two additional appearances with WCW as a participant in matches, the first of which is tentatively planned for the 7/13 Bash at the Beach PPV in Daytona Beach.

WCW was able to outmaneuver the WWF, which was also pursuing Rodman. The WWF had offered Rodman a two-show deal reportedly for a $1 million fee. The first of which would have been Wrestlemania, to appear in Goldust's corner to attempt to help the faltering Goldust character get over stronger as both a babyface and as a mainstream bizarre cult figure. The second of which was the SummerSlam PPV in August where he and Goldust would have formed a tag team.

However Rodman's representatives, since Rodman worked a WCW PPV in July of 1995 as Hulk Hogan's corner man for the Bash at the Beach in Huntington Beach, CA, went to WCW to match the offer. WCW pulled the deal off for an undisclosed figure although you'd have to figure they at least matched the WWF's offer if not topped it in some fashion, since there were several incentives for WCW to do so. Besides nixing a WWF publicity ploy with a star that would have gotten them mainstream play, WCW was able to get a front page story in the Chicago Sun-Times just two weeks before Wrestlemania with the breaking of the story although WCW had for the most part completed the deal more than a week earlier. In the Chicago market, where Rodman has to be one of the two biggest sports celebrities right now behind only Michael Jordan, WCW stole much of WWF's local thunder as they built for Wrestlemania, although Mania is going to sellout or come close to it anyway. Rodman, who has been a fan of Hogan's for years, taped a segment with Hogan that promoted both Rodman's movie that comes out this coming weekend and the Uncensored PPV two days later, which aired toward the end of the 3/10 Monday Nitro television show.

Rodman's contract with the Chicago Bulls wouldn't prohibit him for passive participation in something like pro wrestling (ie he could be in the corner, but not get physically involved to any real degree) during the season. When the season ends, Rodman will be an unrestricted free agent, and thus without an NBA contract, would be free to perform in a pro wrestling match.”

Eric let’s break down the Rodman negotiations and how it all happened.

Were the WWF ever players do you think?

Now we see the stage and Eric I’ll give you the credit here. This is the kind of outside the box thinking nobody in professional wrestling, not Vince McMahon or anyone else, that thought this was a good idea and you pulled it off and did it for years. Were you always looking for these types of ideas?

Meltzer would describe it as, “approximately 2,000 fans there, largely out-of-towners for spring break. They really weren't wrestling fans, but reacted to seeing the stars live. The atmosphere at the beginning of the show made WCW seem really like an in-thing, but as the crowd hardly reacted to the wrestling, it ended up turning into a flat show by the finish.”

We’re opening with…High Voltage vs. Steve McMichael & Jeff Jarrett as the Jarrett not being a Horseman angle just has to continue.

So there’s really one spot in this match where there’s teased tension but it’s more that Jeff doesn’t need to tag Mongo in yet because of the hot tag. McMichael hits the tombstone for the win.

Was it important to present the Horsemen as a united front considering later on in the show they were going to announced as teaming with Piper to fix that whole mess?

Speaking of which…here comes Roddy. From the Observer:

“The only real major storyline on the show was Roddy Piper doing an interview, obviously majorly pissed off at the reaction to his ultimate ego angle of the previous week and to the WWF commentary during the Owen Hart-Davey Boy Smith match. He did agree to acquiesce as far as his teammates on the PPV goes. It was never made clear, but my belief is that Piper's team will be composed of himself, John Tenta, Steve McMichael & Jeff Jarrett with Flair, Anderson, Layton Morse (or Morrison) and Craig Mally all in the corners presumably based on the interview, which sounds just a slight bid crowded. Ric Flair and Arn Anderson came out as Piper was ranting and raving and Anderson said it was a job for professionals, not amateurs and Flair, who got the biggest reaction of anyone on the show as it was a primarily early 20s male audience, started dancing around. Finally after turning them down a few times, Piper agreed to take the Horsemen as his partners. Let's see if I can explain the main event, since almost nobody seems to be able to remember the stips. If the NWO team wins, then the NWO gets to appear on all WCW television shows. If the NWO team loses, then the NWO members must leave WCW for three years (like there's a chance that'll happen) and the WCW singles and tag titles will be returned to the WCW championship committee. If Piper's team wins, then Piper gets a cage match with Hogan. Piper's interview largely made no sense as usual, first knocking Howard Stern (don't know if Stern said something about Piper on 3/10 when Hogan & Rodman were on his show), then got mad at the WWF, mentioning them by name but not Jim Ross by name. During the Hart-Smith match the previous week, Ross was knocking WCW calling them the seniors tour, the over-40 promotion and mentioned that he didn't believe there were any wrestlers in the WWF with one hip. Piper called the WWF liars saying that when he was there last year and beat Goldust, that he only had one hip then. He then ripped on his critics, and boy were there many, for knocking his friends saying he'd never turn his back on his friends and be a fair-weather friend because people said bad things about them (which was ironic since the whole idea of the interview segment was for him to eventually drop them from the match). Piper also said that the WWF was right about being no one hip wrestlers in the WWF, saying that there isn't one hip wrestler in the entire WWF and that's why everyone watches WCW pay-per-views and not WWF's (ironically, the two sides are still pretty much equal on PPV, it's Monday Night TV ratings where WCW has the big edge).”

Eric - what in the fuck was this? Two weeks in a row where Piper just grabs a microphone and goes nuts. And the rules of the main event - we break Russo’s balls about things being confusing. Why is this so complicated?

David Taylor - seen two weeks ago in a jungle expedition outfit losing to DDP - now has rejoined with Steven Regal as a Blue Blood and is here to defend his honor taking on Prince Iaukea for the TV title. The goal here is to get Iaukea better by working with some real good workers right?

nWo arrives during this match in a hummer but very quickly it’s pointed out that they can’t protect their own as Mr. Wallstreet is taken out by an unknown assailant. This was DDP right?

Iaukea gets the win and we didn’t really even see most of the match. Did any workers ever get pissed that their match time was lost to whatever was going on backstage?

Eddie Guerrero is defending his US Title against Jim Powers. Meltzer said in the Observer that the focus of this match is to give Eddie some type of edge because he’s just a vanilla babyface and it’s hard to get over as that right now. Teddy Long interference backfires and Eddie takes advantage and gets the pin. Were the short matches designed to keep the crowd more interested considering how young they are?

Craig Pittman makes his last WCW appearance against DDP. Do you know why Pittman left the company?

DDP gets the win in what Meltzer calls “a really bad match.” Is this just a styles clash between these two guys?

DDP begins his promo afterwards and the power goes completely out. Can you describe what the backstage reaction is like during this time when it happens?

How do you let DDP know to stay in the ring until it comes back if the power is out?

We come back to DDP still in the ring and finishing his promo and letting Savage know he’s going to feel the bang. How excited are you over this DDP - Savage fued?

The time of the power outage is reported in the Observer as sucking the excitement from the crowd. Do you remember that being the case?

Rey Mysterio takes on Galaxy (Damian) and gets the win in under 3 minutes.

Hour #2 begins with Mean Gene bringing out John Sensio who is a MTV VJ. Pamela Rogers is introduced as Miss WCW. What do you remember of all this?

It’s done to basically promote Hall & Nash appearing at MTV’s Spring Break which is the infamous time someone threw a rock at the Outsiders and they pretty much beat the shit out of him. Does Kevin or Scott tell you about this?

How’s this for a team Eric…Amazing French Candians, Greg Valentine & Roadblock taking on Lex Luger, the Giant & the Steiners.

How are you guys keeping Greg Valentine around at this time?

Juventud Guerrera vs. Ultimo Dragon is up next and supposedly this was supposed to be Psicosis but he was stopped at the border so that match is to be pushed to Uncensored. Was this a common issue with the luchadores?

From the Observer: “The crowd was totally dead for these guys, and they were sloppier than expected (the floating ring probably affected balance and the style these guys use involves more balance than other styles) but it was still the best match on the show.”

Here’s Scotty Riggs still thinking he’s an American Male to take on Chris Jericho. Talk about two different career paths.

Buff Bagwell interferes to end the match in our first DQ of the evening in 3:33 and Bagwell starts whipping the hell out of Riggs before Jericho saves. Any thoughts on what a Buff - Jericho program could’ve been at this time?

Madusa is out next and can’t really pronounce Akira Hokuto properly but we’re still building to a WCW Women’s title match. Was the division even worth anything at this point and who was pushing to keep including it?

Kevin Sullivan is going to take on Hardbody Harrison and it goes 2 minutes before they brawl over to the beach and that’s really it. Sullivan & Jackie beat the shit out of him and throw him in the pool. How is it decided he’s the one to go swimming?

Sullivan then cuts a promo where he takes credit for destroying the Horseman when we all know that was Jeff Jarrett and then tells Piper not to trust them…is the Dungeon of Doom and Horsemen angle STILL GOING ON?

Here is the pretape of Rodman joining the nWo and then the nWo enters and Sting is with them and gets the shirt just placed on him but doesn’t actually put it on. Then everybody cuts their promos for Uncensored and that’s it…right? Wrong!

Now we got Public Enemy and Harlem Heat brawling after Public Enemy makes fun of the Horsemen…did you guys just have some extra left and needed to throw something out there?

Not…the best Nitro but definitely newsworthy!

The show gets a 3.51 rating and a 5.55 share compared to Raw which featured the rechristening of the show to Raw is War. Were you able to take a look at the show and the redesign they did? What did you think of it?

Obviously Nitro has a bunch of momentum at the time and that rating is staggering. You have to be happy about that right?

From the Observer: “Disco Inferno (Glen Gilbertti) was fired on 3/4 when he refused to do a program which would have ended with him putting over Jacquelyn in the single match at Uncensored. The vast majority of the wrestlers were totally in support of Disco on that one and felt that putting over a woman in a singles match was a career killer.”

Who makes the final decision on this?

There’s a TV taping on March 4th in Rome and Randy “Pee Wee” Anderson is given the key to the city but the mayor ends up calling him Pee Wee Herman. At the taping Chris Kanyon debuts as Mortis with James Vandenburg. Who came up with the Mortis gimmick, why Kanyon and why Vandenburg?

Meltzer called the gimmick a copy of La Parka’s…what do you say to that?

“Public Enemy has signed a new two-year contract.”

What was it about PE that made you think they needed to be around for 2 more years?

“Bryan Clark (formerly Night Stalker and later Adam Bomb) has signed and should be starting shortly.”

The future Wrath gets signed. Did he come recommended? You can’t have enough big dudes in wrestling can you?

You and Randy Savage tape an episode of Jeff Foxworthy. Any memory of that?

Last thing to ask before we get to fan questions Eric is also from the Observer: “Bischoff did a lengthy Prodigy chat on 3/8, mainly to talk about the Rodman deal. The Rodman deal got discussed, and other subjects heavily discussed were the proposed New Japan buy-out (it should be noted that this is not even being discussed in Japan and if the Japanese media thought it was a serious story, the idea their top promotion was getting bought out, it would be incredibly huge news), and Bischoff surprisingly saying the ECW alliance was the best move WWF had made over the last 12 months. Bischoff has Japan trips scheduled for late March (for the New Japan 25th anniversary party) and April (apparently to attend a Gaea womens wrestling show). He also said that he hoped Piper would agree to allow them to change the main event but admitted it was up to Piper. He did his usual McMahon knocks. Overall, he did his usual switching between shooting and working and when the lines are blurred like that it's hard to take anything seriously, although the questions and answers were better for this than previous sessions and it seemed he was doing less working than in the past.”

So you did think the ECW deal was a good thing for the WWF at the time?

Did you enjoy doing these online chats? They were kind of the predecessor for social media don’t you think?

Let’s get to the fan questions!