The Complete History Of The New World Order | Wrestling Timelines
February 23, 1998 - The Disciple Joins
Again: the New World Order is meant to be cool. If you want to be reductive about it, that is the stable’s key selling point. Hogan is cool by proxy, and works in the context of the stable because he grounds it with actual heat, but the collective is (or was) cool.
Nash and Hall are aloof, handsome mercenaries who radiate a sense of entitlement, but are equipped with the size and power to pile sympathy on the babyfaces. It’s this dichotomy with which the nWo can both sell warehouse-loads of t-shirts and - on occasion, anyway - get a babyface over.
On February 23, the Disciple joins the nWo as yet another favour to Hogan.
There are already far too many bad nWo members by February ‘98 - Brian Adams, the artist formerly known as Crush in the WWF, had joined just a week earlier - but we cross the rubicon here.
The Disciple is Ed Leslie, the former Brutus ‘The Barber’ Beefcake. He is a punchline - more over in the ‘80s than his reputation indicates - but a punchline, nonetheless, who has played various dismal characters in WCW to give him something to do.
A thrashed artifact of a different time, the Disciple is a tedious nonentity. He has nothing going for him; he isn’t cool, talented, over, nothing. He is a void, a living embodiment of the idea that the nWo is increasingly meaningless.
In parallel, the WWF is becoming cool, and a few weeks earlier, on January 19, Steve Austin had engaged in a pull-apart brawl with Mike Tyson. It was easier to believe that Austin could beat up a former undisputed World boxing champion than it is to believe that the Disciple, and by extension the nWo itself, is cool.
This exercise in contrast is less than ideal.