The Complete History Of The New World Order | Wrestling Timelines
August 16, 1999 - There Is No End
There is no definitive end to the original nWo story in WCW, and it’s very fitting. Bischoff didn’t know how to do that, when the nWo Nitro concept bombed, and so it was essentially ended on his behalf.
Wearing the cooler red and black aesthetic, the ‘New World Order Elite’ is the name, and the unit quickly procures every piece of heavyweight singles gold.
If ‘Elite’ is subtext for “there will be no extraneous members this time”, it’s another con: Disco Inferno is part of the stable. Even though they’re ‘Elite’, they decide to “trim the fat” by jettisoning members within weeks.
The stable ends quietly when three key members succumb to injury - after which there is a slow, collective realisation within WCW that the whole thing is dead. Hall is ruled out until November when a car backs up over his foot in February. Luger suffers a torn bicep that same month. Hogan is shelved for three months when he gets injured at Spring Stampede on April 11. As ever with Hogan, the veracity is questioned. He’s back as a babyface in the red and yellow by August.
The date on this timeline reads August 16, 1999.
As the Elite dominate WCW for all of two months, the remnants of the old nWo, the guys who joined because WCW thought a t-shirt would get them over, are still just hanging around. It’s strange. It’s as if nobody has bothered to tell the likes of Stevie Ray and Horace Hogan that the nWo has been liquidated. Still wearing the original black and white tees, they are explicitly referred to as the ‘B-Team’. On August 16, 1999, Brian Adams is kicked out of a version of the nWo that doesn’t really exist. That’s as good a date as any to declare a time of death. An alternative date?
September 10, 1999, on which Bischoff is sacked.