WCW has gotten a lot of flak for its use of celebrities, particularly from WWE which is strange considering the abysmal state of celebrity involvement in WWE over the past few years. In fairness to WCW though, some of these celebrities they used were okay. The Karl Malone and Dennis Rodman feud was a brilliant combination of reality and fiction, even if the wrestling was subpar. And for all the words written about David Arquettes infamous reign as WCW Champion, at least the organisation had the smarts to do the whole thing in a very tongue in cheek fashion. There were at least a few laughs from a frustrated Courtney Cox Arquette trying to tell her deluded husband that he wasnt actually the champion. The Jay Leno angle on the other handwell that was just odd and confusing from the start. The whole thing started when Eric Bischoff decided that he apparently wanted to mimic the success of Tuesday Night Titans and start a wrestling talk show. However in typical Bischoff form he didnt do a huge amount of planning and simply constructed a $75,000 talk show set and went about interrupting his already watered down three hour Nitro broadcast to talk smack about whatever was on his mind including Jay Leno. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtHOt-hLaX8 This is already kind of strange in itself, but things just became downright surreal when the segment continued on, and a kayfabe war of words between Leno and the nWo inexplicably began. Smelling a continuation of the mainstream exposure the company had experienced the month before with Rodman and Malone, Bischoff upped the ante and increased the time dedicated to this talk show war (on his alleged wrestling show mind you) leading to a match at Road Wild 1998 which is as infamous as it is painful to watch. For those few that have never seen the match it should be noted that Jay Leno wasnt just on the winning tag team, but he made the winning pin. The whole thing kind of fizzled away after this and within a few months Hogan was back to being a guest on Lenos show as if the whole affair had never really happened, which only added to the cynicism the fans had towards the angle, and the overall confusion it caused.
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