It was one thing to expect Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash to eventually end back up in WWE after the demise of WCW. But arriving altogether? As the NWO? Absolutely surreal. The New World Order, after all, was a WCW creation and a genius idea that brought Vince McMahon and his company to its knees. The WCW Invasion of WWE in 2001 was a pretty big letdown. This was in part due to most of the bigger names deciding to sit it out, and collect money off of their Time Warner contracts at home instead. When those deals ran out for Hogan, Hall and Nash, WWE was wise to bring them in as a unit. At the time, Vince McMahon was battling Ric Flair over control of the WWF. Since he couldnt defeat his nemesis, he decided to kill the entire company with a lethal dose of poison. On the January 14, 2002 episode of SmackDown, he cut a bizarre and brilliant promo announcing the New World Order was coming. One month later, they arrived. At No Way Out, the three original members opened the show. Their familiar theme from WCW played, with the added addition of black and white footage. Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler were just as amazed as fans. The three stood in the ring to enormous cheers, with plenty of skepticism too. They were a few years older, but they still had it. Unfortunately, WWE dropped the ball on the angle, but those first few weeks of WCWs greatest stable aligned inside of a WWF ring was truly something special that seemed insanely unlikely to ever happen.
As Rust Cohle from True Detective said "Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you're good at."
Sadly, I can't solve a murder like Rust...or change a tire, or even tie a tie. But I do know all the lyrics to Hulk Hogan's "Real American" theme song and can easily name every Natural Born Thriller from the dying days of WCW. I was once ranked 21st in the United States in Tetris...on the Playstation 3 version...for about a week.
Follow along @AndrewSoucek and check out my podcast at wrestlingwithfriends.com
