History Of WCW Monday Nitro - Episode One: "The Shot Across The Bow - From A Luger"

Match Two: Sting Vs. Ric Flair (United States Heavyweight Championship)

The intros are made, and then, WCW changes the show from basic competition, to firing an ACTUAL shot at WWE. As Sting's music fades, Lex Luger walks out from the backstage area down to the ringside area. Which wouldn't be a big deal, unless you realize the man was in a WWE ring just ONE DAY prior to this. Nobody knew Luger was going to make an appearance at this show. This fires up the crowd, and we get a fairly decent match between Stinger and Flair. Flair does his trademark heel match, overpowered, outgunned by the babyface, and he takes it outside, frustrated with the beating he's taking. Big Sting chant going up around the mall. A test of strength with Flair ends with an eye poke, and he gets his offense in, but only enough to get the Stinger riled up. Flair and Stinger do a cross body to the outside spot that makes me all nostalgic for those days of wrestling when Flair and Stinger could still do spots like that, or hell, anyone doing rough double down spots like that. Sting tosses Flair in through the ropes with a gorilla press, and Nature Boy takes over after Sting makes a mistake. During Flair's comeback, Sting takes over, and Arn Anderson comes out to intimidate Flair. At this point, Flair and Anderson were on the outs, scheduled to wrestle at Fall Brawl. Their program was designed to give Flair something to do, as word on the street and in the dirtsheets was that Bischoff wanted to phase out Flair in the company, but Flair was loved by the front office, and Turner himself. This match continues, and with a great bridging pin, counter-pin, pin sequence. Flair and Sting exchange offense, and finally as Flair has the Figure Four on Sting, Anderson ends the match and the pair brawl their way out of the arena. Good match, forwarding the storyline between Flair and Anderson - but here's a clue as to how the match ends, to show how Bischoff was trying to undercut Flair - the ref rules it a no-contest, rather than a disqualification victory for Flair. I don't know if it's legit beef he had, or if he didn't want to confuse new viewers, but that seemed like a planned slight. Scott Norton comes out to accost the announce team to demand a match, McMichael stands up for them, but Randy Savage is out there to make a match. Doug Dellenger intervenes to stop them from taking it to the ring - Bischoff is overshouting Norton, to show off a highlight reel of Sabu destroying Norman Smiley and a few other WCW mainstay jobbers of the time with his highspot antics. It's also cool to see that WCW made video packages like this for their wrestlers they had high hopes for. Good match, but screwy finish leaves a bad taste in your mouth. We're back in the ring with Gene Okerlund - who announces a sweepstakes winner. Bischoff rolls off the matches for Saturday Night, including a barn burner between one half of the then tag champs Dirty Dick Slater and Johnny B. Bad (Also known as Mark Mero) - and Stinger and Savage teaming up to take on the Bluebloods - Bobby Eaton and Steven Regal. Sounds like a good match, actually. Then another vignette with another WWE turncoat, Mike Rotundo (Whose son is Bray Wyatt now in the WWE) leaves behind his tired lame gimmick of IRS, and gets a fresh and amazing gimmick as Michael Wallstreet. Ugh. Dude has so much talent - he's an amateur style genius - but had been saddled with these lame heel gimmicks. He was also known as V.K. Wallstreet, a take on Vince McMahon, but yeah, it was just a damned shame Rotundo got pushed into doing such ridiculous crap. More shilling for Slim Jim. And we're at our MAIN EVENT!