Story Of The Monday Night War: July 1996

With Turner Broadcasting covering the Olympics in Atlanta, Nitro was marooned outside in Disney MGM.

Listen to our July 1996 WCW podcast, reviewing all of the big WCW TV action from the month.

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Olympic Ring – With the bulk of Turner trucks pre-occupied by the Olympic Games in Atlanta, WCW found a temporary home for Nitro in Disney... a small outside studio in Orlando that held no more than 1,000 people for a memorable set of tapings. With shows starting in daylight, and ending in darkness the temporary outdoor setting added an edge to an already bursting month in the aftermath of the formation of the NWO.
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Ultimate Warrior – Quelle surprise? The Ultimate Warrior's relationship with the WWF fell apart. What's perhaps more interesting is, is that the WWF had no problem essentially telling the truth on television. On the second Raw of July we opened with Gorilla Monsoon in his office, telling viewers that Warrior was suspended due to no-showing a series of live events, and that he would have to post a bond before he would be allowed to return. The WWF even had a Warrior beatdown taped (after a match with Owen Hart that aired prior), this made it to TV in full but they decided not to use it as an excuse. 

Us Against The World – The angle on the final Nitro of the month, where Kevin Nash famously "lawn darted" Rey Mysterio into a wall was one of the most effective I can recall. The overall beat down showed no bias, with Arn Anderson, Marcus Bagwell and others being targeted. The show all but stopped for the following half hour as WCW to a largely excellent extent presented a "real life" reaction to the unplanned attacks. If one thing was clear, this was WCW vs the NWO.

Sid's Back – With Raw taped right through until the pay-per-view prior to Warrior's issues, there wasn't much the WWF could do on two weeks notice. On the July 9th Raw they had to re-tape commentary and splice in studio segments with Shawn Michaels and Ahmed Johnson teasing who their partner would be. At the end of the show they finally unveiled Sid, much to Jim Cornette's dismay. A week later, Sid would announce his arrival in style by crashing a car into a set of palette's as Camp Cornette fled the chasing Michaels/Johnson. 

Great Promos, Everywhere – If there's one thing you can say about Sting (and there are many) it's that he is an in-ring performer that thrives on showing fire. So it shouldn't come as a great surprise that when given a mic eight days after Hogan's heel turn he smashed the promo out of the park. The great surprise, mind, came on the July 29th show, where Jim Duggan of all people called on his real life history with Hulk Hogan to cut a tremendous promo bemoaning him turning his back on the kids. 

Criminal Company - "He was not convicted of any crime"… we're yet to see who this person is, but on Raw on July 22nd we saw a tease of a discussion between Clarence Mason and Gorilla Monsoon. The person who Mason was arguing about was Crush... who a year prior had been jailed for purchasing steriods and possession of a hand gun. I'm sure the WWF will handle this one very responsibly. 

Hogan Talks – It's probably forgotten with history, but when you think that  Bash At The Beach received maybe 250,000 buys the famous Hogan promo from the show will have (at the time) been seen by far fewer people than that who would be watching Nitro. While he didn't break much new ground In this one, he did at least manage to avoid calling it the "New World Organisation". The one new thing of note was the promise, very soon, of new members of the group. 

Farooq – It's not every day that a former WCW World Champion walks into the WWF (although every *WCW* World Champion to date had wrestled in the WWF before or after winning that title) - so Ron Simmons' arrival was certainly a big deal. He's a big bastard, and he cuts an intense promo, but quite why they felt the need to dress him up like, well, I don't know, is beyond me. His attack on Ahmed Johnson would lead to some serious complications for Johnson, more on that in August. 

Park The Truck – File this one under another famous NWO moment, this time Hall and Nash made their way in to the WCW production truck and started playing havoc with the feed, barking orders and messing up the programme. It was another example of the levels of reality that WCW were willing to push this angle, but another example of the bi-polar nature of the NWO. Some weeks they're vicious killers, other weeks they're friendly and funny. Either way, they're already way too cool to get boo'ed.