The Story Of The Monday Night War - December 1995

The permanent "overrun" on Nitro gave Mean Gene Okerlund more opportunites to ask Sting about Lex Luger...

Listen to our December 1995 WCW podcast, reviewing a bumper month of Nitro's along with Starrcade 1995.

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1) Alundra Blayze/Medusa – Now that is how you make an entrance. Rocking up unannounced at the beginning of the December 18th Nitro, Blayze rocked up, told everyone she would be known as Medusa, before taking the current WWF Women’s Title into the trash. Great segment, a reminder why you just cannot keep your eyes off of Nitro.

2) Retirement Talk – The big talk in the WWF is whether Shawn Michaels will be forced to retire, due to complications from his real life attack in Syracuse a couple of months prior. Michaels sits down with Tod Pettengil for an interview, and gets choked up and angry when Pettengil asks him if it’s all over. He wants back in.

3) Overrun is the new normal – Ever the innovative company, WCW introduced the “overrun” to wrestling in December 1995, with every Nitro (even the one taped a week in advanced) running well over the originally allotted hour slot. The main event finishes were still the same, but at least they were longer.

4) Doctor, Doctor – Shawn Michaels’ doctor watches Raw, apparently. His sit down assessment of Michaels’ prognosis was another feature of the December 4th episode of Raw – and his prognosis for Michaels’ future isn’t positive.

5) Will You Stop! Mean Gene Okerlund likes asking questions – and he kept asking Sting the same question over and over and over and over again. "What's going on with Lex Luger?" Quite what they were asking Sting to say in response… Sting, never the best promo, got clearly quite exasperated on a number of occasions, and not in a good way.

6) Backlund – It feels a long time since Bob Backlund was a serious main event act, as he was in the latter third of 1994. Still, if it was only to setup a Raw main event with Bret Hart, we got Backlund back on the mic as his usual crazy self. After getting his mic cut, Backlund did the only logical thing… he put the sound man in a chickenwing.

7) "You need a better body to be managed by Jimmy Hart" – 18 months after the steroid trial ended, and in the month where Marcus Bagwell re-emerged looking significantly bigger than when he last appeared, Jimmy Hart turned down the chance to manage Sergeant Craig Pitman. Hart asked Pitman to remove his shirt, before saying that Pitman would need a body like Luger’s to be managed by Jimmy Hart.

8) Diesel, Owen, Yoko and... Jeff Hardy? Owen Hart defeated Jeff Hardy on the December 11th Raw – although that’s most certainly not why this is in the list. After the match, Yokozuna delivered a painful looking Banzai drop to Hardy before Diesel came out to make the save. Diesel and Yokozuna’s energetic 30 second interaction suggested those two might have had a decent pay per view match.

9) Orndorff Stretcher Job – In a desparate and ultimately futile attempt to get heat on the Horseman in the Carolinas, Paul Orndorff did a stretcher job after being piledriven by Arn Anderson after running down the Horseman. It gave Orndorff a reason to be off TV, and should’ve got the Horseman some boos for the main event against Sting and Hogan. It didn’t.

10) Christmas Hope? Raw didn’t air in the US on December 25th and because they were losing their Thursday slot anyway, they didn’t promote it – so nobody saw it. But if you were watching in another part of the world, like the UK you would’ve seen a rather good half hour studio show looking at the title picture headed into 1996. And, you know, despite the shit-show of 1995, with Taker, Bret, Diesel and Shawn a top the tree, things don’t look all that bad.