WCW Nitro 7/6/98 Match Ratings and Commentary
Goldberg (Credit-WWE)
For the 25th anniversary of Goldberg’s first historic title win, we look back at the classic episode of Monday Nitro from the Georgia Dome during the Monday Night Wars. Curious how we rank matches? We’ve got a rubric for that.
WCW Nitro 7/6/98
Booker T def. Dean Malenko for the WCW TV Championship: ★
Raven def. Kanyon: ★
Scott Putski def. Riggs: ★
Chris Jericho def. Ultimo Dragon to retain the WCW Cruiserweight Championship: ★
Chavo Guerrero Jr. def. Johnny Swinger: ★
Public Enemy def. Alex Wright and Disco Inferno: ★
Goldberg def. Scott Hall to retain the WCW United States Championship: ★
Juventud Guerrera def. Psychosis: ★★
The Giant def. “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan: ★
DDP def. Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart: ★
Sting and Lex Luger def. Kidman and Sick Boy: ★
Goldberg def. “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship: ★
Goldberg and Hogan (Credit-WWE)
Show Highlight—
Goldberg vs. Hogan. At that time I thought there was no way in hell they’d actually follow through with it. It was too big of a match for TV. During the Monday Night Wars it was the expectation that you’d get a three minute match or a fuck finish to kick the can to the next week.
It’s easy now in hindsight to think of how boneheaded it was to give away Goldberg v. Hogan in the Georgia Dome for “free” but Nitro and WCW in general was always a TV show first and that was always their frame of reference. You can see them thinking a rating pop would be a reinvestment to bolster other revenue streams and regain dominance gradually over WWE. But what it did do was give equity to WCW fans and allow them not to be completely devastated by the resurgent WWE. And who knows, maybe delaying the Goldberg/Hogan match to say, Starrcade at the Georgia Dome, would have been a misstep as well. Given the living and dying by the Nielsens may have made influential people in WCW think that they wouldn’t have even been around by December. Who knows, who cares—let’s talk about Hogan being shit!
I haven’t watched a “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan match in-full in years and forgot how wonderfully goofy and pathetic his character was in the ring. So much cheap heat and mincing around while playing VERY BROADLY to the crowd. It’s funny too, knowing how gigantic his insecurities were/are that he’d allow himself to be portrayed as being so weak. If you combined his in-ring character with how out of touch and ancient he seemed trying to look like he was effectively absorbing hip hop culture during his promos, it’s fascinating to see his schtick today.
To the match itself, it was shit but who cares. The crowd couldn’t have been happier to see their hometown hero win big. They built Goldberg’s streak throughout the show (all the while showing him getting wins over talent that wouldn’t have won the TV Title but, well, that’s WCW for ya) and how he played in that very stadium years previously. It was a cathartic, real reaction and celebration to an extremely unlikely outcome realized.
As cathartic as the crowd response was, I loved listening to Bobby Heenan call the finish. He got shit for “spoiling” Hogan’s heel turn prematurely, and the drinking, and a noticeable lost enthusiasm for the product after how much of a mess WCW was, but on this night, Heenan was not playing The Brain or The Weasel, he was Ray Heenan, The Fan he once was as a poor midwestern kid. I’ve see the clips of Goldberg winning the title a million times in montages but watching it back and giving it time to breathe, it’s music to your ears to hear Heenan happy again.
What Worked—
Shooting the Georgia Dome. Just over 40,000 fans attended the show, an insane achievement so beyond what anyone would assume WCW was capable of. But it was also nice to see the WCW production truck not shying away from showing curtains and empty sections and how the stadium itself was blocked off for TV. There’s a viewpoint in wrestling that venues have to be shot to never reveal how many people aren’t in a building—which I’d typically agree with—but the way this was shot in the daylight made it seem like a bigger deal, oddly enough, in what they were aiming for and what they did mange to pull off. Sometimes it’s great to see the reach, too. I don’t look at the Texas Stadium match between Flair and Kerry and think of the empty sections in the nosebleeds, I think of how impressive it is to run such a big building and have that turnout.
Nitro Party. When I was a dumbass 12 year old, I earnestly believed a WCW Nitro Party with its Mug Root Beer and Glacier matches would be the perfect aphrodisiac to scrump college chicks. Looking back at this now, it’s a stealthily good idea to show WCW being a communal, watching experience. Now there’s all sorts of gatherings in-person and online for all other aspects of geek culture but there’s nothing like this for wrestling today. I’m surprised it hasn’t resurfaced, what with WWE being enough of a global brand where it’s not always this secret, guilty pleasure.
Influx of real athletes. In the spring of 1998 WWE was winning and it was clear as fuck they were cooler and WCW would need a similar reinvention to ever hope to catch Vince again. You wonder why they didn’t double-down and clearly brand themselves more as the place for professional athletes. On this show alone you had Malone, Rodman, Dikta, Kevin Greene, and some NASCAR hick, to name a few. You’d think what with TNT broadcasting the NBA and NFL at that point someone would see the value of having synergy and getting athletes to do cameos for Nitro. But, maybe that lack of piecemeal effort by the Turner executives proves how little so many wanted wrestling broadcasted.
Da Coach. Again, another bit you see 25 years later that you had no memory of. All I could think about watching this was that infamous Deadspin thread of all those great Ditka stories and knowing that recording his segment must have had a great story of pulling teeth, drinking, belching back up Combos or god knows what else.
What Didn’t Work—
Opening Hogan promo. Funny how when we think of the Monday Night Wars/Attitude Era it’s Triple H that gets castigated as the boring one who cut snooze-fest, 20 minute promos to start shows when it was Hogan who was the most egregious offender.
The wrestling itself. Again, revisiting this with the legacy of the product in mind, I expected some banger cruiserweight match and a good mid-card match but every match was terrible, short, and had a lousy finish. I thought the abbreviated, bad in-ring product was just WWE then.
Chavo The Barber Beefcake. This was damn near too embarrassing to watch. So Chavo got his hair cut against his will, so he did what everyone does, tries to cover it subtly with a hardhat. After he beat Swinger he pulled a Brother Bruti and went for some struttin’ and a cuttin’ by neatly trimming a tiny section of Swinger’s hair he couldn’t possibly miss. People shit on Jungle Boy or Sammy for being cringe and not worthy of their TV time but Chavo was just fucking skin-crawling initially.
Show Cringe—
Goldberg vs. Scott Hall. Was Hall fucked up? It’s like Hall made a point to intentionally blur the lines and make you think maybe he was as his movements in general were awfully jerky and he seemed incapable of stand still. Smart fans can’t watch this and think something was up, like Hall was intentionally trying to make Goldberg look bad here, as their timing was noticeable off as they missed a choke slam spot early in the match, a shoulder tackle did as well, and Goldberg seemed to be legit mad and put his hands around Hall’s throat for a second. But maybe that was Hall’s plan all along—if it’s going to be a trainwreck squash, might as well make it interesting on repeat viewing?
Goldberg and Hogan (Credit-WWE)
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