[1996-07-07-WCW-Bash at the Beach] Sting & Lex Luger & Randy Savage vs Scott Hall & Kevin Nash & Hulk Hogan

[flyonthewall2983]

Me too, but Jesse always could shine no matter who he was broadcasting with. I liked him better in WCW because he was way more neutral than he was as a heel announcer in WWE. Him and Heenan were the only two guys who could pull being that kind of announcer off. As much as I like Jerry on Raw now, I really didn't like his approach to the role back when he replaced Bobby.

[BackToBionic]

I was only allowed to rent one PPV a month and I favoured WWF so I made my mind up I'd go for International Incident. But our cable system at the time only scrambled the image on PPVs so I would sometimes listen to the WCW PPVs. I remember clearly listening to this so intently and being dumbfounded when the first thing Hogan said was "Tell these fans to shut up!" I wanted to see it so bad that I bought it on VHS a few months later.

 

In retrospect, the Heenan line is pretty awful. I don't think it killed it dead at the time because people were so shocked, but yeah on rewatch it sticks out big time.

[flyonthewall2983]

As far as Heenan, you would have had to know that his character had a particular hatred for Hogan in his WWF career, from the tone in which he said that now (for silly reasons) infamous line. Even from the very beginning, I believe his first promo was that Big John Studd would beat Hulk for the belt. And as Bobby pretty much was on auto-pilot in WCW, to hear him say such a thing didn't register as giving the plot away. I didn't watch the PPV, because our cable company didn't start carrying WCW PPV's every month until later that year. I first saw the segment I believe on the following week's edition of Worldwide. Even then I didn't give the line much credence.

[Childs]

Just watched this as a warm-up for the 1997 set and a few things struck me:

 

1) I know this is remembered almost entirely as an angle, but the match itself was surprisingly good. I loved the way Luger slapped Hall to start things off and then got taken out. Sting worked an energetic face-in-peril segment, with Hall and Nash doing solid work cutting off the ring. Savage went nuts off the hot tag. It was a very good "big stars" tag match.

 

2) The "which side is he on" line from Heenan didn't bother me. He always hated Hogan and frankly, it was a reasonable question to raise at that juncture, given the hovering issue of the mystery partner. I did think he stepped on the moment a little quickly once Hogan had actually begun the leg drops. Stunned silence would have worked better.

 

3) Schiavone was very good throughout, setting the "anything could happen" tone and then finishing with the appropriate disgust.

 

4) Almost every big-picture decision about how to stage this was correct, setting the tone for a hell of a run of booking, which didn't go off the rails for more than a year.

[Death From Above]

The only thing I found weird about this was why take out Luger instead of Savage? Yeah Luger was in WWF but he was still seen by the fans as a "WCW guy". Savage would have been a more interesting guy to run the "oh he's out will he return for the other team which is the thinnest of thin veils as team WWF" bit, for me.

 

Other than that, this was pretty good. Hall, Nash and Hogan come off as almost unstoppable together, and Hogan's promo is amazing other than "New World Organization" which he dropped in there twice, which thankfully isn't the direction they went. Just not as catchy. Seeing fans this legit into an angle is exceedingly rare, as throwing trash at WCW events later became a thing to do, but here is really genuine. Hogan just unleashes all this venom and he really sells it as having been built up inside for a long time, like he's been just dying for a chance to let this out and to stop giving a shit what fans think about him. He really burned out badly later with the long promos, but the early parts of the nWo Hogan was totally money.

 

And I don't mind the Heenan line. It's right in line with the sense of paranoia the announcers built up all match.

 

"Hulk Hogan, you can go to hell." - you can almost picture Tony in tears after this match. He's like a grown up kid that's just been betrayed by the Easter bunny. It rules.

[Loss]

I think Luger was taken out early because people were suspecting him as the third man. Luger making his triumphant return at the end of the match, only to turn, would have fit the storyline with Sting that had been building for months, and also seems like something WCW would have booked at the time.

[Death From Above]

Admittedly I've never seen any of the buildup to this really, aside from highlight packs. I didn't start watching Nitro until around the Hogan/Piper Starrcade build. So there may be a lot more to the Luger thing than I am realizing, granted.

[Loss]

I also think they wanted Hogan to drop the leg on Savage, since at that point they saw that as the money match. Hogan vs Sting became the money match over time, but I can see them thinking Hogan vs Savage was where the money was early on.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

Hogan vs Savage was already planned for Halloween Havoc at that point, and in fact had been for months before that, as Slim Jim would only sponsor the event if that match headlined it.

[El-P]

You can feel Hogan was nervous cutting the promo, but he pulls off a rare *money* promo for the ages here, and I actually got shivers rewatching the whole thing. This is pro-wrestling at its absolute best, this is heat, and Hogan reinvents himself as the biggest draw in wrestling for the next year and a half again. I wonder how Vince and his office reacted when they saw this. They must have saw the writing on the wall at this point.

On Heenan's call, yeah, it fit his character and his long term relationship with Hogan, and he redeems himself afterward with "I told you all along", but shouting "Whose side is he on ?" twice did hurt the moment a bit. Schiavone was exceptionnal during the whole match though, and his call at the end, complete with adding "straight to hell" and dumping his mic down, remains my favourite pro-wrestling call ever. Just perfect. Yeah, this was awesome. WCW could begin to print $$$ now.

[JaymeFuture]

One small thing on the "Whose side is he on" - if they did an angle today in a similar position, and JBL said "Yeh but whose side is Cena on", nobody would pay it any mind more than JBL playing bullshit antagonist because he know there is no way Cena is going heel. Watching it at the time, that was the effect with Hogan. Even if it's said, it was so unfathomable that it never runs through your mind as anything more than rhetoric.

[flyonthewall2983]

For those watching in the arena and live on PPV, and because he still had a following and recognition for being the top hero, the high of seeing him come out (because he'd not been on TV or rarely mentioned by the announcers much for over 2 months by this point) would overwhelm anything anybody was saying. Which is what made the legdrop to Savage all the more powerful an image.

[flyonthewall2983]

Watch Randy Anderson just before Hogan tosses him aside for the legdrop.

[PeteF3]

There's not much I can say about this--and I tired of the "Who's side is he on?" debate a long time ago. Everything about that line has been said and no one's mind is changing.

 

The match is better than I remembered, but how can you even remember the match itself for anything other than the ending? Heat is through the roof throughout, and climaxes with Hogan's fateful legdrop. Hogan follows up with one of the promos of his career, as he takes every bit of trademark Hogan self-aggrandizement, and frustration over the past 2 years of hostile crowds, and purposely turns it up to 11. For the first time in 6 years, Hulk is interesting again.

[soup23]

Brilliantly put together match with a big fight feel and a ton of emotion waiting to boil over. The match portions here were better than I remembered as only the awkward Nash elbow to Savage was the only hiccup. Sting played a really good face in peril and Luger leaving at the hand of Sting put a cloud of doubt over all the proceedings. I hate Bobby's call and actually think he gets an insane pass on it because it's Hennan and if Tony said the same line, he would be crucified in some parts. Tony here is wonderful during the promo. Ditto Gene and his disgust at everything. The promo Hogan delivers is one of the best of his career and really skyrockted his heel turn. ***

[BruiserBrody]

The WON 2 or 3 weeks before this speculates that MABEL is on the shortlist of 3rd Outsiders. That made me laugh.

[TheU_2001]

This was one of my biggest mark our moments of all time. This match had a huge "big fight" feel to it, and was brilliantly put together by the bookers and workers involved. And then when the moment comes that my hero, Hulk Hogan, turns heel. Awesome! As a teenager watching the PPV, I was marking out big time, as I was cheering for Hall and Nash. I was a huge mark for what would become the nWo, and thought as a faction, up until the watering down period late 1996, early 1997; they were one of the best groups. This match, although not the best match ever by any means, was just put together in a great way, and contains perhaps the best heel turn ever.

[raul]

"hulk hogan, you can go to hell [...] straight to hell". sting dragging macho man out of the ring like a dead body was awesome.

[flyonthewall2983]

He gets a lot of crap online, and maybe deservedly so in a lot of cases, but Hulk Hogan deserves credit for making this turn. It could not have been easy for him to do. Whatever was going on in arenas where he was getting a tepid reaction at best, people still depended (financially and personally) on his image as a good guy. As touched on earlier you can really see all of that in his face just before he drops the leg. It's not a classic Hulk Hogan run-in save, he basically walks down and has a blank expression. He'd even go on to say in later interviews he was nervous that people wouldn't buy it, or it would fail. But obviously it didn't, and helped cement his legacy even beyond what it had been by then.

[tim]

The match itself is so overshadowed by the angle, but it was actually really good. The sequence that took Luger out of the match was really cool and energetic. Afterward Sting shows a lot of fire and then we go into Sting as face in peril. It's really great thanks to some really, really excellent commentary and Savage turning in a great apron performance. Savage's hot tag is really good too. The commentary was just great though, really perfect and made this match feel so special.

 

And then the angle. Well, it's on the very short list of contenders for being the greatest angle of all time. Hogan was out of this world great. What a promo. And the crowd reaction. The commentary was again fantastic. Everything about this was perfect. Truly feels earth shattering.

[G. Badger]

I thought this was a very good match. Its been so long since I have seen any of these guys actually put on a good physical match besides Sting (and Savage). I'm not even saying that in terms of it being 2021, I'm saying that as if it were 1999. Seriously, you couldn't get me to watch a match with these guys in it 2-3 years later but, I was eating this up - infamous Hogan heel turn and all watching this last night. Its not that it was a pretty bout but they fought with purpose and drive to sell the story. Certainly not the disinterested and disrespectful wrestlers they would become. And I say disrespectful because of how they phoned it in and how they steered the angles and company into the shitter.