[1992-10-24-WCW-Saturday Night] Up Close w/Nikita Koloff

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Nikita hypes his match with Rude at Havoc, where Rude was supposed to pull double duty. The ultimate in bait and switch.

[Tim Evans]

I don't get why they didn't just have Nikita drop the accent completely here. It was pretty much gone anyways.

[PeteF3]

Nearing the end of the line for Nikita here.

[WingedEagle]

Nikita talks about why the US title is more important to him than World Title. Furthering Rude/Heyman tension.

[garretta]

It looks like both of Rude's matches were way, way overbooked here. Vader as a sub for him in the US title match wasn't the worst idea in the world, but he (Vader) probably should have been wrestling Simmons in Barby's place if he was going to appear at all.

 

Interesting that they teased such a close alliance between Race and Rude, although it would have been a terrible long-term fit. Medusa was fine for him if they were determined to get rid of Heyman.

 

The Nikita promo wasn't much. The reason they didn't have him drop the accent is that he sounded too American to have been born within a thousand miles of Russia. He sounded like what he was: a Minnesota boy who'd trained with the Road Warriors. If he'd wanted to drop the accent, the time to do it was when he turned face originally in '86; Dusty could have crafted some kind of "good American gone wrong comes home to the red, white, and blue" story for him, and they could have said that Magnum's accident had inspired him to renounce Communism and reclaim his American citizenship, although how they would have reconciled him being presented as Ivan Koloff's nephew I have no idea.