[1997-01-25-WCW-NWO Souled Out] Show opening

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

This PPV opening in black and white with sirens and the NWO riding in on huge trucks bearing NWO flags still looks cutting edge 16 years later. I'm sure people who ordered that PPV had to think "What the fuck am I watching?" This show doesn't have a great rep, but looking back, I think even attempting it was so ballsy that I'd still call it a success. How could WCW's production team pull something this sophisticated off and make such basic mistakes on the flip side?

[soup23]

Certainly an extreme tonal shift in what you accustomed to in regards to show openings. Neat stuff to watch.

[Kevin Ridge]

That was a pretty sweet opening with the black and white and all the NWO arriving in trucks. It is their PPV and they gave it their own feel. Excellent production.

[bradhindsight]

Awesome concept but rolling this out in Cedar Rapids, Iowa always confused me.

[Robert S]

I'm sure people who ordered that PPV had to think "What the fuck am I watching?" This show doesn't have a great rep, but looking back, I think even attempting it was so ballsy that I'd still call it a success.

Financially I guess it wasn't: It drew the second lowest buyrate of the year (Slamboree was a bit lower) and one of the lowest in WCW history. I remember the whole thing just beeing so uneven: on the one hand you had the really different feel of the show (production wise etc.), on the other hand there were these endless Miss nWo segments, a pretty bad show wrestling wise and a bad crowd. The WCW guys getting screwed was almost comical, but I guess that was the whole premise of the show. It might have been better if they did a nWo Clash of the Champions followed by a normal WCW PPV instead of the other way around like they did.

[stomperspc]

I don’t get what they were going for with the presentation of Souled Out. The NWO has the President of WCW on its side, a guy portrayed as a Hollywood star (even if they do make it clear that he is a bigger star in his own head), and a billionaire backing them. They are portrayed as being a worthy start-up promotion that can compete with WCW. Yet when they get their chance to stand on their own, they show up to the arena on the back of garbage trucks, hold a beauty contest with sub-par contestants, and put on a production that is supposed to look low rent?

 

From a pure storyline perspective, it feels out of context. The NWO seemed to enjoy putting on a low rent, poor production which never made sense to me, Wouldn't they want to have a Hollywood-type production, models in the beauty contest, and limo rides to the show?

[BackToBionic]

Yeah, I think hosting this in a more "rowdy" wrestling city would've been a better idea. Philly could've backfired on them because ECW had a cult fanbase there, but maybe somewhere like Chicago (where they ran a red hot Nitro the week before) or even Nassau Coliseum (I think they started running shows there around this time) would've helped their cause with trying this "different" PPV.

[El-P]

Total bad-ass opening. On par with what ECW would do. I remember that on the German broadcast, they actually put Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall in the background, which made it even better.

On the show itself, there was a lot of stuff that was WTF material (like the Miss nWo contest with zero hot girl or the annoying camera work), but yeah, it was so different and balsy that it gets a A for effort only from me as far as production goes. It could have been done better, and they should have tried to improve it the following year, but I guess the fact it bombed on PPV just killed the whole concept, which is too bad.

[PeteF3]

Bischoff and the Outsiders ride in on a dumptruck flanked by a police escort. So begins one of the most out-of-the-box PPV concepts in wrestling history, that sadly simply didn't work. We'll see if what we see holds up but this show was critically lambasted and called a Worst PPV Ever candidate as soon as it was over, even though the production and "look" was praised at the time. I also wonder if holding this event on a Saturday had anything to do with the lack of buys. I don't know if there was a legit reason for that or if it was different for difference's sake, but Sunday evening PPV had become an ingrained concept in wrestling by this point. Part of me is actually a bit surprised to hear Ted DiBiase shout, "WCW sucks!"

[drew wardlaw]

Juxtapose this show with the Royal Rumble from this year and the two companies couldn't be further apart. However, nwo is supposed to be this anti-authoritarian badass gang but they are escorted by small town Midwest cops on publically funded dump trucks. Ehhhhhh

[drew wardlaw]

Whoa just after the Jericho/Chono match there is a photo montage of mailed in entries for the "Miss NWO" contest. No exaggeration, this is the bleakest thing I've ever seen in a wrestling show.

[KB8]

Cool opening to what was certainly a ballsy concept, even if financially it never really hit. Everyone rolling into the arena in the back of a garbage truck was certainly interesting.