WCW Monday Nitro - Monday, 01/04/99

WCW Monday Nitro - Monday, 01/04/99

By Wade


Hal W. sends the following arena report:

I and my friend Mark ventured to tha' Dome for my first live Nitro. We got there around 6:45. The place wasn't so packed, but that was to change quickly. Around 7:30, Dave Penzer comes out and starts talking to the crowd. He introduces some DJ from one of the local stations, 99X, who comes out and starts talking. While he's talking, our favorite steroid poster child comes out for some cheap heat. He talks about how Atlanta sucks, etc. and proceeds to beat up the guy. Kinda humorous.

Before they go live, Wildcat Willie came out to NO heat. He was filler, and boring filler was he.

By the way, our seats were close to the top of one of the lower sections, and they were piping in TNT into the monitors hanging from the next level. There was a 15-20 second delay between what was happening live and what was on TV.

The crowd was into it at times, but WCW could've put on a much more hype show for them to be in their own back yard. Most of the time, the crowd was quiet. The best moments:

Worst: Despite the fact that I had read ahead of time that the original Wolfpac would be reformed, it was interesting to see the reactions of the 30,000+ marks in attendance. I hate to say it, but it was awesome seeing Goldberg get punked. And even from where we were sitting, you could HEAR the crackle of the cattle prod that Scott Hall was using. After they went off the air, Goldberg got loose. As the nWo made their way to the back, about 12 of the Falcons came out. Why they didn't come out earlier, I don't know. There was a lot of hyping of things going on in the ring, talk of the Falcons, hugging, etc. Too little, too late.

All in all, it was a fun time, but whether or not I'll go again is up in the air.


Brian E. hailing from Rome, Georgia (Arn Anderson's hometown) sends the following arena report:

Probably the biggest pop for a wrestler was, surprise, Ric Flair. Goldberg, when he came in at the end, received a huge one also. Hogan and Bischoff drew the most heat. Hall and Nash received a huge pop and a lot of booing after their turn.

I didn't notice the ending of the Saturn-Jericho match from where I was sitting. It was one of the better matches of the evening. Jericho received a fairly high level of praise from the audience.

I don't know if you could hear it on TV or not, but when Steiner was wrestling and afterward the crowd was chanting, "Steroid."

At the end, the reformed nWo got pettled with trash from the audience all the way to the entrance/exit. I think that Nitro has already gone off by then, based on the monitors, which we saw the whole Goldberg incident on. When Goldberg finally got up he challenged Nash to come back and wrestle him if Nash has the balls for it. A good number of the Atlanta Falcons football team came down to the ring to be with Goldberg. He challenged Nash to fight another time if he didn't want to fight tonight.

After the final match, the two friends who I went with and I started chanting "We got screwed!" We hoped to get the whole audience to do it with us, but to no evail. I said, "Where do we get a refund?" What I really hated was what happened after NITRO. It is extremely cold in Atlanta right now. We had to stand outside with a huge crowd waiting for MARTA (a rail system in Atlanta). I mean, we paid about $30 apeice to see what is one of the worst NITROs that I have seen. Then, we had to stand in the cold waiting for the train while the people who ripped us off (Bischoff primarily) were no doubt in a nice warm area.

Just a personal thought. Why is it that a guy that hasn't wrestled in months and has cost WCW money on pay per views and announces that he is retiring, is allowed to come back after this long absence and win the belt without any pretense of wrestling. Is Eric Bischoff that stupid? Needless to say there were not a lot of happy people there tonight after the show.


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