Ted Dibiase tried to pass this off as some new, cutting edge filming technique, but honestly, it just looked dreadful. To make matters worse, the majority of this one was shot using a shaky, poor-quality camera that the production crew had been cutting to intermittently throughout the show. Though it did have its moments, the bout between the two tag team partners went about twice as long as it needed to. That, however, was the least of anyone's problems with this match. In the end, Chris Jericho got pushed off the top through a table on the outside, then kicked in the head and pinned by Masahiro Chono to make it nWo 1 - 0 WCW tonight. Whilst that was funny, the rest of the pro-nWo stuff quickly stopped being entertaining, and took away from what was otherwise a good opening match.
Towards the start, Eric Bischoff noted on commentary just how successful the end had proven to be, and how they didn't have to give away tickets for free just to get people to come, a clear dig at the WWF Royal Rumble 1997 held the previous week which was famous for being heavily papered. This must have been some different variation of the word 'babe' that I hadn't heard of because these girls were anything but.Īs the match itself, it was about as good as it could be given the overall distraction of this whole event basically being one big gimmick. We were also shown a couple of average looking housewives hanging out on motorcycles. Here's what went down at the first -and only- NWO Souled Out, live from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Yet in a classic example of style of substance, the cool aesthetic of this show didn't exactly translate into quality, nor buyrates for that matter.
It was, in theory, a good idea, and at first glance, nWo Souled Out certainly looked a hell of a lot different than your typical pro wrestling event. So you can understand the reasoning of WCW Executive Vice President and on-screen nWo boss Eric Bischoff when he created an entire Pay Per View centered exclusively around the nWo. With this angle alone, WCW had cemented their reputation as the number one professional wrestling company of the 1990s, kicking off the decade's biggest boom period. Having dominated the professional wrestling landscape throughout the second half of 1996, there was no doubting that the New World Order was the hottest thing in professional wrestling.