Road Wild 1997: WCW Gives Lex Luger Five Days With the Belt and the Bikers Give the Finish Back

Harlem Heat and Vicious and Delicious open the show with ten minutes that feel designed to prove motorcycles can idle longer than wrestlers can hold a chinlock. The heel-versus-heel alignment gives the crowd no obvious emotional lane, and the elevated outdoor ring makes the floor exchanges awkward rather than dangerous. Booker T supplies most of the movement, Scott Norton provides useful power, and Buff Bagwell can still bump when the match asks him to. Jacqueline's arrival gives the segment its lasting purpose, helping Harlem Heat secure the win and beginning her association with the team. The finish advances something. The match before it mostly passes time.

Konnan and Rey Mysterio Jr. work a match that is better than the phrase 'Mexican Death Match' would lead anyone to imagine and less spectacular than a 1997 Rey match usually promises. Rey enters with a damaged knee, so Konnan spends most of the bout attacking it instead of chasing aerial exchanges. That choice gives the wrestling logic, even if it also removes the exact thing many viewers came to see. Rey's one-legged comebacks are excellent, the mask tease adds genuine hostility, and the cradle DDT into the Tequila Sunrise makes the finish feel earned. TJR liked the psychology more than several other reviewers did. Both readings are fair: thoughtful, useful and slower than the billing.

The elimination tag contains enough talent to be good and enough storyline baggage to keep interrupting that possibility. Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko work with the crispness expected from them, while Steve McMichael is functional when the match asks for simple power offense. Jeff Jarrett is the problem by design and by execution. His decision to pull McMichael on top of himself for an intentional elimination advances the Debra story, but it also leaves Malenko to absorb the predictable two-on-one finish. The bout is coherent, just dramatically backward: the wrestlers most capable of carrying the match are treated as support for the least compelling feud. Nine and a half minutes is mercifully short.

Alex Wright and Chris Jericho wrestle a match that looks good on paper, looks competent in motion, and somehow never becomes exciting enough to justify the combination. Wright is improving rapidly as a heel, using exaggerated stalling and cheap shortcuts to make the Sturgis crowd react to him. Jericho brings the cleaner offense, including the Lionsault and double powerbomb, while Wright takes several excellent bumps that make the champion feel vulnerable. The closing run finally finds pace before Wright reverses a roll-up and grabs the tights. Scott Keith rated it three-and-a-quarter stars in his later revisit; Leighty was cooler at two-and-three-quarters. The middle ground fits: good mechanics, modest chemistry, useful title work.

Ric Flair versus Syxx should be a strange little gem. Instead, it feels like one wrestler is sprinting through an audition while the other is trying to remember why he agreed to be there. Syxx gets most of the offense, mixes his kicks with the Bronco Buster and top-rope legdrop, and repeatedly creates openings for Flair to take over. Flair's responses are brief, the rhythm keeps stopping, and the Figure Four never becomes the dramatic centerpiece it normally would. The finish is at least perfectly Flair: a low blow followed by feet on the ropes. Leighty and Scott Keith both saw a major disappointment here. The crowd recognizes Flair's star power, but recognition cannot manufacture chemistry.

Curt Hennig and Diamond Dallas Page have enough natural physical chemistry to make their nine minutes feel competitive even when the booking starts throwing furniture into the hallway. Hennig bumps with his familiar theatrical snap, Page keeps the pace urgent, and the exposed-turnbuckle sequence gives the match a nastier edge. Then the referee goes down. Then he goes down again. Then Ric Flair appears, eats a Diamond Cutter, and the actual feud has to wait for everyone else to leave the frame. Hennig wins with the Perfect-Plex, but the finish makes a straightforward rivalry feel needlessly crowded. Tommy Hall called it the best match of the night; that says as much about the show as it does about this bout.

The Giant versus Randy Savage is not trying to be epic despite the commentary treating every late-card match like the signing of the Louisiana Purchase. Savage attacks the knee because fighting The Giant straight up would be lunacy, and that gives him just enough control to make the comeback matter. The Giant's athleticism remains the attraction: he absorbs the leg work, survives Savage's aerial offense and catches him cleanly for the chokeslam. There is little drama beyond that basic structure, but six minutes is exactly the right length. Several reviewers graded it more generously than the surrounding card because it never becomes complicated. In Road Wild 1997, simplicity is practically a superpower.

The Outsiders and Steiner Brothers follow the classic tag formula closely enough that the eventual payoff should be automatic. Scott Steiner absorbs an enormous heat segment, Hall and Nash repeatedly cut off the tag, and Rick finally erupts into the match to give the crowd the release it has been waiting for since winter. The Steiners hit the top-rope bulldog, the title change is sitting directly in front of WCW, and Kevin Nash pulls referee Nick Patrick out of the ring for the disqualification. The Outsiders keep the belts. The bikers chant their opinion. The work is mostly fine; TJR even rated it a solid 2.75 stars. The booking turns fifteen minutes of structure into a dead-end road.

Lex Luger enters Road Wild as world champion because six nights earlier WCW produced one of Nitro's defining feel-good moments. That should make this rematch emotionally enormous. Instead, Hogan controls most of a slow sixteen minutes, Luger gets a brief comeback, the nWo surrounds the ring, and a fake Sting hits Luger with a baseball bat before Hogan regains the title. The wrestling is dull and the booking is worse because the title change on Nitro now feels less like a breakthrough than a rental agreement. Hogan needed the championship for the eventual Sting program, but Starrcade was still months away. The crowd responds by throwing debris. Sometimes audience feedback is the cleanest review available.