World War 3 1997: WCW Has Two Great Matches and Sixty Problems

An unexpectedly lively opener gets over through contrast. Meng and The Barbarian look like two men who were told the martial-arts gimmick across the ring had insulted their families, while Ernest Miller supplies the speed and the biggest surprise of the match. The opening brawl has energy, the Faces of Fear’s power offense looks excellent, and the crowd responds to the simple escalation. Glacier remains awkward in spots, but the match never asks him to carry more than he can handle. Jimmy Hart’s distraction leads directly to Meng catching Miller in the Tongan Death Grip, giving the heels a clean enough finish after a compact nine minutes.

Saturn and Disco produce a match that is technically functional but emotionally flat. Saturn’s dismissive attitude gives the opening a story, and Disco earns a few useful hope spots, including the ringside sequence where he takes shots at members of the Flock. The problem is that none of it develops into urgency. Saturn looks like the superior wrestler from the first exchange, Disco never feels close to changing the hierarchy, and the audience responds accordingly. The roll-through into the Rings of Saturn is a smart finish and easily the cleanest idea in the match, but it arrives after eight minutes that feel longer than they are.

Nagata and Dragon are good enough to survive a match that keeps interrupting itself. Nagata attacks the injured arm and controls the middle with kicks and submissions, while Dragon’s comeback finally wakes an audience that had drifted away. The late stretch contains the athletic exchanges expected from both men, including Dragon’s moonsault and Dragon Sleeper. Then Sonny Onoo becomes the center of gravity. He distracts the referee, helps Nagata escape, and is involved in the awkward final suplex sequence that gives Nagata the pin. The work is solid and occasionally sharp, but the story ends with more confusion than satisfaction.

The talent is obvious, the suspense is not. Regal and Taylor can wrestle anyone, and the Steiners can make basic offense look violent simply by throwing people farther than seems necessary. That produces several satisfying exchanges, especially when Regal tries to turn the bout into a technical contest and Scott answers with suplexes. The challengers eventually control Scott long enough to create a conventional hot tag, but the audience never seriously believes the titles are changing hands. Rick’s entry accelerates the finish, the Steiners clear the ring, and the top-rope bulldog ends it. The match is competent, physical, and almost completely free of uncertainty.

This is more angle than athletic showcase, which is exactly why it works. Riggs arrives with the eyepatch and attacks before Raven can settle in, turning their ongoing story into a brawl across the rings. The chair becomes both weapon and callback, with Riggs reversing Raven’s familiar drop-toehold spot and briefly getting the revenge the audience understands. Raven then changes the match with the Evenflow DDT. Instead of taking the easy pin, he speaks to Riggs, insists that the punishment hurts him too, and keeps dropping him until the referee counts Riggs out. The ending is manipulative, cruel, and completely in character.

The most interesting part of this match is the opponent who never reaches the ring. Goldberg is shown knocked out backstage after McMichael’s attack, allowing Mongo to reclaim his Super Bowl ring and issue an open challenge. Debra drags Alex Wright into the vacancy, and the replacement bout becomes a three-and-a-half-minute squash. Wright gets a burst of offense and tries to leave, but McMichael overwhelms him with basic power spots before the tombstone ends it. As a piece of storyline housekeeping, it moves several characters from one television segment to the next. As pay-per-view wrestling, it is filler with excellent hindsight.

Following Halloween Havoc is an impossible assignment, so the useful question is whether Guerrero and Mysterio can produce a very good sequel without pretending the original never happened. They can. Eddie slows Rey with suplexes, back work, and opportunistic counters, while Rey repeatedly changes the geometry with springboards and ranas that force the champion to react. A few ambitious sequences misfire, including moments where their timing is less seamless than it had been a month earlier. The audience forgives them because the important beats still land. Eddie survives Rey’s late flurry, catches him on the ropes, and finishes with the Frog Splash.

Hennig and Flair work this as a fight first and a title match second. Flair chases him to the floor, the two use the ringside environment, and an apparent leg injury gives both men a target that shapes the second half. Hennig attacks Flair’s leg, Flair answers by trapping Hennig’s leg in a chair, and the no-disqualification stipulation finally matters when the weapons enter the ring. The match can drag because the brawling is repetitive and the crowd is quieter than the feud deserves. Still, the selling is committed and the finish fits the hatred: Hennig uses the United States title belt to escape the Figure Four and steal the pin.

The first twenty minutes are the annual World War 3 problem in concentrated form. There are too many wrestlers, too many rings, and too many eliminations happening outside the camera’s attention. The spectacle looks huge and communicates almost nothing. Once the field shrinks, the match improves dramatically. WCW’s survivors finally have a visible enemy in the nWo, The Giant becomes the dominant force, and DDP’s involvement gives the crowd someone to believe in. Then the machinery arrives: Hogan appears as the final entrant, a suspiciously enormous Sting descends from the rafters, Kevin Nash is revealed beneath the disguise, and Hall wins. It is memorable television attached to a poor battle royal.