Dark Side Of The Ring season 4

[Drunk Doink]

Sandman admitting he beat his wife in DSOTR might be a first. Of course, most of the other guys are dead.

This series is also toast. It's been bad for awhile but it sucks at this point and hopefully dies with Vice.

 

[joestevens29]

Vice sold Black Saturday short on this one, this should’ve been a two parter. There wasn’t a whole lot of emphasis on Vince.

I was kinda surprised at the Vince bashing they showed at the end.

 

[BruinDust]

Yep...the death of WCW for me was constantly trying to chase the Outsiders and Hogan/NWO swerve for years. The NWO stuff got boring after several months and definitely after a year, but they insisted on trying to chase that one swerve to bring the fans back.

AOL/Time Warner merger aside, I felt it went downhill the minute they decided to increase Nitro from 2 hours to 3, along with now a 2 hour Thunder show. It wasn't like Bischoff had a choice, Ted Turner wanted Thunder for his TBS station. 2 hours became 5. Way too much.

Yet, NWO was still red-hot into mid-1998. The fans were begging for a face version to cheer for and they got it. It's rarely acknowledge how over NWO Wolfpac was. You look at them in mid-1998 they had a hot angle with NWO Wolfpac vs. NWO Hollywood, and a scorching hot Goldberg as US champ with his unbeaten streak. Those two angles could of carried them all the way to Starrcade.

Instead they hot-shot Goldberg beating Hogan to pop a rating against WWF Raw's momentum. Should of been saved for Starrcade. And Hogan didn't want Hall in NWO Wolfpac which made no sense storyline wise but Hogan never wanted to see the Red and Black version without him flourish. He didn't want all the "cool" characters on the other side.

If executed right, they could of came out of Starrcade 98 with an still unbeaten Goldberg as WH champ, a uber-popular babyface nWo Wolfpac selling T-shirts and merch by the truckload, and killed off the NWO Hollywood group once and for all.

Instead we got the finger poke of doom, and the downward spiral couldn't be stopped at that point.

I still say one of WWE's biggest missed opportunities was not doing NWO Red and Black Wolfpac babyface faction post WM 18. It would of been a license to print money.

 

[AtlantaWhaler]

AOL/Time Warner merger aside, I felt it went downhill the minute they decided to increase Nitro from 2 hours to 3, along with now a 2 hour Thunder show. It wasn't like Bischoff had a choice, Ted Turner wanted Thunder for his TBS station. 2 hours became 5. Way too much.

Yet, NWO was still red-hot into mid-1998. The fans were begging for a face version to cheer for and they got it. It's rarely acknowledge how over NWO Wolfpac was. You look at them in mid-1998 they had a hot angle with NWO Wolfpac vs. NWO Hollywood, and a scorching hot Goldberg as US champ with his unbeaten streak. Those two angles could of carried them all the way to Starrcade.

Instead they hot-shot Goldberg beating Hogan to pop a rating against WWF Raw's momentum. Should of been saved for Starrcade. And Hogan didn't want Hall in NWO Wolfpac which made no sense storyline wise but Hogan never wanted to see the Red and Black version without him flourish. He didn't want all the "cool" characters on the other side.

If executed right, they could of came out of Starrcade 98 with an still unbeaten Goldberg as WH champ, a uber-popular babyface nWo Wolfpac selling T-shirts and merch by the truckload, and killed off the NWO Hollywood group once and for all.

Instead we got the finger poke of doom, and the downward spiral couldn't be stopped at that point.

I still say one of WWE's biggest missed opportunities was not doing NWO Red and Black Wolfpac babyface faction post WM 18. It would of been a license to print money.

I just think they dragged the nWo into the ground. The Hogan turn was one of the biggest storylines in history and gained WCW a ton of viewers and media. But, for the few years, they tried a swerve like every week. New members, new nWo's, face turns followed by heal turns....it was tiresome.

 

[BruinDust]

I just think they dragged the nWo into the ground. The Hogan turn was one of the biggest storylines in history and gained WCW a ton of viewers and media. But, for the few years, they tried a swerve like every week. New members, new nWo's, face turns followed by heal turns....it was tiresome.

It does take a turn in late 1996 when Bischoff is revealed as an NWO member and in storyline forces WCW wrestlers to join. You then get a bunch of guys added who didn't belong (except Bagwell who fit the group). Konnan was added later wasn't a huge swerve but also fit the faction. Conversely, I liked Curt Henning's turn but once that was over, he didn't fit in. Dennis Rodman doesn't get enough credit for the mainstream spotlight he brought in '97 and '98 coming from the biggest show in sports at the time, Jordan's Bulls.

Come late 1997 into 1998 you get bad swerves like Bryan Adams and Dusty Rhodes. Bret Hart as this pseudo-member of NWO Hollywood that they never followed up on. I felt Sting joining Wolfpac was ridiculous and made a angle built on blurring reality into just another wrestling angle. Luger joining wasn't much better. Bad decisions scrambling from Savage's injury and Hogan using his stroke to keep Hall in his group. Bischoff taking on more and more of a wrestling role wasn't needed or wanted. See Road Wild 1998 and the terrible TV leading up to it (NWO Nightcap anyone?). It's been said that once Bischoff became an on-screen character and "one of the boys", it was all over.

As a storyline, by early 1998 it had run it's course and it's only the splintering of the group kept it interesting. The two rehashes really hurt the long-term view on the NWO angle. As bad as the 1999 nWo Elite rehash angle was, the NWO 2000 rehash that Russo tried was 10x worse.

While the story got old, there is no denying the incredible popularity of the faction itself and as a faction and not a overarching storyline, there was still plenty of money to be made had it been executed correctly and allowed the babyface Wolfpac faction to continue on.

 

[Leon Lucius Black]

I went back and caught up on some previous seasons, man that Breaking the Cycle Graham Dynasty episode was hard to watch.

Nicole is such a strong women.