WCW Worldwide

It was a moment that shocked the world. The biggest hero of his era and arguably the closest thing wrestling has seen to a superhero come to life, Hulk Hogan, dropped the leg on his friend “Macho Man” Randy Savage at WCW’s Bash At The Beach 1996 PPV.

That leg drop sent shockwaves through the wrestling industry as the Hostile Takeover by the men formerly known as WWF’s Diesel and Razor Ramon (Kevin Nash and Scott Hall) had the BIGGEST of big guns as their “third man.”

Let’s back up for a second though and look at this through the eyes of this (at the time) young man who grew up on 6:05 Saturday Night.

It was an exciting time for wrestling fans. This period of WCW is the only time in the business where we gathered and purchased all of the PPVs. Up until this point, I was a kid listening to scrambled PPVs. Later on, I purchased WrestleMania and maybe the Royal Rumble every year, and that was it. Purchasing all the PPVs during this era felt reasonable though as there was an excitement and electricity surrounding each of them.

Another thing that jumps out to me when we revisit this historic moment is that my dad, my uncle, my cousin, and I all thought the “third man” was going to be Bret “The Hitman” Hart.

Why?

I literally have no idea. This was a couple of years before I even got on the Internet, so it’s not like any of us read it there. I’m not even sure that any of us would have known about wrestling newsletters at the time, but for some reason that was our guess.

We were wrong about that, and what we got was way bigger and more important.

Hulk Hogan becoming Hollywood Hogan was truly a seismic shift in WCW and the wrestling landscape. As cool as Hall and Nash were, it was that moment that took this storyline from intriguing to monumental.

With the trio in place, WCW did the next most important thing when they absolutely nailed the nWo aesthetic. The black and white videos, the shirts, and the music were all pitch-perfect. Twenty-five years later, that logo and the nWo shirt still stand as an iconic look. Everything about it still exudes “cool”, and more importantly it did back then as well.

Wrestling did not become cool in the 1990s because of the nWo, but the stable is a big part of it.

Christmas and the Holidays are here, time to whip out the ol’ WCW end-of-year catalog to mark down what wrestling goodies we want Santa to bring. Inside are several pages of forgotten and now hard-to-find merchandise that go beyond the usual shirts and toys. Holiday ornaments, beanie baby knockoffs, and more!

1999 saw the end of the classic WCW logo, and the introduction to the new STARBURST logo, seen here on a Nitro shirt. Since professional wrestling in the 90’s was so extreme, the shirt has a matching back design that lays out what viewing professional wrestling does to a young mind. Psychotic outbursts, deranged behavior, foaming at the mouth??

If watching Nitro was terrible for your health, imagine being backstage at it every week. Someone should’ve warned Al Green about the potential dangers, his brain was totally melted by the end of the year.

Poor guy.

Featured on the front cover, WCW Mayhem is the hot new video game shown being played by Santa and his elf. This was the first Nintendo 64 WCW title that wasn’t put out by THQ as the rights of WCW had been acquired by EA in early 1998. However during that time, THQ ended up releasing the world champion of wrestling video games in WCW/nWo Revenge, so EA had something to prove with their initial entry. Visually, Mayhem was an upgrade to what we were used to, and the title incorporated a lot more real-life audio in form of Schiavone/Heenan commentary and wrestlers’ entrance themes… but that’s about all it had going for it. Sloppy controls, poor gameplay design and questionable hit detection really kept this one from shining.

Regardless, 1999 was the hottest year for professional wrestling, so I’m sure it sold well even with WCW now cemented as the number two professional wrestling league behind Vince McMahon’s WWF.

Always found it strange how the foam WCW title was always the early 90’s version of the world championship and not Big Gold. According to the Big Gold book, there were no copyright issues with that belt design, so WCW was free to do whatever they wanted with the title despite it originating back to the NWA days. IIRC, the only person who made wearable cheapie Big Gold Belts were Manley Toy Quest around 1999. There was a version of the title packed into their Action Sets, which featured items to play dress up as your favorite wrestler, and an electronic talking version of Big Gold:

There might have been another foam Big Gold that was packed into a WCW children’s party set, but my memory and Google searches are failing me. The point still stands, if you went to a WCW live event, the only foam titles I ever saw for sale were the ones that the elf above is holding! Also, the less said about the WCW Bean Bag Brawlers, the better, but I know there’s a hardcore group of toy collectors that are hunting down the rarer ones from 2000. Nash, Goldberg, Sting, and Bret Hart are the more common ones, I believe. It’s the Jeff Jarrett, Booker, Buff Bagwell and Scott Steiner ones that go for $$$ nowadays.

The Vampiro ones are all worthless, so if you have any of those, get in contact with me, and I’ll take it off your hands for nothing. Consider it a favor.

Nothing says professionalism at the workplace than a WCW desktop calendar! I got this off eBay a while back, and I’m actually surprised at how well put together it all is. The amount of work done by Chad Damiani for something like this is impressive considering how few would’ve seen the finished product. It’s something I’ve been wanting to scan but the daunting task of it all keeps me from ripping it apart.

Instead, just know and remember that April 20th will forever and always be Brad Armstong Day.

“Badstreet” name drop!!

Just like getting socks for Christmas. I’m so, so sorry.

The WWE’s version of wrestling history has seemingly completely erased Konnan from the list of top WCW stars back from this time-frame. If they ever go beyond the roster of WCW World Champions, it’s usually an Eddie Guerrero or Rey Mysterio mention but never K-Dogg who was completely on fire in 98/99. This hilariously captioned “Straight Up Gee’s Forever” marked the death of the nWo Wolfpac after Lex Luger turned on Konnan during the nWo Elite formation. Here’s a closer look of that Wolf cartoon on the shirt sleeve that’s hard to make out in this catalog:

nWo 4 life. STR8 Up G’Z 4-Ever.

You better be into being in this fandom for the long hauls, boys. You’ll never get out.

Flip through the catalog and comment below on the items that you’d give an arm and leg to own nowadays. Some of these are actually tough to find, I can’t recall seeing that “Goldberg Man or Machine” shirt ever on eBay. I’d imagine that Hogan pennant would probably fetch something around $50 to $100 now too. Since it’s the Holidays and all, why don’t you go over to the WCW Worldwide Big Cartel store and pick up our newest pin:

I JUST watched Santa’s Slay for the first time this year, and I feel like there’s a lot there to talk about, so maybe a more in-depth talk about it soon? I mean, it was better than what I expected and the exploding gift gag had me actually laughing out loud at the Looney Tunes shit that was on my screen. Five stars!

**Subscribers at ANY level of the WCW Worldwide Patreon will get to download these files as soon as they’re uploaded to my Google Drive. Patreon backers are rewarded with early downloads and other goodies like original wrestling enamel pins and magnets.**

Download WCW Holiday Catalog [Winter 1999]
ZIP File | CBR File

WCW Holiday Catalog - 1999

1 of 12