One of the ‘perks’ of being on the Dynamite live chats I do on my Facebook page is I give a teaser of what new INDUCTION I am posting on any given week. So this week I noted that I was doing, God help me, NAILZ IN WCW. To which one of my regulars asked…
Yes, yes my friend. It did you a big favor. It blocked you from remember that…
NAILZ WAS IN WCW!
And holy smokes, there is a lot to unpack here. So Nailz was a heel in the WWF, primarily feuding with the Big Bossman. It was actually something of an interesting set up – Nailz claimed he was in the pokey when Bossman was there as a prison guard and he was basically a jerk to him. There’s some layers there, as if you will recall, Bossman was brought in as a heel to the company with vignettes explaining just what a bad, bad man he was. So that all made sense.
Then we got match after match after match after match between the two. And they were all horrible. I had seen some decent Bossman matches (including a very famous one in a cage with Hulk Hogan no less!) back in the day so it was pretty easy to see where the weak link was.
Eventually, of course, Nailz had a falling out with the company which coincided with him attempting to quite literally strangle Vince McMahon backstage over being shorted on a payoff. Shockingly, shockingly I say, this led to lawsuits being filed and Nailz being out of the company for good. Which meant of course he was now a free agent, and yes, it led to this:
I’m sorry, that wasn’t Nailz. It was THE PRISONER. How clever those folks in Atlanta were!
Look, I know I just wrote like 300 words prepping for this, but even with that bracing me for it, I am still trying to wrap my brain around the fact that this horrible wrestler who physically attacked his employer was somehow in WCW. Not only that, but immediately put into a match on PPV against none other than arguably the biggest star in the company. That’s right, in his debut he’d be taking on…
STING, who looked like he wished he was anywhere else on planet earth. I should also note that in the weeks leading up to Slamboree ’93, the Stinger had a completely different opponent on the card…
…one that was advertised and everything, literally to the night before the show on WCW Saturday Night! But you see, there was an issue there and Scott Norton decided he wasn’t getting paid enough and thus decided to no show the event. You’d think stuff like that would be worked out ahead of time, but this is WCW we’re talking about here!
I should also note that when Nailz came out, he got “bullsh*t” chants as well as folks yelling for the Big Bossman. Who, of course, was not in the company. Well yet.
We also got this amazing visual, where a little boy is holding up a magazine perfectly to make it appear the woman behind him actually has Sting’s head. I refuse to believe they didn’t practice that for an hour before the show just in case they made it on camera.
So anyway, we get the match and it is every Nailz match you ever did see. He starts off by choking Sting all around the ring. I mean, he takes him to every single corner and never stops choking the guy.
Then he takes him to the mat and chokes him some more.
He breaks up that monotony with a kick or two…but then realizes the error of his ways and jumps down on the Stinger and chokes him as he’s laying on the mat.
An Irish whip leads to an elbow followed up by…yes, you guessed it, MORE CHOKING. God bless poor Steve Borden, but this is making those old Bossman-Nailz matches look like Steamboat-Flair in comparison.
Into the corner we go with Nailz throwing punches that miss by a good six inches. It’s really too bad there was that incident with Nailz and Vince, because I could totally envision a world in which we got a WrestleMania match with Nailz versus…
…Shane McMahon! It would have been absolutely glorious.
Anyway, Nailz “throws” Sting outside the ring then promptly…oh yes…chokes him some more. But this time, he does it with some cables. That counts as a different move right?
OWWWWWW!!!!
At this point you can tell Sting has just about had enough but isn’t quite sure what to even try with the big lunk. So he gets back in the ring, ducks a lariat, and then hits whatever the heck that was. No idea, but rest assured if my buddy Maffew was around back in 1993 he’d have been licking his chops.
We get a Stinger splash that has Nailz wobbling in the corner. Sting takes him down and I am guessing he was maybe trying to go for a Scorpion deathlock but realizing how the match had gone thus far knew there was zero chance his foe would know what to do there. So instead he just goes for a cover, one that sadly only gets a two count.
A big ol’ elbow drop comes next, but Nailz rolls out of the way. You can tell that Sting is doing his best here but is rapidly running out of patience.
So as Nailz is arguing with the ref, Sting heads to the top rope and comes off with what I THINK was supposed to be a clothesline. But it’s like the weirdest clothesline Sting ever did, as he throws it with his LEFT ARM. But hey, whatever, as it ends this horrible, HORRIBLE match. And you can tell Sting is ready to get out of there as fast as possible – literally the nanosecond he gets the three count (I think, it may have only been two), he jumps out of the ring and immediately heads for the shower. Poor Nick Patrick has to run him down on the ramp to raise his arm!
And that was the end of Nailz in WCW.
Oh who am I kidding, of course it wasn’t. You see, he came back to the company four years later and worked for them for about six months (!!!!), with his final match being at a house show against Barry Darsow in 1998. Yes yes yes – some random WCW house show featured NAILZ VERSUS THE REPO MAN. That sounds absolutely awful…I am shedding tears I wasn’t there for it. And I know I can’t be the only one!