NWO SOULED OUT MAKES NWO NO-SO-COOLThe first NWO pay-per-view derails with bad humor, self-indulgent behavior, poor matches, bad musicThe first NWO pay-per-view will be remembered — or perhaps more aptly put, vilified — for years to come as one of the biggest aesthetic flops of a big event ever. Almost nothing seemed to go right, but what makes that more disturbing is everything seemed to go as planned.
The matches, with one exception, were all below average — some well below average. The fans weren’t pro-NWO or pro-WCW as much as they were bored or turned off. The skits went no where. The finish of the main event was anti-climactic and left the audience with an empty feeling. The live rock band — members of Jackal — seemed to be embarrassed by their lyrics half way into their really long song. Yet nothing unexpected happened compared to WCW’s plans going in. In other words, the ideas were ill-conceived or poorly planned from the start.
The event featured a lot of the obnoxious-acting Eric Bischoff swerving from one persona to another — from an executive v.p. to an arrogant NWO leader to an obnoxious announcer to a bizarre horny middle aged beauty pageant judge. While there was no shortage of Eric Bischoff emulating Kevin Nash’s bravado and Scott Hall’s “insider wit,” there was very little of Nash and Hall themselves. Other than “losing the WCW Tag Titles” under reversible circumstances, the personalities that made the NWO the phenom it is today were rarely seen.
Scott Hall and Kevin Nash met with Eric Bischoff in Atlanta on Tuesday, Feb. 4 to discuss problems they have with the booking of the NWO angle. They were apparently extremely upset with the content of the NWO pay-per-view, especially since they spoke out before the event against many of the skits and concepts that ended up airing and flopping. They were also upset that the time allotted to the Syxx-Eddie Guerrero ladder match was cut in half because the skits cut so much match time out of the event
NEW SOULED OUT DISAPPOINTSIn a sense it is good news and bad news for WCW. The bad news is NWO Souled Out drew a disappointing buyrate, with early estimates as low as 0.5 to 0.6 percent, a drop from the 1.0 percent buyrate Starrcade drew. The good news is fewer people saw the critically (and internally) panned event than could have, thus fewer people arguably were turned off from WCW’s product.
Although the NWO pay-per-view had high hopes because the NWO concept was hot and the pay-per-view was off the beaten path and might have drawn an unusually large number of curiosity purchases, the 0.5-0.6 is not a disastrous buyrate, basically falling in line with the average for 1996.
