10 Cringey nWo Moments We Completely Forgot About

The New World Order is among the greatest wrestling factions of all time. The group was the engine behind WCW’s surge to truly compete against and, in the short-term, actually best WWE in TV ratings.

Particularly in the early going, the group was defined by genuinely surprising storytelling with a more realistic edge than wrestling fans were accustomed to in that era. For all the success the stable enjoyed, however, they also had share of regrettable moments dating back to their earliest times together in WCW in 1996, and running through their limited time as a full-time act in WWE in 2002.

10 Hulk Hogan Misnamed The Group In Their Launch Promo

Hulk Hogan Mean Gene Okerlund WCW Bash At The Beach 1996

There was an electric atmosphere for the launch of the New World Order at WCW Bash at the Beach 1996. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash had built things to a fever pitch, and when Hulk Hogan turned heel to join The Outsiders, fans were about equally outraged and fascinated. One detail that tends to be forgotten is that Hogan actually misnamed what the letters nWo stood for in their launch promo, calling it the New World Organization.

It was an understandable mistake for never having used the name before, but nonetheless cringe-worthy for how iconic the New World Order would become. WWE went so far as to edit the audio to subsequently correct this error for their own archived version of Bash at the Beach, and documentaries for which this promo gets excerpted.

9 The Outsiders And Syxx Ran The Steiner Brothers Off The Road

In the heat of The Outsiders feuding with The Steiner Brothers over the WCW Tag Team Championship, there was an offbeat segment in which The Outsiders and Syxx filmed themselves following Rick and Scott Steiner as they drove down a highway. The segment may have been an homage to The Horsemen recording themselves stalking Dusty Rhodes and jumping him in a parking lot years back.

As much as that, too, would have been illegal, the nWo pushed things to new extremes when they ran the Steiners off the road and caused their car to roll over—vehicular assault that likely would have killed them and resulted in Scott Hall, Kevin Nash and Syxx going to prison. At the least, the incident definitely pushed beyond the style of violence most wrestling fans have an appetite for.

8 Buff Bagwell Undermined His Own Inspirational Comeback Story

Spring 1998, Buff Bagwell took a botched bulldog from Rick Steiner that landed him a real-life neck injury. Fortunately, Bagwell was able to recover and ultimately resume his wrestling career in a matter of months. It stood to reason that after Bagwell was so seriously hurt in such public fashion, WCW would use his comeback for an inspirational face turn.

Indeed, the wheels were in motion for that story with the nWo bashing Bagwell and him signaling a face turn. That is, until it was revealed it was all a ruse. Bagwell made amends with Steiner in a promo segment, only to subsequently help the nWo attack him, undoing all the good will and organic support built behind Bagwell, and returning him to where he started as a mid-card lackey for the super group.

7 The Miss nWo Pageant

Souled Out 1997 was a highly experimental PPV as WCW themed the whole show around the New World Order, including a Miss nWo Pageant. The idea might have been harmless fun, except it came across horribly with production issues, contestants repeating the same uninspired answers one after the other, and the nonsensical finish of selecting a woman who pointedly seemed unattractive in comparison to the more conventional beauty pageant contestants she “competed” with. The whole endeavor came across as a misguided attempt at comedy that undermined the cool ethos that had otherwise defined the nWo.

6 Warrior Kidnapped The Disciple

When WCW signed the man formerly known as The Ultimate Warrior, it made some sense on paper. He was an iconic star who was still a draw in 1998, not to mention a natural opponent for Hollywood Hogan. Warrior's run went off the rails quickly between terrible promo work and an even worse climactic match at Halloween Havoc.

In between, Warrior kidnapped The Disciple (a rebranded Brutus Beefcake, playing Hogan’s heel sidekick), and converted him to become a follower of Warrior's nWo parody, the One Warrior Nation. A babyface abducting and brainwashing a heel was at best a strange choice, but the historically bad work from Warrior pushed this over the top to one of the most embarrassing angles connected to the nWo.

5 Hollywood Hogan Whipped David Flair

Ric Flair was a defining rival for the New World Order, feuding with Hollywood Hogan in particular on multiple occasions. Their storylines led to David Flair joining the roster and one of Hogan’s most dastardly moments as a heel, whipping the younger Flair with a weight belt right in front of his father.

As Flair recounted at some length in his book, Hogan went overboard, pummeling David many more times than was planned, and when David was too untrained and inexperienced to be prepared for that level of physical punishment.

4 Miss Elizabeth Accused Goldberg Of Assaulting Her

The Fingerpoke of Doom has taken a life of its own as one of WCW’s most embarrassing moments, as Kevin Nash handed the WCW Championship to Hollywood Hogan. Fans tend to forget the set-up for this scenario, though. Goldberg was originally supposed to get the title shot, but got sidelined when police arrested him because Miss Elizabeth had accused him of stalking and assaulting her. The angle was in poor taste then, but in the time of the Me Too Movement and an emphasis on believing women, Liz’s false accusations have aged particularly poorly.

3 Eric Bischoff Pinned Ric Flair At Starrcade

The 1998 feud between Eric Bischoff and Ric Flair was incredibly heated as they blurred the lines between real life and kayfabe and did some inspired promo work against each other, with the Nature Boy particularly impassioned. It’s probably for the best that many fans forget their biggest match—a showdown at Flair’s signature event, Starrcade—saw Bischoff pin The Dirtiest Player in the Game. It was a disgraceful moment that robbed fans of a straightforward, satisfying conclusion to the story. To be fair, WCW corrected course the next night, with Flair winning a rematch on Nitro, but the powers that be had to know Starrcade would have a longer shelf life in the memory of fans. It was cringe-worthy to see non-wrestler Bischoff beat a legend like Flair under those circumstances, in a feud that personal.

2 The NWO Arrived For Souled Out In A Garbage Truck

One of the defining elements of the nWo was that they were cool heels—provocative, and the kind of act fans wanted to be like. The original Souled Out PPV, themed around the faction, captured some of that identity with counter-culture, unconventional elements in play.

However, the choice for the nWo members to be presented as arriving at the arena in a garbage truck undermined the idea they were cool or enviable, placing too much emphasis on them being off-beat to the point of them coming across as random, if not disgusting.

1 The NWO Ended As A Full-Time Act When Vince McMahon Arbitrarily Announced It

WCW had run the New World Order into the ground over the years, but there was still some buzz around the group debuting in WWE. In particular, their arrival dream collisions with the likes of Steve Austin and The Rock, highlighted by a Rock vs. Hulk Hogan match at WrestleMania 18 full of hidden highlights. However, the stable soon flopped in WWE, out of lackluster creative, unclear direction, and injuries.

Rather than giving them a proper breakup angle or even quietly dissolving the group, WWE ended them via Vince McMahon’s proclamation they were done, as if, even in storyline, they were always just doing what he asked them to. The resolution was the antithesis of the group’s identity around taking over and bucking traditional authority, as the nWo felt as though it took its final steps to become one-hundred-percent neutered at its end.