Rants

Bash at the Beach 1996

By Scott Keith on March 2, 2014

Scott,

I'm watching Bash 96 in its entirety for the first some since I watched and live and pooped myself. I was 13!

Now, I was genuinely shocked at the time when Hogan strolled out and revealed himself, but was was the smark atmosphere like around this time? Did everyone assume Hogan, or was there a list of like 5 legit possibilities that some smarks figured would happen?

Sidenote, I started watching the WCW PPVs after this last week and it's super off seeing Hogan not yet perfect the Hollywood character. Also, seeing Dibiase just about everywhere. Also, Heenan saying Piper was in the best shape of his life at Starrcade 1996. But what do I know, people in theses crowds were losing their shit for Piper at these PPVs.

I feel like we discussed the Hogan deal recently, but yes, we absolutely knew it was going to be Hogan, but we didn't think they'd actually have the balls to pull the trigger. There was no other serious candidates aside from some wild speculation about Bret Hart and the like.
The Piper deal was weird in that he didn't have any specific value left for the WWF, but working with the other dinosaurs in WCW made sense since they hadn't really run of those matches on PPV before. Like, if WWF had Hogan and Savage still, they could exploit those nostalgia matches, but with only one piece of the puzzle there wasn't any point. So yeah, there WAS still money in Piper, but only under the specific circumstances that WCW was creating. That's why I always found it weird that Vince was so personally offended by Hall and Nash leaving in 96, as though he had huge plans for them or something. They were basically slagging Nash for being the lowest-drawing champion of all time and making fun of Hall for his substance problems, and suddenly there's huge money to be made with them? I guess, as Cinderella once told us, you don't know what you've got until it's gone.

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