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Say Hello to the Bad Guys: How Professional Wrestling's New World Order Changed America
From ESPN reporter Marc Raimondi comes a compelling, gripping narrative history of professional wrestling’s legendary faction, The NWO (New World Order), from their inception in 1996 to their influence on American pop culture today.
In 1996, professional wrestling was one of the most watched sports on cable television, with more than 5 million people tuning in every week. And in the late 1990s, pro-wrestling was the hottest thing in American pop culture, with companies making millions in action figures, video games, and simple black t-shirts emblazoned with three little NWO.
The NWO, or New World Order, became a business like no other, and was responsible for the explosive ratings and rabid fanbase. It started with an ingenious storyline starring Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and the titular Hollywood Hogan—Hulk Hogan gone bad. Together, they formed a new era of characters to root The Bad Guys.
Never before had audiences cheered for the villains, rooting for them over the heroes. The NWO broke down wrestling’s fourth wall in a clever new way, blurring the lines between fiction and reality. And suddenly, watching professional wrestling not only became socially acceptable, but a necessity if you wanted to stay up to date with pop culture. Their impact was infectious and long-lasting. It was entertainment that shaped a generation.
Written by Marc Raimondi, a current ESPN reporter with nearly twenty years of experience in journalism, this narrative history explores professional wrestling’s most popular faction and how their existence influenced American culture like never before.
In 1996, professional wrestling was one of the most watched sports on cable television, with more than 5 million people tuning in every week. And in the late 1990s, pro-wrestling was the hottest thing in American pop culture, with companies making millions in action figures, video games, and simple black t-shirts emblazoned with three little NWO.
The NWO, or New World Order, became a business like no other, and was responsible for the explosive ratings and rabid fanbase. It started with an ingenious storyline starring Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and the titular Hollywood Hogan—Hulk Hogan gone bad. Together, they formed a new era of characters to root The Bad Guys.
Never before had audiences cheered for the villains, rooting for them over the heroes. The NWO broke down wrestling’s fourth wall in a clever new way, blurring the lines between fiction and reality. And suddenly, watching professional wrestling not only became socially acceptable, but a necessity if you wanted to stay up to date with pop culture. Their impact was infectious and long-lasting. It was entertainment that shaped a generation.
Written by Marc Raimondi, a current ESPN reporter with nearly twenty years of experience in journalism, this narrative history explores professional wrestling’s most popular faction and how their existence influenced American culture like never before.
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First published June 24, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
June 25, 2025
The book seemed to focus more on WCW/nWo history than it did really delving into how it shaped America. There are nods to pop culture moments (Rodman, Leno, Bad Bunny), but not enough to sufficiently connect them to being the powerhouse behind driving, or remotely shifting, politics and America. It was an engaging read, even as a kid who grew up on more WWF, but the title is misleading.
July 3, 2025
I was skeptical when I bought this book. The nWo story has been told ad nauseam on countless DVDs, documentaries, books, podcasts, old Nitro recaps on blogs, dirt sheets, and Reddit pages recapping old dirt sheets. It's a testament to how meaningful the nWo was to wrestling fans of my era that, despite us devouring most of the media mentioned above, we're buying up this book.
If you know the story, Raimondi's book does not contain any earth-shattering new details. He does unearth little nuggets, such as Scott Hall's disconnect with his 5/27/96 promo that launched this angle and Nick Patrick's perspective on the Sting-Hogan 3-count, that I don't recall knowing about before. These nuggets make this moment in time just a little more compelling for diehards, and help make up for the lackluster opening chapters.
The gold standard for WCW books is the Guy Evans tome Nitro. I consider that more essential than this one. Even if it's not as essential, Raimondi has penned an enjoyable book.
If you know the story, Raimondi's book does not contain any earth-shattering new details. He does unearth little nuggets, such as Scott Hall's disconnect with his 5/27/96 promo that launched this angle and Nick Patrick's perspective on the Sting-Hogan 3-count, that I don't recall knowing about before. These nuggets make this moment in time just a little more compelling for diehards, and help make up for the lackluster opening chapters.
The gold standard for WCW books is the Guy Evans tome Nitro. I consider that more essential than this one. Even if it's not as essential, Raimondi has penned an enjoyable book.
August 23, 2025
this was more of a recap of the NWO era rather than a look at how the nwo era changed America.
July 28, 2025
I've been on a bit of a wrestling non-fiction binge as of late, having just recently finished Bryan Alvarez's "The Death of WCW". While that book covers the entire promotion, this book covers just the New World Order, one of wrestling's greatest factions. I started watching wrestling on May 26th, 1997. I know this specific date because WWF Raw was broadcasting live from my hometown that night and my parents were curious enough to watch. Before that, I wasn't allowed to watch wrestling. Ever since that night, I have been a fan of all things pro-wrestling, even if there were a few periods when I wasn't watching regularly.
While I was mostly a WWF (WWE) fan in the 90's, I was aware of rival promotion WCW and their heel group the NWO. The NWO were the bad guys but they made bad being cool. While WWF had D-Generation X, WCW had the NWO, for better and for worse. The NWO was one of the most innovative groups of all-time, which started with the shocking heel turn of Hulk Hogan.
It's surreal to be reading this book just days after Hulk Hogan's passing because he was such a huge part of the wrestling business and a key member of the NWO. This book highlights some of his more notorious backstage politicking that other wrestlers have criticized him for over the years. But if you've listened to podcasts or read other books, you've probably heard it before.
What I did like about this book is that it went a bit deeper into Kevin Nash and Scott Hall's careers. I've always been a fan of them so it was great getting to hear more about them. And I enjoyed getting to hear things about how the NWO logo was made, how the vignettes were shot, etc. These were great stories and things that aren't often talked about.
But the book doesn't really break a lot of new ground that isn't covered elsewhere. They also leave out large chunks of the NWO's history, most notably the NWO 2000 fiasco. And I was kinda hoping for some discussion on how the NWO inspired New Japan's Bullet Club, but alas, that is nowhere to be found. Still, this is a fun and easy read that any wrestling fan, casual or hardcore, can enjoy.
Oh, I do respect the author for going into detail about how Donald Trump's involvement with pro-wrestling helped him develop the MAGA movement since it's just a wrestling promo. Also, it's super depressing that the President is doing wrestling promos. This is the dumbest timeline.
While I was mostly a WWF (WWE) fan in the 90's, I was aware of rival promotion WCW and their heel group the NWO. The NWO were the bad guys but they made bad being cool. While WWF had D-Generation X, WCW had the NWO, for better and for worse. The NWO was one of the most innovative groups of all-time, which started with the shocking heel turn of Hulk Hogan.
It's surreal to be reading this book just days after Hulk Hogan's passing because he was such a huge part of the wrestling business and a key member of the NWO. This book highlights some of his more notorious backstage politicking that other wrestlers have criticized him for over the years. But if you've listened to podcasts or read other books, you've probably heard it before.
What I did like about this book is that it went a bit deeper into Kevin Nash and Scott Hall's careers. I've always been a fan of them so it was great getting to hear more about them. And I enjoyed getting to hear things about how the NWO logo was made, how the vignettes were shot, etc. These were great stories and things that aren't often talked about.
But the book doesn't really break a lot of new ground that isn't covered elsewhere. They also leave out large chunks of the NWO's history, most notably the NWO 2000 fiasco. And I was kinda hoping for some discussion on how the NWO inspired New Japan's Bullet Club, but alas, that is nowhere to be found. Still, this is a fun and easy read that any wrestling fan, casual or hardcore, can enjoy.
Oh, I do respect the author for going into detail about how Donald Trump's involvement with pro-wrestling helped him develop the MAGA movement since it's just a wrestling promo. Also, it's super depressing that the President is doing wrestling promos. This is the dumbest timeline.
June 30, 2025
When I think about this book, one word comes to mind: passion. It is clear the author has a lot of passion for the wrestling business. On each and every page, I could feel his passion. Even though I knew about 80% of this information, it was a lot of fun to relive it again. The 90’s wrestling boom is something that will most likely never be replicated again. It was a special time for wrestling and, most importantly, for the fans. I was a fan of ECW, first and foremost, but I definitely kept a very close eye on the WWE and WCW.
When ECW and WCW closed, the wrestling business was never the same again. This book briefly talks about professional wrestling in the eighties, what led to the lean years of the early to mid-90’s, and, of course, the formation of the NWO. This book is carefully researched, and there are some great anecdotes from that era. This is a 4-star review based on the writing style of Marc Raimondi and the feelings this book brought out of me. As an author, it is imperative to make your readers feel something. Marc has accomplished that and then some.
While I would’ve enjoyed some different perspectives on this era or some new interviews or information, this is a book that is a very enjoyable read, and it made me feel very nostalgic. I read the book in 48 hours because I was having a blast going down memory lane. While I asked myself at the beginning of this book, “Do we need ANOTHER book on the NWO or the Monday Night Wars?” The answer ended up being yes because of the feelings and emotions this book brought out of me mixed with some terrific writing.
When ECW and WCW closed, the wrestling business was never the same again. This book briefly talks about professional wrestling in the eighties, what led to the lean years of the early to mid-90’s, and, of course, the formation of the NWO. This book is carefully researched, and there are some great anecdotes from that era. This is a 4-star review based on the writing style of Marc Raimondi and the feelings this book brought out of me. As an author, it is imperative to make your readers feel something. Marc has accomplished that and then some.
While I would’ve enjoyed some different perspectives on this era or some new interviews or information, this is a book that is a very enjoyable read, and it made me feel very nostalgic. I read the book in 48 hours because I was having a blast going down memory lane. While I asked myself at the beginning of this book, “Do we need ANOTHER book on the NWO or the Monday Night Wars?” The answer ended up being yes because of the feelings and emotions this book brought out of me mixed with some terrific writing.
July 16, 2025
Yes I've been a wrestling fan since childhood, but what I like about this book is that it manages to pack an enormous amount of information and discussion into a tight, readable package that doesn't waste a single word. This is how to tell a story in simple, concise, chronological fashion without losing anything. And I must say...I do remember how out-there & exciting the events surrounding the nwo invasion of wrestling felt like to long-time fans. It was like an invasion from a parallel universe, and the book conveys these feelings with great skill.
November 4, 2025
Like many other reviewers, I feel like I’ve been sold a bit of a lie with the title.
It’s essentially a week by week recount of the entire nWo angle. There’s some backstage stories, or later comments from Bischoff, Nash etc to add a bit of extra depth. Aside from that, if you’re a fan of this era, there’s not much new here. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by the author, and it felt like there was a big reveal moment for the “Fingerpoke of Doom” for example. But for much of the target audience, we know what’s coming.
There’s not a whole lot on how the nWo influenced America. There’s a story about Kendal Jenner wearing a nWo hoodie, and a whole bit tacked on to the end about Donald Trump..? To be honest I didn’t see the relevance, it talked more about how Trump is a wrestling fan. When The Smiths sang “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before” maybe they were talking about wrestling non-fiction.
Still, 3 stars as I did enjoy it, and I got to relive the rise of the nWo through the medium of audiobook. Great stuff.
It’s essentially a week by week recount of the entire nWo angle. There’s some backstage stories, or later comments from Bischoff, Nash etc to add a bit of extra depth. Aside from that, if you’re a fan of this era, there’s not much new here. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by the author, and it felt like there was a big reveal moment for the “Fingerpoke of Doom” for example. But for much of the target audience, we know what’s coming.
There’s not a whole lot on how the nWo influenced America. There’s a story about Kendal Jenner wearing a nWo hoodie, and a whole bit tacked on to the end about Donald Trump..? To be honest I didn’t see the relevance, it talked more about how Trump is a wrestling fan. When The Smiths sang “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before” maybe they were talking about wrestling non-fiction.
Still, 3 stars as I did enjoy it, and I got to relive the rise of the nWo through the medium of audiobook. Great stuff.
September 23, 2025
After all, the nWo? It really is for life. Maybe Hall put it best when he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame the first time, as Razor Ramon. “Bad times don’t last,” Hall said, closing his speech. “But Bad Guys do.”
Rating: 5/5
“The world is fake, and wrestling is real.” —Rick Rubin
That’s where the nWo was born, at the intersection of genuine and phony. Lines became blurred. The antiheroes became the main characters. And pro wrestling was never the same again.
His promoter felt otherwise. Vincent James McMahon told Hogan that he was in the WWF’s storyline plans and there just wasn’t time for him to jet off to Hollywood to film a movie. The elder McMahon issued Hogan an ultimatum: If you do Rocky III, don’t bother coming back to the WWF. Believing that sharing time with Stallone on the silver screen would do wonders for his profile, Hogan walked out on the WWF and took the role. Rocky III ended up doing very well at the box office, becoming one of the highest-grossing movies of 1982. The only two films that made more money were E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Hogan’s testimony also killed the government’s case. They expected him to say McMahon bullied his wrestlers into taking steroids. McMahon ended up being acquitted due to lack of evidence. It was evident to everyone that Hogan had indeed lied on the Hall show, that he didn’t practice the principles that his character talked about on the air. Somewhat disgraced, even in a profession already treated by many as a disdainful fake sport, Hogan’s career was at a crossroads. Perhaps more television and film opportunities were in the future. One thing he had always promised to McMahon, though, was that he’d never compete against him in the wrestling business.
Some of the Kliq members were babyfaces in the WWF script and others were heels, and the hand signal was their way to show unity in a world where they were not supposed to socialize behind the scenes. Some have called it the “too sweet,” but The Kliq called it the Turkish wolf, due to its other origins as a Turkish nationalist symbol. It was first done by the group during a European tour and thought up by Waltman, who later would popularize another, more obscene gesture that went viral long before viral was a thing. “When we did [the Turkish wolf sign] originally, we were sneaking it into places where we could get away with doing it,” Levesque said. “A lot of it was breaking the rules, anyway. It really was more about sneakily breaking the rules and seeing if anybody catches on that we’re doing it.”
“Then, when Kev came along, when Diesel came along, we taught him the way we thought business should be done,” Hall said. “When Kid came along, Kid had to do business the way we thought it should be done because he was in our clique. And later, Triple H came in, we taught him, ‘This is how we do business, this is the way we think it should be done.’ ”
The group even started to use its own signature hand gesture that they would flash to acknowledge the camaraderie. They would put their middle and ring fingers together with their thumb and point their pointer finger and pinkie upward. The gesture originated at North Carolina State University. The school’s sports teams are nicknamed the Wolfpack, and fabled women’s basketball coach the late Kay Yow has been credited with popularizing the sign going back to the 1970s.
The Kliq loved to push boundaries and was gaining power as a unified force, inside and outside of the ring. Michaels even started to call his fan base “The Kliq” on screen as a nod to his backstage buddies.
In wrestling, promos are as important as the matches, arguably more so. A promo, which is short for promotion, is a talking segment (or interview) that builds to a match or the next beat in the story. Promos explain the storyline, the stakes at play, and what a character’s motivations are. They are the essential connective tissue of professional wrestling. If you’re a good promo artist and you can get people to believe in your persona, it almost doesn’t matter as much if you can’t perform entertaining matches in the ring.
A classic promo can define a wrestler’s career. Flair’s 1985 monologue about being a limousine-ridin’, jet-flyin’, Rolex-wearing son of a gun exemplified exactly what his character was supposed to be. Same for the blue-collar Dusty Rhodes’s promo about the working class and falling on “hard times” from the same year. In 1987, Savage’s “cream of the crop” interview, complete with tiny plastic half-and-half containers, is remembered as much as any of his matches. A promo can come in many forms. The WWF has long preferred a script written by a writer with input from the wrestler. In other promotions, the wrestlers write promos themselves or go on screen with a few bullet points memorized and fill in the rest themselves. The most talented wrestlers on the microphone can go out there in front of a crowd with just an idea in their head and construct their words on the fly, listening for the crowd to send them in the right direction.
Hall’s promo on May 27, 1996, has gone down as one of the best of all time, as much for its unprecedented content as for Hall’s delivery. “Where is Billionaire Ted?” Hall went on, referencing the WWF’s skits. “Where is the Nacho Man? That punk can’t even get in the building. Me? I go wherever I want, whenever I want. And where oh where is Scheme Gene? ’Cause I got a scoop for you. When that Ken Doll lookalike [Bischoff], when that weatherman wannabe comes out here later tonight, I got a challenge for him, for Billionaire Ted, for the Nacho Man. And for anybody else in [here Hall puts on an exaggerated southern accent] ‘Dubya Cee Dubya.’ Hey, you want to go to war? You want a war? You’re gonna get one.”
As Hogan made his way to the ring, Heenan on commentary exclaimed: “Yeah, but whose side is he on?!” It could have been an all-time gaffe if things didn’t end up so overwhelmingly successful. When Hogan got to the ring, Hall and Nash cleared out. Hogan played to the crowd like he always did—and then dropped his signature leg drop on a prone Savage. The crowd didn’t understand what was going on. “Hulk Hogan has betrayed WCW,” Heenan said on commentary. “He is the third man.”
“I didn’t back off,” Hogan said. “I could have pulled back a little bit on the verbiage, but I’m like, ‘Nah.’ I just shoved the gas pedal down.” What came out almost seemed therapeutic. Hogan told the fans to shut up, compared them to the garbage in the ring, and told them to “stick it.” Hogan said he was fed up with the fans’ reactions after all he had done for them and for charity. He intimated he only did it to line his own pockets. As far as WCW went, Hogan said he was bored, and that Hall and Nash represented “the new blood.”
Cutting a promo is an art unto itself—an art within an art.
Weber had been the WWF’s head of media relations in the 1980s at the height of Hulkamania. But this was something completely different. Hulkamania was something built up and carefully manicured. The New World Order was a spontaneous convergence that became bigger than anyone had counted on. “The whole thing was about the most organic, reactionary type of a thing I’ve ever seen,” Weber said. “And everything we did was reacting to it and then trying to like expand upon it. From merchandising, how it’s marketed, how it was promoted, how it was licensed and all that stuff.” The nWo needed a logo.
Leathers, Yother, and Wright told Sloan’s boss that they needed a logo—that day. And they only had the budget for one hour of Sloan’s time. No one involved remembered the exact dollar figure, just that the execution of such a thing would have normally been done by WCW in-house at its offices in Atlanta. But the Summer Olympics were being held that year in WCW’s home city and there were simply no production trucks available to roll for WCW television, so the promotion was using the in-house operations and production at its second home in Orlando. Leathers had come prepared with some ideas in his head. He spent hours perusing the magazine stands at places like Walgreen’s, buying biker and skater magazines and ripping out pages afterward in search of the right aesthetic. “I knew I wanted it kind of grungy,” Leathers said. “Something easily readable.”
Leathers, Yother, and Wright stood behind Sloan in the corner of a long editing suite, their backs to the huge window. Sloan sat in a red chair with a gray Macintosh computer in front of her and got to work. With a short amount of time, Sloan didn’t even have time to sketch anything out on paper. She said Leathers told her maybe just start laying out some ideas with the letters “NWO” on the computer, suggesting something that looked a little “rough” and like “graffiti.” “Of all the work I’ve ever done that was like the fastest, quickest, did-not-think-it-would-last-any-time-at-all [thing],” Sloan said. “I mean, they couldn’t even afford color. I was like, ‘All right, well, I guess a black T-shirt with a white logo.’ ”
Right before the dawn of the nWo, WCW had hired 4Kids Entertainment, a children’s entertainment and merchandise licensing company run by Alfred Kahn. 4Kids became the largest merchandise trading entity in the United States in the 1990s on the back of their work with Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. With the help of 4Kids, WCW was able to get nWo products sold at Spencer’s Gifts, a favorite mall store at the time for kids, teens, and young adults that sold offbeat items, as well as pop-culture merchandise. WCW and 4Kids licensed whatever they could with the nWo brand—“we went full tilt on everything,” Weber said—from sneakers to bandanas to baseball caps to women’s apparel to pennants to replica belts to action figures to credit cards to even a bowling league.
Then there were the video games. Weber said a deal with developer THQ was signed late in 1995 and when the nWo started in July 1996 they had to hit the metaphorical pause button and overhaul the original plan to include the group. What WCW and THQ ended up agreeing on was a game cobranded as both WCW and the nWo. THQ was completely fine with that, Weber said, because they saw how “the nWo took over the business in days.” The group’s name, the New World Order, did not end up being controversial. Nash and Bischoff discussed its relationship with conspiracy theories and the idea that there was a higher power somewhere pulling the strings on everything, like “the World Bank and the Illuminati and the different Rothschilds.” They wanted a sinister theme for the group that had the curiosity factor that Bischoff pined for. The nWo fit the bill.
Once the logo was in hand, Merwin ordered nWo T-shirts at five thousand per clip from printers in Las Vegas and Atlanta. Most merchandise items, if she was unsure how they would sell, would be ordered starting with five hundred and Merwin would see how things went. The nWo shirt was a hot seller right from the beginning.
Hall and Nash were inspired by gangsta rap and the culture surrounding it. They started wearing bandanas tied onto their heads with the knot in front like Shakur did. The “4 life” came directly from West Coast rapper Mack 10, who debuted the single “Foe Life” in 1995. WCW had little to no urban appeal previously. It was still, at its heart, a wrestling company in the Deep South with a good old boys’ club in place.
Hogan wasn’t necessarily a part of that, but he wasn’t bumping to Westside Connection on his car tape deck, either. Hall and Nash felt like the real-life Terry Bollea was actually a pretty cool guy. He had played bass in local rock ‘n’ roll bands as a kid in Florida. But he was not exactly up to speed on hip-hop culture. Nash put him on to the likes of Doctor Dré and Run DMC. “He just basically sat down and goes, ‘Where are you guys getting this from?’ ” Nash said of Hogan. “And then we just thumbnailed some stuff for him to listen to and he was on board.” By 1997, the middle-aged Hogan was wearing wide-leg JNCO jeans, a staple of late-nineties streetwear.
Hall and Nash took over the broadcast desk and provided some hilarious commentary for the second hour. It was difficult for fans to boo the duo, because they were so entertaining. Not so much for Hogan, who spraypainted Savage’s bald spot with graffiti and later was in the locker room area tagging walls with “NWO.” Meltzer reported around this time that a woman called the WCW offices, furious that her five-year-old had spraypainted “NWO” on her one-year-old.
There’s another insider wrestling phrase for this: keeping someone strong. Even if a good guy must lose to a villain in order to advance the storyline, you can keep him or her strong by having the heel cheat to win. Cheating and using outside interference to win matches behind the referee’s back was long a heel trope in professional wrestling. And the nWo used it—excessively.
Gangsta rap crossed over into the mainstream during the mid-1990s. The group N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton was the first record from the genre to go platinum. Doctor Dré departed N.W.A. and released The Chronic in 1992. It went triple platinum. Yo! MTV Raps became a popular show on the music network in the early 1990s.
The battle between West Coast rap, led by Death Row Records and Tupac Shakur, and East Coast rap, led by Bad Boy Records and Notorious B.I.G., intensified toward the middle part of the decade. Shakur was shot dead after a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas less than a month after Hogan christened the WCW title with “NWO” graffiti.
Starrcade 1997 was still an overwhelming business success. Ticket sales added up to a WCW record $543,000, and $161,961 of merchandise was sold, another record, Meltzer reported. The show was sold out and the paid attendance (16,052) was the most ever for a WCW show. The estimated pay-per-view buys were 700,000, which made it the highest-selling professional wrestling pay-per-view of all time at that point. WCW had an all-time-high amount of people watching and delivered to them an all-time blunder.
“Just the fact that Sting doesn’t speak for a year and a half and the first thing out of his mouth is something in Spanish—‘mamacita,’ ” Nash said. “I mean, that’s what he yells to the hard mic when he goes over. I’m just thinking to myself, ‘Could you imagine if Neil Armstrong just took that step down [onto the moon] and was in it for himself, and said something about Coca-Cola?’ “[Hogan] had creative control. You can’t give a wrestler creative control. Can’t happen. Just can’t happen. He doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do.”
Bash at the Beach took place July 12, 1998, in San Diego. The morning of the show, Manley had breakfast with Malone and asked how much Malone was getting paid to do the match. Malone told him $900,000, a figure he was proud of getting. Malone didn’t have an agent at the time, but negotiated with Bischoff with the help of Jazz owner Larry Miller. Manley told Malone that Rodman was getting $1,500,000 and Malone ended up hiring Manley as his agent. “He would have [wrestled] for free,” Manley said of Malone. “He loved it. He would watch it at home. He’d have vanilla cream waffle cookies and watch it from home—he loved it.”
Since the Montreal Screwjob, McMahon had become an evil authority figure character on screen, a caricature of himself. He was opposed mainly by Steve Austin, the goateed, bald-headed, beer-swilling, ass-whupping everyman who fans could not wait to see give the bullying boss his retribution. Austin had the same anti-establishment chops the nWo did and he took things to another level. His trademark gesture wasn’t a Turkish wolf or demonstrating “4” and “life” with his hands. It was a pair of middle fingers.
The match itself was not as impressive as Rodman’s debut a year earlier, but it didn’t have to be. Rodman wore a white “Rodzilla” T-shirt that had his head on it and the nWo logo stamped onto his blond hair. The shirt was still popular three decades later. Top boxer Devin Haney wore it during media interviews in 2023. Malone, meanwhile, wore purple spandex pants, similar to the ones worn by Page. He looked like a real wrestler and comported himself quite well.
By the end of 1998, Bischoff said he was so burned out between merger talks and the ongoing lawsuit with the WWF that he essentially removed himself from the creative process outside of simply greenlighting ideas. He could see things circling the drain and knew it was too late to stop it. “We were going to go back to what WWE did when I beat their ass,” Bischoff said. “That was the beginning of the end. The finger poke of doom was the manifestation of it.”
Dunn said Titan v. Turner wasn’t necessarily any more heated compared with other civil cases he has worked on involving competitors in the same industry. And it wasn’t necessarily more colorful of a case than others he has experienced in entertainment. But it was unique, in its own way. “It’s really all combined in the whole issue of, ‘Where do you draw the line between the individuals and the persona, and what’s real and what’s fictional?’ ” Dunn said. “And a lot of that is a line that’s deliberately blurred in professional wrestling.”
The WWE Hall of Fame induction was equally as ironic as it was deserving. This was the group of guys who left the WWF in the 1990s, when the promotion was struggling financially, and helped WCW became the top dog for a time. “I mean, you got four guys that were basically going at Vince as a shoot, pushing hard to actually try to take over—not put him out of business, but basically take his spot and be the number one company,” Hogan said. “So all of a sudden you’re inducting four guys in the Hall of Fame that twenty years ago were trying to stab you in the back.”
Nash said he was contacted by a company out of London in the early 2020s that was doing a documentary about Hogan, and they were going to bring up some of the more negative things about Hogan’s past. Nash called Hogan about it before deciding whether or not to cooperate with them. “Do you know anything about this?” Nash asked Hogan. “No,” Hogan replied. “Cool, then I’ll tell them to fuck off,” Nash said. “Thank you,” Hogan responded. “Love you, brother.” “It’s as simple as that,” Nash said of his relationship with Hogan. “I don’t have to be with him twenty-four/seven, but when it comes down to somebody trying to bushwhack him, I got his back, and I know he’s got mine.”
The nWo has been referenced in sports for years, whether it be the NBA, NFL, or college football. In 2019, Northwestern University offensive line coach Kurt Anderson started calling his line the nWo, asking for them to play with the ferocity of Hogan, Hall, and Nash. Even going back to the 1990s, the nWo made a major impression on sports—and not just Rodman and Malone, either.
“I’m going to lose the one person on this planet I’ve spent more of my life with than anyone else. My heart is broken and I’m so very fucking sad. I love Scott with all my heart but now I have to prepare my life without him in the present. I’ve been blessed to have a friend that took me at face value and I him. When we jumped to WCW we didn’t care who liked or hated us. We had each other and with the smooth Barry Bloom we changed wrestling both in content and pay for those… alot that disliked us. We were the ‘Outsiders’ but we had each other. Scott always felt he wasn’t worthy of the afterlife. Well God please have some gold-plated toothpicks for my brother. My life was enriched with his take on life. He wasn’t perfect but as he always said, ‘The last perfect person to walk the planet they nailed to a cross.’ ”
Rating: 5/5
“The world is fake, and wrestling is real.” —Rick Rubin
That’s where the nWo was born, at the intersection of genuine and phony. Lines became blurred. The antiheroes became the main characters. And pro wrestling was never the same again.
His promoter felt otherwise. Vincent James McMahon told Hogan that he was in the WWF’s storyline plans and there just wasn’t time for him to jet off to Hollywood to film a movie. The elder McMahon issued Hogan an ultimatum: If you do Rocky III, don’t bother coming back to the WWF. Believing that sharing time with Stallone on the silver screen would do wonders for his profile, Hogan walked out on the WWF and took the role. Rocky III ended up doing very well at the box office, becoming one of the highest-grossing movies of 1982. The only two films that made more money were E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Hogan’s testimony also killed the government’s case. They expected him to say McMahon bullied his wrestlers into taking steroids. McMahon ended up being acquitted due to lack of evidence. It was evident to everyone that Hogan had indeed lied on the Hall show, that he didn’t practice the principles that his character talked about on the air. Somewhat disgraced, even in a profession already treated by many as a disdainful fake sport, Hogan’s career was at a crossroads. Perhaps more television and film opportunities were in the future. One thing he had always promised to McMahon, though, was that he’d never compete against him in the wrestling business.
Some of the Kliq members were babyfaces in the WWF script and others were heels, and the hand signal was their way to show unity in a world where they were not supposed to socialize behind the scenes. Some have called it the “too sweet,” but The Kliq called it the Turkish wolf, due to its other origins as a Turkish nationalist symbol. It was first done by the group during a European tour and thought up by Waltman, who later would popularize another, more obscene gesture that went viral long before viral was a thing. “When we did [the Turkish wolf sign] originally, we were sneaking it into places where we could get away with doing it,” Levesque said. “A lot of it was breaking the rules, anyway. It really was more about sneakily breaking the rules and seeing if anybody catches on that we’re doing it.”
“Then, when Kev came along, when Diesel came along, we taught him the way we thought business should be done,” Hall said. “When Kid came along, Kid had to do business the way we thought it should be done because he was in our clique. And later, Triple H came in, we taught him, ‘This is how we do business, this is the way we think it should be done.’ ”
The group even started to use its own signature hand gesture that they would flash to acknowledge the camaraderie. They would put their middle and ring fingers together with their thumb and point their pointer finger and pinkie upward. The gesture originated at North Carolina State University. The school’s sports teams are nicknamed the Wolfpack, and fabled women’s basketball coach the late Kay Yow has been credited with popularizing the sign going back to the 1970s.
The Kliq loved to push boundaries and was gaining power as a unified force, inside and outside of the ring. Michaels even started to call his fan base “The Kliq” on screen as a nod to his backstage buddies.
In wrestling, promos are as important as the matches, arguably more so. A promo, which is short for promotion, is a talking segment (or interview) that builds to a match or the next beat in the story. Promos explain the storyline, the stakes at play, and what a character’s motivations are. They are the essential connective tissue of professional wrestling. If you’re a good promo artist and you can get people to believe in your persona, it almost doesn’t matter as much if you can’t perform entertaining matches in the ring.
A classic promo can define a wrestler’s career. Flair’s 1985 monologue about being a limousine-ridin’, jet-flyin’, Rolex-wearing son of a gun exemplified exactly what his character was supposed to be. Same for the blue-collar Dusty Rhodes’s promo about the working class and falling on “hard times” from the same year. In 1987, Savage’s “cream of the crop” interview, complete with tiny plastic half-and-half containers, is remembered as much as any of his matches. A promo can come in many forms. The WWF has long preferred a script written by a writer with input from the wrestler. In other promotions, the wrestlers write promos themselves or go on screen with a few bullet points memorized and fill in the rest themselves. The most talented wrestlers on the microphone can go out there in front of a crowd with just an idea in their head and construct their words on the fly, listening for the crowd to send them in the right direction.
Hall’s promo on May 27, 1996, has gone down as one of the best of all time, as much for its unprecedented content as for Hall’s delivery. “Where is Billionaire Ted?” Hall went on, referencing the WWF’s skits. “Where is the Nacho Man? That punk can’t even get in the building. Me? I go wherever I want, whenever I want. And where oh where is Scheme Gene? ’Cause I got a scoop for you. When that Ken Doll lookalike [Bischoff], when that weatherman wannabe comes out here later tonight, I got a challenge for him, for Billionaire Ted, for the Nacho Man. And for anybody else in [here Hall puts on an exaggerated southern accent] ‘Dubya Cee Dubya.’ Hey, you want to go to war? You want a war? You’re gonna get one.”
As Hogan made his way to the ring, Heenan on commentary exclaimed: “Yeah, but whose side is he on?!” It could have been an all-time gaffe if things didn’t end up so overwhelmingly successful. When Hogan got to the ring, Hall and Nash cleared out. Hogan played to the crowd like he always did—and then dropped his signature leg drop on a prone Savage. The crowd didn’t understand what was going on. “Hulk Hogan has betrayed WCW,” Heenan said on commentary. “He is the third man.”
“I didn’t back off,” Hogan said. “I could have pulled back a little bit on the verbiage, but I’m like, ‘Nah.’ I just shoved the gas pedal down.” What came out almost seemed therapeutic. Hogan told the fans to shut up, compared them to the garbage in the ring, and told them to “stick it.” Hogan said he was fed up with the fans’ reactions after all he had done for them and for charity. He intimated he only did it to line his own pockets. As far as WCW went, Hogan said he was bored, and that Hall and Nash represented “the new blood.”
Cutting a promo is an art unto itself—an art within an art.
Weber had been the WWF’s head of media relations in the 1980s at the height of Hulkamania. But this was something completely different. Hulkamania was something built up and carefully manicured. The New World Order was a spontaneous convergence that became bigger than anyone had counted on. “The whole thing was about the most organic, reactionary type of a thing I’ve ever seen,” Weber said. “And everything we did was reacting to it and then trying to like expand upon it. From merchandising, how it’s marketed, how it was promoted, how it was licensed and all that stuff.” The nWo needed a logo.
Leathers, Yother, and Wright told Sloan’s boss that they needed a logo—that day. And they only had the budget for one hour of Sloan’s time. No one involved remembered the exact dollar figure, just that the execution of such a thing would have normally been done by WCW in-house at its offices in Atlanta. But the Summer Olympics were being held that year in WCW’s home city and there were simply no production trucks available to roll for WCW television, so the promotion was using the in-house operations and production at its second home in Orlando. Leathers had come prepared with some ideas in his head. He spent hours perusing the magazine stands at places like Walgreen’s, buying biker and skater magazines and ripping out pages afterward in search of the right aesthetic. “I knew I wanted it kind of grungy,” Leathers said. “Something easily readable.”
Leathers, Yother, and Wright stood behind Sloan in the corner of a long editing suite, their backs to the huge window. Sloan sat in a red chair with a gray Macintosh computer in front of her and got to work. With a short amount of time, Sloan didn’t even have time to sketch anything out on paper. She said Leathers told her maybe just start laying out some ideas with the letters “NWO” on the computer, suggesting something that looked a little “rough” and like “graffiti.” “Of all the work I’ve ever done that was like the fastest, quickest, did-not-think-it-would-last-any-time-at-all [thing],” Sloan said. “I mean, they couldn’t even afford color. I was like, ‘All right, well, I guess a black T-shirt with a white logo.’ ”
Right before the dawn of the nWo, WCW had hired 4Kids Entertainment, a children’s entertainment and merchandise licensing company run by Alfred Kahn. 4Kids became the largest merchandise trading entity in the United States in the 1990s on the back of their work with Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. With the help of 4Kids, WCW was able to get nWo products sold at Spencer’s Gifts, a favorite mall store at the time for kids, teens, and young adults that sold offbeat items, as well as pop-culture merchandise. WCW and 4Kids licensed whatever they could with the nWo brand—“we went full tilt on everything,” Weber said—from sneakers to bandanas to baseball caps to women’s apparel to pennants to replica belts to action figures to credit cards to even a bowling league.
Then there were the video games. Weber said a deal with developer THQ was signed late in 1995 and when the nWo started in July 1996 they had to hit the metaphorical pause button and overhaul the original plan to include the group. What WCW and THQ ended up agreeing on was a game cobranded as both WCW and the nWo. THQ was completely fine with that, Weber said, because they saw how “the nWo took over the business in days.” The group’s name, the New World Order, did not end up being controversial. Nash and Bischoff discussed its relationship with conspiracy theories and the idea that there was a higher power somewhere pulling the strings on everything, like “the World Bank and the Illuminati and the different Rothschilds.” They wanted a sinister theme for the group that had the curiosity factor that Bischoff pined for. The nWo fit the bill.
Once the logo was in hand, Merwin ordered nWo T-shirts at five thousand per clip from printers in Las Vegas and Atlanta. Most merchandise items, if she was unsure how they would sell, would be ordered starting with five hundred and Merwin would see how things went. The nWo shirt was a hot seller right from the beginning.
Hall and Nash were inspired by gangsta rap and the culture surrounding it. They started wearing bandanas tied onto their heads with the knot in front like Shakur did. The “4 life” came directly from West Coast rapper Mack 10, who debuted the single “Foe Life” in 1995. WCW had little to no urban appeal previously. It was still, at its heart, a wrestling company in the Deep South with a good old boys’ club in place.
Hogan wasn’t necessarily a part of that, but he wasn’t bumping to Westside Connection on his car tape deck, either. Hall and Nash felt like the real-life Terry Bollea was actually a pretty cool guy. He had played bass in local rock ‘n’ roll bands as a kid in Florida. But he was not exactly up to speed on hip-hop culture. Nash put him on to the likes of Doctor Dré and Run DMC. “He just basically sat down and goes, ‘Where are you guys getting this from?’ ” Nash said of Hogan. “And then we just thumbnailed some stuff for him to listen to and he was on board.” By 1997, the middle-aged Hogan was wearing wide-leg JNCO jeans, a staple of late-nineties streetwear.
Hall and Nash took over the broadcast desk and provided some hilarious commentary for the second hour. It was difficult for fans to boo the duo, because they were so entertaining. Not so much for Hogan, who spraypainted Savage’s bald spot with graffiti and later was in the locker room area tagging walls with “NWO.” Meltzer reported around this time that a woman called the WCW offices, furious that her five-year-old had spraypainted “NWO” on her one-year-old.
There’s another insider wrestling phrase for this: keeping someone strong. Even if a good guy must lose to a villain in order to advance the storyline, you can keep him or her strong by having the heel cheat to win. Cheating and using outside interference to win matches behind the referee’s back was long a heel trope in professional wrestling. And the nWo used it—excessively.
Gangsta rap crossed over into the mainstream during the mid-1990s. The group N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton was the first record from the genre to go platinum. Doctor Dré departed N.W.A. and released The Chronic in 1992. It went triple platinum. Yo! MTV Raps became a popular show on the music network in the early 1990s.
The battle between West Coast rap, led by Death Row Records and Tupac Shakur, and East Coast rap, led by Bad Boy Records and Notorious B.I.G., intensified toward the middle part of the decade. Shakur was shot dead after a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas less than a month after Hogan christened the WCW title with “NWO” graffiti.
Starrcade 1997 was still an overwhelming business success. Ticket sales added up to a WCW record $543,000, and $161,961 of merchandise was sold, another record, Meltzer reported. The show was sold out and the paid attendance (16,052) was the most ever for a WCW show. The estimated pay-per-view buys were 700,000, which made it the highest-selling professional wrestling pay-per-view of all time at that point. WCW had an all-time-high amount of people watching and delivered to them an all-time blunder.
“Just the fact that Sting doesn’t speak for a year and a half and the first thing out of his mouth is something in Spanish—‘mamacita,’ ” Nash said. “I mean, that’s what he yells to the hard mic when he goes over. I’m just thinking to myself, ‘Could you imagine if Neil Armstrong just took that step down [onto the moon] and was in it for himself, and said something about Coca-Cola?’ “[Hogan] had creative control. You can’t give a wrestler creative control. Can’t happen. Just can’t happen. He doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do.”
Bash at the Beach took place July 12, 1998, in San Diego. The morning of the show, Manley had breakfast with Malone and asked how much Malone was getting paid to do the match. Malone told him $900,000, a figure he was proud of getting. Malone didn’t have an agent at the time, but negotiated with Bischoff with the help of Jazz owner Larry Miller. Manley told Malone that Rodman was getting $1,500,000 and Malone ended up hiring Manley as his agent. “He would have [wrestled] for free,” Manley said of Malone. “He loved it. He would watch it at home. He’d have vanilla cream waffle cookies and watch it from home—he loved it.”
Since the Montreal Screwjob, McMahon had become an evil authority figure character on screen, a caricature of himself. He was opposed mainly by Steve Austin, the goateed, bald-headed, beer-swilling, ass-whupping everyman who fans could not wait to see give the bullying boss his retribution. Austin had the same anti-establishment chops the nWo did and he took things to another level. His trademark gesture wasn’t a Turkish wolf or demonstrating “4” and “life” with his hands. It was a pair of middle fingers.
The match itself was not as impressive as Rodman’s debut a year earlier, but it didn’t have to be. Rodman wore a white “Rodzilla” T-shirt that had his head on it and the nWo logo stamped onto his blond hair. The shirt was still popular three decades later. Top boxer Devin Haney wore it during media interviews in 2023. Malone, meanwhile, wore purple spandex pants, similar to the ones worn by Page. He looked like a real wrestler and comported himself quite well.
By the end of 1998, Bischoff said he was so burned out between merger talks and the ongoing lawsuit with the WWF that he essentially removed himself from the creative process outside of simply greenlighting ideas. He could see things circling the drain and knew it was too late to stop it. “We were going to go back to what WWE did when I beat their ass,” Bischoff said. “That was the beginning of the end. The finger poke of doom was the manifestation of it.”
Dunn said Titan v. Turner wasn’t necessarily any more heated compared with other civil cases he has worked on involving competitors in the same industry. And it wasn’t necessarily more colorful of a case than others he has experienced in entertainment. But it was unique, in its own way. “It’s really all combined in the whole issue of, ‘Where do you draw the line between the individuals and the persona, and what’s real and what’s fictional?’ ” Dunn said. “And a lot of that is a line that’s deliberately blurred in professional wrestling.”
The WWE Hall of Fame induction was equally as ironic as it was deserving. This was the group of guys who left the WWF in the 1990s, when the promotion was struggling financially, and helped WCW became the top dog for a time. “I mean, you got four guys that were basically going at Vince as a shoot, pushing hard to actually try to take over—not put him out of business, but basically take his spot and be the number one company,” Hogan said. “So all of a sudden you’re inducting four guys in the Hall of Fame that twenty years ago were trying to stab you in the back.”
Nash said he was contacted by a company out of London in the early 2020s that was doing a documentary about Hogan, and they were going to bring up some of the more negative things about Hogan’s past. Nash called Hogan about it before deciding whether or not to cooperate with them. “Do you know anything about this?” Nash asked Hogan. “No,” Hogan replied. “Cool, then I’ll tell them to fuck off,” Nash said. “Thank you,” Hogan responded. “Love you, brother.” “It’s as simple as that,” Nash said of his relationship with Hogan. “I don’t have to be with him twenty-four/seven, but when it comes down to somebody trying to bushwhack him, I got his back, and I know he’s got mine.”
The nWo has been referenced in sports for years, whether it be the NBA, NFL, or college football. In 2019, Northwestern University offensive line coach Kurt Anderson started calling his line the nWo, asking for them to play with the ferocity of Hogan, Hall, and Nash. Even going back to the 1990s, the nWo made a major impression on sports—and not just Rodman and Malone, either.
“I’m going to lose the one person on this planet I’ve spent more of my life with than anyone else. My heart is broken and I’m so very fucking sad. I love Scott with all my heart but now I have to prepare my life without him in the present. I’ve been blessed to have a friend that took me at face value and I him. When we jumped to WCW we didn’t care who liked or hated us. We had each other and with the smooth Barry Bloom we changed wrestling both in content and pay for those… alot that disliked us. We were the ‘Outsiders’ but we had each other. Scott always felt he wasn’t worthy of the afterlife. Well God please have some gold-plated toothpicks for my brother. My life was enriched with his take on life. He wasn’t perfect but as he always said, ‘The last perfect person to walk the planet they nailed to a cross.’ ”
August 1, 2025
Very fun book diving into the history of the nWo and WCW. My young adult return to wrestling happened because of Scott Hall and Kevin Nash jumping to WCW in 1996 and starting the nWo.
Keeps the story telling to the point and moving in mostly chronological order which is nice.
Keeps the story telling to the point and moving in mostly chronological order which is nice.
June 25, 2025
Doesn't exactly tread any new ground, but it's an interesting and quick read
November 10, 2025
While reading this, my perspective on the work as a whole changed multiple times. I had questions during the read such as "who is the intended audience of this work?", "when is the author going to deliver on his subtitle's word of explaining how the NWO changed the U.S.?", and "will there be any new or fresh perspectives on a subject that's been discussed ad nauseum?". Shortly after the halfway point, I let these questions slip to the back of my mind, and my perspective on the book shifted to "lets just sit back and enjoy the ride", which drastically helped me to better enjoy this work. While an entertaining ride, I still question "to what extent did the author, Marc Raimondi, actually explain how the NWO influenced American society?"
To best answer that question, I first have deal with the question of "what did this book do for me, having read it?". I think mostly, this work helped me to better understand how the NWO came to be, how it came to be so successful, how it influenced the pro wrestling business as a whole, and how it eventually failed and brought down a whole wrestling company with it. Tangentially, Marc Raimondi spoke about how the NWO influenced aspects of American society, mostly by proclaiming various merits of NWO's popularity (TV ratings, merchandise sells, what pop icons wore NWO merch, ect). The chapter that was most true to the book's subtitle, was "14. I Could Have Called Him Porky The Big", in which the author discusses the lawsuit Titan v. Turner. This lawsuit, which revolved around the formation of the NWO, produced several strong ramifications to copyright infringement and journalistic integrity.
To go back to the question of "who is the intended audience of this work?"; I think I can better approach that by asking "who would I recommend this book to?". Mostly, I think this would be best suited for gen Z readers that enjoy pop culture sociology and are somewhat familiar with, but vaguely interested in the world of professional wrestling. Beyond that, I'd say it's a decent read for those who love learning or reading about the world of professional wrestling (me), or wrestling fans who want a solid crash course in the NWO (also me, albeit to a much lesser extent).
Overall, I enjoyed this read and am appreciative of the feeling that I now have a better understanding of current wrestling trends; particularly of the Death Riders faction in AEW. A new take that I have is that the Death Riders are a version of the NWO that is much healthier and sustainable for the AEW promotion and business as a whole.
To best answer that question, I first have deal with the question of "what did this book do for me, having read it?". I think mostly, this work helped me to better understand how the NWO came to be, how it came to be so successful, how it influenced the pro wrestling business as a whole, and how it eventually failed and brought down a whole wrestling company with it. Tangentially, Marc Raimondi spoke about how the NWO influenced aspects of American society, mostly by proclaiming various merits of NWO's popularity (TV ratings, merchandise sells, what pop icons wore NWO merch, ect). The chapter that was most true to the book's subtitle, was "14. I Could Have Called Him Porky The Big", in which the author discusses the lawsuit Titan v. Turner. This lawsuit, which revolved around the formation of the NWO, produced several strong ramifications to copyright infringement and journalistic integrity.
To go back to the question of "who is the intended audience of this work?"; I think I can better approach that by asking "who would I recommend this book to?". Mostly, I think this would be best suited for gen Z readers that enjoy pop culture sociology and are somewhat familiar with, but vaguely interested in the world of professional wrestling. Beyond that, I'd say it's a decent read for those who love learning or reading about the world of professional wrestling (me), or wrestling fans who want a solid crash course in the NWO (also me, albeit to a much lesser extent).
Overall, I enjoyed this read and am appreciative of the feeling that I now have a better understanding of current wrestling trends; particularly of the Death Riders faction in AEW. A new take that I have is that the Death Riders are a version of the NWO that is much healthier and sustainable for the AEW promotion and business as a whole.
August 8, 2025
"Whether ya like it or ya don't, it's the best thing going today!"
-Hulk Hogan
It felt necessary to read this right after the passing of Hulk Hogan. Having watched the NWO as a kid in the 90s to now only one of the original trio being left alive gives me a new look on my own mortality.
In the mid 80s Ric Flair's 4 Horseman were introduced to the world as the most dasterly group of men on television. Almost a decade later three men would take that identity and make it cool, almost acceptable. Blurring the lines between fiction and reality; Hogan, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash terrorized opposing wrestlers and did the only thing that the US federal government could do, make Vince McMahon sweat. The Nwo's catchphrase "for life" they have been metaphorical back and it's heyday but in present day it really has been for life. Wrestling gestures have been seen being performed by NFL and NBA players, wrestling heel type promos are being performed by us politicians, and now and again you'll see someone wearing a piece of NWO paraphernalia and not even know where it's from.
The controversies the stable produced in a way only made them more immortal in retrospect. Accusations of gang influence, sexual innuendos, and inserting themselves into the world of professional sports has all been exacerbated in the 2020s. Hell as of writing this ESPN and WWE are now in a joint deal partnership of some sorts! Even with kayfabe long dead and buried a situation like that would be inconceivable a few years ago. The NWO obviously didn't bring all this about themselves, but their ratings war with WWE and Degeneration X laid the foundations of the wrestling stables who were all doing this today. I think Scott Hall said it best when he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
"Bad times don't last, but bad guys always do!"
-Hulk Hogan
It felt necessary to read this right after the passing of Hulk Hogan. Having watched the NWO as a kid in the 90s to now only one of the original trio being left alive gives me a new look on my own mortality.
In the mid 80s Ric Flair's 4 Horseman were introduced to the world as the most dasterly group of men on television. Almost a decade later three men would take that identity and make it cool, almost acceptable. Blurring the lines between fiction and reality; Hogan, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash terrorized opposing wrestlers and did the only thing that the US federal government could do, make Vince McMahon sweat. The Nwo's catchphrase "for life" they have been metaphorical back and it's heyday but in present day it really has been for life. Wrestling gestures have been seen being performed by NFL and NBA players, wrestling heel type promos are being performed by us politicians, and now and again you'll see someone wearing a piece of NWO paraphernalia and not even know where it's from.
The controversies the stable produced in a way only made them more immortal in retrospect. Accusations of gang influence, sexual innuendos, and inserting themselves into the world of professional sports has all been exacerbated in the 2020s. Hell as of writing this ESPN and WWE are now in a joint deal partnership of some sorts! Even with kayfabe long dead and buried a situation like that would be inconceivable a few years ago. The NWO obviously didn't bring all this about themselves, but their ratings war with WWE and Degeneration X laid the foundations of the wrestling stables who were all doing this today. I think Scott Hall said it best when he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
"Bad times don't last, but bad guys always do!"
October 3, 2025
The 1990s were a glorious time to be a fan of professional wrestling. The WWF was surging in the early portion of the decade, and by mid-decade the WCW (and its NWO offshoot) had seemingly taken over the world. This Marc Raimondi book tells the story of the latter in perfectly-balanced form.
Basically, “Say Hello to the Bad Guys” tells the history of the NWO faction from beginning to end. It of course needs to stretch a little further back than the group’s 1996 inception for context, and go a bit beyond its 1998 dissolution, but for the most part the 1996-1998 period is intensely covered here.
The hallmark of this book is how Raimondi is able to perfectly balance the history of the material with the blow-by-blow of it all. If you want event-by-event remembrances of your favorite pay-per-views and Monday Nitro’s—you’ll love this effort! If you want a more over-arching, behind-the-scenes-reality (well, at least as close to reality as one can ever come when writing about pro wrestling) of what was transpiring—you’ll love this effort! It would be easy to swing too far in either direction here and alienate certain reader sets, but Raimondi walks the line perfectly.
Sure, it probably helps that I was utterly entranced by the likes of Hollywood Hogan, the Wolfpack, & “Crow” Sting during this period—so the nostalgia was “running wild”, to be sure, while reading this. But even beyond that, it is a really solid and fun tome for anyone even adjacently interested in that era of WWF/WCW.
Basically, “Say Hello to the Bad Guys” tells the history of the NWO faction from beginning to end. It of course needs to stretch a little further back than the group’s 1996 inception for context, and go a bit beyond its 1998 dissolution, but for the most part the 1996-1998 period is intensely covered here.
The hallmark of this book is how Raimondi is able to perfectly balance the history of the material with the blow-by-blow of it all. If you want event-by-event remembrances of your favorite pay-per-views and Monday Nitro’s—you’ll love this effort! If you want a more over-arching, behind-the-scenes-reality (well, at least as close to reality as one can ever come when writing about pro wrestling) of what was transpiring—you’ll love this effort! It would be easy to swing too far in either direction here and alienate certain reader sets, but Raimondi walks the line perfectly.
Sure, it probably helps that I was utterly entranced by the likes of Hollywood Hogan, the Wolfpack, & “Crow” Sting during this period—so the nostalgia was “running wild”, to be sure, while reading this. But even beyond that, it is a really solid and fun tome for anyone even adjacently interested in that era of WWF/WCW.
August 9, 2025
Windham Rotunda (deceased WWE superstar Bray Wyatt) once wrote and posted this on X about wrestling:
Wrestling is not a love story, it's a Fairy Tale for masochists. A comedy for people who criticize punchlines. A fantasy most can't understand, a spectacle no one can deny. Lines are blurred. Heroes are villains. Budgets are cut. Business is business.
But it can also be a land where Dead men walk. Where Honor makes you Elite. Where Demons run for office. And Rock bottom is a reason to rejoice. WOOOOO! It's an escape. A reason to point the blame at anyone but yourself for 2-3 hours. An excuse to be a kid again, and nothing matters except the moment we are in. Wrestling is not a love story, it's much more. It's hope.
And in a world surrounded in hate, greed and violence, a world where closure may never come. We all know a place that has hot and cold hope on tap. For better or for worse."
In this book, you get a long form exposition on why people cannot look away from the spectacle that is professional wrestling. You get an explanation that is logical, fueled by a childhood love of the shows, and full of well researched behind the scenes information.
If you’ve been a fan of wrestling for 30 years, this will give you an enjoyable stroll down memory lane. If you have no idea about the difference between a northern lights and German suplex, you will probably enjoy this book and learn a great deal about a pivotal time in the business.
Highly recommend.
Wrestling is not a love story, it's a Fairy Tale for masochists. A comedy for people who criticize punchlines. A fantasy most can't understand, a spectacle no one can deny. Lines are blurred. Heroes are villains. Budgets are cut. Business is business.
But it can also be a land where Dead men walk. Where Honor makes you Elite. Where Demons run for office. And Rock bottom is a reason to rejoice. WOOOOO! It's an escape. A reason to point the blame at anyone but yourself for 2-3 hours. An excuse to be a kid again, and nothing matters except the moment we are in. Wrestling is not a love story, it's much more. It's hope.
And in a world surrounded in hate, greed and violence, a world where closure may never come. We all know a place that has hot and cold hope on tap. For better or for worse."
In this book, you get a long form exposition on why people cannot look away from the spectacle that is professional wrestling. You get an explanation that is logical, fueled by a childhood love of the shows, and full of well researched behind the scenes information.
If you’ve been a fan of wrestling for 30 years, this will give you an enjoyable stroll down memory lane. If you have no idea about the difference between a northern lights and German suplex, you will probably enjoy this book and learn a great deal about a pivotal time in the business.
Highly recommend.
September 23, 2025
If you were around for WCW in the mid-’90s, you know the world changed the night Scott Hall walked through the crowd and said he had a story to tell. The NWO wasn’t just another faction—it was the shot of adrenaline that flipped wrestling on its head. I lived through that era, loved every second of it, and then pretty much stopped watching once it all fizzled out. I didn’t come back for twenty years.
That’s why this book hit so hard. Raimondi takes you back to those moments—the invasion, the black-and-white promos, the Outsiders, Hogan dropping the leg at Bash at the Beach—and shows how the whole thing wasn’t just chaos, it was strategy. He makes the case that the heels were the show, that without the NWO, wrestling doesn’t reach that fever pitch where everyone, even the casual fans, had to tune in.
Reading it felt like both a time machine and a crash course. The nostalgia is there—I could hear the crowd losing it, feel the electricity when the music hit—but it’s also packed with insight. The book breaks down how these “bad guys” carried WCW, changed the business, and left fingerprints all over the wrestling we see today.
For me, it was a reminder of why I loved wrestling in the first place and why that stretch will never be duplicated. If you were glued to Nitro on Monday nights, if you remember arguing with your friends about whether WCW or WWF was hotter, if you still pop when you hear “too sweet”—this book is for you.
That’s why this book hit so hard. Raimondi takes you back to those moments—the invasion, the black-and-white promos, the Outsiders, Hogan dropping the leg at Bash at the Beach—and shows how the whole thing wasn’t just chaos, it was strategy. He makes the case that the heels were the show, that without the NWO, wrestling doesn’t reach that fever pitch where everyone, even the casual fans, had to tune in.
Reading it felt like both a time machine and a crash course. The nostalgia is there—I could hear the crowd losing it, feel the electricity when the music hit—but it’s also packed with insight. The book breaks down how these “bad guys” carried WCW, changed the business, and left fingerprints all over the wrestling we see today.
For me, it was a reminder of why I loved wrestling in the first place and why that stretch will never be duplicated. If you were glued to Nitro on Monday nights, if you remember arguing with your friends about whether WCW or WWF was hotter, if you still pop when you hear “too sweet”—this book is for you.
December 1, 2025
I'm a giant fan of professional wrestling, and the NWO storyline was a big part of my childhood. I still proudly wear my NWO t-shirt, and often find myself listening to Eric Bischoff's podcast, which frequently covers the history of his creation of the New World Order as a professional wrestling concept. As books go, I found myself enjoying every page of this, but I did find it lacking when it comes to new material. There weren't any bombshells or big revelations here. This book is a straightforward retelling of what happened in various television storylines while sprinkling in the real-life drama that it took to make what we saw on WCW programming actually happen.
When it came to the interviews that he used, I couldn't tell if the author actually sat down with the people being discussed, or if he was transcribing clips of past interviews or podcasts. I'm pretty sure it's the latter, and would even go so far as to guess that a lot of the content from this book came from Eric Bischoff's podcast that I mentioned above, called "83 Weeks."
So, even though I really liked this book, I can't give it five stars because I had heard much of the content here in other places.
When it came to the interviews that he used, I couldn't tell if the author actually sat down with the people being discussed, or if he was transcribing clips of past interviews or podcasts. I'm pretty sure it's the latter, and would even go so far as to guess that a lot of the content from this book came from Eric Bischoff's podcast that I mentioned above, called "83 Weeks."
So, even though I really liked this book, I can't give it five stars because I had heard much of the content here in other places.
July 30, 2025
I will start this review off by saying this is a pretty niche book, but hit all the nostalgia buttons for me. It hits a bit harder with the passing of Hulk Hogan that 2 of the 3 wrestlers on the cover have now passed away. At the end of junior high and the beginning of high school, wrestling was one of the main interests of my friends and I. The "Monday Night Wars" drew amazing ratings for the day and we couldn't wait to talk about the shows the next day. This book explores the creation of a group of "anti-heroes" called the nWo that pushed WCW to the top of the ratings battles for over a year. At the center of it was Hulk Hogan. Always a good guy, he re-invented himself as a bad guy. His betrayal of WCW is still considered one of the best twists in wrestling. This book explores all these plots, but looks at the wrestlers and executives behind these decisions as real people and explores why they did what they did. A must read for any wrestling fan.
July 26, 2025
3.75
Picked this up after Hogan passed away as I wanted to read a bio of the man that wasn't entirely full of crap like his autobiography. The first chapter does do a fairly good job of summarizing his early career; so from that aspect it did exactly what I was after. The rest of the tale goes over the formation, rise, fall, and overall pop culture effect of the NWO, as well as focusing on WCW primarily from 1996-late 1999. While it is a good primer on the subject and includes the very occasion new nugget of information, both Nitro by Guy Evans and Death of WCW by Bryan Alvarez and RD Reynolds are better deeper dives.
Highlights for me were the explanation of how the NWO logo was designed, and all of chapter 14 which dives into the legal battles fought between Warner and WWF.
Picked this up after Hogan passed away as I wanted to read a bio of the man that wasn't entirely full of crap like his autobiography. The first chapter does do a fairly good job of summarizing his early career; so from that aspect it did exactly what I was after. The rest of the tale goes over the formation, rise, fall, and overall pop culture effect of the NWO, as well as focusing on WCW primarily from 1996-late 1999. While it is a good primer on the subject and includes the very occasion new nugget of information, both Nitro by Guy Evans and Death of WCW by Bryan Alvarez and RD Reynolds are better deeper dives.
Highlights for me were the explanation of how the NWO logo was designed, and all of chapter 14 which dives into the legal battles fought between Warner and WWF.
August 20, 2025
3.5 stars. Idk what I expected from this book but I felt disappointed.
This book has such a niche audience, yet it goes over and explains wrestling jargon that most fans that are going to read this book are already familiar with. Also a bulk of it is just the author going over the weekly storylines that happened on Nitro.
If you are a big enough fan of wrestling to be reading books about it, there’s probably not too much new info you are going to learn about the NWO in here. But it is enjoyable to go back and relive some of the highlights. The last chapter in the book felt more in line with the title and actually spoke on the impact the NWO had on American culture but it felt fairly rushed.
This book has such a niche audience, yet it goes over and explains wrestling jargon that most fans that are going to read this book are already familiar with. Also a bulk of it is just the author going over the weekly storylines that happened on Nitro.
If you are a big enough fan of wrestling to be reading books about it, there’s probably not too much new info you are going to learn about the NWO in here. But it is enjoyable to go back and relive some of the highlights. The last chapter in the book felt more in line with the title and actually spoke on the impact the NWO had on American culture but it felt fairly rushed.
June 28, 2025
Book 35 of 2025
4.25 stars
Let’s start off with this book was a good, quick, fun read! Didn’t really break new ground, and I personally thought it was a little weird for this book to come out so late after the fact. (Or put it out next year, 30 year anniversary of Scott Hall’s 1st appearance/year of Bash if the Beach when NWO was formed)
The NWO -when it started- was edgy, new, groundbreaking, and kept fans captivated week after week. Unfortunately nothing lasts forever, insert the finger poke of doom, and it’s over Johnny!
I was in my 20s at the NWO height, so this book is worth the read for any of us Gen Xers, and wrestling fan!
NWO 4 Life!
4.25 stars
Let’s start off with this book was a good, quick, fun read! Didn’t really break new ground, and I personally thought it was a little weird for this book to come out so late after the fact. (Or put it out next year, 30 year anniversary of Scott Hall’s 1st appearance/year of Bash if the Beach when NWO was formed)
The NWO -when it started- was edgy, new, groundbreaking, and kept fans captivated week after week. Unfortunately nothing lasts forever, insert the finger poke of doom, and it’s over Johnny!
I was in my 20s at the NWO height, so this book is worth the read for any of us Gen Xers, and wrestling fan!
NWO 4 Life!
July 17, 2025
Say Hello to the Bad Guys doesn’t really add a ton new that wrestling fans don’t know about the nWo, or anything that hasn’t been said since the end of WCW in 2001. But the impact of the group still remains almost 24 years later. The book was once again a fun look at the height of the nWo’s run, their downfall with the Fingerpoke of Doom, and the sad WWE run in 2002. A little disappointing that it did not go into the NWO 2000 or the dismal years with Vince Russo in charge, but the interviews with some of the backstage producers and even Jay Leno was cool. And the tribute to Scott Hall was beautiful. Nothing new, but a good read
September 14, 2025
Generally awesome. For those that know the nWo, WCW, Hall, Nash, and Hogan story, there isn’t any new earth shattering info as this story has been told and covered at nauseam but there is a good fair share of new, fun nuggets like the perspective on the Sting Hogan 3 count and Hall’s disconnect with his famous 1996 promo. The second half really picked up for me when Raimondi started flushing out the impact the nWo had on culture (both domestically and globally) and how everything really is professional wrestling. Does professional wrestling mirror culture? Or does culture mirror professional wrestling? Awesome awesome book. 4/5
July 3, 2025
This book may have been a 5 star book 20 years ago. As it is, there's nothing new or groundbreaking here. All this info is already widely known to any wrestling fans. Hogan is still god. Bischoff is still the savior of wrestling and the smartest man on the planet.
There's not much of anything about how the "nWo changed america". Was it extremely popular for 12-18 months yes. But it also killed WCW, as it got bloated and then added crap like the lWo (which isn't menioned in the book) and other branched off fractions to try and milk every drop out of it.
There's not much of anything about how the "nWo changed america". Was it extremely popular for 12-18 months yes. But it also killed WCW, as it got bloated and then added crap like the lWo (which isn't menioned in the book) and other branched off fractions to try and milk every drop out of it.
September 5, 2025
Raimondi is a good writer but unfortunately he chose the most overdone topic in wrestling history, and has nothing new to say about it. The target audience seems to be people with a vague nostalgia for the nWo, but who have never heard a wrestling insider term before, and have never encountered the infinite podcasts, newsletters, books or documentaries about WCW. If you fed all that source material to an LLM, AI would probably spit out something that feels more fresh and original than this book.
June 25, 2025
I was a freshman in high school when the nWo broke and I recall how quickly I went from being mocked for liking wrestling to my sophomore year to suddenly having everyone talk to me about my nWo or DX shirt and knowing who everyone was.
Obviously nWo changed the landscape of wrestling and this book is well written and entertaining , although offers few insights that haven't come out recently in podcast form, I still enjoyed it start to finish.
Obviously nWo changed the landscape of wrestling and this book is well written and entertaining , although offers few insights that haven't come out recently in podcast form, I still enjoyed it start to finish.
July 31, 2025
Well written. Well researched. Well tread territory.
When this book was announced I was ecstatic, thinking we’d finally get a thorough accounting of HOW the nWo and 90s wrestling shaped America. That’s the title, after all. I’d hoped for a literary version of OJ: Made in an America - setting the cultural scene, exploring the country’s climate and tying it all back to the main squared circle subject.
The intro to the book presents that exact setup. And it hooked me. But then the following 250+ pages are simply a week by week rehash of the nWo angle from start to finish. And that is what ultimately made this read so incredibly disappointing. Sure, there a few interesting nuggets scattered throughout and funny stories retold. But when the authors own go-to OMG revelation that he’s pointed out in multiple interviews is “I learned the logo was made by some Turner rando, crazy right?!” then clearly the mission of the book was not accomplished.
And what makes this read all the more unsatisfying is that the very last chapter is exactly what I wanted the whole thing to be! It highlights the impact of the group, how it still resonates today, how it directly led to the reshaping of American politics, how the generation of millions who grew up with all this are now running countries and taking inspiration from three letters scribbled in black and white. Or red.
I’m sure this book was written with the best of intentions. The beginning and end show that the potential was all right there. But just like the nWo itself, it got too enamored with its own story and became an overstuffed, overblown letdown.
When this book was announced I was ecstatic, thinking we’d finally get a thorough accounting of HOW the nWo and 90s wrestling shaped America. That’s the title, after all. I’d hoped for a literary version of OJ: Made in an America - setting the cultural scene, exploring the country’s climate and tying it all back to the main squared circle subject.
The intro to the book presents that exact setup. And it hooked me. But then the following 250+ pages are simply a week by week rehash of the nWo angle from start to finish. And that is what ultimately made this read so incredibly disappointing. Sure, there a few interesting nuggets scattered throughout and funny stories retold. But when the authors own go-to OMG revelation that he’s pointed out in multiple interviews is “I learned the logo was made by some Turner rando, crazy right?!” then clearly the mission of the book was not accomplished.
And what makes this read all the more unsatisfying is that the very last chapter is exactly what I wanted the whole thing to be! It highlights the impact of the group, how it still resonates today, how it directly led to the reshaping of American politics, how the generation of millions who grew up with all this are now running countries and taking inspiration from three letters scribbled in black and white. Or red.
I’m sure this book was written with the best of intentions. The beginning and end show that the potential was all right there. But just like the nWo itself, it got too enamored with its own story and became an overstuffed, overblown letdown.
August 22, 2025
While it’s not necessarily ground breaking and really nothing new that wrestling fans don’t know, it was a great story to tell via Raimondi’s writing. Granted I was between the ages of 1 months to 4 years old at the height of the NWO, it was really interesting to learn about the Leno and Carl Malone matches.
Ultimately, worth it if you’re a new wrestling fan or just wanna learn about this piece of pop culture and fun nostalgia for fans of WCW/WWE
Ultimately, worth it if you’re a new wrestling fan or just wanna learn about this piece of pop culture and fun nostalgia for fans of WCW/WWE
October 19, 2025
A great history of the nWo. Not a ton that hasn't been reported on before, but this is everything put together all in one place, and the author gets quotes from pretty much everyone involved. He even got Sting! It gets bogged down by a couple of typos (including confusion on when Kevin Nash was signed to WCW), a misleading subtitle (I assume added by the publisher) and a really boring legal chapter, but overall, a very quick and easy read with a few new pieces of intel.
July 9, 2025
Growing up a wrestling fan in the early 90’s and through the Monday night wars I definitely enjoyed this walk down memory lane. The author brought back a lot of memories and some things that I didn’t know or remembered. Would definitely recommend for any wrestling fans out there, especially if you were a fan of the NWO!
July 26, 2025
If you are a fan of 90s wrestling there isn't anything new in this book. Most of the stories in the book have been in other books such as "Nitro" or told on the podcast "83 weeks" not that it's a bad book.
I'd just say it's more aimed towards people who don't consume a lot of 90s wrestling content already.
I'd just say it's more aimed towards people who don't consume a lot of 90s wrestling content already.
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