Lex Luger's 96-97 run was an example of great babyface booking

THE 101

THE 101

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From Fall Brawl 96 to beating Hogan for the title on Nitro in August 97, THIS is how you book a babyface. And it was simple, basic booking and storytelling.

He costs Team WCW the War Games at Fall Brawl, while also alienating Sting, leading Sting to walk out of WCW and become Crow Sting. Luger ends Fall Brawl beaten down, crawling on the ground begging Sting for forgiveness.

But with Sting out of the picture, Luger becomes pretty much the defacto leader of the WCW locker room, and his redemption story begins with a feud with Arn Anderson the next month at Halloween Havoc, who called Luger out for quitting at Fall Brawl. Luger wins and barely takes any L's for the next 10 months. Valiantly takes on the NWO by himself at the end WW3, and then every week on Nitro is racking motherfukkas with ease, picking up win after win. Never looking weak and just steadily building up momentum. Most of the time he's beating bums, he doesn't need to be beating major talent. And he is OVER AS fukk. Crowd popping like crazy every week for this theme :banderas:



He gets the #1 contender shot in that weird tag match stip with Giant v Harlem Heat, then he makes Rodman submit in a hugely high profile main event at Bash of the Beach 97, which then finally leads to him beating Hogan live on Nitro in one of the GOAT moments of the Monday Night Wars. Honestly, the Goldberg title win gets talked about more, but I prefer Luger's win. It felt more earned to me.

The match made all them other Nitro main event non finishes worth it....because that's how it looked like it was gonna go down. NWO run in fukkery, but Luger ducks them all, puts Hoegan in the rack and Hoegan instantly submits :gladbron::ooh:

The crowd reaction, Tony's call, the celebration after :blessed:

And then 5 days later they ruined all this good work and Luger was never the same, and in many ways this marked the beginning of the end. Forget the Starrcade 97 mess, this was the rot setting in. But that's for another thread.

Sorry for the long post....didn't even intend to go this long...but i'm inspired by watching a lot of 97 WCW lately.

TL;DR - Give a babyface a nice redemption story, let him stack up wins, then give him the title = tier 1 babyface booking.
 
Omar Little

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No argument here.


Luger more than held his end of the feud up against the horsemen in the 80’s and the nWo in the 90’s that alone makes for an amazing resume

He definitely had the mandate of the masses in late 96/97 while DDP was emerging and Sting was in the shadows and he played that part well. The pop he got for beating the Giant at Starrcade 96 let you know the fans were with him.
 
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and his 2003 run was a great example of being a piece of shyt :yeshrug:


On April 19, 2003, Luger was involved in a domestic dispute with Elizabeth Hulette, then his live-in girlfriend, in the garage of their townhouse in Marietta, Georgia, during which Luger struck her. Cobb County police found Elizabeth with two bruised eyes, a bump on her head, and a cut lip. Luger was charged with a misdemeanor count of battery and released on $2,500 bond.

Two days later on April 21, Luger was arrested for driving under the influence after rear-ending another car. According to the police report, Luger had slurred speech and bloodshot eyes, and could not locate his driver's license. Hulette was a passenger in the vehicle and was sent home in a taxi. Luger was also driving with a suspended license for not appearing in court on March 5, 2003 for a hearing on a previous offense of driving with expired tags and having no proof of insurance.

On May 1, 2003 (less than two weeks after the domestic dispute), Hulette died in the townhouse they shared in Marietta, after mixing pills of hydrocodone, and Alprazolam (Xanax) with vodka. Luger was arrested after a search of the residence revealed a number of illicit controlled substances, including anabolic steroids, OxyContin, synthetic growth hormone, testosterone, and Alprazolam. He was charged with 13 felony counts of drug possession. He was released the following day on $27,500 bail. Hulette's death was eventually ruled accidental. Luger pleaded guilty to the charges and was fined $1,000, sentenced to five years probation, and ordered to undergo periodic drug tests.


yea good for him for turning his life around, but the shyt with Elizabeth is still :francis::pacspit:
 
THE 101

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puppetmaster said:
No argument here.


Luger more than held his end of the feud up against the horsemen in the 80’s and the nWo in the 90’s that alone makes for an amazing resume

He definitely had the mandate of the masses in late 96/97 while DDP was emerging and Sting was in the shadows and he played that part well. The pop he got for beating the Giant at Starrcade 96 let you know the fans were with him.
Click to expand...

That's the thing I notice about WCW in 97...they had some incredibly strong babyfaces....Luger, Sting and DDP were all on fire and in many ways they all deserved that title run.

I know the logical thing to do was build to Hogan and Sting, so they needed the title back on Hogan, but if they absolutely had to go Hogan v Sting at Starrcade, then I would've scrapped that Hogan v Piper bullshyt at Halloween Havoc, and give Luger at least a couple month run with the title,do Luger v Hogan at Havoc with Hogan going over. But i dunno....they've could've easily waited to do Hogan and Sting at Superbrawl, with Sting having to run through the NWO first before getting a match with Hogan.

Whatever the case, the backstage politicin was seriously getting its claws in the product at this point...similarly it was a joke that The Steiners (again insanely over) didn't beat Hall and Nash for the tag titles at Road Wild. That was the original plan but Hall and Nash got it nixed as they "thought the show had too many title changes already" :comeon::martin:
 
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