Review for nWo: The Revolution

nWo. Three letters that changed the face of the wrestling business. Or at least of WCW. In fact these three letters kick started one of the greatest factions in wrestling history and allowed WCW to destroy WWE in the ratings for almost two years.

This DVD is one for those who do not know, or care, about why WCW died, why people jumped ship to WWE or ECW from WCW and focuses simply on the positives. This is both a good and bad thing. It is good, because really if you want to hear all the really bitter negatives about what the nWo did then you should go look up The Rise and Fall of WCW DVD or even the Monday Night Wars one.

nWo: The Revolution looks at how having two WWE wrestlers debut in WCW (Scott Hall and Kevin Nash) announcing "You wanna war? You got one!" made the best angle in years. The reason? Because people thought it was real. People thought that these guys had come from WWE to destroy WCW and there was nothing that was going to stop them.

Over the weeks and months, they interrupted matches, powerbombed WCW Boss Eric Bischoff through the ramp and caused chaos. It all seemed like it could not get any worse until they were booked in a match against Sting, Lex Luger and Macho Man Randy Savage. It was during this match that they revealed who their third man was. The man who would become the leader of the nWo:

Hulk Hogan.

With this reveal and the speech the followed 'You are looking at the New World Order of Wrestling': The nWo was born.

The ratings skyrocketed. WCW could not keep nWo t-shirts in stock and WCW began to overtake WWE in every way imaginable.

It is here, during the rise that the nWo began making mistakes, allowing everyone and I mean EVERYONE into the group from Virgil to Dusty Rhodes to Eric Bischoff to factions like the lWo (Latino World Order) and the nWo Hollywood (Hogan's faction) and nWo Wolfpac (Nash's faction). It got to the point that nWo had no one really to face as everyone was in the group. In the documentary Booker T even comments that he had to refuse a number of times an invitation into the group.

The only person who stood up against the group was Sting. I am glad the documentary went into detail on how great this feud was. Again, they do not go into why the payoff at Starrcade 1997 was one of the worst in the history of the business. In fact they don't go into many of the lows of the group. They talk about Rodman and Leno as if the publicity and notoriety were good enough reasons to include them, rather than the utter money pits having them there seemed to be. Warrior and the One Warrior Nation, is not looked at. Neither is any of the major mess ups that were caused such as the Fingerpoke of Doom that was one of the first nails in the coffin of WCW.

A look at nWo 2000, with Vince Russo, in new interview footage is shown. This was amazing, as I never thought I would ever see him on a WWE product ever. The end of WCW is brushed over and then a few minutes is spent on WWE's version, which started off with such promise and then, as with all versions, simply fell apart.

However, this documentary does not dwell on any of the low points. This is a positive DVD and according to everyone on it, the nWo was the best thing that ever happened to the business.

The three disk set is actually pretty good with lots of matches and promos. It would be easier to say what was missed out, rather than what was included. As this is supposed to be everything positive for the nWo Hogan/Sting at Starrcade is not here neither is either Rock/Hogan or Austin/Hall from Wrestlemania 18. The most shocking thing from this is the lack of promos and videos. Many people (even the documentary) say the best thing about the nWo were there promos, especially the earlier ones. This is a shame. Also missing is the awesome McMahon promo for the nWo which I still think is one of the best I have ever seen.

As it is, the set is filled with some great matches featuring the likes of Hogan, Roddy Piper, Macho Man Randy Savage, Bret Hart, Goldberg and also an awesome War Games match that pitted Team WCW vs. nWo Hollywood and nWo Wolfpac. These are all great and only some of them (yes I'm looking at you two Leno and Rodman) can be said to be awful, but certainly worth watching even just for curiosity sake.

The nWo, based on this DVD were one of the best factions and one of the most important things to ever happen to wrestling. Sure, I know that they represented a great boost to WCW that ultimately became their downfall, but that's not important. The nWo were an important element in the history of professional wrestling and this DVD (flaws and all) is a good showing of why this was.