How the New York Order changed pro-wrestling forever
In 2002, Mark Raimondi was waiting for his breakfast in a restaurant in Tokyo. As he waited, the local man serving the food spotted the black hoodie he was wearing, adorned with the logo of the New World Order (nWo), the 1990s movement that revolutionized pro-wrestling, and simply smiled at him. 'He didn't speak English and I can't speak any Japanese, but we were able to connect through memories that meant something to both of us,' he recalls.
9 Pro-wrestlers Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and Hulk Hogan became household names as part of pro-wrestling's New World Order, which became a '90s pop-culture phenomena whose influence transcended far outside the competition ring.
WWE via Getty Images
In 'Say Hello to the Bad Guys — How Pro-wrestling's New World Order Changed America' (Simon & Schuster), ESPN journalist and former Post writer Raimondi investigates just how the rebel New World Order not only changed the face of professional wrestling but also manage to tap into the national psyche unlike anything before.
Advertisement
'The kids, teens, and young adults who grew up watching the nWo from 1996 to 1999 — and there were millions — are now leaders of industry, politicians, writers, producers, entertainers, musicians, and professional athletes, all of whom are helping to shape American culture right now,' he writes
9 Hulk Hogan, arguably the best-known of the New World Order-members.
Getty Images
In the late 1990s the fierce competition between rival pro-wrestling organizations the World Wrestling Federation (now known as WWE) and World Championship Wresting reached its zenith, as their events went head-to-head on live television and each tried to outdo the other with increasingly spectacular stunts and controversial storylines.
Advertisement
The resulting surge in popularity and unprecedented mainstream attention was largely down to the emergence of an outrageous new faction in the WCW — the New World Order.
Conceived by WCW senior vice president Eric Bischoff, it featured former WWF wrestlers Scott Hall and Kevin Nash and a mysterious 'third man,' later revealed to be another ex-WWF wrestler, the legendary Hulk Hogan.
Rebellious and edgier than their counterparts, the New World Order were portrayed as outsiders, a band of unsanctioned invaders intent on taking over the WCW with the key storyline being Hogan 'turning heel' and switching from good guy to one of the baddies.
9 The New World Order singlehandedly reinvigorated professional wrestling and helping to turn it into the multi-billion dollar entertainment machine it is today.
Advertisement
'That's where the nWo was born, at the intersection of genuine and phony. Lines became blurred. The antiheroes became the main characters,' says Raimondi.
'And pro wrestling was never the same again.'
Nothing was off limits for the nWo.
They even used storylines based on Hall's chaotic private life.
Advertisement
A self-destructive character, he often drove drunk and had totaled eight Cadillacs in just a few years and now it was all part of the act. 'He started stumbling to the ring holding a cocktail cup, acting like he was drunk on television,' adds Raimondi.
'Or maybe he actually was drunk. At that point, it hardly mattered.'
The fans lapped it up.
9 Donald Trump raising the hand of Bobby Lashley in victory at Wrestlemania in 2007.
Getty Images
'The idea of the antihero being the protagonist wasn't an especially new one in the entertainment industry,' says Raimondi. 'But the nWo hit in such a formative time and was consumed by millions of people every week.'
Being in the nWo gave Hulk Hogan's career a much-needed boost, too.
When he first left the WWF in 1993, the wrestler's popularity had plummeted, not least because he had admitted to taking steroids.
Now though, he was once again in the good graces of the nation's wrestling fans. 'The boos and indifference toward Hulkamania were gone. It was running wild again,' says Raimondi.
Advertisement
'All it took was Hogan to be a dastardly son of a bitch for several years before fans wanted to see the old him again.'
With their distinctive black and white branding and anti-establishment personas, the impact of then nWo's arrival was so significant that soon the WWF would follow suit. They launched their own Attitude Era, where they enlisted box office names like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock and Triple H to push the boundaries still further with edgier storylines, profanity and even sexualized content.
9 Former pro-wrestler Dwayne Johnson with daughter Simone Johnson, who is also a well-known wrestler.
Getty Images
For author Raimondi, the burgeoning popularity of wrestling at the time was part of a wider cultural shift in the late '90s, when a wave of pseudo-reality shows like The Jerry Springer Show and The Real World pushed the limit of credulity to great success.
Advertisement
'Like wrestling, few really believed everything happening on Springer or Real World was completely on the up-and-up,' he writes. 'Yet, people watched anyway — at a high rate — and bought in, to an extent, to their staged realities.
'Almost everyone has been aware for decades that pro wrestling isn't a legitimate sports competition, but Robert Downey Jr. isn't actually Iron Man, either.'
9 Rapper Kendrick Lamar has reference the New World Order in lyrics to songs related to his 'beef' with Drake.
AP
Wrestling's surge also came at a crucial moment for network television as the expansion of cable meant an increased demand for entertaining and low-cost programming. 'Talk-show guests and reality television contestants came much cheaper than actors,' adds Raimondi.
Advertisement
'So did pro wrestlers.'
Today, the success of the New World Order and the transformative effect it had on the fortunes of both pro-wrestling organizations continues to permeate all aspects of modern life.
President Trump, for instance, hosted an episode of Wrestlemania and once shaved the WWE owner Vince McMahon's head in the ring. More recently, Trump even appointed McMahon's wife Linda, a former CEO of WWE, as the secretary of education.
9 Pres. Trump with Linda McMahon, now US Secretary of Education.
REUTERS
Advertisement
Dwayne Johnson, a former wrestler whose daughter is now in WWE, is now the highest-paid actor in the world and one of most recognizable people on the planet.
In music you would be hard pressed to find a hip-hop artist who has never rapped a lyric about pro-wrestling. Kendrick Lamar, for instance, used the line 'sweet chin music,' in his definitive Drake diss track 'Not Like Us,' a reference to the finishing move of WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels.
In 2017, meanwhile, influencer Kendall Jenner even rocked an oversized nWo logo shirt at a Michael Kors show during New York fashion week.
'To understand pro wrestling is to understand America itself,' writes Raimondi. 'It's capitalism, it's materialism. It's bombast. A wrestling program is like a TikTok algorithm come to life.'
Almost inevitably, the success of nWo and the WCW meant that WWF — the bigger of the two operations — began to eye its competitor and in March 2001 bought out its rival, acquiring all of the organization's assets for $4.2 million.
Now, the nWo was living on borrowed time.
While Hogan, Hall and Nash briefly rehashed their act in WWF — and new members of the faction came and went — Vince McMahon announced that the New World Order had been disbanded on July 15, 2002, during an episode of 'Raw.'
While the nWo was no more, the founders could at least take comfort from the impact they had, both in the wrestling ring and outside it. 'The nWo was more than just a wrestling faction; it was a cultural phenomenon that redefined the landscape of professional wrestling,' adds Raimondi.
9 Author and former ESPN journalist Marc Raimondi.
And while Kevin Nash and Hulk Hogan are still here to tell their story, the other founding member, Scott Hall, passed away in March 2022, after he suffered three heart attacks as a result of a blood clot that developed after a hip operation. He was 63.
Prior to his death, when Hall was first inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, he gave a speech explaining what being a member of the New World Order had meant to him. 'Hard work pays off — dreams come true,' he said. 'Bad times don't last. But Bad Guys do.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Jaws' at 50: How Steven Spielberg's shark movie changed my life and cinema forever
It's been 50 years since American movies, and a boy's life, changed forever. ' Jaws ' was released on June 20, 1975, a seismic event in moviegoing. Few films can be said to have changed cinema, but Steven Spielberg's early masterpiece is one. With an unprecedented marketing campaign, an unusually wide initial release and crowds packing showings from its opening weekend, the shark thriller literally invented the summer blockbuster season. It also happened to be the first 'adult' movie I ever saw in a theater. At age 9 and growing up in Indianapolis, I might have been too young to see it; my sister Kristin, four years younger, certainly was. Before 'Jaws,' the only films we'd seen in theaters were Disney-type fare. Perhaps our parents couldn't get a babysitter, or maybe they didn't care. Like the rest of America, they wanted to be where the action was. I likely would have fallen in love with movies anyway at some point, but you could connect the dots directly from that viewing to this column, the latest in a career spent in the dark. If it hadn't been then, it likely would have been in 1977, when the summer movie season became a full-blown phenomenon. Of course, there was George Lucas' ' Star Wars,' which 11-year-old me saw seven times, but there was also the 'Jaws'-inspired 'The Deep,' the Burt Reynolds car chase action comedy 'Smokey and the Bandit' and the James Bond film 'The Spy Who Loved Me.' I could go on: 'Grease' and 'Revenge of the Pink Panther' in 1978; 'Alien' and 'Moonraker' in 1979; 'The Empire Strikes Back' and 'Airplane!' in 1980. You get the idea — I saw them all. In 1981, at age 15, I broadened my horizons. I spent the summer watching the Spielberg-Lucas 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' fantasy films 'Time Bandits' and 'Clash of the Titans' as well as the box office bomb 'Megaforce,' a terrible action movie starring Barry Bostwick that for some reason sticks in my mind to this day. In the fall, I ventured into more sophisticated fare, what we'd call Oscar bait today. 'Chariots of Fire,' the eventual best picture winner; then 'Reds,' 'Ragtime' and many others. By college I was consuming the French New Wave and film noir, and the rest is personal history. However, the summer box office season of big scale adventures, eye-popping special effects, jump scares and belly laughs still holds an allure for me after all these years. I'm obviously not alone; the recent Memorial Day box-office weekend, led by ' Lilo & Stitch ' and ' Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,' was the best ever for that holiday. This summer is shaping up to be the best since at least 2019, the last before the pandemic. Spielberg calls such genre movies 'films of imagination,' although one has to say that character-driven comedies and dramas from 'Casablanca' to ' Anora ' are also imaginative, but I know what he means. Science fiction and action films have a way of transporting the viewer into another realm — alternate universes, if you will — more than conventional comedies or dramas do. Yet, what is the future of the summer movie season? Despite its current viability, home viewing habits in general and higher movie theater ticket prices present obstacles. The legacy of 'Jaws' has lasted 50 years. Will it last 60? I think so, but who knows. ' How to Train Your Dragon ' is going strong, Pixar's ' Elio ' and the zombie sequel ' 28 Years Later ' just opened to high expectations, and 'Jurassic Park Rebirth,' a new 'Superman' and 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' loom. Still, few of these movies reach the sublime level of 'Jaws,' which is quite simply not just the greatest summer movie, but one of the best suspense films ever made, not only in its visual splendor and memorable performances, but also the character-driven script by Carl Gottlieb and Peter Benchley from Benchley's novel, Verna Fields' kinetic editing and John Williams' legendary score. Its troubled production, mainly stemming from the fact that the mechanical shark often didn't work properly, is the stuff of legend. Spielberg, then only 27, had to invent on the fly. With the shark, nicknamed Bruce, unavailable much of the time, scenes with humans became more important. With its brooding battle of wills, Robert Shaw's classic USS Indianapolis monologue and a clash between civilization and the elements, 'Jaws' became the '70s version of 'Moby Dick,' a man vs. nature parable that was almost operatic in its humans' obsession with the destruction of an unstoppable predator.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Bay Area artists turn down S.F. Boiler Room show, throw their own party instead
When Jorge Courtade first started DJing in 2016, he aspired to perform for Boiler Room, a popular online music broadcaster founded in London in 2010 and credited with bringing the underground music scene to the masses through livestreamed performances. 'In the underground, people are very mindful of how dance music fits into the global political context,' said Courtade, also known to the Bay Area's event scene as DJ Juanny. But Courtade doesn't think Boiler Room's new owners align with that ethos. So, when he was approached by Boiler Room in March to play a show in San Francisco on June 6 — after performing for them in 2022 and 2024 — he says he turned it down. Instead, Courtade joined a group of Bay Area artists and studios including DJ Fridge, Lower Grand Radio, Program SF and SafariiiCamp, to protest the show by throwing their own counter event called Bay Area Solidarity Strike. 'Our decision was primarily focused on Boiler Room's involvement in Israel and direct support for what ended up being, to me, a genocide,' Courtade said. The global underground music scene prides itself on counterculture. Some of Boiler Room's most-watched streams include Yousuke Yukimatsu, a Japanese DJ who left his construction job to pursue music after he was diagnosed with brain cancer, and Kaytranada, whose 2013 performance became a career-defining moment for the Canadian producer. That renegade spirit is what made people like Courtade fall in love with the scene and look up to places at its cutting edge like Boiler Room. But lately, the subgenre has been reckoning with the increasing ubiquity of private equity, which has been investing in everything from public utilities like water to music, sometimes to damaging effect. In January, Boiler Room was acquired by Superstruct Entertainment, whose parent company is the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. The acquisition prompted a slew of artists to withdraw from events with ties to Superstruct, citing KKR's investments in the fossil fuel industry, the defense industry, Israeli tech companies and ties to a company accused of contributing to human rights abuses in the West Bank. 'Boiler Room feels like a giant corporate entity that's still trying to masquerade as part of the underground, but it's extracting value from our positions as community members,' said DJ Fridge, also known as Benjamin Cook. 'And then that value is eventually going upstream to KKR.' Boiler Room did not respond to the Chronicle's request for comment. But since the acquisition, the entity has shared its stance via social media. KKR 'has investments that categorically do not align with our values,' Boiler Room posted on social media in March. 'We are also unable to divest because we have no say in our ownership. … We will always remain unapologetically pro-Palestine.' Cook said it's a layered situation since Boiler Room has made statements in support of Palestinians — and Cook wants to make a distinction between staff and owners. 'We want to be clear that we're not trying to bash on the employees,' Cook said. 'But you also have to recognize that when they first sold their company, they gave up that control to a … disgusting entity.' Boiler Room's San Francisco show earlier this month never came to fruition after artists refused their offers, Cook and Courtade said. Instead, the DJs helped organize a show on the same date at the workspace SafariiiCamp in Oakland, where zines and projectors detailed KKR's investments. 'We kicked Boiler Room out the Bay Area,' read a post on social media by the event's organizers, who said they raised $9,050. The funds, they say, went to artists who had dropped out of Boiler Room's event, to the Middle Eastern Children's Alliance, to eSIM cards for Gazans and to the organization Ravers for Palestine.
USA Today
3 hours ago
- USA Today
Russells, Van Rhijns and dukes, oh my! Who's who in 'The Gilded Age' Season 3
It's not easy to remember exactly which rich and pretty young lady is which on "The Gilded Age." HBO's costume drama, set in the height of American excess and splendor in the late 1800s, returns for its third season June 22 (9 ET/PT). And while there's still plenty of societal machinations, bustled gowns and upstairs/downstairs melodrama in the series, created by Julian Fellowes ("Downton Abbey"), it can all be a bit difficult to keep straight. Even the characters, led by Christine Baranski, Carrie Coon and Cynthia Nixon among the large ensemble cast, need the gossip rags to help them keep track of who is courting whom, who is up (or down) on the social hierarchy and which opera house reigns supreme. Ahead of the Season 3 debut, we've prepared a primer on the members of New York society, so tasteful that even the highfalutin Mrs. Astor (Donna Murphy) would approve. And if you're a fan of Broadway, you'll be delighted with the staggering number of theater actors that make an appearance. The Van Rhijn Household Upstairs: Mrs. Agnes Van Rhijn (Christine Baranski), Mrs. Ada Forte (Cynthia Nixon), Miss Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) and Oscar Van Rhijn (Blake Ritson) Downstairs: Miss Armstrong (Debra Monk), Mr. Bannister (Simon Jones), Jack (Ben Ahlers), Mrs. Bauer (Kristine Nielsen) and Bridget (Taylor Richardson) Relations: Cousins Aurora Fane (Kelli O'Hara) and Charles Fane (Ward Horton) While for many years the austere and exacting widow Agnes ran her East 61st Street home with an iron fist of propriety and high necklines, everything changed at the end of Season 2. Agnes' son Oscar lost the family fortune to an investment scam while her sister Ada inherited her own windfall from husband Luke (Robert Sean Leonard), whom the former spinster married just before his untimely death from cancer. Now Ada is in charge of the purse strings and Agnes fears her own obscurity and irrelevance. But keep an eye on their amiable cousin Aurora, because her fate this season might be far worse than Agnes'. Young and bland Miss Marian is still balancing her desire to do real work with her aunts' desire that she marry someone of good breeding, while stealing secret kisses with young and incredibly wealthy Larry Russell (Harry Richardson) from across the street. Downstairs, young footman and part-time inventor Jack is trying to sell a new style of alarm clock with Larry's help and leave the world of service and rigid class striations behind him. The Russell Household Upstairs: Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon), George Russell (Morgan Spector), Larry Russell (Harry Richardson) and Gladys Russell (Taissa Farmiga) Downstairs: Mr. Church (Jack Gilpin), Mrs. Bruce (Celia Keenan-Bolger), Monsieur Baudin (Douglas Sills) and Adelheid (Erin Wilhelmi) Interested parties: The Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb), Richard Clay (Patrick Page) Pretty much the queen of society since her Metropolitan Opera House won out in the battle with the Academy of Music in Season 2, Bertha has her sights set on cementing her new status by marrying her daughter Gladys to the British Duke of Buckingham. The impoverished duke needs Gladys' dowry to prop up his family's estate, and Bertha may have promised him a bit too much without informing George or taking Gladys' wishes into account. Meanwhile, George is trying to go bigger and better with his businesses, mounting a scheme to build a railroad from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles. It might lose him everything, his most trusted lieutenant Richard warns. The Scott Household Miss Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), Mrs. Dorothy Scott (Audra McDonald) and Mr. Arthur Scott (John Douglas Thompson) Back from her reporting trip in Season 2, Peggy is once again spending less time as Agnes' secretary at the 61 Street house and more time finding her own path in life. Love might be in the air this season, thanks to a handsome new doctor who comes into her life (more on him below). But her parents are wary of his snobbish family. New 'Gilded Age' characters in Season 3 Dr. William Kirkland (Jordan Donica): A Black doctor who treats Peggy for an illness after the Van Rhijn's family physician refuses to treat her because she's colored, William takes a particular shine to his patient. He comes from a very old Black family in Newport. Mrs. Elizabeth Kirkland (Phylicia Rashad): The all-powerful matriarch of the Kirkland family is proud, patronizing and immediately judgmental of the Scotts, because Arthur is a former slave. The Scotts also notice Elizabeth discriminates against them (and her own grandchildren) because they are dark-skinned. JP Morgan (Bill Camp): The banker and American aristocrat whom George calls upon for help in his latest railroad venture. Monica O'Brien (Merritt Wever): An unwelcome guest for the Russells: Bertha's sister. Madame Dashkova (Andrea Martin): Adding a touch of mysticism and superstition to the series, Andrea Martin ("Only Murders in the Building," "My Big Fat Greek Wedding") plays a fortune teller who says she can speak with the dead.
