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.
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.
“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
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.
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.
“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.
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.
“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.
“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.
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.
“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.”
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.
“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.
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.
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.”
