In August of 1996, Eric Bischoff and company had what they thought was a great idea; run a PPV at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis, South Dakota.
They had to consider a few things:
– There was no venue so you couldn’t charge for tickets
– There was no venue so people couldn’t sit anywhere other than on their motorcycle or in the dirt
– The people attending might be racist
While the environment was unique, Sturgis wasn’t the type of place you’d considering running a pro wrestling show when you had the hottest act in town, the nWo. It was also decided that WCW wasn’t just going to run the PPV from Sturgis, they would also do two hours of live television before hand which made for a long night for wrestling fans which ended when Hulk Hogan beat The Giant for WCW’s world title.
WCW was also in the midst of running four live events in a span of eleven days ending with the Clash of the Champions event from Denver. It was a hot period for the company.
John LaRocca and Garrett Gonzales covered this time period in the last two episodes of their Patreon podcast WCW ’96. The links to the episodes are below.
WCW ’96: Hog Wild – https://www.patreon.com/posts/wcw-96-hog-wild-88998155
WCW ’96: Clash of the Champions XXXIII – https://www.patreon.com/posts/wcw-96-clash-of-89144151
The introduction to this series is available for free on YouTube if you want to get a sense of how the story is told.
