On this date in WCW history: Kevin Nash shows up with Scott Hall on Nitro

It was just two weeks before this date in history that Scott Hall had invaded World Championship Wrestling (WCW) claiming he was bringing a friend with him to declare war on the company. He didn't say as much but he played heavily on the fact that most fans knew him as Razor Ramon, the name he worked under while he was with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF).

Hall had teased a "BIG" surprise and it came on the June 10, 1996, episode of Monday Nitro when Kevin Nash made his first appearance back with the company since he left it back in 1993.

Except he was an entirely different man.

The new Kevin Nash had gone off to WWF and become a consistent main event player. He famously held the WWF championship for almost an entire year, from Nov. 1994 to Nov. 1995, and was the lowest drawing champion in the history of the company. Despite that, he was considered a star by WWF standards and that made him a major player by the time he got back to WCW in 1996.

Unlike his buddy Hall, though, Nash's (re)debut promo was equal parts good and bad:

"You been sitting out here for six months, running your mouth. This is where the big boys play, huh? Look at the adjective: play. We ain't here to play. Now he said last week that he was going to bring somebody out here. I'm here. You still don't have your three people. You know why? Because nobody wants to face us. This show is about as interesting as Marge Schott reading excerpts from Mein Kampf. Yeah, (you don't want) no trouble because you know I'll kick your teeth down your throat. Where's your three guys? What you couldn't get a paleontologist to get a couple of these fossils cleared? You ain't got enough guys off a dialysis machine to get a team? Yeah, where's Hogan? Where's Hogan, out doing another episode of Blunder in Paradise? Where's Macho Man, out doing another Slim Jim commercial? You want to say something? ... Bring what you got. The measuring stick just changed around here, buddy -- you're looking at it."

Nash starts terribly by showing his lack of knowledge of the English language before getting warmer with a timely reference to Marge Schott, an Adolf Hitler sympathizer, and finally doing his usual thing where he blurs the line between shoot and work.

Thunder in Paradise wasn't that bad.

Either way, the message was clear and WCW would use this episode of Nitro and the return of Nash to catapult its way past WWF in the ratings war to take the lead the next week, a lead it wouldn't relinquish for 84 consecutive weeks. They also did one hell of a job building towards the Great American Bash pay-per-view (PPV) set for that Sunday night.

But more on that later.

In the meantime, watch Nash's return to WCW to join Hall as The Outsiders: