When the nWo invaded WCW in 1996, it changed the landscape of professional wrestling. It put WCW on top of the wrestling world while Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Hulk Hogan helped put WWE on the defensive, eventually leading to the Monday Night Wars. Storyline wise, with some of the biggest names in wrestling, in WCW, it was all hands on deck in trying to slow down the nWo.
Hall and Nash started just pushing around little guys, and then when they brought in Hogan, they took the war right to WCW's most prominent names in Lex Luger, Macho Man Randy Savage, and Sting. The nWo even had a new life in WWE when Mr. McMahon brought them in. With a decade of history, and preparing for their WWE Hall of Fame induction, here is a look at the 10 greatest rivals of the nWo.
10 THE ROCK / STONE COLD
When Mr. McMahon brought in the nWo to WWE, he said that he wanted to destroy his creation rather than allow new WWE head honcho Ric Flair to do it with his ideas. The idea was that the nWo poisoned WCW, and they could do the same for WWE.
While Ric Flair was the cause of McMahon bringing in the nWo, it was the top stars of WWE who had to fight them. Sadly, nothing worked out the way WWE envisioned it. Scott Hall entered a feud with Stone Cold Steve Austin, which Austin won easily. Hogan attacked The Rock, but fans at WrestleMania that year sided with Hogan, so it all backfired big time.
9 HARLEM HEAT
When the nWo attacked WCW, they targeted every area of the company. Hulk Hogan went after the world title while Scott Hall and Kevin Nash teamed up to battle the top tag teams. Booker T and Stevie Ray were at the top when Hall and Nash arrived.
Harlem Heat were seven-time WCW tag team champions, and they had proven to be a match for anyone who stepped into the ring with them, up to and including the Steiner Brothers. However, at Halloween Havoc 1996, The Outsiders ended their title reign, and Harlem Heat couldn't get their titles back.
8 THE STEINER BROTHERS
After Harlem Heat lost their titles, that meant that the men at the front of the line were the Steiner Brothers. The Steiner Brothers were the stalwarts of the tag team division, and they took the fight to the Outsiders heavy and hard.
After the Outsiders beat Harlem Heat for the tag titles, it was the Steiner Brothers that stepped up, and the two teams traded the titles eight times between them. The nWo ended up the final victors when Scott Steiner defected from WCW and joined up with the nWo, breaking up one of the best tag teams in the '90s.
7 RANDY SAVAGE
The genesis of the nWo, as most fans know it, was at Bash at the Beach 1996. The match was The Outsiders and a mystery partner against Lex Luger, Sting, and Macho Man Randy Savage. Luger was attacked before the match and stretchered out, leaving Sting and Savage against Hall, Nash, and the mystery partner.
Most fans thought Luger would show up and betray WCW, but it was Hulk Hogan who came in and dropped a leg on Savage to start the war. Hogan and Savage feuded through the early portion of the nWo vs. WCW feud until he was forced to join the nWo or lose his job by Eric Bischoff.
6 RODDY PIPER
If there is one person who will always be on the opposite side of Hulk Hogan in any war, it was Rowdy Roddy Piper. So, Piper is the man who did many things to foil the nWo in their attempts to conquer WCW. It was Piper who proved that Eric Bischoff was the mastermind.
It was also Piper who had the recently-turned Giant help him battle the nWo around the time that Warrior returned to professional wrestling. Unlike Warrior, who ate the loss to Hogan in their feud, Piper knocked Hogan out with the sleeper and finally beat his long-time nemesis.
5 BILL GOLDBERG
Bill Goldberg was one of the only real homegrown stars that WCW was able to build during the nWo-era of the company. Goldberg came in and just squashed every single person who got into the ring with him. His intensity and power made him an instant fan favorite.
However, WCW did something very questionable with Goldberg. They had him beat Hollywood Hogan for the WCW world title on a free episode of Monday Nitro rather than at a PPV they could build to. Goldberg was a thorn in the side of the nWo until his undefeated streak came to an end at the hands of Kevin Nash and a cattle prod.
4 DDP
While Goldberg was the biggest name that WCW built in the nWo era, Diamond Dallas Page was easily the best wrestler that WCW ever created from scratch in the Nitro-era. DDP went from being a loudmouth manager and an average wrestler to being one of the best in-ring stars in the company.
The fans loved him, and when he took the battle to the nWo, and especially his matches with Macho Man Randy Savage, he was as hot as anyone in the company. DDP was the one man that could get every fan on their feet when he showed up to battle the nWo.
3 WOLFPAC
Yes, the Wolfpac was nWo as well. However, they were the anti-thesis to the nWo black and white, which will always be the true nWo. For one thing, you had a red-faced Sting and Lex Luger, two men who were always WCW to the core in the war with the nWo.
Kevin Nash was also in it, but that was just to add the connection to the Black and White. The difference is that the nWo was the bad guys that fans loved to cheer, and the Wolfpac was the nWo wrestlers who wanted to be cheered. They didn't last, and soon Nash was back with Hogan.
2 LEX LUGER
While Sting was hanging out in the rafters with his crows and only occasionally dropping down to beat up someone with a baseball bat, it was Lex Luger who was at the forefront of the battle with the nWo, the leader of the WCW locker room. Only something like the nWo could ever make Luger the face of the locker room.
Luger, who for years was always a wrestler who straddled the lines of good and evil, was the one who stuck with WCW and never let nWo get too far. He even beat Holywood Hogan for the WCW World Championship during the way with the nWo.
1 STING
The face of WCW and the man who was always expected to beat and end the nWo was Sting. It was a long-running storyline, with Sting leaving when his friends wondered if they could trust him. He went to the rafters and watched from afar as his WCW contemporaries struggled to overcome the odds.
Sting was supposed to finally come back at Starrcade and beat Hollywood Hogan and win the WCW World Championship, the conquering hero who saved his company from the invaders. However, things went wrong when the Hogan match ended in controversy, and the big moment never came. Regardless, Sting was the biggest rival the nWo ever had.