Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
It was January of 1999 and World Championship Wrestling was coming off the most profitable year in its history. In 1998, WCW pocketed over 30 million dollars for that year. So when the new year rolled in, WCW naturally tried to piggy back on 1998’s success. They partnered up with MTV to be a part of their “Snowed In” project.
Snowed In was the winter version of their popular ‘MTV’s Spring Break’ with the only difference being this was set in a ski lodge instead of a beach and no women in bikinis. 1999’s Snowed In was set at The Snow Summit Mountain Resort at Big Bear Lake, California. SnowBrawl was an event put on by WCW that aired during MTV’s Snowed In Week. It was a big opportunity for WCW to garner some main stream publicity…but in typical WCW fashion at the time it didn’t necessarily go well.
First off, there was little to no advertising this event on Monday Nitro or even by MTV themselves. Pro wrestling was still pretty much red hot at the time, so it would’ve made perfect sense to plug this as a must see event. Secondly, WCW didn’t bring out any of their biggest stars for SnowBrawl. No Hulk Hogan, No Kevin Nash and no Goldberg…heck…they didn’t even bring in a suitable announce team for it. No Tony Schiavone, Bobby Heenan or Mike Tenay, but rather Jimmy Hart, Larry Zbyszko and Rob Zombie. Zombie made sense because, after all, he is a rock star…but Jimmy Hart and Zbyszko?
Jimmy Hart did have a musical background and Larry Z was a living legend, I guess. In all seriousness though, Larry was the only one who had proper training as an announcer, so he was fine. To add an aura of hipness, MTV hired ‘Stuttering John’ of Howard Stern Show fame to be the guest ring announcer. I suppose MTV thought it would be cool or funny if Stuttering John would stutter a few of the wrestlers names while introducing them. We did get the Nitro Girls, although, only Chae, Spice and Whisper appeared. The rest were MIA for this event.
SnowBrawl itself was a simple enough concept, it was a battle royal that consisted of just seven wrestlers. They were: Konnan, Disco Inferno, Brian Adams, Booker T, Billy Kidman, Wrath, and Kenny Kaos. The winner of the SnowBrawl battle royal would receive a small trophy with a plastic snowflake glued on it. Again, no big WCW stars were featured on this event, but it was still a good opportunity for some of the younger talent to get much needed exposure.
In the end, it was Brian Adams who won the match and the trophy. Why exactly? Maybe because his name was Brian Adams and well, there was Bryan Adams the rocker…so at least MTV could brag that Brian Adams won a wrestling match…I have no idea. As Adams stood tall in victory, he began to cut a heel promo on all the fans that were ringside for this special moment. That is when Konnan drop kicked Adams and told him to “toss his salad and peel his potato.” Thus, WCW’s SnowBrawl came to an end.
The show did nothing to elevate new talent nor was it even promoted after the fact. It was like it was nothing but a throw away show. Sorta like they did MTV a favor or something like that. The rating for SnowBrawl did an abysmal 0.9 for MTV. In retrospect, Monday Nitro was doing quadruple that number. Snowbrawl was just the beginning of the epic slide WCW would do in 1999. The company would go on to lose 9 million dollars that fiscal year. The partnership between WCW and MTV wasn’t exactly a match made in heaven. If you recall the disaster that was MTV’s Ultimate Video Bash you’d understand perfectly.