The 1997 Uncensored was the third Uncensored professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by World Championship Wrestling (WCW). The event took place on March 16, 1997 from the North Charleston Coliseum in Charleston, South Carolina.
The main event was a triangle elimination match between Team nWo (Hollywood Hogan, Randy Savage, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall) (with Dennis Rodman), Team Piper (Roddy Piper, Chris Benoit, Steve McMichael and Jeff Jarrett) and Team WCW (Lex Luger, The Giant and Scott Steiner).
Storylines
The event featured wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds and storylines. Wrestlers portrayed villains, heroes, or less distinguishable characters in the scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches.
The main event was conceived following the events of SuperBrawl on February 23. At the event, Hall and Nash were scheduled to defend their WCW Tag Team Championship against Luger and The Giant. Luger, however, was injured and failed to meet a deadline set by WCW Vice President and nWo manager Eric Bischoff to get medically cleared before he left the building on the February 17 edition of WCW Monday Nitro, which turned the match into a handicap match. Luger did, however, show up at SuperBrawl and compete in the match, which he and Giant won after Luger forced Nash to submit to the Torture Rack.
The next night on Nitro, Bischoff announced that because Luger did not get the proper medical clearance, he and Giant were going to be stripped of the tag titles and forced to return them to The Outsiders. Luger countered by challenging Bischoff to a match at Uncensored where the entire existence of the nWo would be on the line. Only after Bischoff accepted did Luger return the belts; after making the match, Bischoff was suspended from his duties as a WCW executive for abusing his powers.
Initially, the match was to be contested between a team representing WCW and a team representing the nWo. However, a third team was formed after Roddy Piper, who had lost to Hogan at SuperBrawl thanks to interference from Savage, decided that he wanted to participate. His team initially consisted of himself, WCW wrestler John Tenta, and actors Layton Morrison and Craig Mally, who were portrayed as a kickboxer and a regular boxer. However, on the March 10 edition of Nitro, Ric Flair offered up Chris Benoit, Steve McMichael, and Jeff Jarrett, his Four Horsemen teammates, to Piper and he agreed to replace his original teammates with them.
Team WCW consisted of Luger, The Giant, and The Steiner Brothers, with team nWo consisting of Hogan, Savage, Hall, and Nash and Team Piper composed of Piper and the aforementioned three Horsemen. Each team had their own reward for winning the match. If Team nWo won, they would get the ability to challenge for any WCW championship whenever they wanted. If Team WCW won, every member of the nWo would be suspended from wrestling for WCW for three years and all of their championships would be returned to WCW. If Team Piper won, he would receive another match against Hogan for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, to be contested at a time and a place of his choosing and taking place inside a steel cage.