What the hell happened? You know it was like an accepted thing at the time it was all happening, I never really paid much thought to it but Larry would always get huge pops and his name chanted before the show to the point where he would stand up and leave the booth to take a bow. Watching the old tapes back now it's like what the fuck!?! This old dude got THIS over for real? How?! Was there a specific moment or was this a gradual thing? 

It is pretty bizarre. First off, Larry knew how to work crowds pretty well, so there's that, but I think the situation had a lot to do with it too. Like all the Monday Nitro announcers would talk shit about the nWo the entire broadcast, but Larry was really the only one that could benefit from it. Nobody was going to start cheering for Tony Schiavone and Mike Tenay, you know? Even Heenan, who I think was a missed opportunity as a personality in WCW in many ways, was still playing the weasel heel on commentary, being the first to run from the desk every time the nWo approached. Larry would naturally be the best at roasting the nWo on the headset, and simply by being the only one in a position to stand up for himself, he became the ace of the defiant WCW announcers.

I don't remember when exactly he started getting goddamn curtain calls. I remember Hall ran a program with him in '97, and Larry got really over then, which led to him and Bishoff, where anybody opposite Bischoff was over. Was Larry taking bows before then? I don't remember. Regardless, he definitely was still doing it after, as Hall did for him what he did for DDP the year before, giving rub to an old AWA friend.

It couldn't have been before '96, since he was calling WCW Pro and they'd dub that in post. Larry's promotion to Nitro was odd in of itself. I'll have to dig out some of the Observers to see if Dave mentioned anything, but you'd think that Schiavone/Heenan or Schiavone/Dusty would have been the logical choice.

I think fans just liked chanting Larry.

Good point. I never thought about this either. Of course I also just accepted the fact that everybody knew Larry Legend ruled  :lol:

Here's my theory....

Larry was a fairly witty longtime heel commentator to the point where he became an accepted 'voice' of the company. By the late 90s that's eventually going to turn you babyface even if you don't act like one. See Lawler over in WWF for an example. I went to a bunch of Raw's in the late 90s-early 2000s. Lawler ALWAYS got huge pops when he was introduced even though he was still a heel. He eventually became a babyface wrestler without ever officially turning face. He just wouldn't get booed anymore. I imagine Zbyszko's reaction at a 96-97 Nitro would have been similar to Lawler's.

Plus he stood up to the NWO when not many did. That took balls. Fans are going to respect that. Zbyszko always spoke with conviction. He made you believe. It was easy to buy into this guy genuinely hating the NWO. He was a believable defender of WCW with legend status to boot.

I watched a Hall & Nash shoot on Youtube a while back where they talked about how the Hall/Zbyszko feud came about. Hall & Nash were sitting around one day trying figure out who they were going to work with because in their minds practically everybody on the most stacked roster in wrestling history was "the shits." One of them (probably Hall) was like "What about Larry?" and they were both like "Yeeeaaaah....Zbyszko. Now HE knows how to work." Plus Hall wanted to pay Zbyszko back for Larry helping him out when he was a young greenhorn in AWA. Bischoff & Larry had worked together for a long time so I assume they got along fairly well too. And the rest is history.

Didn't Zbyszko face Eric Bischoff at Starrcade '97, for control of Monday Nitro?

Larry won the match, and I guess fans adored him for saving the show.

Also a little tidbit. The plan was for Larry to win at Starrcade, to give WCW control of Monday Nitro. But Bischoff would answer back, by creating his own NWO show on TBS. But that fell through, and what we got instead, was Thunder.