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SirSmUgly

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Everything posted by SirSmUgly

  1. I do love some FirePro feel, yeah. I've started a quest to (re-)build my N64 collection. I don't need everything - I don't like OoT enough to spend a lot of money on a physical copy - but I am going to get all the wrestling games that got stateside releases. And I've never played WCW Backstage Blast, but as someone who is writing about late-stage WCW, I am looking forward to hating it. On another note, this No Mercy mod looks insane. The mod community in general has done some great work with No Mercy, but this is especially impressive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOMAog5eotw
  2. Most of those posts were truthful, but I do not condone the unnecessary DDP slander.
  3. Thunder Interlude – show number thirty-five – 8 October 1998 "The WCW Gang is infected with the sick that is Nitro’s awful featured feuds” Tony S. tells me that we’re still seventeen days’ worth of shows away from Havoc…My goodness…Chucky starts laughing over the P.A. system, likely at my distress and pain…Tony S. says that Mike Tenay, roving reporter, is off finding Scott Hall at some bar in the area to talk to him…Stevie Ray/Lex Luger is hyped as the main event…I didn’t realize before this re-watch just how fucking awful late ’98 WCW was…People focus on the terribleness of ’99 (for obvious reasons) and ’00 (fair, but there’s some of that stuff that I do remember liking, especially in the back half of the year or so)…’98 WCW heads south about July and is truly awful by September…Staggeringly terrible wrestling programming on their parts… Mike T. interviews a (possibly?) sauced Scott Hall…Hall invites Kevin Nash down for a beer or maybe a punch up…All I can say about this segment is that I could go for a Rolling Rock in a bottle right about now…Rolling Rock and Heineken were the finer beers that we’d drink in college…You know, compared to the complete trash we’d drink because it was the dirt cheapest…I’m not arguing that Rolling Rock and Heineken are great, but they are two levels above the most widely available and cheapest beers IMO and maybe YMO if you enjoy an occasional brew…We see a limo purportedly belonging to Kevin Nash racing away from the arena, presumably to meet Hall at the bar… Kanyon (by himself) opens the wrestling action for tonight…He doesn’t get the right response from the fans to his question w/r/t who is better than him…He’s frustrated about it even though he keeps feeding the crowd the correct answer beforehand…Hey, it’s Prince Iaukea…I expect something decent out of this matchup…I was right, it’s fun stuff…Iaukea busts out a wheel kick and hits a senton body press early on…Kanyon ducks a punch, sits Iaukea up top, and lands a hanging neckbreaker…Iaukea is sporting a small ponytail, and Kanyon keeps using it to help him get Iaukea positioned for moves…Heenan tries twice to set up a dumb punchline, but he really didn’t have to…He’s worse than Lee Marshall out here…My man Bobby the Brain is going out sad…Kanyon scores a series of two counts…Iaukea makes a nice comeback and scores 2.9 off a springboard somersault senton…That’s as close as he gets, as Kanyon drops him with a Flatliner for three shortly after…Fun stuff… Chris Jericho takes the chance to challenge Goldberg since Goldberg’s not in the arena tonight…He bangs on a door looking for the champ…He’s hastily added a “2” to his t-shirt listing out his “wins” over Goldberg so far…If you’re good enough at heeling, you can make me believe that you believe that running away from the ring while Goldberg kills your bodyguards somehow equals a victory…I am certain that this incarnation of Chris Jericho believes this with all his heart… We get the Scott Steiner black-and-white promo against brother Ricky that played on Nitro…Scotty makes his way to the ring with Buff Bagwell backing him up after the video is over…Buff grabs the mic, shares his hatred for the state of Indiana (reasonable), and promises that the Steiner Brothers will not have their match at Havoc because Scotty is out of shape (not reasonable)…Scotty gets the mic and tells Buff that he needs to put a (metaphorical) leash on his mom…Buff doesn’t like this…Scotty threatens to slap Buff if Buff gets physical with him…Buff blames Scotty for blowing up this whole Ricky Steiner feud…Scotty tells Buff to learn how to control a woman or he’s not nWo material…Buff ditches Scotty in response…I assume it’s all another ruse… This video package for the WCW Mastercard launch on Wall Street uses the Hardy Boys' WWF theme…Oh yeah, the ‘90s were full of licensed wrestling crap…What a time to be alive… Meng disappeared from TV for a minute after inexplicably letting Goldberg out of the TDG…He squashes Jerry Flynn, who gets a jobber entrance…Flynn hits a nice flying clothesline for less than one, but he’s got no shot…Flynn tries some more kicks, but Meng walks through them and locks in a TDG for the win… Jericho and Ralphus (w/2x4) stands in the parking lot pretending to want a fight with Goldberg tonight… After the break, Chris Adams comes to the ring and sees Meng still out there; the feared Tongan is bored after what was an easy victory…Meng wants to fight Adams and eventually catches Adams as Adams gets in the ring…We get another TDG…They’re really trying all sorts of stuff to vary these show segments over the past couple of shows…OOOH, Wrath comes down…He was supposed to wrestle Adams…Wrath gets in Meng’s face…They brawl, and I’m into it…There’s a bad chairshot spot where Wrath doesn’t want to hit Meng in the head, so he catches his initial chair swing and pauses in order for Meng to bend over and show his back…It’s okay, though, this is still exciting stuff…And there’s no need for chairshots to the head just to make things look smoother… Some cops issue a restraining order to Ric Flair and Arn Anderson outside the arena…This angle stinks…It’s because Bischoff is involved with some legalese-type shit when what everyone wants to see is the Four Horsemen in the ring fighting actual wrestlers in nWo Hollywood… El Dandy makes a WCW appearance…Hey, it’s Tokyo Magnum!...I dig this guy…They,ve dropped the Boogie Knights as a going concern (for now), and it’s too bad because I thought Magnum trying to win their approval had great potential as a midcard angle…Magnum and Dandy trade a series of two counts off flash pinfall attempts…Tony S., in talking about weight classes for this belt, basically calls Dandy fat…Tony S. also basically called himself fat on Nitro…Tony, don’t be so weight conscious…Chucky starts laughing in the middle of this match, which is the sort of disrespectful nonsense toward two professionals that you’d expect from a doll inhabited with the soul of a serial killer…Tony S. continues to freak out about not knowing whose voice this is…OK, then after that, Scott Norton comes down and powerbombs both guys…Fuck off, WCW…Thanks for letting us all know that neither of these guys matter… After the break, Eddy Guerrero comes out and recruits Dandy into the lWo by blaming Eric Bischoff for Norton’s attack…There’s a lot of garbage angles going on in this company, so this use of Eddy Guerrero coming off the amazing feud with Chavo is floating under the radar a bit…Creative has absolutely fallen apart…Eddy is supposed to be crapping on heel Bischoff with this, but these very non-Latin American crowds aren’t exactly fired up to cheer for a group centered around Mexican wrestlers that explicitly is portrayed as an ethnic Latin stable…Do Bisch and Sullivan not understand their base audience?... Tony S. tells us Mark Curtis is very sick…Both Curtis and Pee-Wee Anderson would pass away in the next four or so years from this show’s original airing…That is sad, man…Saturn comes to the ring to face that supreme scallywag of the Seven Seas, Scott Putski…Saturn doesn’t have much issue with Putski to start…He scores a nice superkick…Putski fires back and lariats Saturn to the floor…Putski is really sort of dull outside of the jacket, tights, and ostentatious Jesus piece…Saturn avoids a sleeper with a jawbreaker, then mows Putski down…Saturn lands a GORGEOUS top-rope splash for two…Putski gets a floatover powerslam for two of his own, kicks out of a flash pin attempt at two, and then keeps control until he whiffs badly on a corner charge…Saturn hits a Falcon Arrow and rings Putski up with a DVD for the win…You know, Saturn came out of that Raven feud hot…If only he had something to do, like maybe engage in a feud for a secondary title…Like the United States Championship, which sure would be a useful tool for continuing a guy’s elevation if it weren’t around Bret Hart’s waist for no good fucking reason… Too much crappy Nitro angle garbage has leaked into this Thunder…Now the Disciple comes to the ring and is allowed to talk…Why?...He reiterates that he can stand on his own (or with some friends, he’s not too picky, I guess)…This dude says that Hulk got a few chumps employment in WCW even though they're a waste of roster space…I think he’s going to finally admit that he's a fucking fraud, but no, he calls out Horace, who I’d much rather watch than Ed fucking Leslie…This guy Disciple won’t shut the fuck up…Just get Horace out here and have Horace kill Disciple off in sixty seconds or fewer…Oops, no, Horace runs out and struggles badly against Disciple…Horace finally gets in some offense which Disciple no-sells before hitting a Stone Cold Stunner for an easy three…MINUS FIVE STARS…Horace was actually a useful piece of the Flock…He wasn’t the best wrestler ever, but he worked hard and did some fun stuff on television…He attacks Disciple post-match to get some heat back, but this was a really dumb use of him… Tony S. interviews Chris Jericho in the ring…Even Jericho’s not too big a heel to wish Brian Hildebrand well…Jericho promises to beat down Goldberg tonight even though Tony S. has made it clear that the WCW World Champion isn’t in the building…Goldberg’s music hits and no one comes out…Jericho demands that Nick Patrick count Goldberg out…Jericho celebrates his third-straight win over Goldberg…None of these wins are official or go in the record books as wins, but you know what, Jericho seems pretty pleased with them all the same… I am reminded of the Sting/Hitman rip-off main event from Nitro because Lee Marshall insists on narrating stills of said rip-off main event…Tony S. is still in the ring, and he introduces Bret Hart for an interview…Bret Hart being badly booked and completely wasted is shitty, yeah, but this booking committee and the executive producer who oversees it seem intent on badly booking and wasting as many people as possible…Bret challenges Sting to a match for the U.S. Championship at Halloween Havoc…OK, that match sounds amazing, but maybe can we take the title off the Hitman next Nitro so we can free that up for a couple of guys who need it?... This Four Horsemen hype video is great, but what if they actually wrestled instead of standing around and getting kicked out of arenas?...Dean Malenko is allowed in the arena tonight, I suppose to wrestle?...The rest of the Horsemen are banned (I guess Mongo and Benoit were too, but I don’t care enough to go back and watch that segment)…Nope, wait, they sent Malenko out here to talk…What the fuck?...Why not let Mongo talk then as he’s a clearly better talker than either Benoit or Malenko?...Malenko doesn’t fit the Four Horsemen because he’s boring and has zero style…Malenko does a sit-in, demanding a match…Eric Bischoff walks out and books him against Barbarian…Fine, I see why they sent him out here…And at least Malenko didn’t talk for too long…Bisch offers Barb a million bucks to injure Malenko…Minus Jimmy Hart’s forty percent commission, of course… Oh great, Bisch joins commentary to yap about how he set Malenko up…Bisch talks about how long his contract runs and says he’ll be around for a long time…Meanwhile, I desperately calculate how many more shows I have to wade through until September of 1999…Malenko takes a beating, but takes out Barb’s wheels and locks on the Texas Cloverleaf…Malenko coaxes Barb to tap out, and in an admittedly funny visual, Bischoff gets up and yells NO NO NO NO NO NO NO while whapping Tony S. in the head with his booking papers on each NO…Well, even guys who absolutely SUCK as on-TV authority figures can do something entertaining every once in awhile, I suppose…Though Bischoff as a scumbag, used-car-salesman type of authority figure on WWE television was actually very good…If WWE authority figure Bischoff were transported to 1998, I wouldn’t mind him getting all this mic time… Raven comes to the ring, sits down in the corner, and talks about his unhappy childhood…He notes that his mother told him that he was a zero of a human being at the tender age of eight…He says his ma told him exactly this: “You’re just a cinder in the furnace of the damned”…I have to tell you, that is way more hurtful and abusive than Judy Bagwell slapping Buff…Raven compares himself to DDP and notes that even though he fought his way through a sad life, Page is the guy that gets all the breaks…What about him?...What about Raven?!...Page cuts in and decides to fight Raven right then and there…Raven jumps Page as Page slides into the ring…This might be a wild thing to say, and I have no idea if it is or if it’s something that fans mainstream see as a reasonable position, but I think Raven is Page’s best career opponent…Even though they had that cage match blow-off earlier this year that underwhelmed (largely because of the overbooking), they are still an awesome feud pairing overall and brightened up 1998 WCW considerably when they worked together… Page tries a Diamond Cutter, but Raven slips out of it and boots Page in the sack…Raven takes over and cuts off Page at every turn…He hits Page with a side Russian into the guardrail…Raven grabs a chair, but gets caught when he tries to post Page’s nuts and pulled into the post himself…Raven recovers quickly and lands a drop toehold into the chair…Lodi comes out and stands on the apron, which distracts Raven as Raven tries to land an Evenflow…That allows Page to push Raven into Lodi and then use the chair to bonk Raven in the face…A DDP lariat gets two…Raven back elbows himself out of back suplex position, but Page holds on and hits a belly-to-belly for two…This is a great fight, man, it rules…Raven locks on a sleeper after some more back-and-forth…Page breaks it with an elbow, then as both men fight over a backslide, he slips out and lands a Diamond Cutter for three…I get that Raven’s not a guy you build the company around, but he’s a guy you keep as a gatekeeper…I apologize for bringing this back up, but Raven’s a guy who would be better positioned as the heel secondary singles champ right now… I have no idea why Lex Luger and Stevie Ray get the Michael Buffer Special, but okay…Tony S. hypes a movie star being at Nitro…How about if you hype me with a handful of decent matchups and fewer bad angles instead?...Lex Luger might as well be invisible at this point…Not every guy can be the focal point all the time, but Luger was way, way over…Now, he’s just a guy…If this company pushed the Wolfpac as a threat better, he’d be fine, but it didn't, so he’s badly underused…There’s not much to say about the match itself…Luger goes for a Torture Rack, but Scott Hall runs in…I sure hope he didn’t drive himself here…I did wonder how they were going to pay off Nash leaving to find Hall…OK, so it was a set-up to get Nash away from the building, but where are Konnan and Sting?...They said Sting was in the hospital, but so was Bret, and Bret made it to Indianapolis to talk...Stevie whaps Luger in the head with the slapjack, and then Konnan runs out both a) late and b) alone and gets beaten up…The booking for the Wolfpac is criminal… This show was bad, but as with the previous Nitro, Raven and DDP are part of a small group of people (Wrath, Meng, Kanyon, and Iaukea included) that kept watching this show from feeling like I’d hit my thumb with a hammer…By the barest of margins, it’s a WOO…
  4. Austin/Rhodes best of three falls at Starrcade and Sting's Squadron vs. Dangerous Alliance War Games would be on that top ten list for me.
  5. Everyone says it so often it's cliche, but nothing really has recaptured the pacing, cadence, and meaty weight of movies like AKI's WCW and WWF games. I had to go get a new HDMI/USB combo cord to get the N64 to work on my modern television, but it was worth it. These games still feel incredible to play. So did Def Jam Vendetta and Fight For New York. AKI just had insane fighting/wrestling game talent. I'm not sure any stateside wrestling game has made me feel like I can break down an opponent through targeting like the AKIs. I'm glad that I didn't settle for emulating them on my PC this time around and busted out the carts.
  6. SCSA hot take incoming: He and Kurt Angle had their career best match against one another at SummerSlam '01. Most people prefer Bret/Austin at WM 13 for Austin, and lots of folks prefer Benoit/Angle at the '03 Rumble, which is why I think this classified as a hot take.
  7. Show #160 – 5 October 1998 "The one where WCW Nitro tries to be like WWF RAW even though Vince Russo isn't involved in booking or formatting the show" Sting and Bret Hart are feuding now. Unfortunately, they’re doing it under the least interesting circumstances possible, and somehow Hulk Hogan jammed himself into the middle of this whole deal. Eric Bischoff didn’t even have the decency to silo Hogan and Warrior off into their own universe so the rest of the show could breathe. Tony S., after a video recap of all this garbage, says that, “[Bret's turn] will go down as one of the most shocking moments” and come on, this was one of the most telegraphed turns ever. Poor Tony S., having to hype this crap and sound like an idiot. Nitro Girls routine. Halloween Havoc promo. Fireworks. Commentary desk chatter. Confusion about Chucky cackling like an idiot. Bret Hart vs. Sting for the United States Championship - do any of you remember that this title even exists? – will happen later tonight. Somehow, I doubt it’ll have an ending that is even remotely un-clusterfucky. Video of Roddy Piper cutting a crappy promo about/to Bret Hart from a few Nitros back. More video recaps of this Hogan/Hart/Sting stuff that happened in past weeks. Enough! This has been completely uncompelling television! Show intro. Finally. That all took seven-and-a-half minutes, but it felt like seven-and-a-half hours. Lizmark Jr. comes to the ring to face Saturn in the opener. At least the opener will probably be decent. A dude in the crowd holds up a sign with red facepaint Sting next to white facepaint Sting. Red Facepaint Sting is, quite sensibly, crossed out. Stingiagree.gif. This match is fine. Lizmark is having a strange night: He takes a weird, overelaborate bump off a superkick, then so badly telegraphs a corner splash that it looks comical. Saturn scores a Falcon Arrow after that missed corner splash and wins in only a couple of minutes with the DVD (no Video Review). DDP/Goldberg hype video. This feud is so good and should get somewhat more time than it’s gotten, but it’s been crowded out by the awful nWo-adjacent stuff. Speaking off, Warrior/Hogan hype stuff is grafted onto the second half of this hype video. Nitro Girls routine. Kimberly’s a charming and pretty lady, but what if we got some pro wrestling on this here pro wrestling show instead of a second Nitro Girls routine in the first fifteen minutes of the show? Kaz Hayashi has, I guess, accepted Sonny Onoo’s tutelage at what I’m sure is a step managerial fee. That must have happened on SN. They come to the ring together; Kaz is opposing Ernest Miller, who is still repping what is now an overlong gimmick that should have been squashed by Goldberg two weeks ago. Miller does his same heel routine. It stinks. I guess Kaz has no idea what the fuck is going on, and Onoo doesn’t help him at all by translating or anything, because he just stands there while the Cat counts, takes off his robe, and then kicks him right in the chest. Onoo is the anti-James Vandenberg. This match has a cap on it in quality, obviously. The Cat does a relatively long pressure hold on Kaz’s ribs. Kaz has some bursts, but leaps off the top rope and right into a leaping kick counter. Oops, no, the timing is horrid and it looks awful. The Cat has terrible timing at this point and should probably stop it with all the kick counter spots that need good timing to pull off for awhile. Miller hits a Feliner after that for the win; Onoo gets in the ring and immediately dumps Kaz for Miller. Seems about right. There are lots of hype videos tonight. This is not a complaint; it is merely an observation. DDP gets a cool little video package of him dropping fools with Diamond Cutters even though his ribs are taped because of kayfabe injuries a whole bunch of the time. The man’s a fighter! Jerry Flynn and Juventud Guerrera are next up, and I know that Juvi is on his way out here because his music plays for a few seconds while Flynn is still on the ramp. Dammit, Leathers! We don’t get into this match at all before Disco comes out and boots Tenay off the desk. Disco verbally shits on Juvi. Also, Disco calls himself “slim in the waist and cute in the face.” This guy cracks me up. Hahaha, Disco claims that Juvi is used to the metric system and miscalculated Disco’s weight in pounds. What a dumbass. In the ring, Juvi and Flynn have a surprisingly decent little man/big man match. I never would have guessed that these two have some solid chemistry. I’m honestly somewhat shocked at how fun this nothing little match is, which ends with Juvi winning a series of counters by backflipping out of a back suplex attempt and drilling a Juvi Driver for three. Huh. I think this reaches "charming uniquity" status. In a pre-tape, Mike Tenay asks the humanoids outside the arena who will win the Goldberg/DDP match at Havoc. A woman wearing a DDP shirt is brave enough to pick DDP when everyone else picks Goldberg. But in an illustration of the thin line between bravery and stupidity, she then holds up a sign which exhorts Hulk Hogan to shake his dick at her. I did not make this up. God knows that I wish I had. The desk talks about Hogan/Warrior. A Hogan/Warrior hype video plays. Did I mention that there are lots of hype videos tonight? Wrath crushes the fifth Villano in a quick squash. I’ll tell you, Wrath and Crush both have some excellent tilt-a-whirl backbreakers. Wrath’s Meltdown looks great tonight. Another Warrior/Hogan video package plays. Then, we cut to more pre-tape of Tenay yammering at the humanoids. I must credit one fan who predicts DDP countering a Jackhammer attempt by slipping out of the back and hitting a Diamond Cutter because he’s seen himself a wrestling show or two. This group of fans seemed comparatively savvy about pro wrestling, how to cut a faux-promo while yelling catchphrases, and also none of them begged Hulk Hogan to shake his dick at them. So that’s a plus. An incredibly tacky Hummer limo pulls up to the arena. Of course the Wolfpac are in it. Of course. They pop out and we get a tracking shot as they walk from the limo all the way into the arena and, uh, as they wander around trying to find the nWo locker room; we stick with it until they find a few B-Teamers backstage and kick the shit out of them. Dellinger and the fuzz show up and stumble around ineffectually; the Giant and Scott Steiner show up and don’t do much. I respect the Wolfpac moving like an actual wolfpack for once, I have to say. This is a lukewarm backstage brawl. This thing goes on forever, man, forever. The fans in Columbia appear entertained by what they’re seeing on the big screen, though. Sting finally finds the room Bret’s in and ambushes him. Dellinger and the LEOs try to break it up as we go to commercial. We come back and this thing is still going. Sting hijacks a forklift and then rams it into nWo Hollywood's non-Hummer limo. In what is pretty boring TV, but which must have been fun for Sting, Sting picks up the limo with the forklift and then dumps it over on its hood. In fairness, once Sting drops it, that’s fun to watch. I'm a man and therefore enjoy watching cars getting crushed or dropped. It's science. Nash was using a sledgehammer (™Triple H) to hit the limo from beneath while Sting had it in the air, which seems like an inadvisable thing to do! Damian 666 shouldn’t have a ‘90s pop theme, I don’t think, but hey, this is WCW and they had it in the licensed music catalog they have access to. Damian faces Hector Garza. This match starts out shading slightly more toward “tumbling competition” than “simulation of an actual fight,” but it only lasts a minute because Eddy Guerrero cuts in with a mic and basically pitches these dudes on the lWo as a way to get back at Eric Bischoff booking anyone with Mexican heritage into the ground. Eddy whines about Bisch and Hogan controlling the money and the main event spots and then proposes that he and the other Latino WCW wrestlers band up in the lWo, complete with an lWo shirt that has a logo in the colors of the Mexican national flag. Damian and Garza join up immediately. This is our third “[Something] World Order” group in the fucking company, by the way. Mike Tenay tries to sneak into a Wolfpac huddle backstage, then interviews Kevin Nash, who plans to run up into a few local-area bars until they find Scott Hall so they can beat the fuck out of him. Tenay hopes to bring a cameraman and tag along on this fantastic voyage. More Bret Hart/Sting recap, specifically with a snippet of a Hart promo from a couple weeks ago. It only lasts a few seconds, at least. The Nitro Girls dance. Psicosis heads to the ring after this latest dance routine and faces off with Billy Kidman for the WCW Cruiserweight Championship. Psicosis tries to intimidate Kidman, which fails, and then tries to work the arm, but that fails too, as Kidman works out of the hold and hits an armdrag, then follows up with a release overhead suplex for two. Kidman hits a plancha to Psicosis after Psicosis heads outside; he rolls Psicosis back in the ring and brings himself back in with a guillotine legdrop for another two count. He tries to follow up, but ducks down and gets caught and Falcon Arrow’d for two. Hey, that’s the second Falcon Arrow of the night. Psicosis celebrates and clowns and doesn’t seem to be taking Kidman very seriously, but he still scores a top rope wheel kick. This only gets two, but man, is Psicosis consistently casual about staying on top of Kidman. Psicosis goes to the chinlock. Kidman doesn’t take too long to work his way out of it, and he manages a dropkick. They trade counters once they’re back to standing, and Psicosis hits a wild guillotine legdrop from the ring to Kidman laying on the protective mats below. Psicosis sure loves pulverizing his spinal column. Psicosis beats Kidman up outside the ring, then back inside the ring, but he is so distracted tonight. He bitches at Charles Robinson, yells at the refs, and gives Kidman plenty of time to recover and score a counter lariat for two. Kidman tries to follow up, but misses a corner splash and gets back suplexed for a two count himself. Psicosis is on top, so he goes back to the chinlock. It’s not a very good looking chinlock. Kidman is out of it again and hits a sunset flip for two, but Psicosis is up and hits a lariat of his own. Psicosis follows up with a piledriver. Oops, no, he jaws at the fans and goes back to the chinlock. But, as unfocused as Psicosis is, he makes his biggest mistake by standing with Kidman and trying to powerbomb him. Kidman counters with a facebuster. Both men trade two counts after this, with Kidman’s 2.9 on the sit-out slam getting the closest to ending the match. Psicosis tries to hit a top-rope rana, but Kidman holds onto the ropes and then, as the crowd volume rises expectantly, lands an SSP for three. No, he doesn’t have good aim. But yes, the crowd loves the hell out of that move. This match was fine, but they have better in them. We get a pre-taped Warrior promo. He talks about giving Hogan that work at WrestleMania VI. In a weird bit of theming in this promo, Warrior mentions the famous Santayana phrase about people who don’t remember history being doomed to repeat it. Then, his promo argues that Hogan clearly remembers losing at WrestleMania. Doesn’t that mean, implicitly, that Hogan is less likely to repeat history and more likely to overcome Warrior at Havoc, then? I’m probably nitpicking. This pre-taped promo is too long, but there are parts of it that are actually decent, like when he says that he sleeps easily at night because he’s haunting Hogan’s dreams at the same time. He doesn’t say it that way exactly – he's a bit more wordy - but it's not a bad line. There was a lot of nonsense to get to that line, though. Scott Steiner cuts a pre-taped promo on Rick Steiner with the B-Team theme playing in the background. Scotty pretty much says that he carried the team for years. It’s a decent enough promo. Mike Tenay drives behind a Hummer limo. It’s exciting. You know, if you’ve never seen someone driving behind another car. I think they’re playing with the formatting of the show here and trying to hit the high notes that Attitude Era WWF hit with stuff like Steve Austin riding trucks into the arena and spraying dudes with beer. It’s not working for me, really, but it’s a moderately interesting attempt. Scott Steiner and Buff Bagwell come to the ring. Scotty hits the line BIG POPPA PUMP IS YOUR HOOKUP, HOLLA IF YA HEAR ME, which is a good sign. Scotty re-hashes the promo he just gave in the pre-tape. Rick Steiner rolls out onto the ramp to rebut. Ricky’s so unsympathetic. Who gives a shit about this dude at all? You can’t get any heat on him because of how unsympathetic he is. Ricky is upset about Buff playing on his past injury; he’s so upset that he calls out Buff’s mom Judy. Judy takes the mic and gets in the ring like she pulled a switch off a plant outside and is going to whoop Buff’s Marcus’s ass. The crowd cheers appreciatively. Judy cuts a diabolical, screechy promo that Vickie Guerrero would be proud of. Then, like any Southern mom worth her salt, she guilts her son for not even calling her anymore, what the fuck, Marcus?! Buff takes the mic and tries to assert himself against his overbearing helicopter mom. Then he says that he makes the money that keeps his family housed, clothed, and fed. That is a mistake because, like any Southern mom worth her salt, Judy slaps the shit out of her disrespectful child. Look, you might be horrified at the babyface mother repeating an instance of child abuse against her son in his adulthood, but this is the south. Judy gets a massive pop. Also, I popped. Don’t judge me too harshly. Judy drags Buff away from the ring by his earlobe to loud cheers while Rick jumps Scott. During the break, Crush helped Scotty turn the tide, and they beat Ricky down. Scotty throws up the double birds while Ricky writhes in pain after getting tossed into a guardrail. Yeah, I’m sure Bischoff didn’t have an eye on what RAW was doing. I fucking bet. Crush versus Rick Steiner is the match that was next before Scotty and Buff crashed the proceedings, and that match goes on right now while J.J. Dillon comes to ringside and gets cops to escort Scotty away from ringside. Crush works a chinlock, hits Ricky with a big boot, eventually drops him with a piledriver, and casually covers for 2.9. I mean, wow, this Crush control segment goes on for about fifty years. I don’t even think it’s bad on an aesthetic level, necessarily; it’s just that Crush is so fucking boring. Finally, Ricky makes a comeback and lands the top-rope bulldog for three. The crowd was into the finish. I think what we’ve learned from this segment is that the crowd wants Judy to use corporal punishment on her adult manchild fuck-up of a son, and that they really dig the top-rope bulldog. The Wolfpac stalk Scott Hall at one of Hall’s favorite Columbia, SC haunts. See, this is straight out of the late ‘90s WWF playbook to run a series of segments like this where a story is told outside of the ring area, or outside of the arena itself, building toward a final confrontation and/or punchline. Anyway, they don’t find him at this spot, so they move on to the next one. Eric Bischoff escorts Hulk Hogan to the ring. David Flair is in the front row so that Eric Bischoff can taunt him. Hogan cuts a promo. It’s a fucking bummer. He cuts a far worse promo against Warrior than Warrior did in the pre-tape against him. I can scarcely believe it, but Warrior has been a consistently better promo than Hogan in this feud. I’m not saying Warrior is good at promos or even average, but he’s better than Hogan. The Four Horsemen are the next to get hyped via video package. Then the Nitro Girls dance. After that, Kanyon comes out, flanked by Raven. DDP comes to the ring to face his fellow Jersey scumbag. Someone holds up an EDGE STEALS MOVES sign. Edge stinks on ice, but everyone steals moves, man. Page gets a couple of flash pinfall attempts after Kanyon focuses on taunting the crowd instead of facing off with his opponent. That puts Kanyon out of sorts as he struggles to get going in the match. Page gets two on a big belly-to-belly, then sends Kanyon tumbling outside with a wild haymaker. Lodi comes out here begging Raven to take him back, which distracts Kanyon and allows Page to leap onto both of them. The whole kerfuffle distracts the ref enough that he leaves the ring; this allows Raven to hop in and hit Page with a shitty Diamond Cutter, but that only gets 2.9 when Kanyon gets back in the ring to cover (and Charles Robinson gets back in the ring to count). Kanyon chokes Page, then lands a second-rope Rocker Dropper. Kanyon is just too distracted, though; he celebrates and gets ambushed by Page strikes before landing a well-aimed kick to the ribs and a second-rope facebuster for two. Kanyon sinks in a chinlock, but that doesn’t last long; Kanyon gets to standing and puts Page in TKO position, but Page slinks out, and both men trade counters until finally Page scores a counter-clothesline that induces a standing ten-count. Or, uh, kneeling ten-count from Lil’ Naitch. Both men are up around seven, and Page wins a punch-up and bashes Kanyon’s head into the buckles; he then lands a back suplex for two. Page picks Kanyon back up, but Kanyon grabs him and gets two off a desperation small package. It’s not a bad move, but Page is up, out, and back on top with a DDPancake that gets two. This is enough for Raven to get on the apron, and though Page knocks him off, Kanyon gets a flash pin for two, then finds a swinging neckbreaker for another two. Kanyon tries to follow up, but Page counters him with a jawbreaker, follows with a tilt-a-whirl slam, and signals for the Diamond Cutter. Raven’s had enough of this shit, and after Lodi runs in and gets cleared out with a lariat, Raven runs in and spikes Page with a microphone. Goldberg runs out for the save, spears Kanyon, absolutely clobbers Lodi with an overhand right and a Jackhammer, and then turns around to face off with a revived DDP after Page lands a Diamond Cutter on Raven. J.J. Dillon power-waddles on out to keep them from fighting one another. The match was entertaining enough, but the aftermath in particular was really fun stuff. We cut back to Tenay and the Wolfpac showing up at tavern number two for the night. Konnan is convinced that Hall would be in a strip club instead of this dive bar, but Nash swears that he’s had drinks with Hall here. Unlike the last spot, the bar is full of awestruck patrons who wonder what the hell is going on. Konnan desperately wants to visit a strip joint or two (heh heh heh), but Nash is adamant that Hall isn’t allowed in any strip joints in this area anymore. Yeah, I believe it. The Disciple has new music, but he’s the same old shitbrick. He’s going to squash Lenny Lane. Lane runs around pretending to be the Warrior, and it hurts Disciple’s feelings. Disciple does a rope shake and then no-sells Lane’s offense. I don’t get why this had to be on Nitro. Or SN. Or on TV at all. Disciple eventually lands a Stone Cold Stunner for three. Oh no, Penzer gives this goof a microphone. Penzer, you dumbass. Disciple says he’s done carrying Hogan’s bags. Wow, Hogan should get Judy Bagwell back out here to slap the hell out of this disrespectful bastard. Hogan comes onto the ramp from, uh, somewhere, and follows Disciple to the back through the normal entrance. But the Disciple has disappeared, OOOOH SCARY. So, this is the dumb thing that no one thought up where Warrior appears in the mirror and Eric Bischoff is the only one who can’t see him. We see him, the announcers see him, Hogan sees him. Bischoff looks like the crazy bastard, not Hogan. This was the sort of bad television that eventually gets a TV show canceled. OK, so the third place the Hummer pulls up to just looks like some dudes mother-in-law that he turned into an illegal drinking spot against his spouse's wishes after the ol’ M-I-L passed away. Hall is here, and Nash brawls with him while a bunch of twenty-something dudes cheer and a tiny smattering of twenty-something women look around confused. Well, a couple of those young ladies find the camera to get some camera time. Nash drags Hall in the bathroom and gives him a swirlie. Or possibly a guy who is dressed vaguely like Scott Hall since it was hard to see the dude’s face. Whatever. I give Bischoff a few points for trying to do a style of episode-long storytelling that the WWF excelled at in this time period. I mean, I took away a bunch of points for the previous segment, so he’s well in arrears, but still. Oh great, more Eric Bischoff! I’m so excited to hear him cut a promo on Ric Flair. I’ve wondered where they were going with this whole “the Horsemen are banned” thing, and I think actually I know. We are headed toward Flair/Bischoff, maybe at Starrcade, and then Flair being the new commissioner or WCW executive committee leader or whatever, right? And then Flair tries to pull off a double turn with Hulk Hogan that absolutely no one wants except for Flair and Hogan? Arn Anderson comes out, but I’m distracted by thinking about what is the least straightforward booking of this angle that anyone could possibly come up with. Arn introduces “the champ,” and that brings out Reid (w/terrible haircut, medal). Reid looks terrified as fuck to be on television. He cuts a bad promo, but I don’t judge him. Basically, he is down here to kick Bischoff’s ass. What is happening right now? Everything Bischoff is personally involved in fucking SUCKS. Fuck, this is some awful television. I’m depressed to see Arn Anderson on my screen, imagine that. Reid hits a couple double-legs on Bisch. Whatever, it got a pop. Columbia wrestling fans are good sports. There’s a commercial break, and when we get back, Bischoff is still fucking standing out here. He’s got Liz on the phone calling someone, and I don’t fucking care. Bischoff rants while Liz tries to get Ric Flair on the phone. This is the opposite of compelling television. Now Bischoff pretends to have a conversation with Ric’s wife. Oh, I should clarify, huh? Ric’s wife Beth. He has a fake conversation off-mic (Larry Z. is confused as to why we can’t hear any of this) and then “Thus Sprach” hits and the elder Flair comes to the ring. The crowd gets catharsis as this is what they wanted to see, and immediately a bunch of B-Teamers run down and surround the ring. The Horsemen quickly run down and clear them out. I can imagine what Bisch would say: The crowd was hot, so obviously something about it worked. And hell, Nitro even barely lost the night, so look, who am I to say that this was wretched television? Oh, yeah, I’m a wrestling fan who is still devastated that WCW went out of business in part because Bischoff is bad at creative. That’s who I am to say that this was terrible fucking television. Sting/Bret Hart gets the last nine-ish minutes of the show. Bret comes onto the ramp and then decides that walking to the ring for a wrestling match is a stupid idea. He leaves. Sting runs after him. *sigh* We follow to the back where Sting catches Bret and beats him up. As Tony S. points out that we’re watching yet another backstage event, some EA exec has a great idea for a game if they ever get the WCW license. They brawl throughout the backstage area. Bret gets the upper hand, attacks Sting’s knee and ankle, and then, sliding around on the floor, tries to Pillmanize Sting’s knee with a chair and a garbage can. This is fine as a wandering brawl, but I was promised a match in the ring. Bret tries to use a cart to VROOM at Sting, but it doesn’t start, so Bret abandons the spot. What a fucking ripoff this whole main event was. This brawl just goes on forever. Bret gets a Sharpshooter for a bit; Sting gets a Scorpion Death Lock for a bit. The crowd finally runs out of what I thought was an endless well of patience; they boo and chant BULLSHIT because they realize that they got ripped off. It was like I fell in a portal and went to a world where Bischoff booked RAW in 1998. Oops. Let me amend that statement. It was like I fell into a portal and went a world where Bischoff booked RAW very badly in 1998. As it turns out, while there were bright spots (Judy dressing down Buff Marcus, Juvi and Jerry Flynn having decent chemistry), the Raven/Kanyon/Lodi/DDP/Goldberg segment saved this show from a null or negative score, it was so much fun. 0.75 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.
  8. This was duplicated in one of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark volumes, in which someone was terrified in their office by a man of vague Eastern European ethnicity calling their phone ("I am THE VIPER, I will be at your office at one," "I am THE VIPER, I am only thirty minutes away," "It's THE VIPER, I am coming up the stairs to your office"). Why this person in the Scary Stories tale didn't just vacate the premises, I don't know. At least the Joes had the excuse that they were trying to protect their base of operations.
  9. Hey Curt, I know who to talk to if you want to experience the sheer magic of a bad '80s cartoon with episodes that include a red-haired Princess Toadstool and Captain Lou trading jokes with a Cher impersonator!
  10. Did you know you can get a degree at home now? At home! Not like some rube who has to live in a dorm in Philly, sharing a microwave that no one wants to clean.
  11. I watched some Super Mario Bros. Super Show! the other day, starring one of the only two actors whom I recognize as Mario, Captain Lou. It's dreadful, of course. One episode at a time is enough. But I'll always deeply love it.
  12. I just heard Tenay explain that Psicosis means "Psycho" in Spanish on a random SN episode. Bless that guy. I do think his Lucha Libre and the Mexican Luchadores series that ran on Nitro in 1997 was probably genuinely important for getting a non-negligible amount of WCW fans to watch more lucha. A kid from Acworth or Biloxi or somewhere saw those segments and is now a huge CMLL fan or something. So that's cool!
  13. St. Joseph's and Temple grads always make sure to proofread. Or so I have been told.
  14. Harris could bump athletically. I've seen him bump a handful of times in Mid-South and Dallas where I was surprised at how cool it looked. I forget that by the time he was reasonably high-profile, he was already in his mid-30s. He aged like milk, but he was also well past his athletic peak by the time he was a notable worker. I think the first time I saw him, I was very, very young and he was wrestling Hogan in 1987 or whenever it was, and he was already physically shot.
  15. I enjoyed The Scorpion King for what it was and love The One, totally one of my guilty pleasures, and has one of the coolest ending scenes in a fun action flick. Seems like it all worked out there.
  16. Thunder Interlude – show number thirty-four – 1 October 1998 "The WCW Gang puts the spotlight on DDP and Goldberg (and it pays off)” I would love to get through 1998 already…Even with 1999 beckoning as a roundly shitty year, at least the showrunner shakeups should add a bit of entertainment to the proceedings…Goldberg’s defending the World Championship against Raven under Raven’s Rules…Hell yeah…I feel better already about watching some ’98 WCW… Diamond Dallas Page works the opener against Lodi…Lodi is mad at Page for hassling Raven a few months back…Lodi thinks he’s going to beat Page tonight, take Page's title shot, and then beat Goldberg…I like the little guy’s confidence…Page hits a plancha and then beats up Lodi as Lodi jabbers on at ringside…Lodi jumps Page as Page gets back in the ring, but his control segment doesn’t last long…Page fires back with rights, hits a huge gutbuster, then rips off a rebound Diamond Cutter for three…Fun little squash… Jerry Flynn faces Mike Enos next…I’m just waiting for Enos to get control and do some fun offense…He does a little of it, but there’s too much Flynn offense in this thing for my tastes…Enos does a much better version of Rick Steiner’s leapfrog-catch powerslam than Steiner does…Just as Mike Enos is about to rip off a belly-to-belly, a sauced Scott Hall wanders out with a drink…Enos is incredulous that once again, Scott Hall has barged in on his jobber match…The poor bastard… The crowd eggs Hall on as Hall tries to cut a survey…Flynn tries to remonstrate with Hall, so Hall beans him with the mic and then starts laughing…Enos challenges Hall to a fight for fucking up his spotlight once again…Enos shoves Hall, so Hall tosses his drink in Enos’s face, boots Enos and hits him with a Razor’s Edge, then does the same to Flynn…Aw, the story of Mike Enos, TV title contender has unfortunately gone off the rails…Hall does his survey and WCW gets booed in fucking Virginia, wow…Hall whines about everyone telling him what to do, especially Kevin Nash…He says he’ll only fight Nash on his terms…Vincent gives Hall a Long Island iced tea as a reward for his in-ring success…That’s some enabling-ass shit right there… The former Flock EXPLODES as Kanyon faces Riggs…Kanyon hits his catchphrases before the match and runs down Riggs…He calls Riggs these names: Cyclops, Popeye, and this last verbal jab isn't a name, but he asks where Riggs's parrot and pegleg are…Kanyon talks and talks and talks and talks and talks…I miss Mortis…That guy didn’t talk…Finally, Riggs attacks Kanyon with an overhand right…He snaps off a pretty sweet dropkick that earns a two-count...Riggs dumps Kanyon outside and posts him…He continues to target Kanyon’s arm and shoulder, using the post to inflict damage…Riggs lands a high knee… Finally, Kanyon gets an offensive move in by killing a series of punches in the corner with a Snake Eyes…Kanyon hits a second-rope Rocker Dropper and starts to assert himself…Kanyon cuts off a Riggs hip toss and turns it into a swinging neckbreaker for two…Kanyon gets two off a snap suplex/corkscrew elbowdrop combo…Kanyon lands two off a facebuster…He tries another second-rope Rocker Dropper and that gets countered into a powerbomb…Riggs makes his comeback…Riggs tries a Cross-Faced Chickenwing, but Kanyon escapes it by using his momentum to fall forward and slam Riggs’s head off the buckles…Kanyon follows with a Flatliner for three…That was a pretty good televised wrestling bout… In an outro promo…Raven notes that his parents told him at the age of six that nothing lasts forever…Raven suggests that, harsh as that lesson may be, Goldberg might want to learn from it w/r/t his World Championship run coming to an end tonight… Ciclope does jumping jacks in the aisle…Don’t ask me why…Heenan pretends to confuse Ciclope for Riggs, and I kinda chuckled…Wrath didn’t get a squash in on the previous Nitro, but he’s here on Thunder to make it happen tonight…Tony S. says that there are 24 more days between this show and Havoc…Three weeks of Nitro until then?...This is going to be a brutal run-in to Havoc…In this match, we get a nice side slam and a solid flying elbow…We get Ciclope getting tossed and sliding on his stomach across the mat and into a face-first bump on the floor, which is sort of wild…And of course, we get a Meltdown for three… Chavo Guerrero Jr. rides Pepe to the ring; the former gets a shot at Billy Kidman’s Cruiserweight Championship…Chavo hasn’t exactly looked strong against Disco twice in the past two weeks, so the outcome isn’t exactly in doubt…Chavo hits a shoulderblock and cabbage patches in celebration…Kidman fires back with a headscissors and a pescado…Back in the ring, Chavo takes control with a facebuster…They block each other’s arm drags before Chavo dumps Kidman onto the floor with an arm drag…Chavo follows up with a springboard crossbody, then rolls Kidman in the ring and gets two…Chavo works a headlock…Kidman fights out, gets two on a roll-up, and then nails a dropkick…Lots of good dropkicks on this show…Chavo gets a shot to the gut, hits his springboard bulldog, and gets two…Chavo locks in a headscissors…Chavo hits an elbowdrop and transitions to a headlock, but Kidman fights out of it…Kidman tries to land a springboard bulldog of his own, but Chavo blocks it by crotching him as we go to break… Back from break, Chavo hits an awkward rana-ish sort of deal to a seated Kidman on the ropes…That gets two, so Chavo goes back on the attack with a clothesline…Chavo rides Pepe…It’s sort of an obscene ride…No one should act like that while seated on a horse…Chavo tries a chinlock, but Kidman counters that with a jawbreaker…Kidman tries to pick up the pace and gets two on a sunset flip, but Chavo ends all that with a leg lariat that gets two…Chavo pounds the mat in frustration, then tries a back bodydrop and gets counter-clotheslined instead…Kidman tries to run again, but Chavo sidesteps a dropkick and hits a nice back suplex for two…Chavo goes back to working a hold, this time a Camel Clutch…Chavo pulls back on Kidman’s nose and lets the hold go before he can get disqualified…Chavo stomps a mudhole into Kidman, but badly whiffs on a Superman Punch and gets slammed…Kidman goes up for the SSP, but Chavo is quickly up and crotches Kidman… Chavo goes up and throws Kidman halfway across the ring on a superplex…That only gets two, but it was a heck of a superplex…Chavo tries to shoot Kidman into the ropes, but gets reversed and sit-out slammed, then quickly SSP’d for three…I enjoyed the match quite a lot…Maybe Kidman should have gotten more offense as the champ, though… Lenny Lane faces off with weird hippie Van Hammer…Van is the second Hammer (along with Greg Valentine) to use the Hollywood Blondes’s theme in the Nitro era…Hammer gets an early two on a rollup, then gets another two off a keylock slam…Lane keeps trying to match power with Hammer and losing…Lane isn’t very good, but he will drop himself on his head…Hammer hits a spinning back suplex for two…Though Lane survives momentarily and lands a jawbreaker, Hammer hits a pretty sweet stalling superplex, then hits his Flashback, which is kind of an Alabama Slam, for three…He should use the stalling superplex as his finisher instead… In another short promo, Raven opines on his chances against Goldberg…He thinks that only Saturn and himself have stretched Goldberg at all…Kinda, if you go by “time survived in the match”… Damian 666 tries to take down fellow cruiserweight Disco Inferno…This counts as a WCW-ass WCW matchup in my opinion…Disco takes it a little easy and almost eats a three-count when Damian hits a crossbody on a rope run…Disco dances some more and eats boot on a corner charge, then a lariat for two…Damian, who hasn’t learned anything from Disco’s failures, mocks Disco’s dancing for so long that he badly misses a second-rope elbow…VINTAGE DISCO (™ Michael Cole) from Damian on that whiff…A minute later, Disco dances and actually hits his second-rope elbow…He might have figured that move out considering that he’s two for his last two in attempts…Damian shoves Disco away as Disco tries a top-rope move, but he dives and eats boot…Disco hits the jumping piledriver for three, then beats down Damian post-match until Juvi runs in for the save…Juvi completely out-quicks Disco and runs him off with an array of aerial maneuvers… Stevie Ray (w/Vincent) faces Konnan…Hey, they can’t all be winners…This has been a quite good wrestling show…Pre-match, Konnan hits his catchphrase roulette to a whole lot of pops…This match isn’t good, but I didn’t hate it…Heenan says that Konnan’s a loyal guy…Uh, I remember him leaping from the Dungeon of Doom to the nWo and then to the Wolfpac in the span of, like, ten months…The issue in this match is that these guys have kinda shitty timing and the telegraphs for counters are just too obvious…Konnan hits the sit-out facebuster, which is when Vincent tries to run a distraction…Stevie conks Konnan with the slapjack right in front of Nick Patrick for the DQ, but Kevin Nash runs down for the save…The crowd is super into Nash…Especially when he Jackknifes Vincent…Hall wobbles to the top of the ramp, but refuses to wobble any farther… DDP comes back out to observe Goldberg/Raven…Michael Buffer slums it on Thunder for a paycheck…Raven (w/Kanyon, table) is out first…The crowd seems hot for this…Like, I know they probably juiced the noise on this taped show, but the crowd actually looks fired up…Goldberg (w/quite a few cops) quickly wins his first lockup with Raven…Raven tries a shoulderblock for some dumb reason…Page, Heenan, and Tenay sell the idea that Page discovers a few flaws in Goldberg’s arsenal every time he scouts him…Goldberg whiffs on a flying knee in the corner and tumbles outside…Raven is quickly on Goldberg, using the post and stairs and exhorting Kanyon to set the table up…They dump Goldberg on the table, but Kanyon can’t hold him down and Raven crashes and burns on a dive through the table…Ernie Ladd gets a shout-out and a comparison to Goldberg on commentary…Goldberg scores a superkick, but spears both Raven and the ref when Raven pulls Billy Silverman in the way….Kanyon interferes with a steel chair, so DDP runs in…Raven hits Goldberg with an Evenflow, but Page Diamond Cuts Kanyon…That distracts Raven, who takes a few seconds before he goes for another Evenflow and gets countered into a Jackhammer for three…Fun little main event sprint…Goldberg and Page face off post-match, and it’s pretty intense… Wow, what a fun show…Lots of wrestling, a couple of very enjoyable longer matches, lots of neat matchups, and Goldberg/DDP, the best feud they have going that isn’t the one-sided Goldberg/Jericho feud, got center stage with no Hogan/Warrior or Bischoff/Horsemen stuff to get in the way…They need to give Page and Goldberg more time to sell the idea that Page sees an opportunity to hit his death move on Goldberg...They even mentioned Page shoot watching tapes of his own matches to talk about how intensely he scouts everyone...That was a very neat touch...I really enjoyed my time with this Thunder...WOOOOO…
  17. Show #159 – 28 September 1998 "The one that defies one’s sense of time by being an interminable hellscape of shitty promos, bad angles, and terrible baits and switches" As I click on this show, I see what is an egregious screencap that spoils what would, I suppose, be considered a turn. I mean, it’s a turn that I guessed would happen anyway, but still, the people screencapping each episode need to do better. We start with a video recap of this incredibly stupid Warrior/Hogan feud. And it will only get more stupid! That’s a guarantee! Chavo Guerrero Jr. and Billy Kidman hit the ring to start us off with some pacey and fun wrestling tonight! “Rockhouse” plays as Hogan and Bischoff come out to talk us to death at the beginning of this show. Sorry, my bad, I just reflexively wrote something that everyone seems to remember as true, but which was actually consistently false. Oh, Hall and Crush are also here for some reason. Hogan talks about taking WCW, a small southern hayseed promotion, to the top, and filling southern hayseed buildings like the one he’s in tonight. The building is in…um…let’s see…Rochester. Well, in fairness to Hogan, Upstate New York does have a shocking amount of Confederate flags waving in the air. Then Hogan says this, and let me go back over it word for word because it is somehow the most batshit thing to happen/be said during this whole Hogan/Warrior feud: I WENT DOWN TO THE HOOD, AND WHEN I WENT TO THE HOOD, ALL THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS SAID “HOLLYWOOD, WHY DON’T YA TAKE BACK OVER? WHY DON’T YA SLAUGHTER THE LAMBS THAT YOU’VE LED TO SLA-SLAUGHTER?” AND AS I SAID “BROTHERS, YOU’RE RIGHT,” THEY SAID “'WOOD, DO IT FOR US. ‘WOOD, TAKE ‘EM OUT ONE AT A TIME.” He said that! I swear! I replayed it to make sure that I got the whole thing down! Then he claims that the bandana he's wearing is “’Wood’s War Bonnet” and challenges Sting and Bret Hart to a one-on-two handicap match (Editor's note: Or two separate singles matches? It's not clear) in what is the most obvious fucking turn coming, like you wouldn’t even need to see a spoiler-filled screencap to guess what would happen after Hogan makes that challenge. He claims that everyone should call him “Woody,” like Harrelson or Buzz Lightyear’s chum, I guess. Look, this was the worst promo of the calendar year. I defy you to convince me that Warrior had a worse promo than this in his short run. It was the epitome of cringe comedy, this white guy from Florida in his mid-40s desperately trying to be cool while cutting a heel promo straight out of 1984 WWF in 1998 WCW. Holy shit. La Parka! This is a guy who is intentionally funny. He also rules in general. Super Calo is his opponent. Calo kicks Parka’s chair away; they shove one another, and then Parka dances, so Calo runs into him. Parka badly misses a back kick that is meant to be a low-blow as Calo leaps over him - and not just once, but twice - so he just turns around and punts Calo in the balls in full view of the ref, haha. This show hasn’t been what you’d call “good” so far, but it’s certainly been perversely entertaining. Despite that immersion-breaking spot, this match is fun for what it is. Parka wipes himself out on a shoulder charge and gets body-pressed into the rail by crazy-ass Calo in my favorite spot of the match. Parka comes back with a dropkick that catches a diving Calo and then hangs Calo in the Tree of Woe position and hits a wheel kick in another neat spot. Both guys fight over control on the top rope, and though Parka knocks Calo onto the floor, Calo jumps back up on the apron, grabs Park’s leg and trips him into a seated position, and then hits a top-rope rana. Calo tries to keep control, but when he tries another leapover, Parka catches him and snaps him with a slam, then nails a twisting bodypress from the top that gets three and appreciative applause from the crowd. Post-match, Calo grabs Parka’s chair and beats holy hell out of him with it. That was a fun way to get a show going! It brought a lot of energy! If only it opened the show! Bret Hart “limps” into the aisle to be interviewed by Gene Okerlund. This sucks, man. Anyway, Bret accepts Hogan’s challenge, and I guess it’ll be one-on-one. Bret’s still the United States Champion, which never gets defended anymore since he’s been working an injury angle. The Hitman lays on the “I’m a babyface now!” schtick a little too thickly, but his quickie-turn is obvious anyway. I’m especially salty because these bums on commentary are acting like we’re really getting a proper Hart/Hogan match, which is one of the things I desperately wanted out of this extremely frustrating company in 1998. The Disciple comes to the ring with “Rockhouse” playing for some reason even though he’s got the oWn vest on. Shouldn’t Warrior’s music be playing instead? They’re going to feed Sick Boy to Leslie, which, whatever, but the guy no sells all Sick Boy’s offense – and I’m supposed to buy that, I guess – and then visibly misses on a big boot. This match sucks. Why is it so long? Disciple finally hits a Stone Cold Stunner for three. Ed Leslie made a lot of money and got a lot of TV time he shouldn’t have made or gotten. That’s a skill, I guess. We get an unnecessary retrospective of the worst long-term feud in the company. The Steiner Brothers have been exploding damn near the whole year, since like February, and let me tell you, none of the resulting angles or matches have been good except for the ones where Buff cut stirring babyface promos that meant nothing because he was just pretending to turn babyface, much like Bret Hart is doing. The Fall Brawl match was an abomination and will be on the list that I’m building under the "dumpster fire" section. Break. Nitro Girls routine. Where is Chae? Kimberly is a total dork. “Rockhouse” plays for the seventy-fifth time tonight. Buff Bagwell squires Scott Steiner to the ring. Buff’s hat has his face on it. Scotty speaks before the match. He cuts his “all men are/are not created equal” line for the first time that I recall. I sure wish WHEN YOU LOOK AT ME AND YOU LOOK AT SAMOA JOE was the next thing he said, but it unfortunately was not. Scotty squashes Nick Dinsmore and Lenny Lane in a handicap match, finishing them with a double Steiner Recliner that gets a stereo submission. I do like the double-underhook suplex one guy on top of the other guy spot, I have to say. They do another fake injury spot after the bell because everyone just loved it the last three hundred times that they did it. We’re only at the beginning of hour number two? Fuck! That was the longest ~38 minutes of wrestling show I’ve seen in a long time. The opening to the Warrior’s music is incredibly dumb. It’s not quite as dumb as the opening to Rick Steiner’s music, but it’s a close second. Warrior runs saunters to the ring. Again, this is upstate New York, so the Warrior is actually reasonably over. Anyway, in what turns out to be a “what the actual fuck are you talking about?!” promo battle for the ages, Warrior says this to open his promo: HOGAN, ARE YOU WHO YOU ARE? AND I KNOW WHO I AM. AND THESE WARRIORS KNOW WHAT THEY WANT TO SEEEEEEEEEE! That is some strong Pete Weber WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?! I AM! energy right there. Pete was also a pro wrestling fan who’d hit crotch chops and do the RVD thumb point after striking, so maybe WCW should have brought him in to tag with DDP against Hogan in a PPV main event, too. Warrior cuts an awful promo, but it somehow isn’t as bad as the promo Hogan cut. And I mean, Warrior tries to lower the bar even more with lines like AT HALLOWEEN HAVOC, I WILL BECOME FULL-BLOWN, but I can’t understate just how shitty Hogan’s promo was earlier tonight. Aw man, Buff Bagwell is back out here to give a Scott Steiner “injury” update to Gene Okerlund. It sucks. I’m not going to bother recapping most of this. I do note that while Buff is talking, Chucky starts laughing over the PA. Can you believe that right now, the WWF is building toward what is the greatest one-night tournament in American pro wrestling history (that was caught completely on tape, at least), and WCW is adding Chucky to this deep-freeze, ice cold Steiner Brothers feud? What the fuck?! Psicosis! Thank goodness. Oops, I was wrong to get excited: Ernest Miller is his opponent. Yeah, let’s just waste Psicosis on this garbage push, why not? Miller does his whole “got ‘til five” schtick, but Psicosis is like NO COMPRENDE, YOU STUPID FUCK, so Miller just kicks him. Psicosis wisely fires off a couple low dropkicks to the Cat’s knee, then hits a sweet crossbody from the top to the floor. He follows up with a missile dropkick back in the ring, but it only gets two. There’s a weird spot where Mickey Jay stops Psicosis from doing a top rope move in one corner of the ring, so I guess this is a “we have a spot planned for this part of the ring later” thing because Psicosis just lets Miller down so he can put him in a headscissors (Editor's note: They did not, so IDK what the deal was). Psicosis eventually whiffs on a guillotine legdrop on the other side of the ring, and Miller quickly lands a Feliner for three. This show has been diabolical so far. Kevin Sullivan was serious in all his promos about being the face of true evil considering how he’s contributed to the booking of this show. Gene Okerlund wants to hassle Alex Wright about Wright speaking German, but Wright rips the mic away and insults Gene for being barely literate and also old and short (and uses some unfortunate language for the latter insult). Then, he insults Rochester while the crowd chants U-S-A, and is this hell? Yeah, it is. Finally, Wright challenges the British Bulldog and calls him “spineless,” which is probably literally accurate at this point! Chavo Guerrero Jr. gets another match against Disco Inferno, who may or may not have made weight. I don’t like this “make weight” stuff. Disco is a talented character who can’t pull it off. Matt Hardy was also really talented at making dumb midcard shit work, but he couldn’t pull it off, either. Anyway, this is a solid little bout. Hilariously, Disco threatens to break Pepe, and Chavo begs him not to, but also, Mark Curtis is like DON’T YOU DO IT, and that makes me laugh. Mark Curtis is hilarious, man. Chavo is fired up by the threat to Pepe’s existence and hits a Thesz Press, some punches, and a tope before riding Pepe around the ring in celebration. Disco tries to come back, but eats a facebuster, an atomic drop, and a clothesline for two. Disco is able to back elbow his way out of trouble and then lands a couple of body slams, then he badly misses actually hits his second-rope elbow! Holy shit. No one in Rochester cares, but I do. That elbow only gets two. Chavo turns it around, lands the best Superman punch in the business, and then hits a springboard bulldog. Chavo’s offense rules, man. Chavo stays on top of Disco, but as Curtis tries to break things up, Disco grabs Pepe and hits Chavo in the throat with the hobby horse, then gets a quick three. Juvi comes down to narc on Disco again and beats Disco up to boot, but when Juvi goes over to check on Chavo, Disco jumps Juvi and drills him with a jumping piledriver, then yells DON’T STOOGE ME OFF AGAIN…JUVENSTOOGE. The weight thing sucks, but it wasn’t mentioned tonight. If that angle gets dropped in favor of a Juvi/Disco feud, that’d be cool as hell. Gene Okerlund tries to interview the Four Horsemen in the ring. Eric Bischoff and Stevie Ray come to the ring almost immediately, along with the fuzz and that chump Doug Dellinger. Bisch does some awful heeling and demands that fuzz clear the ring. He also kicks Dellinger out of the arena, which is fair, actually. Anyway, we’re in WWF country, so Rochester reflexively starts a barely warranted ASSHOLE chant. This segment gave me hives. Oh thank goodness, it’s Chris Jericho. That’s a sentence nobody has typed in at least a decade. Anyway, his personal security leads him out to the ring as he offers Goldberg a chance to win his WCW World Television Championship. He cuts a funny little promo into the camera and actually finds his way to the ring on the first try. Goldberg’s theme hits and…oh shit, Goldberg jumped the little person Goldberg impostor in the back and is carrying him to the ring like a sack of potatoes! I can’t believe it, a good angle! Jericho’s not even looking, and when he turns around, he freaks out, shoves his two security guys at Goldberg, and hightails it outta there. Goldberg hits a double spear on the security guys and Jackhammers not-Ralphus. Just let Jericho book the whole show at this point, sweet fuck. Gene Okerlund interviews DDP in the ring. We’ve reached a new level of chant-along in 1998 because Page can get crowds to chant HOLLYWOOD SCUM HOGAN without the crowd feeling like the bunch of assholes that they are for chanting that. Page cuts another subpar babyface promo. Imagine the sort of stuff that babyface Page normally says and does. Vincent caddies that dipsomaniac Scott Hall to the ring for more of this fucking angle with Scott Hall. Hall asks a survey question about the best qualities of a light beer. Because he’s a drunk, you see. Kidman’s funk porno riff, which hit about a minute too early, hits again and brings him down to the ring. Hall toothpicks Kidman. Kidman signals that Hall’s got the delirium tremens. Hall beats Kidman up. Then, Hall tries to get a little sippy-sip, but Vincent won’t give him the cup, and Kidman gets a couple of flash two counts before Hall turns him inside-out on a lariat. Hall controls for a bit, tries to get the cup, doesn’t get the cup, and who does this serve? If a half-sauced Scott Hall can work over the Cruiserweight Champ with almost no issue, have the bookers not just devalued the whole cruiserweight division? Hall hits a chokeslam and then mocks the Giant with the Frankenstein taunt even though they’re on the same side. Hall gets his brew and drinks while Kidman sneaks up from behind, takes out Vincent, and punches Hall (who spews beer all over the spectators in the front row). Kidman gets two off a crossbody, but jumps himself into a fallaway slam. Hall tries a Razor’s Edge, but that’s damn near like a powerbomb, so Kidman reverses with a face crusher. Vincent has to jump in and distract Kidman so that Hall can again try, and hit, the Edge. I don’t like that they booked this match and worked it in this way. If you’re going to have an upper-midcard gatekeeper come to the ring drunk, your Cruiserweight champ should probably win that match and take slightly more of it than Kidman did. Maybe just don’t book this specific matchup at all? They could have gotten the same effect from Hall beating any given midcarder who isn’t a champion. I’m surprised that the British Bulldog is still wrestling even though he was hurt a couple weeks ago. He looks rough, honestly. The back injury, the steroids, and the rampant crack use have really caught up to the guy. Bulldog/Alex Wright is up next. Before the match starts, Bulldog says his son Harry is a better wrestler than Wright is (NOPE), then tells Wright to fellate him in German. The match is surprisingly decent considering that Bulldog is washed. There is a surfboard, and it rules, man. It gets a pop, and it should get a pop. Bulldog working more WoS spots into his matches as he got older would have been the best. Bulldog does land a walking powerslam, but Wright’s boots hit Billy Silverman as Bulldog swung Wright around, so it doesn’t get a pinfall count at all. Then, in what is a confusingly convoluted finish, Wright hits a back suplex from behind and both a revived Silverman and Charles Robinson, the latter of whom came down when Silverman was out, make a count, but both guys have shoulders on the mat, and both refs declare a different winner. Did we need a controversial finish leading to a rematch? Just feed Bulldog to Wright the first time around! Man, it’s Crush. Shit. He’s facing Kevin Nash, who is insanely over in this part of the country. Some kid leaps the guardrail to celebrate with him. I love that Tony S. points out that Dellinger has been kicked out of the building, so there are these lapses in security that are bound to happen. Dude, Dellinger was a fuck-up and we got lapses of security when he was in the building. Diesel/Crush seems like it should be a bore-fest, but this is actually okay. Nash hits almost all of his crowd-pleasers, Crush dropkicks Nash over the top rope in a nice spot, and really, this could have been worse. It’s perfectly cromulent as it is. The only problem is that Stevie Ray runs out and hits Nash with a slapjack (not a Slapjack) before Nash can hit a Jackknife, which is what we all wanted to see. Scott Hall comes out and hammers Nash with punches instead of getting hammered on the sauce before Konnan and Luger run out for the very late save. I have a whole rant coming about how WCW’s booking of the Wolfpac is even worse than its booking of Goldberg, but maybe I’ll wait until the Fingerpoke of Doom to uncork it. Konnan and Luger come right back out here to tag up against Hugh Morrus and Barry Darsow. We are short for time somehow even though so much of it has been wasted; I know this because Konnan does the speed run version of his catchphrase roulette. Haha, Darsow jiggles his pecs at Luger. Darsow’s got normal burly strong guy pecs and not poured-out-of-a-bottle pecs, so the contrast is funny. Anyway, this Nitro has been exhausting – I miss one-hour Nitros so much and I miss two-hour Nitros even more than that – and this match is just sort of here. Jimmy Hart gets on the apron. It doesn’t help his charges take control of the match. Konnan tries a Tequila Sunrise, but it gets broken up, so Konnan tags Luger in and Luger puts Darsow in the Torture Rack for the win. Thank goodness, it’s main event time. Hulk Hogan is out first, which blatantly signals a bait-and-switch. Bischoff is so bad at swerves. He pulled one off turning Hogan heel in the first place, so everyone ignores how shitty he is at the rest of the swerves he’s tried to pull. Bret limps out while Buffer slightly botches the Hitman’s catchphrase. Someone asked way back if Buffer was terrible at his job yet. I haven’t noted this until just now, but he’s been slightly botching stuff like catchphrases and signature moves of the wrestlers that he’s announcing the last couple of weeks. What we get of Hogan/Hitman is actually interesting. Hogan does some solid chain wrestling with the Hitman. See, there was a good match somewhere in here they could have had in a main event. Hogan finds his way out of an armlock and transitions into a cross arm-breaker (!) that sends Hart into the ropes. I’m telling you, as a kid, I wondered about Hogan/Hart as a unique matchup all the time. Could Hogan hang with Hart’s mat wrestling? Would Hart be able to get Hogan to submit? So, this ends up being a taste of that, which only makes me more infuriated that we never got this match in a true main event. Hart dodges two Hogan elbowdrops, but Hogan suckers Hart in, dumps him outside, and then drapes Hart’s knee over the guardrail twice. Hogan targets the knee, wrapping it around the post. Hogan tries to lock on a standing kneebar, and Sting runs down for some reason. The crowd is hot for this. Luger and Konnan come down to check on the Hitman. I guess this match is over, though Hart tries to get back in the ring. Some med techs come down with a gurney. Sting gets in the ring and faces off with Hogan, which I guess since Hogan agreed to fight either or both of them, makes the barest of narrative sense. We get a split screen of Hart being wheeled to the back by Luger and Konnan as Hogan dominates Sting in the ring. Sting makes a comeback while two med techs in masks jump Luger and Konnan. It’s Scotty Steiner and Buff Bagwell, who are known for their ambulance attacks at this point. Hart limps back to the ring, where…Hogan is dominating Sting again. Someone holds up an OTHER CHANNEL, JACKASS sign. That person is correct. Sting makes another comeback, hits a Stinger Splash, locks on the Scorpion Death Lock, and is immediately DDT’d by Bret in the least surprising swerve, non-Russo edition. Bret locks on the Sharpshooter. I stare into space, wondering why this wrestling company that I love deserves any of this sort of shitty booking. I loved WCW, and I loved JCP, and I really dug all the Georgia Championship I saw a few years back, too. And look what Bischoff is doing to it. Look how they massacred my boy! Anyway, Sting gets destroyed by Hart and Hogan while I think about what a new low in quality Nitro has sunk to. Konnan and Luger make it back out for what can’t even be considered a save. In Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, there’s a character named Dunbar. Dunbar is trying to extend his life by being bored, as he claims that it makes time seem like it’s passing more slowly. There is neurological science out that having a new experience has much the same effect. Whenever I travel, especially if it’s somewhere new, I have that experience. A week in, say, Amsterdam feels like two weeks of time passed for me because of all the new stuff I’m seeing and experiencing. Then, there’s a third time-dilation option – torture. Not necessarily physical torture, not necessarily outwardly cruel torture of any type. Just the most mundane types of the mildest psychological torture. You know, the experience of genuinely disliking almost every second of some experience; that definitely extends one’s sense of time. We’ve all been there: A hour-and-a-half crapfest of a movie that feels like it has the runtime of a three-and-a-half hour David Lean epic, or a work meeting that mentally makes thirty minutes into ninety. This three-hour Nitro felt like five or six hours. I can’t believe it’s actually over. The one good thing I can say about it is that from a mental standpoint, I feel like I’ve squeezed a couple extra hours out of my Sunday that didn’t actually exist. -2.5 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.
  18. Thunder Interlude – show number thirty-three – 24 September 1998 "The WCW Gang showcases Goldberg for once” We’re on the road to Halloween Havoc…We’re metaphorically driving that road in a hoopty, no matter how promising Goldberg/Page is… The crowd chants GOLDBERG and then WE WANT FLAIR…Hey, what if WCW had Goldberg wrestle Ric Flair for the title on PPV?...I bet that would be a pretty popular matchup… Jimmy Hart is here with the least of his charges, Hugh Morrus…Ew, it’s Rick Steiner’s music…I’m sure these two will be wrestling for the second-most prestigious gold belt in the company in three years…That sounds like hell, but I’ve got some time to steel myself for something like this…Morrus has a crew cut now in preparation for joining the service during the Russo era…Steiner clears out Morrus and an apron-bound Jimmy Hart…Finally, Morrus jumps Steiner from behind while Steiner considers clocking Hart again…Morrus goes for a top-rope elbow, misses after a lot of stalling and then gets up and slowly wanders into position to get bulldogged, like OH WOW…I’m even going to use the “f” word…That was the fakest shit I’ve seen in a match in awhile…Morrus should be ashamed of himself for slowly walking forward, turning his back slowly, and then looking behind him to see when Steiner was leaping so that he could time his forward bump…I can’t believe they ended up pushing this guy so hard… Nick Dinsmore is out to do another job…This time, he's laying down for Ernest Miller…I wonder if I’m going to enjoy Cat’s James Brown gimmick as much as I did when it originally aired…You’d never guess that this guy had it in him to be entertaining at this point in 1998…The Cat does his YOU GOT ‘TIL FIVE gimmick…Dinsmore jumps Cat after the count…He hits a nice Northern Lights Suplex with a bridge for two…Then he tries to fire up the crowd and gets kicked in the chest…Oops…The Cat hits a bunch of kicks…The Cat hits a bunch of taunts…The Cat gets flash pinned on a Sunset Flip, but it only gets two…Shortly after, the Cat hits a Feliner for three…Inoffensive stuff… Maybe Psicosis will get a push…Or maybe he’ll be stuck in the lWo gimmick because no one can figure out how to push a guy who is an elite cocky, mean heel in the ring…Ooh, and Saturn is his opponent…This is going to be good…Saturn got over as a result of the Raven feud…I know better than to hope they have something good for him…His ceiling is the U.S. Championship, but he’s perfect as a babyface or heel gatekeeper…WCW is lousy with guys who do, or could, make great gatekeepers to the main event…Saturn, Benoit, Meng, Wrath, a healthy Scott Hall… Saturn grounds Psicosis early and actually, these two have some exchanges that aren’t very clean…Saturn eventually scores with an overhead belly-to-belly, then hits a leg sweep and locks on a cross arm breaker...Psicosis gets to the ropes and then, when shot to the ropes after he’s brought to his feet, eventually finds a lariat that gives him control…Not for long, though, and Saturn hits a few punches and chops, then lands a superkick… Lodi comes out holding some signs about how much he hates Saturn…Saturn confronts Lodi on the outside and gets body splashed by Psicosis…Psicosis lands a missile dropkick to the back of Saturn’s head inside the ring…They trade strikes until Psicosis hits a dropkick…Psicosis ducks down on a rope run, though, and immediately gets front suplexed onto the top rope…Saturn is slow to capitalize, gets dropkicked in the leg, and then gets dumped outside…Psicosis does his one crazy bump he does in every match and whiffs on a guillotine legdrop to Saturn on the floor…Saturn makes his comeback inside the ring…Capture suplex, lariat, body slam, awkward celebration, frog splash for…Um…Uh…Well, they just ring the bell and Silverman raises Saturn’s arm, but Psicosis kicked out at two…Whatever, who needs Penzer to know what the finish is going to be?...Makes it more interesting…Anyway, this wasn’t bad, but it was disappointing considering the talent in the ring…And that's before even considering the dumb finish... Goldberg promo in which he Jackhammers a lot of dudes…He’s even reported to be showing up later tonight on this very show… Tony S. interviews Alex Wright on the ramp…Wright’s trying to establish ACHTUNG, ACHTUNG, HIER IST ALEX WRIGHT as a catchphrase…He grabs the mic and tells Tony S. to bug off, and quickly…SCHNELL, MAN, SCHNELL…Huh, I guess taking two years of German actually helped me understand the most basic of German words and phrases…That and watching Run Lola Run about fifty-eleven times…Wright conducts his own interview in which he shits on every other European wrestler in the company…Wright calls out Bulldog for spending too much time living with lazy Americans and falling off badly from his earlier days of greatness…WTF, Bulldog spends most of his time in Canada...Blame Canada…We already get enough heat in the U.S. that we don’t need to take on other countries’ heat… Jimmy Hart has recovered from having to fend off that idiot Rick Steiner…He walks out with a much higher quality of client than Hugh Morrus…Barbarian is in the ring to face Fit Finlay…This match actually starts out pretty hard-hitting, so someone in the back decided that it was time to send Scott Hall out to act completely sauced…Hall kicks Lee Marshall off the desk and drunkenly pours his heart out about Kevin Nash and how everyone is trying to control his life…He leaves while in the ring, Finlay ignores the rules of race and wrestling and tries to headbutt a Fijian man…Oops…This match was better when both guys were standing and striking one another because they’re real good at clubbering…Finlay gets to his feet and tries a flying knee, then another, but he gets caught and dumped…Barb hits a cool press slam into a gutbuster…Finlay dodges a corner charge and gets control…Jimmy Hart gets on the apron again and goes oh-for-two as Finlay dodges an attack from behind and Hart gets hit instead…Finlay snaps off a Tombstone for three immediately after…The best part of the match was interrupted by Scott Hall stumbling to the desk, unfortunately… Tony S. cuts an interview with Diamond Dallas Page…Man, I think it’s really bad…I can’t wait for Page to turn heel again…I do love his in-ring persona as a babyface…He’s great at selling, selling, firing up, and outsmarting a heel and locking on the Diamond Cutter…His promos are so bad, though, I just can’t stand them…He makes multiple verbal errors and calls attention to them by pausing for a little bit before correcting himself…Get this dude a cigar and a garish vest again if you’re going to let him talk…Anyway, he respects Goldberg more than Hollywood SCUM Hogan and embraces his underdog status at Havoc…That’s the long and short of his shitty promo… Why are they showing Villano IV getting spiked in slow motion like five times in a row?...I don’t want to see that shit…Anyway, Mike T. lets us know that Villano IV didn’t miss neck-and-shoulders day at the gym and will be back into action soon rather than out with a long-term neck injury because of it…Thank goodness…Whereas Buff’s neck injury was almost surreptitious, the Villano IV injury was visually nasty…And yet IV walked away from his, but not Buff…Raven (w/Kanyon) faces Villano IV next…Hey, Kanyon grabs a mic and announces that he’s jobbing to beating Goldberg later tonight…Raven talks next and laments being a part of the forgotten generation…Raven promises to hurt Villano V like he hurt IV…I can’t buy it because I saw the guy immediately help IV the other night…I think if Raven had said that even he underestimated his capacity to hurt people until he did what he did to IV, that would have worked better…But pretending that he did it on purpose doesn’t work because he rightly stopped the match to help IV after the spike…Oh yeah, this match…It’s worked at a nice pace, which contrasts with every other match tonight…Villano V comes out hot…Raven eventually hits a drop toehold into a chair and follows up with an Evenflow DDT for the win, though…That match was the equivalent of a bag of Flamin’ Hot Funyuns…Really enjoyable empty calories that I liked, but that I won’t remember I consumed tomorrow… Disco Inferno faces Chavo Guerrero Jr. (w/Pepe) in another match with lots of potential…When we get aggressive Disco, that signals a fun match, and Disco immediately tosses Chavo out of the ring right at the bell…Disco tries to follow, but Chavo jumps inside the ring, meets Disco with a dropkick, and hits a tope before riding Pepe around the ring to cheers…I love Saturn as a worker, but you look at how Saturn worked the Moppy thing and it sucked and compare it to Chavo killing it with Pepe…Chavo is just so gifted in whatever role you give him…Chavo gets two off a headscissors takeover…The announcers debate just how out of touch with reality Chavo actually is…Mike T. announces that Scott Norton is the new IWGP Champ…I vaguely remember that he was IWGP champ once or twice now that Tenay mentions it… Disco hits a hotshot as we go to break…When we come back, Tenay hypes Norton’s win as only the third win of that title by an American…He mentions Hogan…The third person was not mentioned, so you can guess that that person isn’t in the company right now…Actually, I have seen a lot of Vader’s New Japan stuff, inclduing his two short runs as IWGP champ and enjoyed the hell out of it all…How many American IWGP champs did we get before the belt was deactivated?...Bob Sapp (I remember nothing about this)…Brock Lesnar (saw the initial triple threat where he won it, and it sucked, but nothing else about this registers)…and A.J. Styles (his run was fine, but I was not a fan of that era of New Japan and really don’t rate a lot of the stuff I saw from that time)…So, six of them…Not a bad number, actually…More than I would have guessed... Anyway, the match…Disco has never hit that second-rope elbow and should take it out of his arsenal…Chavo Jr. hits a SWEET springboard bulldog for two…Chavo fucking rules man, this guy is the best…Chavo unloads, then grabs Pepe and does a weird horse dance…He then drops down on a rope run and gets elbowed and hit with a swinging neckbreaker for two…Disco tries a back suplex, but Chavo flips out, hits a dropkick, and lands a springboard sunset flip for two…Chavo tries to follow up with a dropkick, but Disco sidesteps it and drills Chavo with a piledriver for three…Good little match even with the break, especially when we came back from break…The desk does a good job of pointing out that Disco didn’t waste time to dance and when he's intense, he is successful… Post-match, Juvi Guerrera comes out in street clothes and hands Billy Silverman a note…Then Nick Patrick comes out with a scale…What the hell?...Oh, I see, we’re doing a “Disco is too fat to be a cruiserweight” gimmick…Apparently, Juvi’s a narc…He grabbed Disco’s (apparently doctored) weigh-in form and tattled on him…So, this was a cruiserweight division match specifically, which no one even fucking announced before the match to try and get over the angle…The crowd is confused about this angle, and hell, I am even though I can hear the desk trying to sell the angle…Cruisers fight heavyweights all the time, so why was this match specifically a match for cruisers if it wasn’t for the gold?...Fuck off, WCW…Anyway, Chavo wins by DQ since Disco is over the weight limit… Norman Smiley!...He was one of the guys Alex Wright insulted earlier for being a crappy European wrestler…He’s facing Wright next…Hey, another potentially good match…Wright tries to make up with Smiley before the match, but it’s a sucker job…Smiley shakes hands and gets booted, but he comes back with a clothesline and body slam…Wright bails…In the ring, we get some solid chain wrestling and a little stalling…Some guy in the crowd is bored, but that’s on him…As Harvey Danger once sung, “If you’re bored, then you’re boring”…Actually, that’s not always true when it comes to WCW, but in this case, it applies… Both men trade offense at a pretty good pace…Wright gets two off a backbreaker, then dumps Smiley outside, where Smiley sells a knee injury on landing…They trade chops outside to WOOs…Back in the ring, Wright lands a back elbow and stomps a mudhole…Wright hangs himself on a diving lariat attempt…Smiley makes a comeback to unfortunate crickets…We get a number of go behinds that end in Wright snagging a reverse neckbreaker that gets three…Decent match… Stevie Ray, a guy who Bischoff thought wasn’t any good on the mic but was a compelling in-ring worker, walks out and cuts a solid heel promo in which he tells everyone that Eric Bischoff called him from Japan and tasked him with keeping Ric Flair and the Horsemen off Thunder…Doug Dellinger doesn’t do his job, of course, and he lets the Horsemen walk past him and go to the ring…Stevie was relying on that doofus Dellinger to actually do his job…Not the smartest plan there…Stevie walks off rather than lose a numbers game…He’s nWo Hollywood, so he can actually count…Stevie heads through the curtains and gets clocked with a tire iron by Arn Anderson… The Horsemen cut a promo in the ring…Arn declares that the Horsemen are going to take WCW back and be the ones who run the whole show like it’s 1987…I appreciate that Arn lets everyone in WCW know that they’re not going to share that shit when they’re done, either…He does self-censor the word “damn,” I have to note…Someone said “hell” earlier and Tony S. reacted like they might get kicked off the air…Turner S&P must be wilding at this point…Dean Malenko starts talking…It sucks…Benoit speaks next…It sucks…Mongo talks…It’s enjoyable because he does it in his inimitable meathead ath-a-lete style…Flair speaks last…We’re in Virginia, so everyone creams their jeans…You know Flair’s going to go off the rails when he starts by calling Tony S. “Antonio” for some reason…Flair promises to burn all his money (spoiler alert: he did, in fact, do this) and then promises that Dean Malenko, a married man with a child, will fuck Liz at the Hilton later tonight…I don’t know, is Malenko ethically non-monogamous, or like, was this just an unfortunate part of your unhinged promo, Flair?...Wait, did Liz consent to being at the Hilton in the first place?...Oops, I’m thinking too hard about a 1998 Flair promo from a 2024 perspective, aren’t I?... Goldberg/Kanyon is the main event…Raven takes Heenan’s spot on commentary…I’m glad that Goldberg is killing off a guy who has actually won something recently for once…Raven is really bummed about what he sees as his subpar treatment by society in general and WCW specifically…Raven is upset that Goldberg gets an armed security force to follow him throughout the building…Tony S. tries to point out that Raven had the exact same thing a few months ago, but Raven and Heenan, the latter of whom standing next to Raven and still able to talk, plow right over him, haha…Raven is upset about Page and Goldberg getting a package full of their finishers, but there now being an Evenflow DDT package…Tony S. is like, But you did get video packages, and they were mostly you complaining about your treatment…Raven redirects to agreeing that he is profoundly mistreated…Kanyon, who was cut off in asking WHO’S BETTA THAN KANYON by Goldberg’s music, grabs the mic to pose the question again…Spear, Jackhammer, and three, and that would be your answer, I suppose…Raven grumbles about getting a second shot at Goldberg as the show ends… That show was alright, man, an island in the sea of bad angles and too much talking that is Nitro…WOOO…
  19. Show #158 – 21 September 1998 "The one that demonstrates the difference between being laughed WITH and being laughed AT" Drunk Scott Hall wrecked his own car and wants Doug Dellinger to find out who did it. Man, starting off hot, huh? And I do mean *hot* because after the Nitro Girls get done with a routine and Tony S. gets done talking, smoke fills the ring area. When it dissipates, the Disciple is face down in the ring, traumatized from being (take it away, Mike T.) “held captive by the leader of the oWn.” Hogan, Bischoff, Giant, and a couple nWo Hollywood ham ‘n eggers come to the ring, at which point smoke fills the ring again and *poof*, the Disciple is gone. Scott Steiner is here, too. He poses. Then, for some reason, Warrior yells UP HERE, SPEED RACER over the PA system. I mean, this is some dreadful fucking television, but again, it’s so bad that I’m sort of giggling over here. We’re in Boston, which is WWF territory and therefore is open to this sort of stupidity. So, Warrior stands next to what is CLEARLY a rubber dummy dressed kinda like the Disciple and cuts a nonsensical promo after Hogan and Bischoff take damn near three hours just to figure out where in the hell Warrior is positioned on the catwalk. This is some batshit stuff, man, just completely batshit, who in the world would watch this over Steve Austin kicking Vinnie Mac in the gut and hitting him with a Stunner? Also, why does Warrior think that I HAVE BEEN RUNNING TO RE-APPEAR is a good retort to Hogan’s claims that Warrior is running from him? He says it twice! That’s two too many times! I wonder if I should just put in a -1 score on the Stinger Splash scoreline now and adjust as necessary or if I should give this show a chance to come back from the death. Barry Darsow would appreciate it if you get that stinkin’ camera out of his face, and also he’s planning to beat that stinkin’ Fit Finlay, who hasn’t been on TV since he dropped the TV title or nearabout. Finlay’s been out with injury and in Europe for a bit, but he’s back to have a mediocre TV match with Darsow. Mickey Jay, who I just found out passed away a couple years back, is your ref. Finlay avoids a piledriver with a back bodydrop and hits a Tombstone for the win. It was a match that happened. Flair promo recap, Warrior recap from his nonsense segment earlier tonight, Wrath squash: All are next in this order. Wrath squashes Nick Dinsmore in a couple of minutes with the Meltdown, which actually gets a small reaction when Wrath grabs the pumphandle to set it up. Dinsmore tries really hard, but his offense barely scratches the big guy. Solid squash. I almost forgot that Goldberg was WCW World Champ, or still in this company for that matter, so the Goldberg/DDP promo video they ran here was really useful! It’s a good video, too, especially the comparison of the Jackhammer versus the Diamond Cutter as the two biggest death moves in the company. They play Tony S. saying this over a series of Diamond Cutters: “It doesn’t matter who you are or how tough you are: You’re always a Diamond Cutter away from losing.” Wow, WCW figuring out how to successfully set up the psychology of a big match for the first time all year was not something that I had on my bingo card. In a battle of the Ricks, Steiner faces Fuller. Boy that WELCOME…TO THA...DOGGGGG POUND *woof woof* opening to Steiner’s theme has to be the worst opening to a theme of the whole Monday Night War era. It gets me downright anti-hyped when it hits. Rick Fuller is on every damn show. Can we not put Psicosis on every damn show instead? Steiner wins with the top-rope bulldog inside of maybe a minute. Then, unfortunately, he talks for another minute that seems to last way longer than the minute of squash match. In what is a case of using the absolute worst insult you could possibly use against someone, Steiner calls Buff a “girl" twice, and Chucky responds over the PA system with the laughter of a tiny possessed doll who is incredulous that they let Rick Steiner cut such a shitty promo. Oh great, it’s been about thirty minutes since Hogan and Bischoff were out here making some bad television. That’s obviously way too long to keep these two off our screens, so they come back to do it again. Hogan calls Warrior out. Warrior walks out and unfortunately responds. He tells Hogan to follow him to the back, so Hogan does. Some smoke rises in the entryway. We unfortunately follow the “action” to the backstage area. Hogan and Bisch find, um, some sparklers and a Warrior logo on the wall in Hogan’s dressing room (IT’S ON FIRE says Tony S. about the sparkler-lit logo in a voice that I can only describe as “filled with childlike wonder”). They also find Disciple knocked out in the bathroom, which is when smoke fills the bathroom and the Disciple disappears again. Hogan grabs a restroom mirror, looks into it, yells GOD, WHERE’D HE GO?!, and reader, I laughed. At Hogan, not with him, because he wasn't trying to be funny. Shit, if I were Jamie Kellner, I might have canceled Nitro after seeing the first half-hour of this show. Villanos IV and V are next up. They face Raven and Kanyon in tag team action. Raven slumps in the corner and laments how crappy it is that the Flock ditched him. He’s pretty heated about it and plans to work out his anger on the Villanos. Then, he punches a Villano with a mic-loaded fist. This is a tornado tag – Raven’s Rules – and Raven and Kanyon absolutely fucking MURDER a Villano with a powerbomb/neckbreaker combo that they badly mistimed and seriously hurt, let’s see, Villano IV with. Raven immediately stops wrestling, stabilizes IV’s neck, and calls for help. GODDAM, that was a disgusting botch. They show it like three times on replay and the crowd, which went OHHHHHHHHH when it happened IRL, go AHWEHAHAOHWWWWW in sympathetic pain when they see it in slow-mo. Goddam, that spot was a mess. The Villano sits up, though, and the crowd applauds that he’s able to move and eventually (just barely) walk away from the ring. Glad to see that he was okay. Disco Inferno’s doing a weight-cutting thing to try and make his Cruiserweight Championship match against Billy Kidman tonight. Alex Wright, sans music, says DANGER DANGER, HERE COMES ALEX WRIGHT over the mic, but some of that is in German. He says some other stuff in German. Basically, he thinks Americans are stupid because most of us are monolingual. Then he says that “Even [English], you can’t speak correct.” Without missing a beat, Tony S. says, “It’s correct-ly.” You tell him, Tony! Learn how to use an adverb, Wright! Anyway, Alex Wright is sick of the whole fucking company and the country in which it resides, especially that Jersey Shore scumbag Diamond Dallas Page. Wright challenges Page to a match right here and now, and Page accepts. Page comes out, finishes taping up his hands, and gets in the ring, where Wright unloads with a ton of offense, capping off with a missile dropkick. Wright celebrates instead of making a cover, which is a mistake as Page shoots Wright into the corner. Wright rebounds into a back suplex attempt and flips out, but Page catches him as he lands and pops off a Diamond Cutter for three. Oh yeah, we’re getting a month of DDP hitting Diamond Cutters from every position in the ring at any point in the match to build the move for the Havoc match, aren’t we? Hell yeah! Post-match, Page cuts an okay babyface promo to build both his opponent and his own abilities to become champ, but I’m really just here for Page murdering dudes with Diamond Cutters all month. We don’t need a bunch of Ernest Miller recap, but we get some! Just have Goldberg kill this guy in thirty seconds and let’s move on from it. But no, we’re getting a Cat/Lenny Lane match instead. The conversation in the main thread about WCW and its status as a workrate promotion was a good one. I think WCW deserved that label, but only because what it did up through about April or May of 1998. At this point, WCW Nitro is basically 1995 WWF RAW. hokey promos, bad interviews, bleh matches a lot of the time. The only difference is that WCW has the in-ring talent to not be like this! Anyway, Miller gives Lenny Lane five seconds to leave, so Lane takes it, and Miller stops Lane, thanks Lane for recognizing his kickboxing prowess, and then kicks Lane to start the match anyway. Aw, do we have to? Then, after Lane gets a flash rollup for two, Miller unloads on Lane and get this – GET THIS – a drunken Scott Hall stumbles out here while Miller works a chinlock. Am I in hell?! Hall gets on the apron, so Dusty Rhodes comes out and pulls him down. Hall takes a cartoonish bump to the floor and then gets lectured by Dusty about being a drunk fuck. Well, at least we’re not really missing anything in the ring. We get back just in time for Miller to hit a Feliner. Miller then talks about how great he is some more after the match is over. That segment was the goddam devil. Disco is on a treadmill trying to shave off every last ounce. He weighs himself. He’s made weight, everyone! I repeat, he’s made weight! Chucky likes things that are bad and evil and terrible and so he is laughing cacophonously once again at this fucking Nitro. Chris Jericho finally gets an appearance on this show, but only after Chucky has had two separate (vocal) appearances. We get some footage of Jericho on Backstage Blast cutting a promo. Jericho mockingly calls Goldberg a fighting champion for daring to face *checks notes* Al Green and Scott Putski. I mean, he’s not wrong! Jericho is wearing a "Jericho – 1, Goldberg – 0" shirt. Oh man. Jericho pretends he’s now a dual champion after beating ersatz Goldberg at Fall Brawl and pretty much is one of the few reasons to tune in to this show anymore. Saturn gets a nice hometown pop on his way to the ring to face Jerry Flynn. Saturn gets two off a springboard forearm shiver, then catches a roundhouse and turns it into an ankle lock. He follows up by hitting a Thesz Press into a keylock choke. Huh, I don’t think this match is conventionally good, but Saturn’s offense is pretty interesting. Saturn lands a few superkicks, then takes a table from Penzer and sets it up at ringside. Flynn nails a couple kicks to fend Saturn off and then hits a pescado. Flynn picks up steam, hits a lariat, and tries another Irish whip. Saturn reverses it and hits an overhead belly-to-belly, but Flynn hits a leg sweep and re-takes control. Flynn lands a juji gatame and then tries to transition into a Fujiwara armbar, but Saturn survives the attempt, gets back to standing, and scores a number of strikes. The match spills outside near the table; Flynn tries to kick Saturn, but only gets post. There’s an awkward sequence centered around the table before Saturn smashes Flynn into the post a couple of times. Saturn lays Flynn on the table and hits him with a splash from the top, then tosses him back inside and lands a DVD(no VR) for three. Flynn got a little too much of that match, but it was definitely an enjoyable watch if only because it felt a little unconventional. Next up is a fucking DUMB (in the best of ways) Monday Night Jericho t-shirt promo in which Jericho sits in shadow and has his voice distorted while he talks about how Jerichoholism has overtaken his life before the mic falls over, bumps the switch on the lamp, and sends a now-revealed Jericho into conniptions. I cannot believe that Bischoff just let this guy leave. I am astonished at how bummed I am to see Scott Steiner and Buff Bagwell. Boy, my memory of late-WCW Scott Steiner went straight from Steiner Brothers to calling Booker T. ‘white trash’ as Midajah and maybe also a live chained tiger stand next to him and look on approvingly without any of this garbage character work or crappy feuding that happened to transition him between these two points. Scott shouts out Bill Buckner’s bad knees and Larry Bird continuing his coaching career in Indiana instead of Boston before yelling BOSTON SUCKS. Cheap heat or not, Scotty’s getting closer to being enjoyable, at least. Scott calls out Bret Hart and wants to find out Bret’s intentions w/r/t the nWo, and I actually am way into the idea of a Hitman/Scotty Steiner feud. The Hitman limps out to a small pop. He gets in the ring for some dumbass reason and immediately gets attacked. This brings out Sting, who makes the save. I assume this is all some sort of stupid-ass ruse so that I can go back to doing the thing I don’t really want to do: boo Bret Hart. Scotty and Buff bail, and Rick Steiner comes out and attacks his bro while Buff heads for the hills. We haven’t had one really good match on this show so far. I’m hopeful that Disco Inferno/Billy Kidman can fill that role. I did like Page/Wright and Saturn/Flynn for what they were, but they haven’t really filled that “man, what a satisfying match” role. Disco didn’t dance out here, though, and he’s looking like he desperately needs some water, so of course we’re going to get Disco working like he’s a dehydrated mess instead of having a good match, which I wouldn’t complain about except that we haven’t had any good matches yet on Nitro. I am fine with matches that are worked around angles or character development or whatever, but they need to be mixed in with enough straight-up, high-quality wrestling matches that I’m not sitting here complaining about not getting enough of the latter. There’s a reasonably funny comedy spot where they do a bunch of leapovers and dropdowns on a rope run until Disco runs out of energy and slowly topples over, I’ll give them that. The match is good for what it is; it’s not what I wanted, but I can’t hate on it too much for that. Kidman hits some decent offense at half-pace, and we even get a commercial break in the middle of this thing for some reason. Kidman ran into a boot going into the break, but he comes out of the break hitting a splash for two. Lodi wanders out with a sad sign about missing his buddy Raven. He walks toward the ring and holds up a KIDMAN LET’S GO FIND RAVEN sign, which distracts Kidman and gives Disco a chance to sneak up from behind and drill Kidman with a piledriver. Disco is slow to cover, only gets two, and Lodi is actually funny here. He stops, looks at the downed Kidman, and says, “Maybe I’ll come back later.” Genuinely hilarious. Disco is feeling good enough to dance a little. He hits an elbow, gets two, tries a second-rope elbow, misses it as he always does, and gets rebound bulldogged for two. The finishing run is solid, as they trade counters and 2.9s. Kidman is the last to win the counter game, as he hits Disco with a facebuster when Disco tries a powerbomb, then drops Disco with a sitout spinebuster when Disco misses wildly with a lariat. Kidman drops a SSP and, three seconds later, retains his title. Decent match, but the commercial break and Disco having to work being exhausted by the weight cut hampered it. Chucky cackles at poor Disco post-match. I was waiting for Chavo Guerrero Jr. to show up after previous comments telling me that he’d be back on Nitro soon. He comes out riding Pepe and, oh look at this, gets a nice little pop. People in the crowd are holding up their own stick horses. Why in the world has Chavo not been on Nitro very much lately? Then, get this – GET THIS – I learn that they sent him out here to job to Konnan. Man, fuck that. Konnan hits his catchphrase roulette. Chavo retorts with a mimicry of Konnan's catchphrase roulette and it kind of works, so clearly the crowd just wants to chant stuff. Chavo tries to join the Wolfpac, which Konnan isn’t into, but Chavo says he’ll just go over Konnan’s head. Konnan beats him up in response. Chavo gets a little offense in the middle of this thing, but he stops to ride Pepe to another pop, then threatens Mickey Jay with the stick horse. Almost immediately after that, Chavo loses control of the match on a rope run, gets press slammed, and ends up in a seated abdominal stretch. Chavo turns it around once more and hits a sweet Superman punch. That move looks great whenever he does it. Chavo works a chinlock, and um, we get another commercial break as Konnan hits a sunset flip for two. What’s up with this show formatting? Back from break, Chavo hits a wheel kick and shouts out Booker T. into the camera, then locks on a surfboard. He gets back to standing, whiffs badly on a shoulder charge in the corner, eats post, and gets his ass whipped at ringside. Mickey Jay just lets Konnan hit Chavo with a chair without calling for the bell. I guess it’s outside the ring, which is a thing they were trying to establish at one point for regular matches. This is a longer match, which I wanted to see, and Chavo is great, but he’s limited by how good his opponent is. Konnan hits a back kick and gets two off a sit-out facebuster. He drops Chavo with a cradle piledriver – glad to see him bust that one out again – and then wraps on a Tequila Sunrise for the victory. This match wasn’t particularly good, but I was glad to see Chavo on television again. Speaking of Guerreros, Eddy is too busy cutting bad shooty-shoot promos to be out here having good matches in fun angles anymore. We see video of Eddy and Bisch beefing backstage from a week ago. There’s a Dean Malenko t-shirt promo. It is, let’s say, not as good as the Jericho t-shirt promo. Eric Bischoff and Liz come to the ring, I guess so we can pile heat onto this Bischoff/Flair shooty-shoot angle that at least has a guy in Ric Flair who can pull off the talking. I love Eddy, but he’s all wrong for this role in 1998, and probably isn’t exactly right for it even in 2004 or 2005. Bischoff talks about the empire that he’s built. It’s crumbling because he’s inept, but he did a good job there for two or three years! He talks about how good he is at building a company and disses JCP and Frye-, Herd-, and Watts-era WCW. He claims that Flair is going to be forced to sit the rest of his WCW contract out rather than being allowed on television again. The issue is that Bisch is making fun off Southern Fried WCW and the Four Horsemen in Boston, which doesn’t react at all to these jibes considering that they are WWF territory and decidedly not Southern! The Four Horsemen hit the ring to respond. No, wait, they’re stopped in the aisle by Dellinger and the Kops. Bisch insults Charlotte, so Dellinger steps aside and lets his fellow Charlotte-ite (Charlottian? Charlotterie?) pass. Flair grabs a mic and tries to save this segment. Flair introduces Mongo, who gets booed by the Pats fans in the crowd for that 46-3 in the Super Bowl a few years back. Flair introduces Malenko, and on cue, a fan in the crowd holds up a “STINKO” DEAN MALENKO sign directly in the shot. Hilarious. Flair gets warmed up, takes off his jacket, and avoids the temptation to punch Bisch in the face. Then he dances. The crowd is delighted. Flair riffs on skipping a show to see Reid win a wrestling tournament and tells Bisch to SUCK IT. You tell someone to SUCK IT in 1998, you get a big pop. This promo battle stinks because it’s shoot-bang garbage and Bischoff keeps responding, but I don’t blame Flair. He’s really trying to carry this thing. I’m just over wrestlers talking about DA BIZ in promos. Flair’s still entertaining, though. I just wish he was released from his contract and got to go to WWF and cut a bunch of promos against the Rock and Steve Austin in 1998. That shit would have been WILD. Instead, he’s here talking inside baseball with Eric fucking Bischoff. You get the point about this promo, though. Flair promises to show up on Thunder. Sure, but please no more shooty-shoot promo battles with Bisch. Michael Buffer introduces our main event, which is…Stevie Ray (filling in for Scott Hall) and the Giant against Lex Luger and Kevin Nash. Is this for the tag titles? Who knows? Luger is growing a villainous mustache, which I guess is foreshadowing for the Wolfpac/Hollywood merger in a couple months. Scott Hall stumbles out to join commentary. This doesn’t exactly make watching Stevie and Luger do some standard clubbering any better. Hall pours his wasted little heart out about Nash, then resolves to get involved in the main event tonight *sigh*. Hall comes down and the match grinds to a halt. Hall dumps Nick Patrick from the ring and taunts Nash, who tags in. Stevie leaves the ring while Hall stumbles around. Hall tries a punch and misses; Nash goes to check on him and Giant jumps Nash as Stevie comes back and jumps Luger. Luger wins that exchange and grabs a chair. That clears the ring of Giant and Stevie. Hall gets to his feet and toothpicks Nash, then charges his old running buddy and gets tossed outside. This fucking STINKS. Nash grabs a mic to lament how fucked up Hall is and holds an intervention/challenges Hall to a one-on-one match at Havoc. I have no desire to see this. Two minutes left and “Rockhouse” hits so we can get another goofy Hogan/Warrior skit. Hogan hits the ring, calls Warrior out, and gets Warrior to walk out with Disciple behind him. Disciple turns his back and shows a oWn logo on his vest while Hogan freaks out. This show started at a -1 Stinger Splash score, briefly climbed out of the hole to 0.5, and then dipped right back into the negatives once Bischoff decided that we wanted to hear him talk. -1 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.
  20. Not surprising. Though I remember enjoying TTP and Totally Buff from a character work standpoint, at least. But when Lex isn't engaged or, in the case of '99-'01 Luger, is both cooked physically and not being asked to do a whole lot in the ring, he's pretty bad! At least TTP cutting promos with Liz and Buff has potential, unlike '92 or '94-'95 Luger having zero worth in watching at all.
  21. That is a big disagree for me, with a handful of caveats. I think they had a bunch of main eventers who could go. And that goes for some of the guys who weren't known as great workers - Lex Luger in 1996 is legitimately great on PPV as far as I'm concerned, and his Starrcade match with the Giant is excellently worked on both their parts. But in 1996 and 1997, they had Hall, Nash, Giant, Luger, Page, Flair and Savage doing good-to-great work, Goldberg doing solid stuff, and later Sting getting in the ring again and even the Hitman, who was going at three-quarters speed, putting together solid work. You add a bunch of guys positioned below them who are doing athletic, explosive work (Benoit, Rey, Eddy, Booker, etc.), and a few low-carders who are good fun (Mike Enos is consistently enjoyable whenever he pops up), and the work is really enjoyable when the booking moves out of the way. We can criticize Hulk Hogan all day, and he's one of the caveats. He's actually putting in decent work in 1996, but by mid-1997 a) he's fallen well off a cliff in athleticism and b) he's stopped working most matches like a cowardly heel, which he was doing right after the heel turn, and is taking way too much of these matches. Roddy Piper is another caveat as he was washed almost immediately after dropping the Intercontinental Championship to the Hitman and is in way too many main event spots over this time. One final caveat is that the undercard is often a mess. WCW shows rarely start with hot cruiserweight action, especially the Nitros, even though they somehow got a rep for doing that. I think WCW was absolutely a workrate promotion, though. They'd give Eddy and Chavo sixteen minutes on PPV or let Jericho and Juvi have fifteen minutes on PPV regularly. I actually think in 1998, both companies were workrate promotions. There were consistently excellently-worked 10+ minute matches on PPV in both those companies. I think WCW was more likely to give you compelling in-ring work on weekly television, but PPVs generally produced at least one or two matches with awesome work, if not more. And my hot take is that Austin was pretty boring on PPV in 1998. It's not his fault that he had to work Kane and 'Taker (who I think he has awful chemistry with) for a lot of it, but meh, Austin had a better '99 and a way better '01 in the main event spot. I think the big problem for WCW in the Bischoff era was the finishes. WCW couldn't book a finish to save their lives, specifically in the main event, and WWF could. WCW never had the strength of booking screwy finishes that were somehow satisfying, but that was well within Vinnie Jr.'s skillset. As swerves and screwjobs became more important features of wrestling matches, particularly once the calendar ticked to 1999, WCW was never going to do well. The other issue is that they tried to match WCW with shorter match times and more angles and talking, and again, WWF had the far better and more talented roster when the focus shifted to angles and talking and away from medium-length or long matches. One specific thing about late-stage WCW that I've been considering: I'm coming around to the idea that losing Chris Jericho to the competition was more shattering for WCW than I ever figured. I think it both signaled something about how WCW was fucking lame and WWF was the place to be, and it deprived WCW of arguably their best talker for the then-modern style of jokes, catchphrases, and creative skits. I digress, though. I think WCW's rep as the workrate promotion is fairly given, but is obscured by bad finishes, an undercard that was inconsistently booked, a move toward less work and more yapping that came to a peak in 1999, and the fact that Hogan and Piper spent a lot of time in main events.
  22. I think it's both. w/r/t "the unwritten code of [...] promotion," he was in business with a bunch of other assholes who defended regional monopolies. I have a hard time squeezing tears out for those promoters (though I do believe that territory-era wrestling is probably the healthiest and most interesting from a creative standpoint, but that's another story). But he did bust up those regional monopolies and eventually make his company synonymous with pro wrestling in America, so he's not any better. I don't think anyone can deny that Vince was a promotional genius in the pro wrestling business, though. The most obvious example of this is his vision of what Hulk Hogan could be compared to Verne Gagne's comparatively very limited vision. And correct me if I'm wrong, but even then, when Hogan showed back up in WWF, Vince pushed him as though he were already a star without ever mentioning the AWA. I think in Hogan's return in '83, they just pretended that he'd fallen into a hole for a year or so and focused on him ditching Freddie Blassie and being a good guy now. Vince has always had the "nothing you did before this matters" perspective, which makes sense when he was a "going national" mindset and everyone else was still in a territorial mindset where you would refer to what a guy did elsewhere to build him in your area.
  23. Surfer Sting was a complete goof. A lovable goof, but a goof. I'm not sure he was a viable character after about 1995.
  24. While I don't totally line up with this list, I line up with it enough that I would like to submit it as evidence that Vader was Sting's best opponent, and it's not even close. If Flair is second, it's a distant second.
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