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SirSmUgly

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Everything posted by SirSmUgly

  1. I appreciate Eddie Kingston, but his machine-gun chops are terrible. I hope you told your kid that no one in their right mind would sell for chops that are more Kingston than Kobashi. (EDIT: To be clear, I don't actually hope that you said this to your child.)
  2. LA does its own thing, like Asian-American punk music club wars in Chinatown. Unlike Randy Newman, I say this completely without irony: I love LA.
  3. Show #151 – 27 July 1998 "The one with negative numbers (for the very first time)” I’d say it can’t get worse than the last Nitro, our first ZERO Stinger Splash Nitro on this watch-through so far, but it can because I am definitely adding negative numbers of Stinger Splashes to shows worse than that one. Imagine going to see a Sting match live and not getting even one Stinger Splash, and then Sting just wins with a small package or a schoolboy. You’d feel robbed of something, right? Just like a negative numbers Nitro is robbing me of my joy for wrestling. I didn’t realize that they went from Hogan and Bischoff feuding with Karl Malone right into Hogan and Bischoff feuding with Jay Leno. Then again, of course this makes sense when more closely looking at the timeline of Bischoff’s first tenure as Nitro show-runner. We get a long video package about how nWo Hollywood was the most dominant faction in pro wrestling history last week. The only good thing about it is that Scott Hudson shows up on the voice over. Wow, Goldberg is going to be on this show! He’s giving Crush a title shot for some reason, but look, baby steps here: The World Champ will on WCW’s flagship television show! We start the show with "Rockhouse," unfortunately, but at least Hall and the Giant are here and not Hogan and Bischoff. Then again, Crush, Hennig and Rude are also out here, but again, baby steps. Hall is still mad that Nash is upset over their friendship ending. He challenges the Wolfpac to some sort of multi-man match, but I’m not sure what type of multi-man match he's calling for. Honestly, it sounds like he’s challenged them to a War Games match, but he made the challenge for Road Wild and not Fall Brawl. Hall notes that they have all the belts except one (well, two, but I guess the Cruiserweight Championship doesn’t matter to them if Syxx isn't around to win it, I guess). Then Hall really gets heelish with it by giving the mic to fucking Crush. He is awful, cuts a promo like it’s 1988, and uses the “cup of warm shut the hell up” line like the cornball he is. He keeps saying his own name, all “Brian Adams, Brian Adams, Brian Adams,” but this cornball is Crush until someone finally does what they should have done all along with him and finally put him back in a tag team with a more talented partner. Until then, Vinnie named him Crush, I'mma call him Crush. They keep showing clips of Bisch doing his shitty Leno impression last week as if they want me to dislike this show. Raven and the Flock get a jobber entrance, in fact, so that we have more time to re-live last week’s black hole of a Bischoff segment. Raven’s sitting down and complaining that nobody likes him, but Saturn jogs down. Saturn is also sick of his former best friend’s crying, much like Scott Hall. Saturn wants to fight Raven, but Kanyon randomly walks up behind Saturn and gets suplexed. Saturn then goes after Raven, but Kanyon saves Raven from a DVD and hits Saturn with a Flatliner. Raven walks off calmly. We get it, we got it with the triple threat match that you had two weeks ago that neither man can get the advantage on Raven because they’re distracted by one another. Move the angle along already. Barbarian tries to get something good out of Hacksaw Duggan. Barb tries to match power with Duggan and loses out to a clothesline. Duggan swings a whole lot of Polish hammers to knock Barb down again. Barb takes over when Duggan ducks down, and he and Jimmy Hart hit Duggan with a bunch of ineffectual strikes. I’ve spent too many words on this match already, which I will note is NOT a hot cruiserweight match to get the show started off with some action. Let’s just get to the point where Meng shows up already…ah, here it is: Barb misses a Kick of Fear on Duggan and instead boots Hart, who is holding Duggan. Duggan gets a rollup for three off the whiff; Hugh Morrus comes into the ring to attack Duggan, and Meng comes in for the save. Duggan tries to shake Meng’s hand, but Meng hits him with the ol’ Tongan Death Grip. Of course, unlike pretty much anyone else. Duggan fights it with a bunch of punches before going down. Sweet fuck, there’s going to be another Tonight Show rip-off segment. What’s on RAW? Well, no match on tonight's competition went over eight minutes and one of them was a Brakkus squash. Uh, what’s the MNF matchup? Oh shit, it’s still the off-season. There is one good thing about this Tonight Show segment and it is Liz in that gray dress. I mean, WOW. Inspirational. You don’t tell me to settle down! I tell you to settle down! You know what’s not inspirational? Making fun of Monica Lewinsky. She was a twenty-something intern! Make jokes about the leader of the free world preying on a twenty-something intern instead! Or, you know, don’t make jokes about that because it’s a fucked up situation. This black hole of a segment is going to definitely cap this show at a max number of Stinger Splashes. Two? Can a show with a long segment of this low quality ever earn more than two Stinger Splashes? I have to think about this. Bischoff being so self-indulgent at this point, when RAW is beating the crap out of Nitro in the ratings regularly, is certainly, um, a direction to go in for him. Wait, this is going to take up multiple segments? We have a monologue, but now, Bischoff sits at the desk and does the “silly headlines” thing. I thought that was a Letterman thing? I did watch Letterman as a pre-teen and teen sometimes. The crowd finally starts chanting BO-RING, which is a surprising amount of patience for this sort of thing. The San Antonio crowd was actually expending energy booing for awhile for some reason. Now Bischoff calls Hogan out to the couch so that he can cut a terrible promo. Is the Jay Leno match happening at Road Wild? They really haven’t set anything up for that card, and it’s in two weeks. It’s gotta be happening at Fall Brawl or Havoc instead, right? Goldberg is the champ and Hogan is out here having tag matches with random non-wrestlers in the main event spot of these PPVs. I’m excited about Bischoff getting fired so that Kevin Nash can book this show into oblivion. Can’t wait! Thirty-five minutes into this show: One (1) match and Jim Duggan was involved in it. Gene Okerlund talks to a sentient ball of support tape that is heavily tattooed and wearing blue jeans. No, wait, that’s just Diamond Dallas Page. Okerlund asks a useful journalistic question: Who jumped you last week? Page claims that Hogan was the one who did it. He also cuts a mediocre babyface promo, and I have scientific evidence that he does because he uses a favored line of another mediocre promo cutter, babyface Shawn Michaels: “Don’t hunt what you can’t kill.” Hey, we’re in San Antonio tonight! Now, that’s mediocre promo-cutting babyface synergy. "Rockhouse." Hall, Norton, and Dusty Rhodes appear. Oh yeah, Rhodes is in nWo Hollywood for no reason. They crash the desk. I guess the nWo is reigniting a feud with Larry Z., except this time between Zbyszko and Dusty Rhodes. In 1998. This segment is making me hate Scott Hall and Dusty Rhodes as performers. Imagine how shitty this must be for me to type that. There’s some nonsense about a gag order because Larry Z. is unfair to the nWo or something, then they leave. Minute 44 of the show (not counting commercials in real time) and we get our second match, a thirty-second squash of Jim Neidhart by Scott Norton. Neidhart gets powerbombed and pinned, and then he immediately books it out of there holding the back of his head while Norton yaps to the camera. At this point in the show, you could send Stone Cold and the Rock out here in the middle of WCW’s ring to cut a promo on one another, and I’d be like FUCK THIS, SHOW ME A SUBSTANTIVE WRESTLING MATCH. Dellinger and his mooks knock on Goldberg’s locker room door, but they don’t get a response. They open it up, and the nWo has spray painted it and turned over all the furniture. Dellinger posts a cop at the door, and Larry Z. rightly points out that it’s a little late for that. Also, Goldberg doesn’t need police protection, I’m sure he’s fine. That was one of the worst hours of a pro wrestling show that I’ve ever seen in my whole life. Bret Hart (w/terrible theme that sounds like someone tried to write his WWF theme on a broken Casio keyboard) comes to the ring. He’s not dressed for action, so I can only imagine that we’re getting another talking segment. Oops, no, I don’t need to imagine it. We’re getting another talking segment. The Hitman loves that modified Hunter S. Thompson quote about the television business, and he hits it again to lead into what is admittedly a solid heel promo that I just have zero interest in hearing right now. I do like that they’re finally running a Hitman/Sting feud. That’s good! Anyway, Bret is like I like Sting, he’s cool, but it was his fuck-up last week at the end of that tag match since I didn’t even touch him. Actually, he and I should be friends because the fans don't appreciate us and also both our companies turned their backs on us. OK, sure, let’s see how this angle/feud goes. Oh wow! A wrestling match! And one that I want to see! Chris Jericho/Dean Malenko for the Cruiserweight Championship is up next. Hey, remember how Rey Misterio Jr. made his triumphant return three weeks ago and now we haven’t seen the guy since that one Nitro where Bret Hart hit him with a chair? This fucking company. Jericho knows that he needs to start off hot and dropkicks Malenko as Malenko enters the ring. Jericho hits a chop and WOOOOOs into the camera as everyone but commentary continues to leave breadcrumbs that Flair might just be back on WCW TV someday soon. From there, they counter and roll through on a number of moves until Jericho gets a Walls of Jericho on Malenko (Tony S. notes the lack of angling on the move, so it’s a Walls). Malenko gets to the ropes and rolls outside, where he’s hit with a plancha by Jericho; we go into a commercial break. We come back to Jericho still in control as Tony S. promises that WCW will torture me with a fucking Travis Tritt concert at Souled Out. No offense to country music fans – Cash, Parton, and Burnett are cool, and Elvis was a far better country singer than he was gospel or blues – but country music is mostly hot trash. Especially the overproduced crap of today that I hear whenever I’m unlucky enough to be in the chair while a dental assistant who loves modern country is cleaning my teeth. I guess the country cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” is decent, but the original by Chapman is way better. Wait, where are we? Oh yeah, this match, which is quite entertaining. Again, we get a counter-counter-counter until Jericho hits a Lionsault for two. Then we are back to standing, and there are another series of counters until Malenko hits a double-underhook suplex. He goes for the Texas Cloverleaf and, though Jericho fights, Malenko turns Jericho over…and Jericho grabs the ropes. Malenko goes to the top, but Jericho hits the ropes and crotches him, then follows up for a superplex attempt. Malenko blocks it and turns it into a top-rope DDT, and yeah, that was cool as fuck. Malenko turns over and gets a cover for a 2.9 – the crowd counts ONE, TWO, THR—OHHHHH, which only enhances the 2.9. Jericho rolls outside and loads his fist, then rolls back in and tries to hit Malenko when Malenko accidentally elbows the ref in the face. He misses, gets hit, and drops the knucks that were on his fist. Malenko picks up the knucks, loads them, and punches Jericho to a HUGE pop…and the ref sees that action and awards the match to a KO’d Jericho by DQ. That is amazing. This match was great, too. These two were stellar tonight. I was sure we were seeing a title change, but no, they continue to string out Chris Jericho surviving by the skin of his teeth, and that’s quality television, too. "Rockhouse." FUCK. Hennig and Rude come to the ring. SHIT. Rude’s facial hair is awful. His barber should be tried for an actual crime. Mongo McMichael is Hennig’s opponent tonight. You know who I miss? Debra. She was so great during her time in WCW. Mongo comes out hot and a series of nice moves culminate in a powerslam. He goes over to jaw at Rude, who grabs his ankle, and um, Hennig just hits him once, grabs him from behind, and drops him with a PerfectPlex for three. That’s it?! (Editor's note: There was a reason for this finish, but the match still could have been a little longer and more competitive instead of having Mongo uncharacteristically go down to a weak distraction and one move.) "Rockhouse." FUCK. Bischoff, Hogan, and Disciple come to the ring. SHIT. Tony S. is like, Hey, we’re going to show you the only bad match at our previous PPV that was otherwise an all-time great wrestling PPV other than it. Wonderful! Hogan promises to fuck DDP tonight, or maybe fight him, I don’t know, it’s hard to tell because the nature of pro wrestling is to tend toward homosocial behavior and that behavior is sometimes tinged with eroticism. Then we have to watch this shitty Bash at the Beach main event from a few weeks ago instead of the stellar rest of the card. Go see my Bash at the Beach ’98 notes entry for more on that show, and also, definitely watch at least the first half of it if you haven’t seen it before (or in a long time). I can’t believe they showed this whole match again on a fucking Nitro when I could have been seeing good live wrestling matches that don’t involve Hulk Hogan instead. By the way, I can only score this from the future, as someone who has easy access to BatB ’98 and therefore wouldn’t have been excited to get a free PPV match on TV – though I think I would have felt the same way in ’98 as I went in on this PPV with some friends and saw it live. Goldberg gets escorted out for an interview. The crowd is very excited to see him. I wonder what they got to see in the spot where we were forced to watch blessed to see the BatB ’98 main event. Anyway, Goldberg speaks! Hey, did we ever get Goldberg vs. Angle? Goldberg vs. tweaker Angle would have been a hell of a show. Anyway, Goldberg cuts an okay promo, but unfortunately, he’s a lot more impressive when he’s just killing dudes and twitching uncontrollably. Still, it’s a solid enough killer babyface promo, and it’s short and sweet as it should be when Goldberg is talking. Gene Okerlund is still fucking talking. We’ve had four matches on this show, not counting the PPV replay, and only one of them was anything good or substantial. Look, Arn Anderson’s a great talker, but I have no interest in it right now. Then again, credit to Arn: He grows my interest in his interview as he talks about how Malenko et al. made things too personal when calling for the Horsemen to re-form. He touches on how he’s upset about Flair being stuck at home without saying Flair’s name. Then he notes that Malenko and Mongo blew it in the ring tonight and didn’t exactly make a case to him for change his mind. He’s especially annoyed that Mongo didn’t find an extra gear against Curt Hennig, who, if you recall, blew up the Horsemen in the first place because for some reason, those idiots wouldn’t settle for Jeff Jarrett as a member. I mean, yeah, good recall! Mongo did come out on fire in his match, though. He’s just dumb and apparently easily knocked out by the PerfectPlex. Anyway, Arn is definitely not bringing back the Horsemen after tonight’s sorry display. Or so he says. Scott Hall challenged Sting earlier tonight in one of his promos, and we get that match next. This is going to be a decent match at worst as long as they give it some time. Scott Hall neutralizes Sting’s energy early, winning strikes and then a fallaway slam on a Sting crossbody attempt. Sting reverses an Irish whip to the corner and hits a couple of Stinger Splashes, then a third when Hall stumbles into another corner of the ring. Sting then hits a Scorpion Death Drop and locks on the Scorpion Death Lock, but here comes Bret Hart. Sting breaks the hold and leaves the ring to throw strikes at Bret. Bret doesn’t fight back, but Curt Hennig and Vincent run down and jump Sting. That whole match took like three minutes, so no, they didn’t give it some time. Luger and Nash run out for the save, and Nash Jackknifes Vincent to a huge pop. Boy, the crowd just wants to see some powerbombs. Nash goes to Jackknife Hall, but Hall hits a low blow and stomps Nash out. In the ring, Bret helps Sting up, but Sting hits his own low blow and goes for the Scorpion Death Drop; Bret wriggles away and heads for the back while Sting yells at him. It's another Okerlund interview, yay, I love these. Scotty Steiner wheels Buff out and they fake a wheelchair crash even though we already know that Buff is well again. OK, whatever. Look, I love Scotty and Buff, and Buff showing the scar where they cut to fuse his vertebrae and talking about it with some intensity is good, but I am done with all the talking, and I just don’t love Buff going right back to being a heel. It is what it is. I do get a kick out of Scotty and Buff’s total bro energy though. They really are a good heel pairing. Also, Scotty says that Rick’s problem is that “[he has] what I don’t have – compassion.” Then he calls the location for Road Wild “the Sturgis.” Hilarious. And if he thinks a scumbag like Rick has compassion, then just how sociopathic is Scotty? True heel shit. J.J. Dillon comes out all mad and stuff and promises to finally book Scotty vs. Ricky at some point. Scotty and Buff seem cool with that idea. Goldberg comes to the ring to defend his gold; Crush unloads on Goldberg early and gets two off a flying shoulderblock from the top rope, then two on a vertical suplex. He goes for another vertical suplex, though, and that’s where Goldberg blocks the move, spears Crush, spears an onrushing Vincent, and spears Crush again. One Jackhammer later, and Goldberg has mowed down another nWo Hollywood member. This guy is literally the only guy who can beat anyone in nWo Hollywood right now, which actually would be the basis for a good storyline about WCW rallying behind Goldberg as the point of their spear against Hollywood. You could even have the Wolfpac, desperate to kill off their nWo rivals, temporarily align with WCW. Nash might to do that until nWo Hollywood is destroyed, and then WCW could go into that Nash/Goldberg feud and have Hall running around with a taser like an asshole at Souled Out or whatever after nWo Hollywood is destroyed at Starrcade ’98. Whatever, it’s very easy to book something better than what we got, but the booker has to be willing to send Hulk Hogan home and pay him all that money not to be on TV, pledging not to use him beyond how much he contractually must be used. No one who got into power in WCW other than Vince Russo would have been even willing to chance that. Hulk Hogan vs. DDP is the main event. They have a short match, like all of the triple-main event for Nitro has been, so they’re not going to replay their miracle match on Show #112. For what we get, this is pretty good, though. Page and Hogan just work really well together, I guess. Hogan dominates, but it makes sense because Page is getting very good at working up from underneath and is selling all those injuries. Hogan hits a big boot, then picks Page up and goes for a slam, but Page slips out and hits a Diamond Cutter. The ref counts to two before nWo Hollywood completes their run-in and attacks Page. The Wolfpac run down for the save and everyone brawls. Then, as the show goes to black, Goldberg trots out and I want to see him kill some guys before the show ends. Hooray, we do get to see him kill some guys before the show ends! The Giant jumps Goldberg at the very end, though, and rocks him with a chokeslam. That’s definitely a feud I want to see, so I’m excited about that. But… …this show was bad, and unlike the previous show, there was too much for one awesome match (Jericho/Malenko) to overcome. The Tonight Show knockoff shit got two whole segments and the show before Jericho/Malenko dug so much of a hole that unless that triple main-event got long matches with at least one or two clean finishes, it was just never going to get to the positive side of the ledger. And so, after it took 150 shows for a Nitro to earn a zero score, it only took one further episode for Nitro to be so bad that I feel like I’ve seen something worth fewer than zero Stinger Splashes. And there were three actual Stinger Splashes on this show, so that’s saying something! -0.5 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.
  4. I don't think it's a defense of Vince so much as it is a statement of fact: Vince had a completeness of (business) vision and a series of advantages that no other promoter had and used those things to make pro wrestling, even if it was merely his limited vision of what that could be, a national concern. Then, he took it corporate as soon as he had the path to go public. Those are just facts.
  5. I don't think Vince won, in the sense that he is in his own personal hell (and IDK if Rovert is in the know, but he's certainly making claims online that Vince is like Logan Roy at his last birthday party with none of the kids around, which I wouldn't be surprised to learn was true). He wanted to run his company and do what he wanted with no scrutiny until he was dead. He didn't get to do that. It's small consolation to us because he's rich and destroyed a lot of lives with no punishment, but to him, I'm sure it's hell. I think pro wrestling, like most things that can be commodified for profit, was always headed toward corporatization and ultimate enshittification and that Vince being the one to do it is ultimately meaningless in the scope of things; it doesn't count as a win for Vince, really, in that his vision was always capricious and would have ended up somewhere else had he lived forever and stayed in power. In fact, I think you only see this sort of corporate-branded show after they go public, so as usual, it's more about the corporation being death to creative flexibility and innovation than anything Vince may or may not have done w/r/t his creative vision of what a modern wrestling show is
  6. Show #150 – 20 July 1998 "The one with the biggest indicator yet that Eric Bischoff should be fired immediately” I’m more slowly than expected making my way through the master list of matches, promos, and segments that I’m putting together. Unfortunately, I’m still back in February of ’97 on this list. I’m thinking that I’ll try to time it so that by the time I’m through 1998’s shows, I’ll have the list updated through 1998 as well. Scott Hall comes to the ring to do something rare in ’98 WCW – cut an enjoyable promo. I appreciate that he’s cut out the surveys because he’s heeling. Weirdly, he references Gilligan’s Island to insult Kevin Nash. That’s a Vinnie Jr. move. He gets real personal about how much he dislikes his old friend Nash, calling Nash’s manhood into question and such. Aw, we don’t get a U.S. Championship tournament. The WCW Championship Committee just declares that DDP and Bret Hart are the #1 and #2 contenders to the title, so they will wrestle for the gold tonight. I love a good title tournament and feel cross that I’m not getting one here. Lots of recap of the Hall/Hogan/Page/Nash stuff from last week. I somehow missed telling you that Hogan wanted to see “who rules and who drools” between he and Hall when demanding their match last week. That is unbelievably terrible mic work. Stevie Ray is not defending and does not possess the TV title belt tonight and he has a whole explanation why that he shares with the camera on his way to the ring. Basically, he’s trying to figure out how to get a legal document to defend the gold and is lying about it, and it’s funny. He squashes a dude named Johnny Boone. Wait, hold on, Chavo is out here with Pepe and the TV title, which I guess was not left back at the hospital with Booker T. as Stevie declared it was on his way out to the ring. Chavo exposes Stevie’s lies, and after Stevie hits a Slapjack, he grabs the belt from Chavo and tries to hide it behind his back like an idiot, LOL. This was all pretty dumb, but in an entertaining enough way. We get lots of “Hogan shoves Buff” recap to get to the current segment in which Gene Okerlund tries to have a conversation with sentient chunk of rancid mayo Rick Steiner. This interview is an acceptable enough one for Rick Steiner; Rick challenges Scott to a match at Road Wild. This thing does go on about sixty seconds longer than it needs to, though. Why does Gene have so many questions for this idiot? Finally, Buff gets rolled out here so that something entertaining can happen, maybe. Rick sorta-apologizes to Buff for the injury. He does one of those things where he doesn’t say I’m sorry I did that, instead opting for I’m sorry that happened to you. I suppose that’s fair; after all, Ricky Steiner does mention that he was trying to win the match, not kill the guy. So, Buff goes so far as to grab Rick’s hand and hug him, which gets a pop. That’s the point at which Scotty Steiner comes out and clobbers Rick with a chair. Buff tries to stop Scotty. Oops, no, Buff takes the chair from Scotty and hits Rick with it, then rips off his neck brace and celebrates. You know what would be cool? If Dr. Schiller or whoever would summon Eric Bischoff to Atlanta and fire the hapless dope. Okerlund’s still out here, this time to interview Chris Jericho. Jericho cuts a zero of a promo in which he basically accuses Malenko of doing all the stuff to him that he’s actually done to Malenko. I get a minor chuckle out of Jericho getting mad that Malenko spoke about Jericho’s dead father when we saw Papa Irvine, alive and well, calling his boy a sissy or whatever a few weeks ago. But yeah, Jericho is pretty annoying tonight, and not in the “good heel” way. But I can’t flip the channel and watch RAW or whatever, so I sit here while Jericho gives Malenko one final title shot on an upcoming show and swears that if Malenko doesn’t win, that’s it for giving him any more title shots. Scott Hall crashes the desk, harasses Larry Z., and I think, wow, we are a half-hour in and have had one (1) three-minute match that involved Stevie Ray and a jobber. This show is fucking awful so far. Hall basically, and I am paraphrasing a bit, says this: Kevin Nash is crying like a woman, a weak woman as we all know women naturally are, amirite fellas, and I bet Kevin Nash has a metaphorical and also maybe a literal vagina that he must treat for various infections and such with Monistat ™ brand products. Monistat – When You’re Diggin’ Your Yeast the Least, Use Monistat ™! I hated it. Show me a wrestling match already. A good one, too. Well, now Bischoff sends out two cruiserweights to get the action going on this show! Alright! Oops, no, it’s just Sick Boy. I love Mongo McMichael, but I just saw Stevie Ray clubber his way through a squash and don’t feel like watching Mongo clubber his way through a semi-competitive squash is really giving me the variety that I want. This is how the WWF won the MNW - by forcing Nitro into playing RAW’s game. Nitro needed to win the argument that the best wrestling show should be centered around wrestling, but they got suckered into competing with RAW over which show could center talking the best. WCW has now, and has always had, great talkers, but that talky, promo-focused approach to putting on a pro wrestling show was just not WCW’s specialty. Even in the JCP era, in the early days of Saturday Night where the Four Horsemen, Cornette, and Dusty would have multiple entertaining studio promos, the real treat was watching great wrestlers figure out a way to destroy a geek or two in their weekly squash, followed by the occasional good match between two names who could go that got you hyped for the big shows. Anyway, Mongo wins in a couple minutes with the Mongo Spike so we can go into another recap. There’s a recap of the Dean/Mongo/Arn stuff, and then… …Eric Bischoff repeats a Jay Leno monologue on a mock Tonight Show set while canned laughter plays in the background. Bisch is gonna get fired over telling a PG-rated joke about it being so hot that everyone’s pool boys actually did their jobs that day instead of, presumably, fucking some kept wives and probably a few kept husbands as they normally do. He didn’t use the word “fuck,” obviously, it was a benign shitty Leno monologue joke. Anyway, this is going right on the ABSOLUTE DIRT WORST list. Fire this fucking moron Bischoff already, please. Put me out of my fucking misery already. Also, I like Tony S., but maybe put him on probation for indignantly yelling: HEY I SAW THE TONIGHT SHOW ON FRIDAY, HE IS RIPPING OFF JAY LENO’S MONOLOGUE. I bet Vinnie caught this segment while trying to counter-program and immediately called his accountants to free up enough of his capital so he could eventually purchase WCW. We are now in hour number two. Tony S. declares that hour number one was “wild.” ON. PROBATION. We start hour number two with a fucking interview because of course we do. We see video of that Nash interview with Tenay yet again. Fuck. Me. Halfway through, the interview cuts out, and we see Scott Hall has jacked the tape from Craig Leathers and Co. Kevin Nash is back there at the production truck just standing around watching Hall, I guess, and Scott Hall throws the tape at him and they fight. Nash wins for awhile, but Hall’s Hollywood buddies burst out of a nearby production trailer and jump Nash. The Wolfpac arrives for backup and we have a donnybrook, a pier six brawl, a veritable slobberknocker. GODDAM, now Bret Hart is out here at the set yelling for DDP to fight him right now. OK, at least the Hitman wants to have a fucking wrestling match. We cut to the back, and Konnan is upset; he’s standing over DDP, who has been attacked by someone else offscreen. I cannot express to you how bad this show has been. I can’t emphasize it enough. Did RAW have a bunch of fifteen-minute-long matches tonight or something? Does errant counter-programming explain what is some of the worst formatting of a show I’ve ever seen in my life? J.J. Dillon comes down to talk to Bret Hart. Fucking awesome. Meanwhile, RAW had D’Lo Brown beat Trips for the European title and had a Rock/X-Pac match that almost went ten minutes, which is pretty much about a thirty-minute match if you adjust for the time period. I would have flipped to USA and never flipped back a long time ago if I were somehow transported back to 1998. Oh wow, a wrestling match! Saturn is here and will probably get something decent out of Yuji Nagata. I’ve been calling Tatanka “league average” because he’s a wrestler whose match quality is completely, 100% dependent on how good his opponent is. He’s not going to drag a match down or anything, but he’s also not going to do anything to elevate a match. His match quality is entirely dependent upon the talent level and mood of his opponent and the booking of the match itself. I mention this because Yuji Nagata is another league-average wrestler. If he was a baseball player, he’d be worth 0 WAR every year. League-fucking-average. Saturn is very good and busts out some good offense, so this match is fine. Saturn gets control and is rolling when Sonny Onoo runs a distraction and Raven runs in. Raven drops Saturn with an Evenflow DDT; Nagata locks on the Figure Four Nagata Lock and gets a pinfall victory since Saturn is KO’d. The rest of the Flock runs in and attacks Saturn. Kanyon runs down for the save and, rather than punching dudes off of Saturn, does a lot of contrived offense to each Flock member one by one that takes forever to set up while the rest of the Flock stands around and looks at him. Oh, Kanyon. You’ve got your one thing that you do really well, so you do it in every situation. I mean, the moves are nice! There’s that, at least. Kanyon goes over to help Saturn up, but Saturn hits him with a DVD (no video review) because Saturn is an anti-social dick. Hey, it’s another match! Two in a row?! Wow, getting crazy with all the wrestling here! It's a tag title match between Nash/Sting and Giant/Hall. Tony S. hyped this incessantly during the previous match, but I think any excitement that I’d normally have for this matchup has been beaten out of me by this show. I’d feel worse for this crowd sitting through this thing, but they’re Jazz fans, so fuck ‘em. Finally, the crowd has something to get hyped about – Nash and Giant locking up. They pop huge for Nash hitting Giant with a big boot. Sting is wrestling in an nWo tank, black denim, and boots. He does some crotch chops and, again, looks like a complete fucking asshole, what is he doing looking like this, even? There’s a break in this match after Sting crotch chops Hall. We get back and Sting and Giant face off. Sting slaps Giant, and Giant misses a corner charge. Man, these fellas are so good together. Sting hits one Stinger Splash, but gets booted out of mid-air trying another one. There’s a huge GIANT SUCKS chant as Sting tries a crossbody and just bounces off of Giant’s chest. This match is good, because of course it is. Everyone in this match knows their business. Sting gets worked over in the FIP role for awhile, but he reverses a Hall abdominal stretch and scores a hot tag to Nash. Nash works over the Giant, then works over Hall for a bit. They work a nice sequence where Hall avoids a Snake Eyes, but eats a big boot while trying to throw a punch. Nash goes for a Jackknife, but Giant breaks it up and the match breaks down. Sting hits Giant with a low blow and a second-rope bulldog, then gets back on the apron so Nash can make a tag to Sting. Sting drills Hall with two Stinger Splashes, then locks Hall in the Scorpion Deathlock. Nash clears the Giant out, but Bret Hart comes down, gets in Sting’s face (probably about the whole Scorpion Death Lock/Sharpshooter thing, I’d bet), and runs enough of a distraction that Hall catches Sting in an Razor’s Edge and scores both a three-count and the tag titles. Excellent match. Not enough to save this redeem this garbage show, but excellent match. Note that the Wolfpac and Goldberg are the most over acts on the show, but nWo Hollywood dominates the TV time and seems to win at every turn, still. Hell, I haven’t seen Goldberg on TV in awhile, come to think of it. He wasn’t on the previous Thunder and hasn’t been spoken of so far tonight. The Boogie Knights come to the ring – good! – to face Chono and late ‘90s Muta – bad! I am over “Rockhouse.” Enough with the “Rockhouse.” I look forward to late ’00 when I think, finally, mercifully, the nWo as a going entity is basically dead in WCW. If I’m remembering wrong, I suppose I’m in for quite a lot of shock and dismay! Anyway, this match is perfectly cromulent and Chono/Muta are more active than I expected. I do wish that the Boogie Knights weren’t essentially squashed here, though. Muta gets Disco to tap to a legbar after about three minutes, and then Scott Norton comes down and destroys Wright and Disco after the match. So, there’s a Nitro Girls routine with three Nitro Girls including Kimberly, and it makes me laugh because a trainer comes back and takes Kimberly to the back (remember, DDP got his ass beat earlier). The other two Nitro Girls don’t even stop the routine – they just keep going, all enthusiasm. It’s like when Michelle tripped during a dance routine with the rest of Destiny’s Child on BET and Beyonce and Kelly Rowland were just like TOO BAD FOR YOU SIS and plowed on through. That was a classic moment. BET didn’t always have the best programming, but they had some classic music programs back in the day. I think that whole thing happened on 106th and Park if I recall correctly. Anway, what was I talking about, now? Ultimo Dragon and Tokyo Magnum go at super-speed so we can have more time for Hollywood Hogan and Company to come out here and kill this show dead on the mic. Hey, we didn’t even see Magnum foolishly try to run in and save his dancing buddies last segment. Dragon dropkicks Magnum out of the air, then hits a brainbuster and locks on a Dragon Sleeper in a semi-competitive squash victory. Scott Norton (w/Vincent) is back out to squash Jim Powers. It’s fine. Norton wins with the powerbomb. Next up: An nWo hype video about what a brilliant amazing badass Hulk Hogan is. Fuck off. Next up after that: Hogan, Bischoff, and Disciple lead a bunch of Hollywood members to the ring to yak. Fuck off. I guess finally at least someone mentions Goldberg, who you know, is the fucking WCW WORLD CHAMPION. Can you imagine Stone Cold being left off two straight 1998 RAWs so that Vinnie could stand around in the ring with Bob Backlund talking about how they’re changing the face of wrestling together? I mean, Backlund is an infinitely better heel promo than Hogan, but you get my point. Anyway, Hogan cuts a dreadful promo as usual. It’s longer than most of the matches tonight. I genuinely think that Vince Russo’s bad shows will be better than Eric Bischoff's bad shows in the sense that they might cross over into being so dumb, they’re somewhat fun to snark about sometimes on a Rifftrax type of level. This show just stinks in a deeply boring and shitty way. I’m probably going to be proven wrong about this, though. Konnan (w/Antoine Carr) faces Eddy Guerrero next. This match is very short, and I think if this show were properly formatted and booked, it could have been something good. Konnan goes with using his size advantage to overpower Eddy, and it makes for a nice contrast in style with the speedy Eddy. Konnan gets two off a back suplex, so Eddy goes with the highly technical “forefinger to the eye” move, but he just gets kicked and hit with a sit-out facebuster for another two count. Chavo comes out dressed like a vato, doing Konnan’s schtick and riding Pepe. It’s pretty funny. Meanwhile, Eddy’s getting mauled in there until Konnan is distracted by Chavo. Eddy takes that opportunity to hit Konnan a suplex, but then he’s distracted by Chavo. What happens is Eddy grabs Pepe, tries to hit Konnan with the poor horsey, and gets back bodydropped way the hell up and over the top rope. The bell rings for a no contest. I feel a bit ripped off. I just watched WM IX, at which Lex Luger and Curt Hennig had a boring match. Now I watch Nitro and…oh come on, these assholes booked this match again? FUCK. Actually, I thought the WM IX match was better than the previous time that I saw it, and it wasn't terrible, but it wasn’t what you’d call good. Maybe “adequate” is the best that you could say about it. Maybe. This match isn’t terrible either, but it’s worse than the WM IX match. Hennig does some boilerplate heel control before Luger comes back and accidentally tosses Hennig into the ref. Rude interferes and Luger racks him. Hennig jumps Luger from behind and hits the PerfectPlex while Rude holds Luger’s leg down; that gets three. Good thing, too, as nWo Hollywood really needed that win to stay over. Boy, Hogan lost the gold and he and Bischoff really booked this show around making him feel okay about that loss, huh? Speaking of “booking a show around an egomaniacal Hogan’s emotional needs,” did I mention earlier that I just watched WM IX? Bret Hart and DDP are the main event, and they really aren’t going to have Goldberg come out here while the cameras are rolling for the second straight show, huh? Anyway, the main event is just DDP coming out and working his tough-luck babyface gimmick. He's badly injured and fights the pain, but is beaten by a Sharpshooter in about three minutes. I am genuinely flirting with giving this show the ol’ negative number. Let me think about it. OK, here’s what I think: As I said earlier, I liked the tag title match, but that wasn’t enough to save the rest of this shitshow. The only thing the tag title match saved this show from was a negative score. 0 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.
  7. Vince, should he live long enough, will attempt to control his narrative with a memoir. That's his next and final work.
  8. Unless Crush said this, it's only the second most stereotypical Hawaiian accent in the world.
  9. I love what auto-correct did to this post
  10. Of course, wasn't Roop a heel at that point? "Women are to be taken seriously" is something only a heel would say at that time and place. Meanwhile, I'm sure the ever genial babyface announcer Boyd Pierce responded with The ladies can be good in the ring, just like they're good in the kitchen, we'll be back after this message from Mid-South Television Network.
  11. How soon we forget Karate Fighters. In seriousness, at one point, they were getting Skittles and Burger King advertising accounts. I don't know what advertising looks like now for the company, though. A quikc Google has a bunch of lists, so it's hard to tell what's accurate and up to date, but I saw DraftKings and thought that DraftKings will probably advertise on public access television, so I doubt they'll be moved by any of this.
  12. These folks can't even agree to unionize. I don't think it's in the mentality of the type of person who goes into pro wrestling that they should even consider banding together for any reason, so if they can't band together to get the company to cover all of their travel costs, they're not going to do it to demand that the guy who comes off like a fatherly, charismatic pro wrestling genius to them is booted from TKO.
  13. I just assume that the MLK Jr. thing is Vince being a racist sociopath, but knowing that he has to mask said racism and sociopathy and doing so in the most ham-handed way possible. As he got older and wasn't able to mask as efficiently, he got more open about exactly who he was on his TV shows.
  14. Wow, we're running the "profiled on Behind the Bastards" count in this thread up to two. Can we make it three? Did Vince push for a Saudi-style deal with Belarus and Alexander Lukashenko? Will Elon Musk somehow be ropes into this thing? I make these jokes because otherwise, I would cry.
  15. WrestleMania IX notes: I should probably get on my horse and finish this WCW watch by March of 2026 just in case, but look at me stopping to review bad WrestleManias instead! I started writing this two days ago and was maybe a third of the way through the show before the new allegations against Vinnie Mac came out, so that killed my desire to go back to watching Superstars after I finish this show, at least for awhile. I guess I’ll go back to watching shows from the company that, uh, was mostly a racist hellpit. But at least it wasn’t a racist hellpit where the leadership also systematically abused the women who worked there. I think. Maybe. Probably? Hopefully? They made Jim Ross dress in a toga on his debut, and he points out his gold sandals and intimates that they’re too, uh, “fabulous” for the apparently closed-minded people of the metro Tulsa area. I think Jim Ross becoming the voice of the WWF is one of the unlikeliest things to happen in the company’s history. This dude is so out of place in 1993 WWF. Ross talking about Hannibal using elephants like utility vehicles is certainly something. I think I’m going to be obsessed with Ross’s commentary on this showing. Cleopatra is looking fantastic, let me tell you. I’m settling down. Macho Man comes to the booth looking like a cowboy hat-wearing Hedonism Bot from Futurama. This is one of the dumbest things at any WrestleMania ever. No, not the Roman theming, the fact that they booked Macho to get rolled by Yokozuna on the RAW before WrestleMania instead of using Macho as a wrestler at this show. I feel like you can see Macho slowly wilting inside with every show he commentates. They put Heenan on a camel and seated him backward. Honestly, I felt bad for the elephant and the camel they brought out here. Imagine being trained by a bunch of likely negligent trainers just so you can show up and do tricks for the crowd at one of the worst WrestleManias ever produced. The Ross-Savage-Heenan booth, short-lived as it was, is one of my favorite three-man booths in wrestling. Mostly, I like it because it’s a mishmash of styles so that even when they’re off, they’re entertainingly off because they don’t work well with one another. Hey, Luna Vachon! Oh, and Shawn Michaels. I forgot that Luna was tagging around with Michaels for a minute there in ’93. Sherri shows up to back Tatanka. Savage crudely insinuates that no one would fuck Luna because she’s ugly. That was a totally unnecessary comment! Tatanka is a league-average wrestler, so he needs Michaels to be on to elevate this match, and he also needs it to have an interesting finish. Michaels is bumping around like a maniac, but the finish stinks (the ref signals for the bell when Tatanka’s got Michaels beaten because HBK attacked him earlier – though they call it a count out victory for Tatanka). That finish is so bad that this match is a match that I always forget happened before at this show. The crowd seems to enjoy it well enough, though, especially the near falls at the end. It’s solid work, mostly thanks to Michaels killing himself to produce something good. I just don’t get the need to protect Tatanka’s winning streak for as long as they did. They ended up breaking it for Ludvig fucking Borga instead of, say, Michaels here. Had this ended with the spot where Michaels hits the SCM on a diving Tatanka, I think this match is much better remembered. On another note, did they set the Luna/Sherri stuff up solely on RAW? This is around the time that, as Cobra Commander noted earlier, they would split angle stuff up between RAW, Superstars, and Wrestling Challenge with little consistency. Some angles seeped through from RAW to the B- and C-shows, but not all of them. They go so far as to set up a Luna/Sherri feud that after Luna attacks Sherri in the post-match of the opener, Ross announces that Luna attacked Sherri again off-camera during the Headshrinkers/Steiners match. I was genuinely excited for this match, by the way, and my excitement was rewarded. There’s a wild spot early on where Samu grabs Scotty and backs up to hotshot him, but Fatu pulls the ropes down and Scotty just goes flying face-first to the floor. Afa follows up with a cane shot to Scotty. Holy fuck, that ruled. So, Scotty’s the FIP, and I think the Headshrinkers are pretty enjoyable in control. I do prefer Scotty as the hot tag and not the FIP, though. The FIP segment is long and only ends when Samu finally whiffs on a top-rope headbutt attempt. Rick doesn’t know that in pro wrestling, Samoans have very hard heads that cannot be harmed with a headbutt, though, so when he smashes his opponents’ heads together, they just headbutt him back. We get another nice spot where Rick reverses a Fatu top-rope crossbody attempt into a powerslam while he's seated atop Samu’s shoulder; after that, the match breaks down and Scotty lands on his own neck hitting a Frankensteiner for three. That was easily the match of the night. Matt Bourne is pretty great in this Doink persona. He’s endlessly entertaining. He cuts a promo before coming to the ring and making Crush look like a complete doofus. Doink basically outsmarts Crush at every turn during this feud to the point that turning Crush heel was the only move left. It’s weird because, as not-good as Crush is, he’s got a finisher and a theme that people genuinely like, and I don’t understand why they booked him like this. We get some wandering brawling at ringside to start and it looks like Crush should cruise to victory. Crush rolls Doink while I wonder what psychological trauma, in kayfabe, that Big Josh went through that made him become Doink? Do you think it was wearing that unflattering flannel, jorts, and work boots look every night? Do you think it was that he was driven to change his own name as a failed Rat Pack member and wrestle for relative pocket change in front of five hundred people in Alpharetta, Georgia while Ted DiBiase and Jim Duggan got to keep their names and make big money in the WWF? I wonder. Anyway, Doink does get some control eventually before Crush makes his comeback. Crush even gets a Cranium Crunch on for a second. However there’s a ref bump off that Cranium Crunch attempt and soon enough, there appears a second Doink. The most fabulous one of the Doinks runs out and clocks Crush with another fake cast twice and the Doinks do a mirror image deal. I enjoy it immensely. Doink gets three and it gets a small pop. Oops! That’s what happens when you book the heel to be smarter at every turn than the dopey face with the shitty Hawai’ian accent! Bill Alfonso has to come out here and tell on Doink – Alfonso and his incessant rulebook bullshit, dammit - but the refs can’t find the second Doink, so the result stands, fuck you Alfonso. Ross calls Todd Pettengill “Todd Pettengale,” which is still too much respect shown to Todd Pettengill. I’m bummed that we’re in the Todd Pettengale era, by the way. Razor Ramon wins a semi-competitive squash over Bob Backlund. Not much to say about this, but the booking of Razor sucks. He’s another heel who is getting over as a face because of his music, his toothpick throwing, his finisher, and his promos. As shitty as Crush’s Hawai’ian accent is, uh, well actually, Hall’s Cuban accent is also shitty, but the Latin wrestling fans I've known adopted Razor as one of their own anyway. At least the Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Central American ones I’ve known have. The crowd cheers when Razor toothpicks Backlund and then chants RA-ZOR RA-ZOR RA-ZOR. Turn him face already! Razor doesn’t even hit a Razor’s Edge in this thing; he small packages Backlund for three. We should have gotten a Razor’s Edge on Perfect for three instead, but whatever. I forgot that Luger jumped Bret and hit him with the metallic forearm at the press conference before this show. I would have been interested in that feud, but it didn’t happen from memory. At least we get this Money Inc./Hogan and Beefcake match over in the middle of the card. Ah, once this is over, no more Hogan on this show. I look forward to a Hogan-free main event. This match has a post-Mid South DiBiase, a Hogan who is past his physical prime, Beefcake, and Rotundo/a. As you might guess, it’s not very good. Hogan shows up with that black eye that he got for sordid reasons, right? Hold on, let’s Google it: Oh yes, allegedly, Randy Savage was being incredibly creepy to Liz, even for him, and Liz left and hid out with Linda Hogan, and then Savage found out and put it to the Hulkster. I believe it, and maybe that’s because I know it’s been at least partially verified based on multiple accounts of Randy and Liz breaking up. Maybe it’s also because on commentary, Savage is like OH YEAH LOOK AT IT LOOK AT IT LOOK AT THE HULKSTER while the camera is close up on Hogan’s fucked-up eye. So yeah, Money Inc. gets beaten up, walks away to save their titles, and then – and I guess the head ref can do this? – the ref (via the Fink) is like, You can lose your titles on a count out now LOL and so we’re subjected to more of this match. Hogan plays FIP. Money Inc. stinks in control. There should be a double-countout, but Hogan steals the Undertaker’s whole sit-up deal at nine and, though Hogan’s not on his feet, Hebner stops the count anyway. Hogan is an adequate FIP I guess, and finally…oh no, now Beefcake is FIP. Beefcake’s selling is peak cartoon ‘80s, and it’s bad. Finally, there’s another hot tag and then Jimmy Hart flips his jacket so that it's lining side out, and the lining happens to be striped like a ref’s shirt, and Hart counts the three. The whole sad affair ends with a second ref DQ’ing the nominal babyfaces and said nominal babyfaces trying to beat the hell out of the ref. Hart stops them to do it himself. I judge everyone in this Vegas crowd who enjoyed even a second of that. Nat King Cole’s supremely talented daughter Natalie, R.I.P. to both, is shocked that Hogan and Beefcake opened up the Halliburton that Money Inc. left behind and tossed the money inside to the crowd – “It was real money!” – and I think she’s actually sort of enjoying this show. Wait, I want to revise my previous statement. I judge Natalie Cole for nothing except for her excellent singing. So, let’s bounce back after that nadir with…oh man, Perfect/Luger. It should be good on paper, but actually as an older fan, I realize that Luger and Hennig are both best with the right opponent, and they are not the right opponents for one another. This match isn’t bad, but it’s a little plodding. It’s at least relatively short, so the plodding nature of the thing doesn’t set in too much. Perfect finally unloads a ton of okay offense on Luger and cuts Luger's comebacks off at every turn. Perfect swings his forearm at Luger’s dome, but it only gets two. Luger swings his forearm at Perfect’s dome and knocks him clean out. Between those two events, Perfect lands one of the uglier missile dropkicks that you’ll ever see and then goes for a backslide, but Luger reverses and gets three after using the ropes for leverage. Post-match, Hennig runs Luger down backstage. Luger is casually talking to Shawn Michaels, and Perfect gets transitioned into a feud with Michaels after HBK grabs a mop and wallops Perfect with it. Two guys whose best qualities are wildly bumping for good offense and whose worst qualities are trying to hit good offense. How did I not see that this would be a series of disappointing matches as a kid? Undertaker wins the only match in his streak that he scored victory in by DQ against Giant Gonzalez. It stinks. Formaldehyde gets involved. The crowd chants for Hogan to come out here and right this wrong, which I blame for giving Hogan certain ideas about writing wrongs in tonight’s main event. Anyway, I think they should have just run the SummerSlam match between the two here instead and given ‘Taker an opponent of a higher quality. I still like Bam Bam as an Undertaker opponent who has decent enough matches with him instead of all this Kamala and Gonzalez stuff. Hogan cuts an ominous promo before the main event in which he talks a whole lot about Bret Hart and makes sure to verbally place the Hitman beneath himself (“I know [Hart is] a Hulkamaniac!”). Then, he challenges the winner to a title match and racially slurs Yokozuna *sigh*. As infuriating as the slur is, it’s extra infuriating because in kayfabe, Yokozuna is a Samoan guy who went to Japan to become a star sumo wrestler, not a Japanese person. Should it matter? No. But it does to me. What’s lost in all this is that Bret and Yoko had excellent chemistry and could probably have a good match together in their sleep. It’s also wild that they had two straight WM main events against one another that no one ever talks about because, even though the matches themselves are good, the finishes are so bad that we’ve just mindwiped these matches from our memories. WM IX itself is full of terrible finishes, actually, which is a big part of what I think makes this card so derided. Sure, Hogan on top again at the end of the night is a big part, too, but boy was this card unsatisfying from the perspective of match finishes. Only the Steiners tag and Razor/Backlund had anything resembling a clean finish (and the second of those matches had a totally unsatisfying clean finish where we didn’t even see a Razor’s Edge, the wildly over finishing move of the winner). When it comes to fuck finishes, the Doink/Crush match is the only one that made sense and was effective in any fashion. Yoko just annihilates Bret early on. The crowd chants U-S-A. Shall I be charitable and assume that they’re doing it to annoy the America-hating Yokozuna? No. I won’t. This crowd is sort of dopey and doesn’t realize that Bret is Canadian, that’s what it is. Bret working from underneath against a bigger opponent is one of the most enjoyable types of match in pro wrestling, in my humblest of opinions. Bret dodging the Yoko corner splash and then firing off the 5MoD and scoring successive two-counts gets some nice pops. So does Bret knocking Yokozuna down with a flying clothesline. I think my second-biggest complaint about this match is actually how short it is. I get it – Yoko’s conditioning is probably not great even at this early point in his run – but this is a good match that has glimmers of something really good if only it got more time. And yet, we move to the finish pretty quickly; I think Yoko should have at least had to drop a leg to get three. I don’t think mere salt is putting the Hitman down for the count. So yeah, the post-match crap has been talked about to death. It sucks, yeah. I guess at least it leads to the excellent KotR ’93 where both Bret and Yoko have excellent performances and are booked like they should be booked? This show is as awful as advertised. OK, I guess I’ll finish the Big Five of 1998 stuff even though Vinnie’s all over those shows, but after that, I’m pretty much good on WWF stuff for awhile. Shoot, I got Peacock well before Peacock acquired WWE’s catalog, but I probably shouldn’t even be using it to watch Nitro. Then again, everything sucks and is bad and watching ‘90s WCW probably isn’t going to make Comcast throw a ton of money at a company that will get tons of money thrown at it anyway. I am but a mere cog in the machine…which I bet is how Bret felt after that egregious finish to the show.
  16. The combination of parasocial relationships becoming more common in the social media era + Vince being charismatic (as many sociopaths are) means that Vince will have a group of boosters who will see anything he does as heartwarming or misunderstood or okay because actually you just don't get it.
  17. I think this is possible for wrestling fans. For non-wrestling fans, I think the response being muted is due to two things: 1) pro wrestling being seen as so silly as to be beyond discussing in any serious way, even if the head of the biggest wrestling company is allegedly raping and assaulting the women who work there, and 2) Me Too fatigue in the media. This isn't to say that I am absolutely right or anything, but that's my read.
  18. That's not specific to pro wrestling. True crime is hugely popular and, of course, centered around content that comes from the suffering and abuse of others. There's surely a discussion about when something moves from informative to entertainment that is probably beyond the scope of this discussion, but I think about our cultural (human?) propensity for deriving entertainment from suffering as well. I think w/r/t popular discussion about this, Robert Evans did a six-part Behind the Bastards on Vince McMahon heavily based around Josie Riesmann's recent book as a source. He notes in the liners for the sixth part that they're done covering Vince...for now. I hope he swings back around and does a part seven on this guy. Am I entertained by it? I suppose. Mostly I listen to stuff like this to learn and to remind myself of the depths that humans can sink to. Anyway, I have more interest in whatever Evans does with this news than the DSotR folks.
  19. I'm gonna guess all the black wrestlers based on the rest of that suit. I much preferred it when I only knew for certain that Vince was acting out his weird racial fantasies through fake fisticuffs.
  20. Yeah, the evidence given in the suit is disgusting. I mean, super disgusting, don't read it if you aren't in the right mindset.
  21. I think probably what's happening is that WWE is in a boom period, not pro wrestling. Actually, yeah, this is just a weird period. You have big shows selling out and even TNA packed 'em in for a recent PPV at a higher amount than ever before, but WWE's the only company doing consistent big business at their weekly and house shows, too. It seems like only WWE has all the things lined up that would make you argue that they're in a boom.
  22. I can believe that, certainly. I think this is a fair argument, though I tend to think that live sports and sports-adjacent programming is still going through a cost-inflation period and that the bubble is going to pop for everyone but the NFL, English Premier League, and maybe the NBA. Netflix was wise to leave themselves an out in five years. I'm always worried to talk about sellouts because, uh, people have lots of opinions about attendance numbers, their trustworthiness, and what they might mean. I will say this: If you're going by big shows in arenas, I can see this being the crux of a boom argument, absolutely. If you're talking about week-to-week attendance at your typical weekly shows, then I wouldn't say we're in a boom period when looking at that landscape.
  23. Lucerne I know because it's a brand of butter in the U.S. that, I believe, is said to originate from that inimitable town.
  24. I genuinely have a hard time conceptualizing that there's currently a boom. Are we saying this because WWE and AEW are doing well in the rights game? What constitutes a boom in a more fragmented market where only the NFL has clearly universal pull among viewers of all types?
  25. I wonder if it's more or less of a downgrade in visibility than the move to TNN/Spike was.
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