SirSmUgly

The bookers got it wrong. The Redcoats shoulda gone over.

Season 1, Show 5: “Boyle Heights Street Fight,” or HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER (dressed in black and looking all mysterious-like)!! It’s a lucha doubleheader! Recap: King Cuerno’s not the only one on the hunt! Sexy Star is looking for Chavo Jr. and Johnny Mundo is out for Dario Cueto’s blood. As someone who might be in the minority of finding L.A. to be a great place and having an almost romantic view of it, these exterior shots of the city as a transition from the recap to the start of the carnage always get me hyped. Seedy backstage interstitial: Dario Cueto and Konnan have a conversation in which Konnan seems to indicate that it was indeed Cueto who sent Cortez and Cisco to attack Prince Puma in the locker room last week. Konnan suggests that Puma wanted to come into Dario’s office and revenge himself upon Dario, but Konnan stopped him. Dario offers Konnan a drink, but Konnan declines because he also thinks that Dario sent the flunkies to attack Puma. Dario declines having sent them to attack Puma and says that they are under Big Ryck’s control, not his. Konnan doesn’t seem to entirely believe Dario, but does request that Dario book a Boyle Heights Street Fight between Puma and Ryck for later in the show. Dario says that he’ll drink to that, but Konnan steals the drink out of his hands and takes a sip instead. Dario is disgusted and throws the whole drink out after Konnan leaves. I see this ill-fated business relationship is already fraying at the edges! Let’s go to the ring, where our opener involves Catrina. Oh, and also Mil Muertes is here. I almost didn’t notice him there. Muertes is wrestling Drago, which I think is a great matchup because after Drago survived Cuerno last week, my kayfabe brain thinks he has a chance against Muertes even though my analytical brain knows that poor ol’ Drago is cooked. I really believe that Drago’s performance against Cuerno was a perfect fightin’ babyface performance. Muertes kicks Drago to the floor immediately and sets a tone, which is that Drago has to run and run and keep running. Drago does avoid a corner charge and hit a twisting bodypress from the top, but he gets caught on a rope run by a shitty Muertes floatover powerslam. Mil Muertes is coming off like Sexy Star’s male compatriot on this show: great presentation, but actually a pretty bad worker. Muertes tosses Drago to the floor; the camera cuts to King Cuerno perched on the top of Dario’s office, scoping out some prey. Maybe he just wants to see how Muertes avoids the mistakes that he made last week in his match against Drago. Back in the ring, Muertes scores a regular old powerslam for two and then embarks upon a slow and low-impact heel control segment. He chugs toward Drago and eats a superkick. Drago exchanges kicks with Muertes and actually wins a leg sweep for two; he follows with a nice springboard tornado DDT for two. That’s as close as he gets to victory, unfortunately for him. Muertes catches him with a spear as he tries another top-rope dive, then lands a Flatliner for three. What I got from this is that Drago indeed rules. Drago is basically carrion at this point, so it’s not very sporting that Cuerno leaves his perch, walks down the stairs, and drills the downed Drago with a sit-out fireman’s carry driver to amplify the pain. Hype video: Johnny Mundo cuts a shitty promo in which he blames POLITICS and NOT KISSING ASS for the lid on his WWE career rather than, you know, not being very good outside of working tags. I hate the whole HELD BACK BY OFFICE POLITICS thing that wrestlers loved doing whenever they jumped from the dub. Anyway, this got me anti-hyped. Turn Mundo heel sooner rather than later, please. Seedy backstage interstitial: Dario Cueto walks up to Mil Muertes and Catrina and congratulates them on their victory, but Catrina isn’t buying this friendly exchange and in fact lets Dario know that she knows about Matanza Cueto being held under lock and key by slinking up to him, tugging on said key around Cueto’s neck, and intimating as much. Son of Havoc (w/Ivelisse Velez) wrestles Mascarita Sagrada in our second bout, and I think Havoc is a good glue guy worker who is especially useful working big against smaller wrestlers even though he’s not that big a dude himself comparatively. As I’ve written in many reviews before, I think the most effective workers typically are good at working big against smaller wrestlers and making themselves small and vulnerable for bigger wrestlers. Throw Havoc in there against Mil or Ryck so we can see if he can effectively do the second one (which I bet he can because my belief is that it’s harder to work big against smaller opponents for guys under about 6’4 and harder to work small against big opponents for guys over that mark…and also because Cross specifically is a smaller guy who likely had to work that way for most of his career). One thing that I will critique is that a lot of the wrestlers who work as bases in this company are very obvious about feeding an arm or what-have-you to help out the smaller wrestler hitting offense. Havoc is a bit too obvious about that. Who are the best bases for intricate flippy offense? I bet if you put them next to everyone else and just watched them feed for smaller wrestlers, you could immediately tell the "solid" from the "elite" at that skill. Anyway, after a burst of offense, Havoc takes over and lands a standing moonsault, then pulls off the pin to gloat. A woman dressed in all black walks out and stands on at the top of the stairs to observe, and I vaguely recall there being an all-female assassin team on this show, don’t I, maybe? Back in the ring, Ivelisse lands a sneak strike on Sagrada while Havoc has the referee distracted. Sagrada kinda gets her back by diving onto her on a rope run, but boy, did he land short of her as Ivelisse desperately tried to catch him so that he didn’t spike himself. What ends up happening is that Havoc joins them outside; Sagrada chases Ivelisse around the ring until Ivelisse runs for safety into Havoc’s arms, at which point the spirited mini dives off the top rope and onto both of them. It's time for our first running segment of these reviews: Yo, shut the fuck up, Matt Striker: Striker jokes about watching porn with little people chasing women in it while this series of spots happens because he’s trying to ruin my enjoyment of this match. He stinks. Just awful. Please shut the fuck up, Matt Striker. Anyway, right after that, Sagrada manages to score a victory roll on Havoc for the win. I thought this was a decent enough little jaunt. Sexy Star seeks revenge on Chavo Guerrero Jr. in the third match of the show. I expect the vet Chavo to carry Star to something pretty good. Star is so mad that she’s not thinking; she tries to match power with Chavo, who shrugs it off and yanks her to the mat by her hair before grinding a boot on her temple. Chavo is enjoying being a bully, but he makes the mistake of forcibly kissing Star, which wakes her up. She slaps him and then fires up and scores a headscissors that sends Chavo to the floor. Sexy scrambles to ringside, grabs a chair, and waits for Chavo to roll back into the ring. The ref tries to stop her, so she pretends to acquiesce and then punts the ref in the balls. That causes an automatic DQ; meanwhile, Star tries to swing, but has the chair yanked away by Penta. Penta teases helping Star before agreeing to help Chavo destroy her, but Fenix makes the save. Penta standing there with the chair in front of his face and then clearly feeding for a Fenix flip is another example of what I mean about bases being a bit too obvious, and I say this as someone who thinks Penta is a pretty good base. In any case, the babyfaces clear the ring in what was more of a perfectly fine extended angle than a match. This has been another wrestling- heavy show, which again is not necessarily my preference for an episode of LU. Big Ryck (w/Cortez and Cisco) enters the ring first; Prince Puma walks out to meet him by his lonesome. Vampiro rightly points out that Konnan sent Puma to the wolves by requesting this match. Ryck immediately goozles Puma, who responds with fists before advancing too far and eating a knee to the gut that he sells by leaping way into the air before slamming himself face-first on the mat. Ryck proceeds to beat the shit out of lil’ ol’ Puma. Puma escapes momentary punishment with a low kick to Ryck’s knee, then fights off Cortez and Cisco when they invade the ring. Ryck gets to his feet and catches Puma as Puma tries a leapover on a corner charge, but Puma manages to twist his way into a tornado DDT; Ryck goes to the floor after that, and Puma waits until Ryck and his flunkies are grouped together before diving onto the whole mass of humanity. The heels do manage to regroup; Cisco runs a distraction and allows Ryck to hit Puma with a blindside lariat. I’m not sure that this match, which has been perfectly fine, is fitting the whole “street fight” stipulation very well. It feels like pretty much any other singles match so far. Cortez is split wide open over his eyebrow, by the way, which is the only thing about this match so far that screams “street fight.” Finally, Cisco finds a trash can and tosses it to Ryck in the ring, which screams more “garbage brawl” than “street fight.” I feel strongly that everyone should wear jeans and taped fists to a street fight and glass bottles and belts are a more appropriate weapon than trash cans. Ryck tosses Puma into the trash can after wedging it between the ropes in the corner, then presses Puma face first onto the trash can to boot. Ryck’s tired after all that work, so he sits in a chair and calls his boys in to beat Puma down while he watches. Of course, Ryck’s dipshit flunkies lose control of the match, eat a double DDT, and allow their boss to get dropkicked right off his chair. On one hand, this match is doing what it’s supposed to by showing Puma endure a one-on-three disadvantage and fight his way through the damage. On the other hand, the action itself isn’t very good. Puma wakes Ryck up with a kendo stick shot; Ryck catches the second one, then yanks Puma in and clubbers him to the mat. The trio of heels once again triple up on Puma, tossing him into a ladder and grab a table. They don’t set it up, though, instead preferring to hang Puma from the ladder and prepare a caning session. That’s when Johnny Mundo, like a goofy parkour-loving Batman, slinks onto the top of Dario’s office and leaps from there all the way into the ring. Mundo knocks Ryck away and holds off the flunkies, then grabs the ladder and wipes the flunkies out by tossing it on them. Ryck tries to attack Mundo with the kendo stick, but Mundo dives at him, knocks him to the mat, and then grabs a chair. He loads up a chair shot, but Ryck dives out of the way and Mundo clobbers Puma. The flunkies quickly score a team Codebreaker on Mundo, then set up the table so that Ryck can dump Puma through it with a uranage and cover for three. Meh. These garbage brawls do nothing for me. The best LU in my opinion is full of story that drives the matches, but this show had too much mediocre wrestling to drive the story. Drago rules, but otherwise, LU should have way more talking and maybe one fewer match than this episode did (or it should be ninety minutes long so that it can have four matches a week and fit in more seedy backstage interstitials). Maybe I’ll feel differently as more characters are added to the roster; as of now, I can see why I bounced right off of LU the first time I tried to watch it. 2.5 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Season 1, Show 4: “Thrill of the Hunt,” or Master Hunter Challenge: Skin One Lizard As we LUCHAAAAAA once more, I wonder who is going to turn on whom first: Dario Cueto or Konnan? Recap: Dario Cueto and Big Ryck target Johnny Mundo; Konnan tries to steer Prince Puma away from getting involved in that particular feud. Somewhere in a dingy warehouse within a neglected industrial district in the Greater Los Angeles area, we start our next episode with Matt Striker and Vampiro opening the show and reminding us about Chavo Jr.’s rampages over the past couple of weeks, after which we go right to the ring so that Sexy Star can cut a promo in which she threatens that “stupid coward” Chavo Jr. with revenge for Chavo’s attacks on her, Mascarita Sagrada, and Blue Demon Jr. She even promises to end the Guerrero dynasty. Does she know about Eddie’s secret son? She might want to take care of him first while he's still young and weak. Ivelisse Velez interrupts and cuts an annoying heel promo in which she declares herself to be the finest of the lady luchadores as opposed to Star. Ivelisse, and I'm paraphrasing here, claims that Sexy Star and her mask are both ugly and also that Star sucks, unlike Ivelisse. This starts a brawl that is now a match, I guess. Vampiro mumbles something about this whole deal being “anti-Diva,” and we get it, you’re not like WWE. Then, Striker says there will be lots of “hair-pulling, punching, and kicking,” which is like the opposite of being anti-Diva. Anyway, these ladies actually do wrestling moves since they are wrestlers, Striker, you moron. Alas, neither of them are very good workers, so it’s a match done at half-speed and with just enough adequacy in the work to make it passable. The funny thing about the “divas” critique of WWE is that, even though it’s still true of their presentation on major television, at this point WWE had stocked NXT with better women’s talent than LU has, and while I believe that LU gets better at bringing in women’s talent, it never passes NXT in that respect. After Ivelisse has a short, dull heel control segment in which she can’t get more than a two count, both women get to their feet and have a chop-off, which Sexy Star wins and punctuates with a Codebreaker. Both women take some time to recover from that, but Star beats the ten count and ramps up her offense, scoring two after a trio of rolling verticals. Star pulls Ivelisse back to her feet, but Ivelisse slaps her, then hooks Star and takes her to the mat before getting a pair of two counts. A frustrated Ivelisse bangs Star’s head on the mat, but wanders over and barks at the ref instead of following up, which means that she turns around and gets caught by a revived Star, who wraps on a La Magistral and earns three. This match was the epitome of bang average, which actually might be a slight compliment given the low ceilings of the workers involved. Seedy backstage interstitial: Dario Cueto slithers up to Drago and asserts that since Drago neither pinned someone else or got pinned in last week’s Triple Threat Match, he’s got no idea how good or bad Drago might be. Therefore, as an additional test of Drago’s mettle, he’s being booked against LU debutant King Cuerno tonight. Pentagon Jr. is in the ring complaining about how he gets no respect from anyone in Mexico, which is a real point of pain for him. He’s glad that Dario Cueto, his new boss, seems to respect him though. He promises to make everyone respect him starting with Rey Fenix and assures us that he has zero fear of Fenix or anyone else. The Lucha Brothers PRE-EXPLODE next! Fenix makes his way to the ring where after a commercial break, he hooks it up with Penta in a singles match. It’s probably smart to have these two establish themselves for a stateside audience by wrestling one another considering they’ve done it all their lives. Anyway, forgive me for seeming flippant about their work, but they do the typical early standoff leading to a babyface dive thing that feels like a MOVEZ~ exhibition rather than a match, and it does nothing for me at all. It’s just two good athletes doing disjointed spots that mean nothing in context and are discrete athletic stunts with no interesting in-match narrative that I can really gather. Fenix does one spot that is essentially a statement of intent for this style in which he runs up the ropes and then feet-first bounces downward off the second rope and right back to the top rope in a standing position so that he can complete a missile dropkick. It was both an awesome athletic spectacle and total empty calories. Those extra bounces didn’t add any impact or momentum to the move from a kayfabe standpoint. It was just flourishes for the sake of flourishes. I got about as much pleasure out of watching him do this as I get from watching an elite gymnast on the balance beam or pommel horse, but the best pro wrestling matches go beyond the simple enjoyment of athletic feats. Fenix is an awesome athlete, but he’s a terrible worker IMO, at least at this time. I’m not sure if he got better by the end of his AEW run. Of course, if you appreciate his philosophy for how to wrestle a match, he’s a great worker. Penta’s work is far more watchable in my view, and he does a fine job as the base for all this nonsensical overcomplicated spot garbage that his lil’ bro is doing. Anyway, both men throw endless bombs at one another with no flow or sense of real struggle for longer than I’m interested in watching it happen. Finally, after what feels like about a decade’s worth of busy, noisy stuff thrown into this match, Fenix wins with a flipping C-4 from the top rope, which is too bad since Penta is the guy who should be getting the initial push here. I’m going to call it the way I see it even if the moves were generally technically crisp: bad match! Hype video: King Cuerno is essentially the Kraven the Hunter of Lucha Underground, right down to the fervent belief that there are merely predators and prey, and Cuerno aims to be the most apex of predators. Drago and King Cuerno face off, and I wish that we had more backstage stuff because the talking on this show has generally been better than the wrestling for the first few episodes. I think this is the first show with more than three matches because Johnny Mundo versus Big Ryck is also on this card. Drago and Cuerno trade holds and moves early before Drago finds out that he has less striking power than Cuerno does. Drago next tries a headscissors, but Cuerno is too strong and holds his ground. Hey, this seems like the sort of spots that Mil Muertes needed in his debut match; these spots where Cuerno is presented as a beast who is hard to knock down would have been perfect for Muertes/Demon. Drago picks up the speed and the quick strikes and actually snaps Cuerno to the mat with a trip, then follows with a rana to the off-balance Cuerno. However, his next headscissors attempt doesn’t work as Cuerno uses his strength to dump Drago face first to the match. He rakes Drago’s eyes and forehead casually – too casually, as it turns out, as he shoots Drago in, gets reversed, tries to toss the ref down in front of him to stop Drago’s run, and then is hammered anyway when Drago uses the ref as a launching pad to flip into Cuerno and complete another headscissors. Cuerno topples to the floor, where Drago follows with a pretty cannonball, but Cuerno quickly recovers when Drago dumps him back in the ring and scores and enziguri. Drago falls back to the floor, and Cuerno runs the ropes and scores a nice tope suicida. Cuerno chops Drago, then rolls him back in the ring and looks supremely confident while doing so. He again relaxes too much while shooting Drago in; Drago does a move I’ve never fucking seen before in which he springboards off the ropes into an armdrag, but then holds onto the arm, wraps himself around Cuerno's shoulders, and almost does an inverted Oklahoma roll to hold Cuerno’s shoulders to the mat for three. That finish ruled, as did this match. It got Drago over for me because he had to survive this bigger, stronger opponent in any way he could, and he used his smarts and speed to manage a victory. Meanwhile, Cuerno established that he can be dominant, but he also needs to maybe take his prey a bit more seriously because this prey is not afraid to fight back. Excellent bout! Seedy backstage interstitial: Prince Puma works out on some probably stolen gym equipment. I bet it fell off the back of a truck. Konnan walks in while Puma does crunches and exhorts Puma not to interfere with the main event, even if Mundo ends up being outmatched or outnumbered. Puma doesn’t respond because we’d all find out he’s a dude from the Midwest if he spoke, but suffice it to say that through Konnan’s increasingly frustrated tone and Puma’s good facial expressions, Puma isn’t promising Konnan anything here. Big Ryck (w/cigar) is in the ring, awaiting Johnny Mundo’s arrival. I remember enjoying Ryck’s ECW work, though he did work quite a few strong workers in what at that point was already a very controlled environment. Here, he does what he’s best at, which is be demonstrably slower, but much stronger than Mundo. As it turns out, that makes for a good short match in which Ryck clubbers and lands big shoulderblocks and splashes while Mundo dodges behind, over, around, and under Ryck, earning every knockdown he gets. I actually really enjoy Ryck just doing the basics as it sits in stark contrast to most of the flippy speedy dudes he shares this company with. And of course, when most of the guys you land shoulderblocks on are way smaller than you, shoulderblocks can be used like wear down moves instead of transitional moves. As the match winds down, Ryck tries a uranage, but Mundo slips away and hits a springboard kick for two…which is when we cut to the back and see Cortez and Castro attack Puma in the locker room, tossing him headfirst into a locker before running away… …and to the ring, where they attack Mundo in full view of the ref, drawing a DQ. This obviously will draw Puma into the fray, but I wonder: Did Dario Cueto tell Cortez and Castro to attack Puma, knowing that Puma would respond and thus starting a rift between Konnan and Puma to some end he's got in mind? Or rather, did he have Cortez and Castro do it simply as a preventative measure? Or did he not do it at all and just let Ryck be the one to give the orders? Anyway, Ryck hits a standing uranage on Mundo that sends him through a table to end the show. I’m interested in seeing where this goes if only because I trust Lucha Underground’s writers to take the thread of Puma getting drawn into Dario’s feud with Mundo and run with it. The second half of the show really saved the first half! 3 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Season 1, Show 3: “Cross the Border,” or Penta and Fenix Shall Be Together in Paradise It’s summer and my workload is way lower as a result and I love it and it’s hot outside but it’s cool in this room and I got my morning workout in and now I’ve had a small lunch and I get to do whatever I want to do and what I want to do is watch, think about, and talk about wrestling, so let’s LUCHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Recap: Chavo Jr.’s loss to Blue Demon Jr. in episode one (and Dario Cueto shit-talking him for it) leads to Chavo Jr.’s heel turn on Demon in episode two; Mil Muertes and Catrina join the seedy underworld that is the Temple; finally, Dario really has it out for Johnny Mundo, lemme tell ya! During that recap, Matt Striker says something silly on commentary that I missed when he originally said it during the previous episode. He queries about Chavo’s heel turn: “What is Chavo’s motivation?” I suppose that I can be a little bit charitable and assume that Striker isn’t privy to what goes on off-screen and away from the ring in kayfabe. Maybe he didn’t see Dario winding Chavo up for tapping out to Blue Demon from a kayfabe standpoint. Still, it might be that Chavo’s embarrassing tap out loss to Demon might be a clue to Chavo’s motivation, Striker, you absolute dolt. Matt Striker is just Scott Hudson with an annoying voice, and yes, I mean that comparison as the sickest of burns and gravest of insults. The sun is going down in Los Angeles, and that means it’s time for a grey market and probably illegal lucha show! Konnan peeks through the blinds of Dario Cueto’s office at the bloodthirsty Temple crowd and remarks on how well the Temple is packin’ ‘em in. He turns to Dario, seated at his desk, and informs Dario that he’s bringing more talent in from Mexico to join this underground lucha fight ring: real-life brothers Rey Fenix and Pentagon Jr. (though not presented as such on screen here) as well as Drago. In his inimitable style, Konnan vouches for them by claiming that their talent is “on point like a decimal.” It’s easy to forget that Konnan is an enjoyable talker when he’s just spamming his catchphrase roulette every Monday night, so I’m glad to be reminded about how engaging he can be when he’s being more creative in his gabbing. Anyway, Dario asks if the visa process went okay to get them into the country, and this is the United States we’re talking about, so no, it obviously didn’t, but Konnan confirms that he got them into the country. Now, he said exactly this: “There were problems at the border, but I took care of them,” so whether he got them into the country through legal means is blurry. Cueto decides to debut them all in a Triple Threat Match, which is a real bummer of a match type, but Konnan seems hyped about Dario’s decision. I'd rather they debut on the same side of a trios tag if we're going to get a lot of dives and speed. Matt Striker and Vampiro update us on Blue Demon, who is recovering in the hospital. Then, they kick it over to Melissa Santos, who in turn kicks it over to Dario Cueto. I may have learned something about this show, which is that it is shot two episodes at a time, and that’s because Striker says that “last week,” Dario Cueto put up a one hundred thousand dollar prize even though it happened, of course, two episodes (and therefore two weeks) ago. Unless, of course, this show debuted with two episodes on night one, in which case his call was correct, and I might be wrong. Cueto, accompanied by a masked man, pulls right from the heel Vince McMahon Jr. playbook in choosing to respond to derogatory chants by delusionally reframing them as plaudits: “Gracias, thank you, and welcome to my Temple!” That emphasis on the “my” in “my Temple” was Dario’s way of letting us know that he’s Vince McMahon Dario Cueto, and he can buy and sell us. Cueto mocks fans who want more high-flying lucha matches by mimicking their annoying little whiny voices, but he then acquiesces and agrees to promote more of that style of match, starting with a match featuring this masked guy named El Mariachi Loco. Cueto says he discovered the guy at his favorite Mexican restaurant down the street and jokes that maybe the guy will play a song for them after he wins his match. The crowd, as annoying as ever, chants PLAY A SONG, and boy are they detracting from this show. Loco is booked against legendary mini Mascarita Sagrada, and of course, Sagrata runs rings around this masked crazy musician doofus in a somewhat comical yet also technically proficient manner. Loco laughs at the diminuitive Sagrada, which is an obvious mistake that only an overconfident jerkass heel would make, then mocks him by getting on his knees and asking for a knuckle lock, at which point Sagrada hits an enziguri and then embarks upon an array of lovely flips, tilt-a-whirls, and dives. Matt Striker is super annoying on commentary, asking for the “politically correct” term for Sagrada and then claiming that everyone is too uptight. Who is this guy, Matt Walsh? Just call the match, you idiot. Mariachi Loco uses his size to bully Sagrada a bit and then plunks on a chinlock before working Sagrada back to his feet and shooting him in for a tilt-a-whirl slam. The heelish Mariachi covers, but lets Sagrada up in a bit of heel hubris that I hope will be narratively punished. Marachi kicks and swivels his hips and press slams Sagrada and taunts and disrespectfully pins Sagrada with a boot on the chest, but Sagrada survives and dodges a Mariachi senton bomb. Sagrada goes on the run and hits a GORGEOUS tornado DDT that I thought was going to get three, but it only got 2.9. Sagrada tries that tornado DDT again, and when Mariachi uses his standing base to halt Sagrada’s momentum, the mini wisely transitions his head hook into a submission hold, cutting off Mariachi’s blood to the brain and weakening him so that Sagrada can then transition into a small package for three. Solid little bout! Of course, that dastardly Chavo Guerrero Jr. is still on a rampage; he runs to the ring and backjumps the victorious Sagrada just to be a big meanie. Hype video: Chavo Jr. is breaking bad! Sit-down interview: Vampiro interviews former WCW running buddy Chavo Guerrero Jr. and unfairly (IMO) runs down Chavo’s many kayfabe accomplishments, including being two times the WCW Cruiserweight Champion and, uh, a former WCW tag team champion for about three minutes. He’s not riding anyone’s coattails, Vampiro, you jerk! Seriously, Vampiro is going full 2000 Mike Tenay here and riding Chavo for being not as good as Eddy. Chavo points out that Blue Demon Jr. is living off papa Blue Demon Sr.’s legacy and then complains that El Rey executives think that Demon is a bigger potential draw than Chavo Jr. Oh no, I don’t want to talk about what television executives are thinking or doing. Plus, it breaks the illusion that Dario Cueto is the only real executive who is paying for this TV time on a niche cable channel with his filthily acquired lucre. I didn’t like this interview because of that illusion break and because Vampiro isn’t what I’d call a good interviewer. I also have zero interest in a Chavo/Demon feud, so that doesn’t help. Backstage and beautifully shot on film: Konnan and Chavo Jr. have a semi-friendly conversation. Konnan warns Chavo that there are a few unhappy Mexicans who will be looking to get back at Chavo for what he did to Demon and Sagrada, and then, we get more Konnan being Konnan: “So I suggest you dip, disappear, like a comprehensive immigration bill or a ghost.” OK, new rule: Konnan is allowed to make political references and Matt Striker isn’t. Anyway, Konnan leaves Chavo in this dingy-ass hallway with that warning. The lights flicker, and Chavo turns around…right into the masked visage of Mil Muertes. Muertes passes, but Catrina, trailing him, stops to let Chavo know that Muertes was supposed to be the guy to put Demon out of wrestling. Catrina promises that Muertes is going to take Chavo stealing Muertes's valor out on Chavo’s hide someday. Then she gives him the lick of death. Ah, I see: Muertes and Catrina were on their way out to the ring so that ol’ Muertes can squash Ricky Mandel. Vignette: We get backstory into Mil Muertes’s background; Catrina, on voiceover, says that a young Mil’s family died in the big Mexico City earthquake in 1985 and that Muertes was changed by his near-death experience. That day, young Pasqual Mendoza was so changed in mind, body, and spirit that he became the Mil Muertes we all know and love today. Back to the ring, we get the match that Mil needed last week, including a much better spear from Muertes and the monster actually taking almost all of the match. Catrina yanks on Mandel’s hair and gets a pop from the crowd. I suppose she’s not a heel, just an amoral tweener. There’s nothing wrong with rooting for amoral tweeners; Jake Roberts is a prime example of why rooting for amoral tweeners can be satisfying. Muertes drops Mandel with a Flatliner for three, and sure, that probably hurt, but at least Mandel gets a lick for his pain. Backstage stuff the crowd doesn’t see: Johnny Mundo tries to get past the two guys guarding Dario Cueto’s door so that he can have an impromptu meeting with Dario. Dario thinks he’s getting an ass kicking for not paying Mundo after Mundo defeated Puma on the first show, but Mundo calms him down and merely asks for a match with Big Ryck next week. Dario, relieved, gives it to him, but Mundo lets Dario know that in fact that ass kicking is in fact coming after he’s disposed of Ryck. Dario blanches and immediately wonders: What to do, what to do? More backstage stuff the crowd doesn’t see: Ryck refuses to fight unless he gets paid in advance, so Dario hands him a couple stacks and demands that he put Mundo out of wrestling next week. Hype video: Prince Puma visits his barrio and shadowboxes while Konnan talks up not only Puma, but the mask he wears in voiceover. Konnan says that Puma’s mask finds warriors who are worthy to wear it over the generations, which makes it like the portal-opening cap that Mighty Max wears, if you needed a ‘90s cartoon analogy to better understand Konnan's claim. Our main event is next, pitting Drago, Rey Fenix, and Pentagon Jr. against one another. Drago’s got a tongue that could also give someone quite the lick, though I would assume that most people would choose Catrina over him in that regard. I’m going to stop here and tell (or remind) everyone of my biases: I don’t like non-ECW style Triangle or Triple Threat Matches, and I especially am not a fan of these matches that feel like a collection of high spots without much storytelling tissue to connect them. With that in mind, what we get here will be very good to a fan who likes this sort of thing whereas I find it watchable enough and a decent one of these types of bouts, but ultimately not particularly engaging on a personal level. Penta is on my shortlist of guys whose look, taunts, and catchphrase I dig the most while not digging their actual work at all. He looks like a guy I want to watch every time I see him, and then he wrestles, and I stop caring. I trick myself into thinking that this time will be different every time. In fairness, his arm breaking stuff and Pentagon Dark or whatever he called himself was the most that I’ve ever liked him, and I believe that happens in a season or two, so I am looking forward to that. Fenix is a great athlete whose stuff looks completely choreographed and leaves me cold. Drago is, uh, fine, I suppose. I think the best thing about this match is that it is on the shorter side, which it should be since everyone hits about a billion bombs right from the start. Fenix leaves the ring and limps up the stairs while Dragon and Penta work a sequence in the ring that is my favorite in the match because it’s just Penta trying to chop the shit out of Drago. Drago eventually reverses the momentum of the match and dives onto Penta at ringside, which is when Fenix reappears on the roof of Dario’s office and dives onto both of them. They get back in the ring and work more sequences like none of the past damage matters, including the big Fenix dive spot, until the point at which Fenix hits a reverse Frankensteiner on Penta for the win. That was a collection of pretty good spots, but as a match, it was nada. At least it got these three over with the live crowd. One more backstage event: Dario Cueto paces nervously in front of a cell and monologues about how he’s going to punish Johnny Mundo for trying to intimidate him. He considers his options; specifically, he considers the grunting one off screen that is his as-yet-unnamed brother Matanza. End show. The wrestling on this show was merely okay (with Mascarita Sagrada being the standout performer, IMO), and the show was actually weaker for not having Sexy Star on it with how well she’s been insta-built as a character, but it did a good job of establishing Mil Muertes as a killer and pushing storylines along, so ultimately it was a perfectly fine episode to help facilitate some of the fun plot stuff that we’ll get to experience later on. 3 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

This is 100% true, all of it. I also think it takes a huge swing on straddling the line between conventional scripted drama and pro wrestling show and mostly nails it. Probably the reason no one has tried again is because it's a miracle that a pro wrestling company pulled it off once. This man's psyche was eternally damaged by his uncle Eddie driving him to extremes in 1998. He keeps repeating patterns of goofball behavior (Pepe, Lt. Loco, Kerwin White) with breaking bad by chair shotting babyfaces (Rey in WCW, Rey in WWE, Blue Demon in LU). I addressed where I stand on Vampiro's color above, but Striker just sounds like a guy who is trying to emulate a good PBP man rather than just being an actual good PBP man. Part of that is over-talking, which makes me think he was really into WWF specifically since that's a big WWF/E trait for PBP, but also, part of it is that he comes off sort of like Crowbar doing a Gordon Solie impression, i.e., a guy who is lampooning or imitating someone else rather than finding himself. Probably ninety minutes is best because as you can see in two weeks' worth of hour-long shows, LU has really only established the motivations and personalities of five wrestlers (Mundo, Puma, Star, Chavo, Havoc). They've also got Dario and Konnan's characters over, but yeah, Muertes, Catrina, Demon, etc., are still ciphers in a lot of ways. You know my taste well enough (which I think differs in a lot of ways from yours; we found completely different gems in the sewage that was 2000 WCW) that you can always make a guess about whether or not to watch S4 once I get there and review it. I remember Cuerno's name, but I don't remember anything about his work, so I'll be looking for this. I remember broad strokes, but not specifics, from my previous watch, so it'll be interesting to see how much I (mis-) remember from nine years ago.

Season 1, Show 2: “Los Demonios,” or Chavo Jr.: A True Firebrand There’s a whole rad choreographed fight scene to start this show, and a dude in a lizard mask jumps in and fucks everybody up, and it rules! Hey, it’s the dude from the previous week’s fight scene opener, and I think he was talking to Puma in last week's scene, actually, and was the one to explain to Puma the whole Aztec warrior history behind lucha. Hold on, these opening fight scene vignettes that started the first two episodes mean something, don’t they? I totally forgot that these shows are being framed by these opening vignettes. Hmm, something to keep my eye on. Recap: Chavo Jr. tapped out, Sexy Star fell juuuuuuust short, and Konnan wants to use Prince Puma to make that scrilla (which unfortunatey for him didn’t happen last week). We get these great exterior shots of Los Angeles to set the mood that in this giant city of millions lies a secret Aztec temple where there is much bloodsport. Things pick up where they left off last week: Big Ryck, Cortez Castro, and Cisco crow about destroying Johnny Mundo and Prince Puma. Wait, here’s Mundo doing the prideful babyface thing and jumping both guys…and he actually clears the ring. Big Ryck just rolled out without engaging at all. I don’t believe in Mundo in this role. Ryck deciding to go chill in the stands, smoke a cigar, and let his flunkies take care of things is amazing, though. What a boss! Puma soon joins Mundo in the ring to back him up, and Dario Cueto sticks his head out of his office and declares that they might as well make this an official tag match, calling for an official to get to the ring now. Hey, I just noticed the giant key that Dario is wearing on a chain around his neck. Foreshadowing! If I recall correctly, that key is later used to release Matanza Cueto from lockup, and that only happens when Mil Muertes goes rogue on Dario at one point. This dude Dario must have gotten an A+ in Multilayered Villainous Plots and Schemes 101. As much as I don’t enjoy Vampiro on color, you know who he reminds me of in that role? Randy Savage circa 1993 WWF. Though I did enjoy Savage in that role whereas I don't enjoy Vampiro in this one, Vampiro is a new-millennium version of Savage on color, and I can see how someone might enjoy his work here. Anyway, Cortez is mesmerized by a bunch of flips and double-teams to start the match. The crowd enjoys this extended shine segment, which ends when Mundo whiffs on a kick, gets rolled up for two, and eats a Cortez dropkick after kicking out. The heels don’t last long in control; Mundo quickly counters Cisco after the latter tags in before hitting an ugly legdrop in that shitty-looking parkour style that he does. Cisco tries to regain control, charges Mundo in the corner, leaps, and wipes himself out on a nice bump to his head and neck area. Mundo lands a couple of elbows, including a slingshot elbow that also looks ugly, though his follow-up cover only gets two. Mundo keeps trying slingshot and springboard shit, which finally catches him up when Cortez trips him as he tries to leap off the ropes. I do think this match is well-laid-out, particularly that Puma’s the guy who is going to get the hot tag. Mundo was established as babyface ace last week with Puma as his 1B, and now Puma will get to shine in that role as the hot tag the very next week, establishing two dangerous babyfaces to stand against the array of monsters and dickheads that Dario will be bringing into the Temple. It’s almost like someone is thinking logically about how they position these wrestlers, which you’ll have to forgive me, but I haven’t seen a lot of in the pro wrestling that I’ve lately been watching, which is why I find such a simple concept so notable. We get a shot of Big Ryck puffing his cigar while sitting in the stands, and I think WWE missed a trick by not putting Big Show and Big Ryck into a tag team called Big Tobacco and letting them smoke cigarettes and cigars on their way to the ring. The babyfaces seem to have things under control as the match breaks down, but Mundo completely whiffs on a plancha to the floor, leaving Puma alone to get double-teamed by the heels. There’s a nicely timed nearfall on a heel team kick/neckbreaker combo that I bit on as the finish. The heels set up for some sort of 3D-ish team finisher, but Mundo yanks Cortez out of the ring and Puma escapes for a roll-up. That only gets two, but Puma hits a running cutter and Mundo follows up with a Moonlight Drive that should have gotten three, but only gets 2.8. This match is maybe a touch too long at this point; if the heels are winning, they should have won with that kick/neckbreaker combo, and if the babyfaces are winning, it should have been there. Instead, we get an athletic dive from Puma that takes out Cortez and then Cisco and Mundo working a nearfall cheating rollup spot and another match breakdown in the ring that leads to a dual 450 spot and a double-pin for the babyfaces that ends the match. They wanted that visual and sacrificed what I found to be more logical ending spots to get it, and it was probably a fair trade even if it wasn’t my preference. This was still a pretty good tag bout in any case. Big Ryck’s finished his cigar up in the stands, by the way, and he isn’t happy! Not over being cigar-less, I don’t think. Over his flunkies failing to beat Mundo and Puma, especially because we know Dario probably isn’t paying him shit as a result. Which I guess means that with no money to pay for more of them, he will be cigar-less, so I guess he probably is mad over both, actually. Backstage plot advancement: Konnan gasses up Prince Puma after the tag match, but also warns Puma away from Mundo and basically tries to keep Puma under his strict influence. Mil Muertes has been brought in by Dario to finish off Blue Demon Jr., and does this mean Catrina is with him? It does! I’ll just say it now and get it out of the way: Catrina is the best and my T-levels are incredibly healthy. We get her voiceover on a short debut vignette for Muertes here. Son of Havoc and Ivelisse Velez stand in the ring, awaiting the arrival of their opponents Chavo Guerrero Jr. and Sexy Star. While I agree with zendragon that signing enough women to have their own division is ideal for any televised wrestling promotion, I enjoy a good mixed tag or intergender match if it’s worked competitively and not creepily. My attitude on promotions having dedicated women’s divisions versus putting on intergender matches is por qué no los dos? Vampiro puts the intergender match idea over as equal opportunity for women, which honestly is kayfabe true in wrestling. As an analogy, it’s not like there are weight divisions, and even when WCW semi-strictly kept them, the cruisers wrestled the heavyweights (and super-heavyweights) all the time. Why not have the same be true of gender divisions, which are largely analogous to weight class divisions between male wrestlers? Heavyweight males can't become cruiserweight champ or women's champ, but cruiserweights and women should be able to become heavyweight champ. I digress; Chavo and Havoc start things out. Chavo pulls Havoc around by his beard in a nice spot. Chavo tries to pick things up against Havoc, but Ivelisse puts a knee in the small of his back as he bounces off the ropes, and Havoc follows up with a big knee. Ivelisse tags in, stomps a mudhole in Chavo, and lands a series of kicks while Chavo tries to work his way out of the corner. The heels do a solid job of trapping Chavo in their corner, but when Havoc makes the mistake of whipping Chavo into the ropes and ducking down, Chavo kicks him and rolls toward his corner, making a tag to Star. She scores a series of kicks before running right into a Havoc back elbow. Havoc drags Star to the corner while Striker and Vampiro get over the idea of women’s empowerment in lucha generally and Ivelisse and Sexy Star proving themselves as the best on the scene regardless of their gender specifically. This is also around the time that Saint Stephanie McMahon fixed gender issues in WWE and practically the whole world by graciously ending the practice of calling women’s wrestlers “divas,” even allowing the women in NXT to have competitive wrestling matches like the men did, so a) all hail St. Stephanie, truly wrestling’s own Betty Friedan, and b) seriously, though, this was an interesting throughline or trend in televised pro wrestling at this time, re-evaluating how women are used or talked about on the card. I feel like most folks thought really positively about this back then, but in 2025, I get the sense that the narrative around women in pro wrestling might have regressed in some ways. Or maybe it’s just the narrative around women in general that’s regressed. Ivelisse tags in and has a decent sequence with Sexy Star before tagging Havoc back in. I’ll tell you this much; Sexy Star isn’t very good, but LU is doing a great job of making her look like she could legitimately be good. They stick her with good workers, lay out her matches carefully, and present her like an absolute star. I wish I could somehow show Kevin Nash and Dusty Rhodes tape of this in 1999 and convince them to push Mona like this with the bonus that Mona is a very good worker and would make the most of it unlike Sexy Star. Would it have ultimately worked in 1999? Probably not considering how edgy that time period was, but I still want to see it. Havoc loses control of the match once more when he eats knees on a casually-attempted standing moonsault. Man, he’s really letting Ivelisse down. Chavo gets the hot tag and scores two on a rolling heel kick, which is the point at which the match breaks down and Sexy Star struggles her way through a brawl with Ivelisse that ends with a seated senton off the apron and to Ivelisse on the floor. Meanwhile, Chavo dropkicks Havoc back in the ring, then drops a Frog Splash on Havoc and tags in Star to roll Havoc up for three. I didn’t like Havoc getting to his feet immediately after that Frog Splash so that he could get victory rolled, but that was a nice tag match overall and this is a minor nitpick on my part. Vignette: As Blue Demon Jr. prepares for battle in the dingy backstage dressing room, he doesn’t spot Catrina sneaking up on him. She licks him: “A taste before a thousand deaths.” And what a way to go, might I add! Don’t tell me to calm down. I am calm. *ahem* so here’s another vignette: Prince Puma trains while Konnan hypes him; Konnan says that a friend whom we might know introduced him to Puma. Hmm, whom might Konnan be alluding to? While Konnan puts over Puma’s lucha bonafides, I must note here that I’m in the middle of the latest Between the Sheets Patreon podcast, which covers a Konnan interview with Wade Keller’s Torch that was published in the mid-‘90s. It ended up being well-timed with the start of this re-watch, and I have to think that LU must have been an exciting prospect to Konnan considering that two decades before it started, he had successful tours of the United States with AAA and seemed to think that they were on the cusp of breaking into he country in a big way. And now in 2025, they sort of have finally broken all the way into the U.S. market in their own fucked up way, haven’t they? Blue Demon Jr. stands in the ring, awaiting Mil Muertes (w/Catrina). Muertes is a fun wrestler when he’s throwing around smaller dudes, which makes me wonder how wise it is to have his first match be against a guy almost as big as he is. They’re putting him over as a monster, and it makes me think that they should have flipped things around and had Chavo Jr. be the guy Demon’s position instead. Demon throws a bad front dropkick and claps his hands in clear view of the camera as he does it, so what I’m saying is that this match isn’t working for me at all. Uh, except for Muertes's valet-slash-Aztec priestess. She’s great. More of her, please. I said I am calm; please stop asking if I am. Demon is also taking too much of this match. It’s a wonder that Muertes got over as a beast considering this debut match. For as much as LU’s bookers (who are they – Konnan is one, I’d guess?) got right the first couple of weeks, they botched this Mil Muertes debut. Muertes hits a nice lungblower at one point, but lands a weak-looking spear and a Flatliner to win the match at another point, so the pro wrestling gods both giveth and taketh away, I suppose. Muertes beats down Demon after the match until a) Catrina gives Muertes something that commentary describes as a “stone” and b) Chavo Jr. runs down holding a chair to make the save. That last part is a fake out as Chavo cracks Demon with the chair and beats him up, knocking out a couple of refs and young boys along the way. Sexy Star runs out to try and reason with her tag partner from earlier tonight, so Chavo completes his heel turn by laying her out with the chair, too. OK, that was a pretty good way to cement a heel turn. I suppose that since a former WCW star is in the ring, it’s only appropriate that we get a stretcher job to end the show. Don’t mind the gratuitous stretcher job, though. This episode of television was much better than any episode of 2000 WCW. I think considering that this show has somehow made Sexy Star the most sympathetic and rootable-for babyface in the company (and maybe in televised wrestling at the time) by a wide distance, it deserves a ton of love, and damn the ineffective Mil Muertes debut that ended up with Chavo Jr. inflicting Blue Demon with more damage than the man of a thousand deaths did: 4 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

Season 1, Show 1: “Welcome to the Temple,” or Super Dario Odyssey Let’s watch some LU-CHA UNDERGROUND! Even the stuff with Jake Strong as champ! My experience with Lucha Underground was that I watched the first few episodes on first run, decidedly did not like it, and then came back to it later and actually enjoyed it. Tastes change. I didn’t see all of its original run – I think I came back and watched most of it in about 2016/2017, but I missed some of the later unfortunate plot twists that I have only heard tell about, and it's been almost a decade since I've watched through it at all. Anyway, we’ll see how this goes. Hopefully, wherever this goes, it gets there before Cineverse loses the rights because while there is an archived backup, it’s a tenuous one as backups of copyrighted material often are! One big thing that Lucha Underground has going for it is that the episodes are short. Two or three wandering hours of endless show is not the best experience. There’s a whole cinematic to open. It’s a giant lucha fight, followed by a whole cinematic about the history of Aztec warfare and how the venerable institution that we call lucha libre can trace its roots back through this history. Skeezy millionaire Dario Cueto loves the lucha tradition so much that he bought a warehouse in an industrial district somewhere in Los Angeles and refashioned it into a modern-day Aztec Temple, which is a rad concept for a wrestling show, IMO. Goddammit, it’s Matt Striker and fucking Vampiro. Fuck. Whatever, I pledged not to watch this show on mute, and even though I’m regretting it right now, I’m sticking to it. Melissa Santos introduces Dario Cueto, who comes to the ring while Vampiro explains in brief the ethnic tension between Spaniards and Mexicans as a way to explain why this crowd would like Dario to get fucked. I appreciate the nuance even if a lot of the crowd is actually white dudes from America. The crowd is receptive to Dario’s love of violence, though, and TBH I also think violence is rad in controlled settings with consenting participants and the necessary health, etc. regulations. Dario quotes 50 Cent, then holds a briefcase full of bonus money that he shall give to whoever does the most enjoyable violence tonight or something of that nature. He introduces our first match… …which pits Blue Demon Jr. against the incredibly underrated and yes, I’ll say it, GREAT Chavo Guerrero Jr. I will say that Vampiro is useful for filling in history on the luchadores for the viewers, so maybe as that was less of a thing he needed to do as the wrestlers got established, he summarily got worse at his job. We’ll find out together. Chavo and Demon do some decent mat wrestling to a stalemate to start. I like how smudged and infectious the mat looks, which we get a good view of on an overhead shot. That’s a nice visual touch that adds to the “underground fight ring” feel. Chavo is so fun to watch. He’s in his forties and doesn’t have nearly the athleticism he had in 1996, but he still has a solid amount of it, and he’s just so good with his timing that it doesn’t matter. Chavo gets worked over until he manages to hit a counter tornado DDT that only gets two because the move seems to have lost its power since 1998. Chavo follows Demon to the floor with a slingshot crossbody, then rolls Demon back into the ring and gets far too ambitious, going up for a moonsault that Demon easily stops by casually getting up and tripping him. Demon misses his own senton bomb attempt and sells a knee injury upon landing. Chavo sets Demon on top and attempts a rana, but Demon blocks it, scores a diving powerbomb from the top, and follows up with a Scorpion Deathlock sort of move in which he also yanks back on Chavo’s arm while tying up his legs; Chavo taps out. That’s my loveable loser Chavo! Decent match. I will say that while it was wise to put Chavo in the first LU match since he’s well known to audiences from the States, this match was between two older, slower wrestlers that probably didn’t showcase the style of speed and big risks that came to be, in my mind, this show’s house style (at least when Mil Muertes or Matanza Cueto weren’t flinging smaller dudes around). Boy, do I hate Melissa Santos’s ring announcing. The syllables that she sometimes chooses to inflect make no sense! Dario Cueto meets with Konnan, the latter of whom can talk up a storm and actually holds his own with an actual trained actor in this scene, though then again, Konnan acted in Mexico and has more experience at it than a lot of wrestlers. Both men discuss the talent they’re bringing to the company in sinister tones. Konnan’s got a guy from East L.A. who he thinks is the best, and Dario notes he signed Johnny Mundo just because Mundo is a total dork who doesn’t understand the world that he’s stepping into; Dario suggests that maybe if Konnan’s dude beats some respect and knowledge about what lucha is really like into Mundo, maybe they can come to an understanding. And by “an understanding,” I mean “a cash settlement.” Hype package: Konnan speaks over video of Prince Puma, who is his guy from the barrio in East L.A., somehow. I mean, at least it’s not Chief Jay Strongbow actually being an Italian-American guy, I suppose. Konnan does a fantastic job of getting over the Aztec history that informs the modern-day Temple and makes clear the importance of the mask to these traditions. I do get a kick out of Konnan saying that Prince Puma’s spirit animal is a jaguar. Then why isn’t he Prince Jaguar? Those are two separate North American big cats! Anyway, good hypin’. How the heck did a character like Son of Havoc find his way into a grungy warehouse in Los Angeles? That’s some backstory that I’d like to be filled in upon. Anyway, he’s wrestling Sexy Star… Hype package: …who gets her own sympathetic backstory about how becoming a masked wrestler lifted her up from a life of abuse and punishment and gave her purpose and confidence as a woman who can hang with the dudes by kicking the crap out of them. As a guy who agrees with Ted Turner on the value of, and note I am merely using his words here, getting “a broad to whip the hell out of all the men” on my wrestling shows, I am super into it. I don’t have an issue with intergender matches at all if they’re worked like any other match and don’t delve into weird sexual assault-teasing spots or anything of that nature, though I know that the topic of intergender matches was a bone of contention for some folks who spent a lot of time online talking about wrestling a few years back (and yes, some of the criticism was for good reason, like suggesting that companies bring in more women to wrestle one another). The thing about Sexy Star is that she sorta stinks, though, and I wish there was a better wrestler to take this spot and do this girl power gimmick. Anyway, Havoc is a sexist douche and refuses to wrestle a woman, so she pretends to leave and take a count out before hopping back in the ring and jumping a celebrating Havoc from behind. Havoc’s sexism is his downfall, though. He has a size and power advantage, but he doesn’t take his opponent very seriously at all. This is a well-worked match, though: Sexy Star comes close to victory with a diving crossbody, but she tries to follow up bulldog and gets countered with a backbreaker; Havoc covers and makes sure to pull the tights to earn a three count. Star’s progression over the years probably counts as one of the better “fightin’ overmatched babyface” character stories in the past couple of decades. Dario Cueto excoriates Chavo Jr. for tapping out earlier, which Dario considers to be very un-Guerrero-like behavior. Dario says that Chavos who don’t put Blue Demons out of wrestling don’t get paid and promises to bring in a man next week who will do what Chavo Nintendon’t. Johnny He Nitr Mor Mundo comes to the ring to face Prince Puma (w/Konnan). They throw speculative kicks at one another before Puma goes on the run, gets shoulderblocked to the mat by the bigger Mundo, and kips right up at what is, indeed, a sort of impressive pace. They do some nice work in an exchange that ends with a Mundo arm wringer; Puma attempts an elaborate escape that Mundo kills, then attempts another one that ends in a Mundo spinebuster for two. After that kickout, they continue to keep the pace up, with Mundo dodging strikes and foot sweeps before landing a dropkick. There’s a standoff so the crowd can self-indulgently chant LU-CHA, which is annoying, but they get back to pacey work, at which point Puma sends Mundo to the floor with a couple of elaborate headscissors and a dropkick. He fakes a dive, backflips, and poses. The crowd self-indulgently chants THIS IS AWESOME *clap clap clapclapclap*. Almost needless to say, I prefer the chant of young women yelling BREAK IT, BREAK IT while Ole Anderson pulls back on an arm bar to whatever this crowd is doing. Still the video game style of work here is fun, even if all the overelaborated moves don’t do much for me. Why does Mundo have to do like three rotations in the air before landing a kick? It made his kick look weaker, actually. Mundo is a good tag worker and a decent enough midcard babyface working from underneath, but LU exposed his limitations as an ace, I think. Maybe I’ll change my mind on this watch through, but this match isn’t making me think that I’ll budge off that belief. Puma, on the other hand, is a very good athlete. I haven’t watched him basically since LU; I didn’t see any of his WWE run and I don’t watch AEW, so I wonder how much he has improved on gluing matches together between spots. They do some parkour shit over at the announcers’ table before going back to the ring for a Mundo chinlock. I think I’m remembering why the first few episodes didn’t do it for me when I first watched; the house style isn’t necessarily my favorite when LU's bookers are pitting two smaller guys against one another, so the A-, B-, C-, and D-stories needed to kick in for me to become more engaged with the show. Also, Mil Mascaras Muertes (dammit, I'm going to do that a whole lot, aren't I?) killing dudes is fun. I’m looking forward to that. Anyway, Puma works his way to his feet and eventually scores a standing shooting star press for two. He tries a back suplex, but Mundo blocks it and then rams Puma into the corner, opening up with right hands until Puma is slumped to the mat. Mundo follows with two clotheslines and a back kick, then lands a knee to Puma’s chest and covers for two. One thing I do like is the overhead shots that production favors tossing in there. It’s a neat view of the action. Puma blocks a Mundo End of the World attempt with a schoolboy for two; both men run and run and eventually, after a number of counters, Mundo rolls through a sunset flip and scores a kick, then tries another End of the World that Puma escapes. Mundo lands on his feet, but eats knees on a Puma springboard; Puma covers, but only earns two. Puma signals that he’s about to finish Mundo off, but he takes too much time to attempt his springboard 450 and whiffs. Mundo quickly lands his Moonlight Drive flipping neckbreaker, but that only gets two. Puma tries to fight back, but misses on a wild swing, is hooked for a C-4, and ends up as food for a third Mundo End of the World attempt that actually lands and ends the match. That was a decent enough bout, though it felt like a collection of spots without the connective tissue that makes for a great match. The babyfaces show one another respect after the match, which disgusts a scumbag like Dario Cueto. He can’t be having all this love and respect in his temple! He pulls a fakeout on giving Mundo the prize money and then has his boys, led by Big Ryck, destroy the babyfaces, setting a certain tone for his character. Of course, we the viewer know that Dario’s a scumbag because we got to see the backstage interstitials, but the crowd at the time couldn’t know that. Anyway, this show probably needed a two-hour debut to have time to introduce the wrestlers coming stateside for the first time with packages and to set up some of the running storylines that would come to dominate this show, but what we got was good. I do think that this show proves that Kevin Nash’s “do a wrestling show like The Larry Sanders Show where the in-ring stuff and the backstage stuff is shot differently to signal what the in-arena viewer is and isn’t supposed to see” idea was a good one in general. The hype videos and introduction packages were good, too, and in general, the production of this show is so interesting and creative that it already has me interested to see more LU. I expect that the wrestling, which was fine on this show, will catch up to the story and production creativity by about halfway through this first season. 3.25 LU-CHA chants out of 5.

I thought Page/Kanyon and Page/Jarrett flowed well into one another, but I do think that probably the match order could have been better. Would placing Cat/Storm after Chavo/Rey and before Wall/Morrus have helped the show, do you think?

Sting wrestles bigger than he is, which I think helps a lot with that.

WCW Great American Bash 1992 notes: Bill Watts loves the NWA Tag Team Championships possibly more than life itself. What is this guy doing pushing them as the big draw of this show alongside the WCW World Heavyweight Championship? Was he aware that WCW kinda had its own WCW World Heavyweight Championships? It seems like he wasn’t even though he booked those titles in the main event of the previous PPV and also just put them on Doc and Gordy. It dawns on me that, while 1992 is an awesome year for WCW, Watts sauntered into the company after a huge chunk of the good stuff was already set in motion, especially that hot Rude/Steamboat feud and that supernova Dangerous Alliance/Sting and Friends feud. Kip Frye’s regime should get more credit for WCW being awesome during this year than he does. Tony S. and Magnum T.A. open the show as presenters and sometimes-interviewers. They talk about Sting/Vader, and we have arrived at Vader’s coming transitional title reign so that we can get that poorly booked Ron Simmons world title run that Bill Watts should also be pilloried for more often. The sad thing about it is that Simmons was over with WCW crowds at that level and could have been a made guy if Watts had booked his title reign correctly. The Steiner Brothers were beaten at the Clash previous to this show by Doc and Gordy in the NWA tag title tournament; I really dug that match, especially because it built off the knee work that the Miracle Violence Connection had already put in on Scott Steiner at Beach Blast ’92. Stateside fans are not really fucking with Doc and Gordy as far as my re-watch of the video tape shows and, probably because of their very ‘70s mat-based style of work with the Steiners, never got into them or bought the hype that they were that much of a threat compared to teams that could stand and throw bombs with the Steiners. However, as someone who would thoroughly enjoy a Dory Funk Jr. and Horst Hoffman vs. Dory and Horst’s clones Mirror Match, I love the whole fucking feud. Alas, that is not how WCW fans in 1992 felt, which is why maybe Watts should have stopped zigging and started zagging with his booking. We have one change to the billed lineup of tag teams: Hiroshi Hase’s original partner Akira Nogami has an eye injury, so Shinya Hashimoto will be substituting for him. As someone who thinks that the WCW/New Japan relationship could occasionally bear fruit, it did so almost against WCW’s inability to frame the wrestlers that New Japan sent over in an interesting way. Jushin Liger got over in America because he’s, y’know, one of the ten best wrestlers ever. After that, I’m not sure WCW got much right about it. I assume that modern-day AEW does a much better job with it, partly because of the fanbase being more primed for New Japan wrestling in general and partly because Tony Khan has a pretty deep respect for New Japan as an organization from what I can gather. What I’m saying is that WCW should have given tween Tony Khan the book way back in 1992. (No, I’m not saying that.) Where did Jesse Ventura get that suit jacket? He looks like a Jackson Pollock vomited on him. Oh, and Jim Ross is also here as his delightfully mismatched commentary partner. Eric Bischoff interviews Bill Watts somewhere in the locker rooms. Bisch asks Watts to explain the rules for the NWA-affiliated tag matches and the WCW-affiliated title match, and oh no, we’re going to have that tournament and the title match and that’s it, aren’t we? That’s this show? And then on top of it, poor old Eric Bischoff having to feed Watts questions so that Watts has an opening to explain the fucking rules to pro wrestling matches, which is of course dumb as pro wrestling matches are supposed to be simple athletically-driven tales that get at broad psychological, social, or cultural narratives and not some sort of complex organic chemistry exam. Watts starts droning on about the AL and NL having different rules (yes, newer baseball fans, they did used to have different rules). I’m somewhat checked out at this point because this is too fucking complex for a pro wrestling show. Anyway, they can dive off the top rope in the tag matches because the NWA doesn’t have dumbass anachronistic rules about that, but they can't in the world title match since WCW does have those rules on account of Bill Watts long having lost his mojo. Personally, I want the NWA tag titles to be put on Brian Pillman and Jushin Liger, but they’re going right onto Doc and Gordy. At least this is an NWA title match so Liger can do some top-rope dives. Their opponents are Nikita Koloff and Ricky Steamboat. Pillman and Koloff work an opener that emphasizes Nikita’s major size and strength advantage while I fantasize about Liger and Steamboat hooking it up. I should pay more attention to the opener, where Pillman gets smart about things, teasing a Greco-Roman knuckle lock as a feint so he can trip Koloff before dipping and dodging and diving his way into a sunset flip for two. Pillman and Liger make a series of quick tags, scoring top-rope double-axes and working Nikita’s arm over. I really like their targeted tag work; they do things with urgency and work like they know they need to keep the bigger man from getting a chance to fire off and re-assert his strength advantage. Liger and Koloff work a nice spot where Liger cuts off Koloff’s comeback with a dropkick and a shoulderblock, but Pillman loses control of the match on a Koloff shoulderblock, and Steamboat comes in, a house aflame. He even flips Liger into the ring from Liger’s spot on the apron and tosses both men outside. After the match settles, Pillman re-enters the ring and works up from a front facelock to fire off a couple of big moves for two counts. This show is made better by Ventura’s commentary, in which right now he pontificates upon the bigger Koloff being unable to sustain his energy levels as the match goes on compared to the smaller cruisers. Liger tags in and just UNLOADS on Steamboat to the crowd’s utter delight. They are literally shrieking with excitement as Liger scores a moonsault for two, drills a Tombstone for two more, and tops that off with a running senton splash for yet another two count. Ventura shouts out Edouard Carpentier on that last move. Anyway, this picks the pace right up and awakens the crowd; Steamboat escapes further damage with a back suplex and a tag, and Koloff drops a couple of elbows on Liger for two before…plunking a chinlock on Liger. I don’t know, man, they needed to keep the pace up there, but they slowed it right back down. I’m not a stickler for every tag match having that traditional tag layout, but if you’ve got two teams with four guys that everyone is apt to cheer for, then you can’t run that layout and thus need to be interesting in another way. The obvious way to do that for this match is easy: Let the three guys with pace run rings around one another and only have the heavy tag in to his power moves or maybe to get eventually toppled by the persistence of the smaller men. This, on the other hand, has had too much Koloff and not enough continuous movement for a match that includes guys like Steamboat and Liger (and even Pillman). Finally, Liger escapes trouble and hits what is meant to be a hot tag that the crowd doesn’t really react for as such, which I think illustrates my point. Pillman lands a bunch of offense, just goes off, and then…puts Steamboat in a headlock. OK, whatever, I’m about done with this match. Let’s shepherd this toward a finish, fellas. I would love Liger/Steamboat one-on-one, though. They have to have worked one another at least a couple of times, right? Pillman stops a Sickle attempt in mid-pose by dropkicking Koloff, then tags in and hits some more dropkicks, and WCW’s propensity for having matches go on a touch too long is just part of their house style almost no matter what. Vince Russo is legit the only guy who broke that tendency, and he went too far in the other direction. There is a hot false finish in which Pillman scores a pretty missile dropkick on Koloff, then dropkicks Steamboat off the apron and covers. That should have been the actual finish. Instead, we get a sleeper spot after Koloff kicks out. Koloff escapes with a jawbreaker and we get dual tags so that Steamer and Liger can have the sort of pacey counter-filled match that I would have rather had be a one-on-one match for the U.S. Championship on this show than as a series of interstitials in the middle of this match. Every time Liger or Steamboat tags out, I get a little bit bummed, which is not to say that Pillman has been bad or that Koloff hasn’t been fine. After the match breaks down once more, Steamboat reverses the momentum on a Pillman diving cross body and gets three, which bums me out as I wanted more Liger on this show, Watts, you shithead. Liger/Pillman trying to survive the onslaught of Doc and Gordy in the next round would have been awesome. I think, if I’m remembering or understanding correctly, that the Steiner Brothers’ loss at the Clash not only was an NWA tag tournament match, but also lost them the tag titles. They are, however, still the IWGP tag champs, and they cut a promo in the locker room with Eric Bischoff. Scott points out that true greats like Muhammad Ali and Harley Race also lost big matches, but what made them great is that they came right back and met adversity with more success. It’s a pretty good little promo, and Rick’s insistence that he will put the hurt on Doc and Gordy so badly that kids better ask their parents if it’s okay to watch the show is also good. Ricky even promises to involve himself in this tournament tonight some way or another. I liked this little segment. Hiroshi Hase and Shinya Hashimoto (w/”martial arts kicks” because Jim Ross is on the call) wrestle the fucking Freebirds, who suck and are bad and are the worst. Jimmy Garvin and Michael Hayes come down here looking trashy as usual and promising to bore the shit out of me in the ring when they’re not annoying me with their act. Hayes does a crappy Fargo Strut and an even worse Moonwalk, so he’s determined to try and make me hate this match immediately. Hiroshi Hase is pretty good, though! I’ve seen some of his New Japan stuff and I enjoyed his work. It’ll be a test of his talents to see if he can help carry guys like Hayes and Garvin to something watchable. Hayes does some shitty chain wrestling and then tags in Garvin; Hashimoto tags in, throws a kick, and points at Garvin. DO IT, DON’T JUST THREATEN IT. Ventura babbles on about the portly Hashimoto eating fish heads and rice because it’s 1992 and I’m watching pro wrestling. I don’t know, I’ve checked out a bit already. Wait, as Hase and Hashimoto put Garvin into a bit of trouble, the crowd chants U-S-A, so I’ve checked all the way out. I’ll tell you if anything notable happens. OK, Hashimoto lands a nice bridging fallaway slam that I really like. Someone should be doing that move on television if no one already is. Anyway, Hayes escapes FIP jail and tags in Garvin, but Garvin eats a Hashimoto kick that knocks him right into a Hase bridging Northern Lights for three. This was acceptable pro wrestling, and its strength was in not being overlong and in having a decent heel control segment. Bill Watts and Hiro Matsuda stand with Tony S. on stage, where Watts announces a joint New Japan/WCW show that will hold a tournament to see who gets to tote around the big gold belt as the NWA World Champion. The story here is that Ric Flair has been stripped of the title and the belt is finally being defended once again, and that the winner of the world title tournament in Japan will be the new NWA Champion and hopefully signed to some sort of unification bout against the WCW World Champion, whether that is Sting or Vader (or Ron Simmons). Stunning Steve Austin and Ravishing Rick Rude (w/Madusa) are our next team up; after Rude poses, their opponents make their way to the ring: Dustin Rhodes and Barry Windham. This match should be pretty good, but the thing about it is that it’s hard to care about a tournament with a bunch of short-term tag teams, New Japan teams that aren’t going to stick around in WCW for the long-term, and a likely, if not obvious, winner. I mean, is Windham and Austin having a dope opening exchange that ends with Windham drilling Austin with a taped fist a good time? Obviously, it is! However, the driving point of this whole tournament doesn’t do much to elevate the proceedings. Meanwhile, Austin is bouncing around like a pinball, selling punches and slaps like a man who would really like to be pushed beyond the TV title level already. He tags out to Rude, and I think that there’s probably not a more fun tag team in terms of bumping and selling than rude and Austin. Watching these guys eat moves and sell pain is fun as hell. It also helps that their opponents throw sweet punches that look painful, so the heels registering that damage completes a perfect visual alignment. We get our second Tombstone of the night when Dustin reverses Rude’s attempt into one of his own for two; Austin makes a near save. Rhodes next tries a big splash, but Rude gets knees up in desperation; Austin tags in and lands kicks on Rhodes’s abdomen, but Rhodes soon reverses the polarity of the match, lodges a few kicks of his own in Austin’s guts, and then tries an abdominal stretch that Austin almost escapes, but doesn’t. Austin tries to escape again and ends up on the wrong end of a Windham diving lariat that only gets two, but he finally scores a back body drop on the now-legal Windham and tags out. Rude targets Windham’s lower lumbar and tags out to Austin way too kayfabe early because Austin immediately gets countered out of a superplex and then hit with a crossbody for two. Madusa recognizes that Austin is in danger and hops onto the apron, which allows Rude to interject by grabbing Windham’s hair on a rope run and yanking him to the mat. Madusa keeps the ref’s attention so that Rude can score an illegal top-rope missile dropkick, except wait, it’s not illegal because this is a match sanctioned by the NWA, so they ran a spot that would normally make sense as a heat-getting maneuver except it doesn’t in this particular match, and I think we’ve illustrated why these rules are so dumb. You can’t expect a heel heat spot to work when it’s not actually a heel heat spot from match to match or show to show. In any case, this has been a good match and more in line with what I’d expect from talent like Austin, Rhodes, and Windham, particularly compared to what they pulled off the previous month. The latter of those guys is the babyface in peril right now, and as Rude clubs away at him, I wonder if Rick Rude is the S+-tier example of consistently great wrestling tights. I’m not sure anyone has had better tights than Rude. Wrestlers need to switch their gear up more. I again want to suggest that someone wear an LED belt buckle that scrolls insults about their opponent. You’d have to dress kinda crazy to make that whole deal work. From what I saw of Seth Rollins a few years ago, it could have worked for him. Bonus: He’d have been watchable for the first time since the days of the Shield just to see what insults scroll across the screen on his belt. After a lengthy heel heat segment and a couple of flash pinfall attempts and near-escapes by Windham, Windham hits an inverted atomic drop so that Rude can sell it exquisitely, all knock knees and tiptoes, and then runs right into Rude and knocks him own before making a hot tag. Rhodes hits a bunch of sweet offense, including a nice second-rope back elbow, and the match breaks down after Austin breaks up his cover attempt. Austin is legal, but he loses track of what’s going on and tries to piledrive Windham, who blocks it. In the meantime, Rhodes has dispatched of Rude outside the ring and makes his way to the top rope, where he nails Austin with a diving lariat and covers for a quick three count. This was a fun match, maybe a touch overlong with the second babyface shine segment, but ultimately watching these four work is so aesthetically pleasing that I can’t complain. Harley Race and Vader interview with Eric Bischoff. Suffice it to say that both Race and Vader exude confidence about Vader’s world title shot tonight. Jim Ross and Jesse Ventura hype Halloween Havoc, WCW’s next PPV show that is three months away. It’s strange that they held PPVs for three straight months in the summer and are now going to take a few months off until the next one. Ricky Steamboat and Nikita Koloff wrestle the fresh Miracle Violence Connection in this semifinal matchup in the NWA Tag Team Championship tournament. This should end up being a match built around Ricky Steamboat suffering, so that should put a decent floor on its quality considering Steamboat’s propensity for selling pain. Steamboat and Gordy open the bout, and Gordy immediately leans on Steamboat, who can only shift leverage for a couple of two counts. When Gordy gets to his feet, Steamboat does get the match moving and earn a hip toss and an arm drag, then arm drags Doc after Gordy tags him in. Ross reminds everyone that Doc is the final UWF World Champion while he and Steamboat grapple. I don’t know; I didn’t want to see Steamboat work for top control with Doc and Gordy. I wanted a greater contrast where Steamer tries to run a whole lot and keeps getting chopped down in between his attempts to leverage his speed and agility advantage. Now Koloff tags in and oh boy, this match is not very good so far. Maybe I was wrong about that quality floor. Doc and Gordy grappling with the Steiners works because they all tend to be really active in those holds and while leveraging for position. Nikita and Steamboat aren’t the Steiners when it comes to simulating amateur mat graps (for obvious reasons). At least Gordy and Koloff have a shoulderblock standoff in there. That ruled. But you know what would rule more? Doc and Gordy attempting to deal with Liger’s crazy ass as he attacks from every angle at high speed. As Ventura makes a kayfabe argument that Steamboat and Koloff should be making way more quick tags, I think to myself that it’s also a good shoot argument for how this match should be laid out. Steamboat does tag back in and finally ends up in peril, but instead of clubbing him down and really making him sell pain, they do some counter-mat wrestling with a Steamboat escape. I take some time to look up whether or not a Steamboat/Liger singles match exists and is on YouTube, but I just get a bunch of WWE 2K simulations. Dammit! Anyway, this match refuses to end already. Steamboat is doing some fine selling, but the crowd is tired and can’t get into yet another FIP segment, and frankly this segment came too late in the match for me. That’s not to say I don’t take enjoyment from Steamboat’s wobbly-legged selling or even the missed tag spot to delay the hot tag (as much as I don’t necessarily want to delay the hot tag any longer than needs must). The hot tag finally happens and is lukewarm, though Koloff shoulderblocking Gordy is unexpectedly for me a thing that I could watch on repeat. Just give me a match, three or four minutes long, of Gordy and Koloff trying to shoulderblock one another to the mat. The first one taken off their feet loses. This match just goes on forever. Why is there a lengthy STF struggle spot with Gordy and Koloff at this point? Maybe Watts should have booked a couple of singles matches on this show to break the monotony and also limit some of these longer matches. We couldn’t have a Scotty Flamingo/Brad Armstrong return bout for the Light Heavyweight title for ten or twelve minutes? Armstrong would have helped Flamingo to something good. This match won’t fucking END. Oh my gosh. Are we getting a second FIP/hot tag segment, and if so, why? Look, suffice it to say that we do get a second FIP and hot tag with Koloff as FIP this time, so let me just tell you how this eternal slog of a bout finally ends: Gordy shoves Steamboat off the top rope as Steamboat prepares a dive, and Steamboat lands right in the arms of Williams, who hits a spinebuster variation of an Oklahoma Stampede for three. Fucking finally. I rescind my former statement about the match floor, but only because Bill Watts thought that having these guys wrestle for four hours or whatever it happened to end up being was a good idea. Sign from the Jim Ross-hating fan standing right behind Jesse and Ross in the camera shot: JESSE VENTURA, DO YOUR MAYORAL DUTY: MAKE JIM ROSS A GARBAGE MAN. The guy sees he’s on camera and hits a big thumbs down right behind Ross’s shoulder. That was pretty funny! Hiroshi Hase and Shinya Hashimoto meet Dustin Rhodes and Barry Windham in the other tournament semifinal. I suppose that the Steiners helping Rhodes and Windham beat Doc and Gordy in the final could also make a lot of sense. I will credit that there can be two possible finishes to the tournament, but still, the meat of the tournament seems so obvious in how the draw would go down as to be dull. They should have had more of the tournament off-PPV before Great American Bash and just had the semis and the finals at GAB. Bonus: The teams that already lost before the tournament started would have been freed up for singles matches on this show! Austin and Rude could have made TV and U.S. title defenses. If this card is as such: Vader vs. Sting (WCW World Heavyweight Championship), Rude vs. Liger (WCW U.S. Championship), Austin vs. Pillman (WCW World Television Championship), Armstrong vs. Flamingo (WCW Light Heavyweight Championship), Miracle Violence Connection vs. Steamboat/Koloff, and Hase/Hashimoto vs. Rhodes/Windham with (ostensibly) MVC vs. Rhodes/Windham in the final round, that’s a far more diverse and thus more watchable seven-match card than what we ended up getting. That’s my argument. And even that card isn’t optimal because Watts is trying to heat up Ron Simmons, so Simmons should really be on this card somehow and winning his match. Maybe feeding Cactus to Simmons here would be a good eighth match to add, assuming Mick isn’t suffering that bad abdominal tear that had him spitting up blood by this point. Alas, this is the card we have, however, so let us forge ahead. Y’know, Dustin Rhodes opens against Hiroshi Hase and I think that this is another singles match that I’d really like to watch. However, I don’t have it in me to talk a whole bunch about another slow-ish feeling out process in a tag match. One benefit of the Freebirds match from earlier tonight is that it was shorter and to the point. I appreciate the Greco-Roman knuckle lock challenges that Windham struggles to meet when his opponents challenge him, but it’s 1990 and these shows need more match variety in them. That’s why Beach Blast was so good – all the variety. The other issue is that a lot of this opening work is work to nowhere. We haven’t had one good limb damage story all night, which is especially a shame considering the array of excellent long-term damage sellers that were in this tournament. I’ll let you know when this matwork to nowhere ends up transitioning to work that goes somewhere. As an aside, I really am wistful about this New Japan partnership. It wouldn't have rocketed WCW to the number one promotion in the U.S. spot, but I really do wish that WCW leaned more on its New Japan partnership at this time and did a sort of proto-AEW style of presentation of its stars. WCW coming off as a true international company was a strength that maybe WCW should have gone ahead and leaned into more, though again, I’m not sure its core fanbase would have taken to it like the modern AEW fanbase does. Rhodes is FIP and has nice segments with Hase, who I wish stuck around in WCW for the rest of the year. I could watch Rhodes and Hase chop the shit out of one another in a three-month feud and fully enjoy it. The work these wrestlers are doing is good in a vacuum, but man, this show is not serving their effort very well. Hase finally whiffs on a top-rope kneedrop and eats a lariat as soon as he gets to his feet, allowing Rhodes to make the hot tag to Windham. Windham goes bananas, scores two floatover powerslams on Hase, and then catches him with a lariat after the match breaks down. Windham covers off that lariat and earns a three count; he and Rhodes also earn a spot in the tag title tournament finals. All Ron Simmons gets on this show is a short interview with Tony S. and Magnum TA. He calls it “the WCW” like he’s Bret Hart and then teases that he’s looking to take on the winner of the world championship match up next. On the one hand, it’s nice to have a singles match to break up the monotony. On the other hand, it’s a world title match and should go on last. On a third, maybe prehensile hand, the idea of having the babyface title victory go on last is reasonable should the babyfaces be booked to win it. On the fourth hand, Sting is way more over than Windham and Rhodes, so it’ll be cold comfort to the fans even if it happens. The point I’m trying to make is that I don’t like the match layout of this card at all. Sting breaks Flag Code like he’s Madusa as he enters the ring to defend the world title against Vader. Sting’s got a number of candidates for his best opponent, and Vader might just top that list. Vader backs Sting into the corner and pummels the champ with fists and forearms, then hits a short clothesline that sends Sting rolling to the floor. Sting tries to punch Vader when he enters the ring. It has no effect!! Sting tries a crossbody next. It has no effect!! Vader charges Sting in the corner, whiffs, and Sting back suplexes him on the rebound. It does some damage, for once. Sting clotheslines Vader over the top and to the floor, which means that Sting propelled Vader over the top rope, and this is a WCW-sanctioned match, so—you know what, never mind. Then again, maybe Sting should have advocated to get disqualified considering what happens to him by the end of this match. Vader challenges Sting to a test of strength, and Sting considers it, then pauses to get the lil’ Stingers to help fire him up. Vader wins that one, so Sting jabs Vader in the eye, punches him, stomps his toes, and knocks him to the apron before suplexing him back into the ring. I love it when babyfaces are crafty and do cheap and cheat-y type moves when overwhelmed. I always liked a smart babyface when I was a kid (and I abhorred a dumb one), so it works well for me. Sting has some momentum and follows up on the suplex with a lateral press that earns a two count and then a small package that earns two more. A bewildered Vader rolls outside and reassesses things before getting back in the ring and putting a halt to Sting’s sunset flip attempt by countering with a sitdown splash. Vader embarks upon a measured attack, hitting elbow drops and then a big splash for maybe a bit less than two as Sting frantically rolls a shoulder out from underneath the big man. After continuing his assault with kicks and a chokebomb, Vader steps over and bars Sting’s leg, then grabs Sting’s other leg, hooks him, and turns him over in a Scorpion Death Lock. It’s not a good version of that move, to say the least. That it isn’t is a shame, too, as this is a long spot. I feel that Sting, being a master of the hold, should break out of it quicker. That’s especially true considering that it also looks, uh, less than aesthetically pleasing and therefore not as kayfabe effective. Instead, Sting does a whole “endure and eventually power out with his legs” deal, which makes sense on one level, but which I think is less effective or logical than a Sting counter of the hold (or, if you really want to keep this endurance spot, not having that endurance spot specifically be the Scorpion Death Lock in the first place). This is a good match, but it’s definitely not Sting and Vader’s best together (that would be the King of Cable Match at Starrcade). I wish Vader had done more clubbering and high-impact spots to show how powerful he is instead of spending all that time in a submission hold. Sting manages to make a small comeback, landing a wheel kick that knocks Vader to the mat. Sting follows with a DDT and then slowly makes his way to his feet and runs at Vader, but they merely bonk into one another and Vader gets up first. Vader goes all the way up top, which I will remind you is illegal in this match and only this match on this specific show, and Sting stops him by kicking him, which is another mistake, as it turns out. Vader is knocked into a prone position across the top rope, so Sting hoists him up and lands a Samoan drop, but he again is slow to cover and only gets 2.5. Gosh, Sting is selling his strain and exhaustion so expertly, but I just don’t think Vader’s offense was dynamic enough to make Sting’s selling feel in line with the damage that he took. Well, folks, this is WCW, so whether we’re in the Nitro Era or not, it’s time for a fucking ref bump. This time, Vader tries to hoist up Sting, who inadvertently kicks the poorly-positioned ref as he goes up and flips behind Vader. The poor dumb ref is therefore late to counting the pinfall as Sting hits a German suplex and bridges for what should have been three but what was only 2.7. Sting tries to finish Vader off, landing one Stinger Splash and then overjumping on the second one and bashing his head off the steel cable that connects the turnbuckle to the post. Sting does a blade job and then slides to the mat, where he kicks out at 2.7 when Vader covers him. Alas, the worked head injury signals the end for Sting, who can’t connect with a pair of wild haymakers. Sting collapses to the mat, and Vader picks him right up, powerbombs him, and covers him for the three and the gold. Sting put on maybe the best sell job I’ve ever seen from him in his life and one that was on par with Rick Rude’s match-long rib injury sell at Beach Blast but in this case, the match could have used a couple more minutes of heel control and maybe excised the long submission spot to be replaced instead with more high-impact Vader offense that would be worthy of Sting’s selling. That match was still strong, of course, but it was strangely sort of a letdown as well. Ron Simmons and Nikita Koloff, along with a group of referees, help a wobbly Sting from the ring after the bout. Jesse, good ol’ J.R., Tony S., and Magnum dissect Sting’s loss; Tony kicks it to Eric Bischoff, who interviews the new champion and his manager Harley Race. Harley cuts a nice promo celebrating his man: “This man is the greatest athlete on God’s green earth, and we just showed every single lil’ Stinger out there that THE MYTH IS GONE. THE MYTH HAS BEEN DESTROYED. *points at Vader* THIS IS THE KING OF ATHLETES!” Vader speaks and is, uh, less articulate, but he yells a lot, and he’s a peak yeller in pro wrestling interviews, so it’s fine. Mercifully, finally, this night-long NWA World Tag Team Championship tournament is coming to an end. The Steiner Brothers storm out as soon as the Miracle Violence Connection, Dustin Rhodes, and Barry Windham are in the ring; officials block their path and send them packing. I eyeball the time left in the recording – about 29 minutes. *sigh*, this is going to be another match that goes five-plus minutes too long. Then again, we need a lot of time to have a super-slow, super-grinding opening with a lot of mat graps that go nowhere in particular! There’s not much more I can say about this show and the way it’s been laid out that won’t just be annoyingly repetitive, so I’ll just shorthand this main event by telling you the stuff that seems to matter. Jesse essentially argues that the lack of ethical behavior by the heels is really just a mirror of our political system and the society that the system reinforces. He didn’t argue it exactly like that, but trust me, that’s basically what he said. There are lots of chinlocks and headlocks and some sprawling. Rhodes is FIP for a bit; after he’s done, Windham is FIP for a bit. Jesse does great work in trying to enhance the kayfabe strategy behind the match with his commentary. The big issue with the Miracle Violence Connection in 1992 WCW is that WCW’s fans like wrestling, but maybe not this type of “spend most of the match on the mat like it’s ‘70s All Japan again” wrestling, so the crowd struggles to get into things. Dustin’s babyface fire is excellent. WCW’s roster in 1992 might have been the most top-heavy roster in terms of talent. Like the ten, maybe twelve best guys in the company have 90% of the total roster talent, Anyway, Dustin never makes a hot tag; he tries a bulldog on Doc, but gets shoved out of that move and into Gordy on the apron as a counter; delirious, Rhodes stumbles right into a Doc lariat that puts his lights out. Doc and Gordy add the NWA World Tag Team Championships to their WCW World Tag Team Championships. This crowd sounds pretty bummed, but not in a “nuclear heat” sort of way. More in a “I really would have liked at least a few more babyface victories” sort of way. After the match, the MVCs cut a promo that is better than you would guess based on the speakers involved. Well, that’s probably not fair to Gordy. Doc is better than you would guess, though. The Steiners don’t even walk out and face off with them or anything*fart noises*. As bad as WrestleWar’s undercard is, at least it had two high-level bouts. GAB ’92 had a higher floor, but a much lower ceiling. I prefer high ceiling/low floor over low ceiling/high floor, which probably isn’t going much out on a limb to say!

They got away with it in 1989 because of the especially high match quality and Funk's great heel performance. Anyway, they should have crowned Sid before he jetted up north somewhere in that 1990/1991 period, but they biffed it.

Clicked on the WCW Watch Party stream just to see if they'd shifted the programming loop for while I work, and Scott Hall's turn on Kevin Nash at Slamboree 98 was a massive error. The Outsiders are massively over with this crowd and the Wolfpac is beloved. If Hall weren't an unreliable alcoholic, WCW could have run with him on top and been very successful. I think his level of stardom during this time is badly underrated. Hell, the crowd still wanted him to be the champ when he last appeared in WCW at SuperBrawl 2000. He was always about as over as Goldberg.

Bret was a heel for most of his run, though. He simply wasn't going to work in that role because he didn't work in that role when he was actually in it. I don't think that bringing him in as a heel or changing his feud partners changes that. There are, of course, extenuating circumstances. Nash gaining power as a booker until he essentially was head of creative by late 1998 is one, but in Bret's book, he notes that his dragged-out divorce during 1998 put him in a bad mental health space and specifically points out his underwhelming match with babyface Sting at Havoc '98 as one that wasn't very good because he was in no place to put on good wrestling matches. All of this is to say that maybe the answer is that there is no fantasy booking that makes Bret Hart's WCW run a successful one even if you remove Nash from the equation (though Bischoff in 1998 is trying to balance keeping Hogan happy with keeping Nash happy as his first concern rather than putting on good wrestling shows as his first concern, so forget just not making Nash the booker). Also, though I could be inferring this in a biased way based on what I preferred as a fan, watching those shows, I don't think Bret is into being a heel, either. His work is always better and more motivated when he's a babyface in WCW. The best thing he did as a heel was in his last appearance, when he cut a great worked-shoot promo on Goldberg (and Diana Myers), and obviously he had reasons to be motivated to be excellent at that.

I'd love some Boston Brawl or the named-before-its-time Malice at the Palace, both of which I believe were PPLs. There was one done in the Seattle area, too, come to think of it. I don't think the bolded follows. One can be undeniably a sympathetic babyface without being the top babyface. Him putzing around the midcard had nothing to do with his being a face, IMO. Bischoff signed him at a point where Kevin Nash, certified Bret Hart hater, got a lot of pull in the booking of the shows. That's the reason that it took until Vince Russo came in for Hart to get any type of sustained featured push (though Russo also turned him heel like the fucking bonehead that Russo is). I don't see him reprising his "heel in the U.S., babyface in Canada" character as meaningfully heat-filled. He essentially did that character without as much of the flag-fucking in 1998 anyway, and none of it mattered because a) it was a character that was well past its mid-1997 peak and b) Nash was still in control and booking most of the show into oblivion. Bret as a heel didn't exactly catch fire in late 1999/early 2000 either in the short time that Bret was around in that role. I'm genuinely curious how you'd facilitate the finish to Bret/Hogan because reading between the lines whenever Bischoff brought it up on his podcast, neither guy was remotely interested in any kind of job to the other, even a protected one. I will agree with you that Steiner should have gotten a clean win over Goldberg at some point; WCW botched their chance at Fall Brawl 2000. Steiner, not Luger and Buff, should have been the one to send him packing from WCW during that nu-Streak angle IMO.

I think that if WCW had committed to something like the Wolfpac teaming up with DDP, Sting, and Goldberg to vanquish Hollywood and then having DDP, Sting, Goldberg, and one other person (Hitman?) then defeat the Wolfpac in a War Games match at Starrcade '98, it could have worked. The problem is that Eric Bischoff was committeed to running with Hulk Hogan on top. Hogan gets the belt back early in 1998 when a guy like DDP was ready for it. DDP therefore doesn't get the belt until 1999, well after his peak as a babyface. Then in 1999, Hogan gets the belt back as a babyface while Goldberg is focused on the "Being Goldberg" Championship and Sting is booked into the ground. Then, in 2000, Hogan was getting the belt back again until Vince Russo finally just up and sent him packing by shooting on him. Meanwhile, Scott Steiner should have been the champion at this point, erratic behavior or no, and doesn't get the gold until the company is two feet in the grave and pouring dirt over itself. If Bischoff could have weaned himself off of pushing his buddy the Hulkster, he'd have had room to, say, job him to Nash and then send him home for a while until bringing him back as a special attraction babyface and fencing him off in feuds with other fading legends, which was a good use for him. Bischoff was mesmerized (or as Scotty Steiner would say, MEZMERMIZED) by Hulk, though. I agree with this, but... ...I don't think Bret Hart can come in as a heel. Even with the claim that Hart was so bad that the WWF screwed him over, a) that was the first huge backstage wrestling story where a lot of the crowd knew that Vince had screwed him IRL and b) Vince is the enemy to WCW fans, so they're not going to go, "Yeah, good point, Vince probably just had to get rid of this evil guy." Really, there was no point at which Bret should have been a heel in WCW. He had sympathy from the Screwjob, and by the time that about ran out, Owen passed and he had sympathy for losing his younger brother.

I'm actually passable at racing in Mario Kart World, which is totally down to having the free roam mode to practice within. I'm ten question mark panels away from completing those, but I still have about 35 Princess Medallions and who knows how many P-Switches to go. I'll finish this up over time and maybe even unlock Mirror Mode if that means I get to do it all again, but in reverse. This seems like a game that I will come back to throughout the Switch 2's run. I have been slowly playing RDR2, and by "slowly," I mean that I did enough missions to unlock the poker and blackjack tables and then commenced to hunting, exploring for treasure, crafting, cataloguing flora and fauna, stumbling across dinosaur bones and carvings of futuristic scenes (the latter of which I can't send the coordinates for yet because I forgot where Strawberry is located and am having too much fun slowly traveling the map to find it), and doing everything but putting Arthur on track for his utlimate demise. No wonder the Ross and the FIB members found our camp; I've spent in-game weeks, maybe months, doing anything but advancing the storyline. I need to look up whichever quest unlocks fishing and then immediately stop doing quests that advance the main story again. I almost broke Balatro twice, but the last time, with NaN in sight, I biffed it, and I haven't had it in me to try again since then. Baron + a shitload of steel King cards + a duplicated Lucky Cat is pretty great, though! I can report that much.

WCW Beach Blast 1992 notes: After working through months of bad WCW shows, I wanted to watch a couple of good ones, so let’s start with what is one of my favorite WCW shows if not my absolute favorite (we'll find out upon this reassessment): Beach Blast ’92! Actually, having watched WrestleWar ’92 a few months back, I plan to watch Great American Bash ’92 after I watch Beach Blast ’92 just to complete the string of PPVs that bridged the K. Allen Frye and Bill Watts regimes. And quite honestly, WCW for all its faults is currently my favorite promotion ever in the world. It might be largely due to nostalgia, but there is something comforting about having a random string of WCWSN matches playing in the background. I might have written about this show here before, maybe? I can’t remember, and it doesn’t matter anyway. WrestleWar ’92 was a two-match show, but Beach Blast should deliver more than that. Tony S. and Eric Bischoff introduce the show and even bring Bill Watts in to help hype the show. Now, WrestleWar ’92 had arguably the best match in WCW history on it (War Games), but Beach Blast also has a contender for that title in Steamboat/Rude, which I cannot wait to see again [Editor's note: Two contenders because I could understand why someone would name Cactus/Sting as the best WCW match of all time even if I don't think I'd agree with it]. Jim Ross is on commentary for this thing; he tries to drag Jesse Ventura to ringside, but Jesse’s lounging on a chair with a few ladies in bikinis. Ventura finally, reluctantly walks over to do his job. I wonder why WCW changed the name from Beach Blast to Bash at the Beach, but if we take these shows as basically the same show with a changed name, it has a very high hit rate of awesome shows and great matches. Then there’s 1999, but we don’t talk about 1999. Scotty Flamingo opens the show in contention for Brian Pillman’s WCW Light Heavyweight Championship. As a huge fan of Flamingo/Johnny Polo/Raven, I’m always glad to see him on my screen. Flamingo and Pillman trade counters to start before Flamingo opens up with fists and gets the match moving. Unfortunately for him, he moves himself right into a Pillman flash pinfall attempt for two and decides to beg off rather than eat a punch on the follow-up. Flamingo gets to his feet, then gets right back, uh, not to his feet as Pillman hooks an armbar. Flamingo manages to maneuver Pillman onto his shoulders and hooks the tights, but can only score a couple of two counts. Pillman reasserts the armbar, and when Flamingo gets to standing and shoots him in to break it, he wins a shoulderblock and an arm drag before going right back to the arm wringer. The challenger looks entirely outclassed; he gets to the ropes and tries to use them for leverage, I suppose, instead of just asking the ref to break the hold. Anyway, it doesn’t work, and Flamingo once again ends up tied into knots on the mat. He finally gets a break in the corner and attempts some offense, but summarily eats a head scissors and then a dropkick that leaves him hanging by his toes over the top rope. Pillman walks over and unhooks him, the nice guy that he is…oh wait, there are no protective mats on the floors anymore due to Watts, so Flamingo smacks the cold, hard floor. I mean, Pillman is kicking the shit out of Flamingo. He fakes a dive to the floor before hitting a double-axe. However, the capricious nature of Bill Watts’s WCW giveth, and it very much taketh away because Pillman leaps up to the top rope in a frenzy, ready to press his advantage, before he remembers that – oops! – hitting a move from there is a disqualification now! Personally, if I were the champion, I’d launch anyway and then take my belt right back to the locker room, but Pillman is a dumb babyface, so he hesitates and is therefore open for Pillman to grab him and hit him with a Rocket Launcher before taking over for the first time all match. Flamingo (dammit, I keep typing "Raven" and then deleting) tosses Pillman to the floor – through the middle ropes, mind you – and then springboards over with a crossbody before putting Pillman back in the ring and giving him the boots. Y’know, I do appreciate what WCW’s wrestlers were able to do with the “no moves from the top” rule, but the limiting nature of that rule outweighs the creative spots that people can manage with them. I do get a kick out of Watts trying to turn every WCW event into the TV tapings at Irish McNeil’s, though. I can imagine Watts addressing the removal of the mats to the locker room: We didn’t have any mats in Shreveport, dammit! We don’t need ‘em here! What are you complainers anyway, pussies or Commies or something? Gary Michael Capetta lets us know that we’re ten minutes into this bout as Johnny “the Raven” Flamingo lands a fistdrop from the second rope. OK, that is illogical. Why is dropping a fist from the second rope okay, but dropping it from the top rope illegal? Give me a reason in kayfabe that rule makes sense. You can’t. Pillman scores a crossbody for two, but is immediately hit with a lariat when he gets to his feet, as is the way of a heel reasserting control after a flash pinfall attempt from the babyface here in WCW. Flamingo goes to the chinlock and hooks the ropes with his boots besides, then transitions into a cover for two before…*sigh*, going back to the chinlock. Ventura points out that this is a resthold for Flamingo, but not for Pillman since Pillman is in the hold, but if that were true, babyfaces wouldn’t routinely fight out of these holds and turn the tide, as Pillman does here. He manages to work to his feet, land a few elbows to the gut and a shoulderblock, and then dodge a Flamingo corner splash when Flamingo tries to halt Pillman’s momentum. This match is decent, but the middle here with Flamingo in control isn’t very good. He gets up first even after his whiff and then, oh boy, it’s another chinlock and a couple of chokes. He’s still rounding into form as a heel in control. His bumping and selling are very good at this point, but he’s low on ideas when he’s got protracted control of the match. Anyway, Pillman and Flamingo trade counters and do a Superman/Doomsday punch spot. They get to their knees and choke one another, but Flamingo stops that with an eye rake and goes to the second rope again, where his double axe attempt is cut off in midair by a Pillman dropkick. Pillman turns up the heat with a wheel kick, a buckle bonk, and a series of punches in the corner. Flamingo does manage to counter a charging Pillman with a floatover powerslam for two, however, and gets back to his feet first. Flamingo tries to shoot Pillman in, but Pillman sells a knee injury and collapses as Flamingo tries to shoot him in. It’s a ruse, which Flamingo would guess if he just thought for a second that he hadn’t worked the knee at all, but instead, the dopey heel celebrates the damage that he hasn’t done and gets back suplexed by the possum-playing Pillman. Pillman’s cover only gets two, though. What will end this match? Pillman sure tries to finish it with a face crusher and a pair of clotheslines, the last one knocking Flamingo onto the raised ramp. Pillman’s feeling himself and attempts a suicide dive, but Flamingo wobbles out of the way and Pillman slams his head into the ramp. A concussed Pillman crawls back into the ring and never sees Flamingo’s second rope kneedrop; that puts Pillman down for good as Flamingo covers, gets three, and earns the Light Heavyweight Championship. That was an uneven bout, but it was generally enjoyable, though part of what worked so well for me is tracking Scott Levy’s development as a wrestler. A peeved Jesse Ventura complains about the sexually fluid Johnny B. Badd judging tonight’s bikini competition. Ventura: “I don’t even think he likes girls!” I don’t know, some of these sexually fluid and genderfluid dudes get numbers, and not just the numbers of dudes or other equally fluid folks. Badd, who is just supremely entertaining, announces this three-round contest that is based completely on looks. My brain says, Man, that’s regressive. My T-levels say, Awesome, let’s do this! We start with the first round: evening gowns. Missy Hyatt walks out to pops and wolf whistles; her opponent is Madusa, who wears a veil like this is some type of wedding, and yet I don’t see Colonel Robert Parker or Sister Sherri or a drive-up wedding chapel anywhere in sight. I forgot that these are the only two women in this contest, so my T-levels have sort of checked out or lowered or whatever T-levels do when they’re disengaged. Ron Simmons attempts to drag Terry Taylor’s sorry ass to something watchable. I have no idea why everyone thought Taylor was the next big thing in the ‘80s. He’s ‘80s Lance Storm except that Storm is a much more fun worker and actually a much better heel, come to think of it. In retrospect, I just drastically undersold what a good midcard talent Storm is in that comparison I just made. Simmons, on the other hand, rules as usual. I like Butch Reed a whole lot, but if Simmons is in Reed’s place in mid-‘80s Mid-South, Watts would have had his black babyface replacement for JYD. Simmons’s babyface charisma is different from JYD’s, but I think Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma would have taken to him. Anyway, at least Taylor is mechanically sound and is a solid bumper. Simmons overpowers him early, presses him from the ramp back into the ring, and then clotheslines Taylor over the top; Taylor hits his head on a chair at commentary upon landing, and that spot looked pretty nasty. As in the previous match, the babyface shine looks like an obliteration. Simmons wraps Taylor in a bear hug, but Taylor makes his way out and then dives out of the way of a Simmons spear attempt; Simmons crashes out on the ramp. Unlike Pillman’s crash out, which came from a higher leaping point and at the end of a long and grueling match, Simmons’s crash out affords some dull heel control to Taylor, but it doesn’t result in a three count. Taylor goes right to a fucking chinlock after about three moves, actually. This dude is the epitome of an incomplete wrestler. Decent booker, though. Simmons fights back with a chokebomb and some punches, then scores a big back body drop and a shoulderblock. Simmons shoots Taylor in, and Taylor barely clears Simmons’s duck down with a leapfrog; Simmons probably needed to duck down a bit more, actually. As it happens, Taylor rebounds of the ropes and right into a crisp floatover powerslam that he doesn’t kick out of as the building of Ron Simmons toward the main event continues. After the match, Jim Ross helps along that building of Simmons by interviewing Simmons after the match and gratuitously pointing out what a roll Simmons has been on lately. Simmons says that your race and income level don’t matter as long as you have the drive to be the best, but I think this is a simple answer to a complex sociological problem. I don’t know about this next bout: a green Marcus Alexander Bagwell locks it up with Greg Valentine. I’ll keep an open mind. Bagwell might have less experience, but he has more speed, and he uses it to win a series of arm drags to start. Valentine solves that “speedy kid running rings around me” deal with boots and a forearm, but Bagwell backdrops his way out of Valentine’s follow-up piledriver attempt and manages to score an atomic drop and two dropkicks, sending Valentine to the floor to consider how he can better use his experience and weight advantage to control the match. What he apparently considered is letting Bagwell try another arm drag so that he could lariat the shit out of him. Good idea, Valentine! Valentine lands chops and a rib breaker, then goes up to the second rope, where he whiffs on an elbow drop. Bagwell slams Valentine, but he misses his follow up kneedrop and clutches his injured patella – uh oh. Valentine duly works the injured knee to set up for a figure four. The first time that Valentine tries a Figure Four, Bagwell manages to counter into an inside cradle for two. Bagwell continues trying to find a way out of trouble, countering into multiple other flash pins as Valentine tries to advance his attack. He even manages a floatover vertical suplex on that knee he’s selling, but that also only gets two. However, as his adrenaline picks up and he ignores the knee injury, he tries a leapfrog that reminds him he has a knee injury. Valiantly, the rookie gets to his feet and tries to throw fists on his injured leg, but Valentine slips a right hand, lands a knee drop, and locks on a Figure Four that Bagwell fights, but eventually submits to. See, that’s why you keep an open mind. This was a fun little match that got Bagwell over as a fightin’ babyface who fell to an experienced wrestler’s targeted attack on an injury. It won’t change your life, but it will feel nourishing to any wrestling fan who consumes it. Bagwell did a good job with selling the knee. I managed to only type the name “Buff” twice in those previous two bullets (before deleting it and muttering “dammit” as I did), by the way. Yes, I am proud of this. Recap: Cactus Jack leads Van Hammer through an entertaining match in some rodeo grounds somewhere; Abdullah the Butcher intervenes with a shovel to Hammer’s back. Jesse Ventura sells that Cactus is in his element in a Falls Count Anywhere match based on his success putting Van Hammer down outside of the ring. Here comes the first match of the night that completely rules: Cactus Jack gets a shot at Sting’s WCW World Heavyweight Championship in the middle of this card, which seems weird. It certainly signals that we wouldn’t be seeing a title change. The crowd is hot for Jack and Sting squaring off on the ramp and firing fists at one another. Sting earns a backslide on the ramp for one, then back body drops Cactus’s considerable girth onto the ramp. That impact makes a great sound on top of looking good. Sting follows up with a facebuster for two. I love that these two didn’t bother with ramping up the nuttiness over time and just started out throwing bombs. Sting leaps out of the fucking building on a Stinger Splash attempt as Cactus slumps against a corner strut; he runs down the rampway and misses badly, launching himself up and over the top rope and into the ring. It’s a great visual. Sting rolls back out to the floor immediately, and Cactus follows with a Cactus Elbow on concrete. Mick Foley just didn’t give a fuck, did he? He grabs his knee momentarily, and I think that though this is setting a matchlong seed, he might have legit injured it there, maybe? I’m trying to remember from his book. I mean, he dropped that knee on concrete! Mick hits a swinging neckbreaker, and both men SPLAT on the matless floor. I mean, this match sounds like it hurts in a way that wrestling matches typically do not. This match might have some of the nastiest audio that I’ve ever heard because of how these fellas are taking moves on the ramp and the floor. Mick’s nutty ass next hits a diving sunset flip on Sting from the apron to the floor for two. I mean, what the fuck? You know, as a kid, I saw Cactus doing stuff like this and thought it was cool, but I’m not sure I quite understood the gravity of the risks that Foley was taking, whereas now, just about everything he’s doing makes me wince. Sting reverses a bash into the guardrail, but Sting reverses and the front row fans are fuckin’ LOVING it. Cactus charges Sting at the railing, but Sting backdrops him over it and then hops over and hits a fucking vertical suplex on the floor. That gets a well-timed 2.9, but if it had gotten three, I would have believed it. No wonder Sting liked working with Cactus; Foley is out here taking years off his life to get Sting over as a tough guy. Did anything make Sting more legit than surviving wars with Cactus and Vader in 1992 and 1993? I always found him to be a giant dork as a very young kid, and was kind of dismissive of him, but I do remember liking him way more at some point in 1993. Anyway, they actually slow things down back in the ring, where Foley tears at Sting’s face while yelling GIVE IT UP, STING, GIVE IT UP. He makes the oopsie of disrespectfully slapping him, though, which causes Sting to fire up and get to his feet. Cactus, trying to stanch Sting’s momentum, does the logical thing that one would do and scores a double-leg takedown before transitioning into a legbar. No, wait, sorry, I got that all wrong. What he does is hit a wild lariat that sends both men tumbling to the floor in another visual spectacle of a spot. Jesse Ventura is doing a fine job of selling how much danger Sting is in whenever the match leaves the confines of the ring. Cactus grabs a chair (kid in the crowd, insistently: CHAIR! STING, HE’S GOT A CHAIR!). Sting doesn’t hear any warnings, though, and eats a series of chair shots to the stomach and back. Cactus thinks he’s in control, fires off his finger guns, grabs Sting in a headlock…and is hoisted backward and hit with a back suplex on the concrete. Cactus’s boot hitting the railing as his head landed near it had the audio effect of making it seem like maybe his head also hit the railing on the way down. I actually played it back, and Cactus protected his head, but sold it like it did rap the guardrail, so he made sure his boot hit the railing at the same time that his head came down with great timing because it fooled me in real time. Between this and that earlier 2.9 kickout, Cactus’s timing is on point tonight in general. The thing about Cactus is that he comes off as a slasher flick villain who is dented and damaged, but who refuses to be put down. The bedraggled nutbar kicks out of Sting’s cover on the back suplex, drags himself to his feet, and wins a punch-up. After exchanging flash pin attempt reversals on the floor (!!), Cactus uses Sting’s momentum as Sting leaps at him to dump the champion across the railing. Jack follows up with a very safe piledriver on the floor, though commentary covers it by saying that Cactus’s knee that he injured earlier gave out and that he didn’t catch Sting properly. In fact, as Cactus goes up for another Cactus Elbow, Sting is quickly up and able to throw a fist into his gut, so yeah, that checks out from a kayfabe standpoint. The match makes its way back to the rampway where it started; Sting dominates, slams Jack, grabs a chair, and exacts his chair-smashing revenge on Cactus. The last one of those is aimed at the knee; Jack topples to the ramp, clutching his knee, and Sting goes for a Scorpion Deathlock. In a panic, Cactus sprawls and rolls off the ramp, breaking the hold and toppling Sting to the floor along with him. The crowd thought that Sting had him, and they get very quiet and don’t pop after Sting kicks out of a Cactus follow-up Buff Bagwell Kenta Kobashi DDT. The one mistake of this match might have been failing to end it with the Scorpion Deathlock on the rampway. Instead, Sting makes one final comeback after the kickout and retains the title with a diving clothesline from the top to the ramp. This is obviously still a classic, though. Jack squeals in rage and also maybe pain as ref Bill Alfonso awards the WCW World Championship to the Stinger. I loved this match and would argue that Sting and Cactus are a pairing made in wrestling heaven for one another’s styles. There’s an interstitial with Tony S. and Eric Bischoff transitioning us from the magic of Sting/Cactus to the equally awesome, yet totally different magic of Steamboat/Rude. I cannot fucking believe that WCW booked Cactus/Sting and Rick Rude vs. Ricky Steamboat in the Iron Man Match back to back. Is this the best pair of WCW matches booked back to back in the company’s history? Maybe Spring Stampede 1994 has a pair of matches that give some competition? As much as I liked Steiners vs. Iizuka and Fujinami/War Games as a pairing at WrestleWar ’92, I can’t say that it’s a better back-to-back pairing than these two matches. Anyway, here’s Rick Rude, the current WCW United States Champion, to tell all the fat, out-of-shape, etc., etc., folks to look at his magnificent abs, and in fairness to him, you could grate cheese with those things. Sadly, his Slam Jam theme does not play as he poses. Here comes Ricky Steamboat with Bonnie and Richie. We get our first Jesse Ventura Reads the Papers moment of the night, as Jesse is annoyed with the ostentatious family values posturing and then claims that the next thing to happen will be Dan Quayle walking out and lecturing the crowd on a similar subject. Ross retorts that Steamboat can spell the word “potatoe.” No, wait, “potato.” That’s how you spell it. Sorry, my bad. I promise not to run for VPOTUS after making an error like that. This exchange inspires Ross to also compare Rude’s popularity in the arena to Ice-T’s popularity at a policeman’s ball. Some people don’t like the pairing of Ross and Ventura, which I suppose that I understand, but I really dig them together. Ventura makes Ross a bit uncomfortable, and the friction that arises from Ross trying to handle Ventura’s style of heel commentating is highly entertaining to me. Anyway, Steamboat gets right to it as the match starts and catches an advancing Rude with punches, then drills him in the solar plexus with a gutbuster. Rude sells a rib injury, and Steamboat presses the advantage, whipping Rude into the air and down to the mat rather than firing him into the ropes. Steamboat measures a series of kicks and forearms to Rudes’s ribs, and Rude does his great selling of them, staggering, twisting his body around theatrically in pain. I adore Rude’s style of selling. It’s like he never forgot how to contort his body painfully like he did when he was the lanky guy he started out as, so even as packed with muscle as he is now, he still sells like a lanky dude with not enough padding to blunt the pain. The visual of this huge muscly dude selling like a 98-pound weakling is striking. Steamboat locks on a bearhug and then drives Rude back into he corner, but Rude puts a knee up and catches Steamboat in his recently-healed face; Ross helpfully reminds us that Rude broke Steamboat’s nose in kayfabe a couple months back. However, Rude’s really got nothing for Steamboat and walks himself right into a fireman’s carry position; Sting dumps Rude and locks on a funky-looking surfboard. In desperation, Rude rakes Steamboat’s eyes to break it, but when Rude tries to monkeyflip Steamboat as Steamboat charges back, Steamboat grabs Rude’s legs and transitions into a Boston Crab that becomes a Lion Tamer in there for a bit as Rude tries to fight out. Rude attempts to get to the ropes. He crawls…and crawls…and each time he reaches out for the ropes, Steamboat sits deep on the Boston Crab, causing Rude enough pain that he pulls his arm back. Rude finally manages to grab the bottom rope, getting a break, so Steamboat breaks and immediately dumps Rude, splashes him across the back and ribs, and drops a bunch of knees right into Rude’s ribcage. Steamboat kicks Rude in the ribs, yells GET UP RUDE as Rude collapses, and generally is fired up to beat the shit out of this guy who claimed that he beat women because Madusa slapped him and he slapped her back as a mindless reaction, such as a pro wrestler might do, before apologizing profusely to her. As Madusa would learn later in the ‘90s, if you slap a dude, he’ll be liable to put you in his finisher. Back in ’92, it’s not like Steamboat got Madusa’s ass FRRRRRANCHISED or anything so egregious as that! Anyway, Steamboat lands a front suplex and a forearm, then covers for two. Rude kicking out of all this damage is pretty impressive from a kayfabe standpoint. Steamboat presses the attack, but he is so overzealous that he runs himself into a Rude knee that hits him flush on the jaw and stuns him for three seconds as Rude pins him at about eight minutes in [Rude 1 – Steamboat – 0]. Ventura puts over the capricious nature of pro wrestling, in which one can dominate for stretches at a time, but find themselves looking at the lights because of a flash strike or counter-move. Rude hobbles to his feet, knowing that he’d damned well better capitalize on this, and quickly lands a Rude Awakening and covers for another pinfall [Rude 2 – Steamboat – 0]. Here’s where kayfabe strategy comes into play, and I can’t give Jesse Ventura enough credit for his work on color to get that strategy over. He suggests that Rude tie Steamboat in knots, maybe a few rest holds, to avoid mistakes, lower the chances of eating a pinfall, eat time, and recover a bit. He even considers that Rude might want to try another impact move and pinfall first if Rude’s feeling that his lead is unsafe, then do the rest hold strategy. However, he doesn’t agree with that impact move coming off the top rope, which is what Rude chooses to do. This is an interesting part of kayfabe strategy in Iron Man Matches, maybe one of my favorite parts of that strategy. Do you try to do damage with an illegal move or weapon, eat a DQ loss, but then get more pinfalls off the illegal move than you lost with the DQ decision? Rude calculates that dropping another one of his deadly knees from the top will do more long-term damage that is worth eating a DQ for [Rude 2 – Steamboat – 1]. As we will find out later, he is very, very wrong about that. I love that maybe the whole story of this match centers around three clear things: 1) Rude’s accumulated rib damage; 2) Steamboat being half-concussed on account of Rude’s knee strikes; and 3) Rude’s pivotal decision to come off the top with a kneedrop and give up a fall instead of maybe just dropping that knee from the second rope. Giving up a fall turns out to be a kayfabe mistake made in the heat of battle and the haze of pain. Fuck, I love this match. Rude follows the DQ ruling with an inside cradle that scores three [Rude 3 – Steamboat – 1]. However, I would argue that in kayfabe, the downtime from the ref announcing the decision and then Rude’s slow follow-up with an inside cradle allows Steamboat to clear a few cobwebs; Steamboat fires back with punches, so Rude smashes Steamboat’s face into the mat and then locks on a good-looking chinlock to keep Steamboat grounded. However, we still have about eighteen minutes, so Steamboat works up. Rude hits a seated splash to knock Steamer back to the mat, then does that awesome spot where he tries to swivel his hips in celebration, but is too hurt to complete his taunt, grabbing his ribs instead. Once again, Rude attempts a chinlock, but Steamboat gets to his knees, then stands up with Rude still on his shoulders and falls backward. Scrambling to his feet, Steamboat tries to follow with a huge running splash, but he eats knees. Rude follows with a swinging neckbreaker, but it only gets two, as do his duo of follow-up pinfall covers. We’re now halfway through, with Steamboat trying to up the pace and Rude smartly grabbing another chinlock to stop all that nonsense. Jesse argues that if the score is tied, there should be sudden death. You think he complained about this to former broadcast partner Gorilla Monsoon over the phone before this event and Monsoon remembered their conversation during WrestleMania XII? That’s my headcanon. Steamboat works back to his feet, but Rude lands a piledriver for 2.8; Rude bitches to Pee-Wee Anderson about the cadence of his count, then tries a Tombstone piledriver that Ricky reverses and drills for three at about 12:15 left to go [Rude 3 – Steamboat – 2]. Slowly, Steamboat gets to his feet and once again advances, but a seated rude grabs Ricky’s tights and yanks him headfirst into the buckles. Rude goes up top again, which is a major mistake, but Steamboat makes a mistake about as bad and catches him, then lands a superplex that is legal since both men are up top. Yeah, I don’t remember superplexes being illegal in Mid-South, so that tracks. Steamboat’s delayed cover gets only two, and his slow follow-up clothesline is met with a clothesline in kind from Rude. The ref starts a standing ten-count; Rude slithers on top of Steamboat for a cover, but Steamboat bridges up and backslides Rude for three at nine-and-a-half minutes remaining [Rude 3 – Steamboat – 3]. Steamboat now attempts a rapid-fire approach, immediately trying a couple of flash pinfalls and a cross body into a cover, all of which only get two; Rude stops the onslaught of pinfall attempts with a jawbreaker. Both men struggle to their feet, but Rude is the one to score by slamming Steamboat face-first into the mat a couple times (and yelling at Steamer with what sounds like exultant joy YOU AIN’T NO IRON MAN, C’MON after doing so). However, Rude’s lateral press only earns a two count. Rude has re-asserted himself as time winds down, but as this is non-title, maybe he should be pressing more for a win. If it were for the title, he’d have a clear advantage in that he didn’t have to win to retain his gold, but in a match that’s just about pride, a draw means little. Rude cuts Steamboat’s comebacks off and even hits a bicep pose (though not a double-bicep pose as lifting his arm on the side that his ribs have been attacked would hurt too much). Rude is doing a masterclass of selling in this match. I mean, Steamboat is an all-time elite seller and is only the second-best guy at selling moves in this bout. That speaks volumes. As Rude continues his assault, he tries a Rude Awakening, but Steamboat manages to break the hold and then land a Rude Awakening of his own. As he is not the master of that hold, it only earns two when Rude puts his boot over the bottom rope. Steamboat is irritated at the ref stopping his count, not having seen Rude drape his boot over the rope; Ventura calls for a DQ ruling as Ricky accosts Pee-Wee. We are under five minutes here as Steamboat attempts a series of pinfalls after moves. A back suplex doesn’t work, and shortly after that, Rude grabs a desperation sleeper and cinches it in deeply, even as Steamboat tries to break it by ramming Rude’s head into the buckles. Steamboat looks like he’s going out, but he manages to stumble toward the ropes. Rude kicks his arm down multiple times as he reaches for the ropes, but Steamboat is right in the corner as we go under two minutes. Maybe in kayfabe, Rude should have dropped the hold and tried another move because it took him a long time to get Steamboat down to the mat, and Steamboat has fought the hold’s effects for a long time. In fact, Steamboat leverages his legs onto the ropes and then flips backward in that Hart/Piper leveraged pinfall spot; Steamboat gets three and merely has to survive about forty seconds of Rude’s frantic pinfall attempts, which he does. Rude doesn’t even manage to attempt another Rude Awakening before time runs out. I think Rude’s panicked attempts to salvage a draw might be my favorite thing about this, and I only wish it were maybe fifteen or twenty seconds longer as a segment. Anyway, this is still the best Iron Man Match that I’ve ever seen. There is an hour of show left after those last two matches, which means that this show was atrociously segmented. How did these two matches happen one after the other in the middle of this show? What an insane way to lay out a show. As I have come to believe, WCW just had issues that were apparently endemic to it no matter who ran it. A long-term viewer would run into the same layout issues across booking eras. For a cool down that probably should have come between the previous two matches rather than after them, we have the bathing suit segment of the contest between Madusa and Missy Hyatt. Madusa walks out first, looking like a trashy biker bikini lady. Johnny B. Badd, being goofily charming: C’MON, MADUSE; LET’S GET LOOSE AND SHAKE YOUR CABOOSE! Jim Ross, being strangely creepy: “[There are] a couple of things about [Madusa] I like, but I can’t put my hands on them.” I don’t like it, Ross. I don’t like it. Meanwhile, Missy wore a two-piece instead of a one-piece and also looks like a cute beach lady rather than a trashy biker lady, so she wins this segment with the crowd by about forty touchdowns. Ref Ole Anderson, who gets his own introduction, stands in the corner and watches Paul Heyman lead the remnants of his Dangerous Alliance to the ring: Bobby Eaton, Arn Anderson, and WCW World Television Champion Stunning Steve Austin. Their opponents are the remnants of Sting’s Squadron: Barry Windham, Nikita Koloff, and Dustin Rhodes. Austin and Windham have a nice opening exchange that Windham gets the best of with a second-rope arm drag (Heyman, alarmed at the fall that Austin’s about to take: WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA). Rhodes tags in and continues the babyface shine, though Austin manages a tag to Eaton, who tags to Arn eventually, who slaps Koloff, who then tags Rhodes. Arn wins a kneedrop before going up top and being halted by Ole; I do like how these wrestlers are working spots to indicate that they keep forgetting about Bill Watts having dumb rules about top rope dives that worked in Louisiana in the ‘80s, but that don’t work for a national company in the ‘90s. Hell, WCW kept that “over the top rope DQ” rule for about six or seven years too long. Speaking of, we have a claim that Koloff should be DQ’d for hitting a Sickle that sends Arn over the top and to the floor right now! Ross clarifies that the DQ is only if someone is thrown over the top (fine), but then speaks too much and says, “or propelled over the top rope,” which obviously a move like a clothesline to a man slumped against the ropes would do. Jesse immediately jumps on that point as well. See? This rule was fucking stupid. Back to this match, which should be a good trios match, but which has been kinda boring so far. Koloff fights off all three heels, extending this watchable-I-suppose shine. Heyman calls for a timeout, but much like Chris Webber in the NCAA Finals, he doesn’t have one and should stop signaling for one. Arn and Windham go at it, and boy, this match is not doing anything for me at all. They crack heads, and Arn goes back to the top, scrapes Windham in the eye as Windham tries to block his top-rope dive, and then changes position and dives from the second rope instead. Where are Ole as ref and all these spots over top-rope confusion leading? Windham tags to Rhodes, who fights off all three heels while the babyfaces chill out and watch from their corner. Arn smashes Dustin’s noggin into Eaton’s, and finally Rhodes is your FIP. This is pretty dull heel control stuff. Ross cuts in to claim some obviously worked stats in which Madusa leads Missy in the fan vote for their pretty-off. Come on, that is some nonsense and you know it, Ross. This is the least believable work on this whole show. Meanwhile, I think we said all that we needed to say about these teams wrestling one another at WrestleWar. This is a dull nothing of a match, which isn’t an offensive thing in isolation, but which is shocking to me considering the talent in the ring. I also don’t love the hot tag spot, in which Austin lands a Stun Gun that launches Dustin across the ring and right into a tag. The match immediately breaks down and Arn finally does his dive off the top; he eats a fist to the gut, but manages to land a knee off the top to break up Windham’s floatover pinfall on a superplex attempt. Alas, Ole sees that one and disqualifies him to end the bout. Oh yeah, Ole as ref and all these Arn top-rope spots led to putting Ole over as a fair referee who didn’t let his family member get away with cheating. Hey, that crappy hot tag, finishing run, and weird decision to focus the match on Ole Anderson, Fair Referee means that this bout wasn’t just a dull nothing; actually, this bout absolutely fucking sucked. Eric Bischoff interviews Ricky Steamboat, who is proud of how he endured the Iron Man Match and won; he vows to come back at Rude for a title shot the next time they meet. Paul Heyman cuts in on the interview, gives Steamboat his props for winning the match, but makes it clear that Rude won’t be giving out any more title shots to Steamboat. Then, he cues Cactus Jack, who runs in and attacks Steamboat until referees and security mooks pull them apart. This is a kayfabe business partnership that will bear fruit in ECW a couple years from now in reality. A whiny Jesse Ventura basically takes Johnny B. Badd’s spot as the host of the pretty-off, but Badd walks out in a spangly cowboy hat and jovially agrees to share the spotlight with the judgmental Jesse. Alright, the ladies are in tinier bikins than from before for this third round. Guess what Madusa is doing for her bikini? That’s right, breaking U.S. Flag Code! Madusa and breaking U.S. Flag Code with her gear: name a more iconic duo! Meanwhile, Missy can’t make it out of her dressing tent because someone (Madusa, if her smirk means anything) stole her micro-bikini out of an envelope, but the industrious Hyatt steals Jesse’s bandana and scarf from around his head and improvises a bikini. Badd peeks inside and sells her makeshift bikini as positively scandalous, though as we find out when she steps into view, it is actually a bit less showy than the previous two-piece she wore. Anyway, the best part of this is Jesse yelling WAIT, THOSE ARE MY SCARVES and Missy, off mic, yelling back SO WHAT, I WON. That got a genuine laugh out of me. An irate Madusa attacks Badd, backing him all the way into her dressing tent, and oh man, there is now some terrible comedy to offset that funny exchange between Hyatt and Jesse. Let me summarize: The tent shakes, Jesse goes WHAT IS THAT GUY DOING TO HER IN THERE (ugh, why), and then Badd comes out looking bashful and holding Madusa’s top. Jesse just pokes his head in to confirm that Madusa has lost her top and possesses a pair of lust-worthy lunghammers. You know, Beach Blast ’92 can’t possibly be the best WCW PPV considering that it includes that string of bikini-based segments. I forgot why the card was laid out so strangely; Tony S. and Eric Bischoff transition us over to the main event, which is the Miracle Violence Connection of Doc and Gordy against the Steiner Brothers for the WCW World Tag Team Championship. Bill Watts’s laser focus on bigging up the NWA World Tag Team Championship and pushing this feud caused him to make some strange decisions. I say this as something of an outlier in that I adore this feud and the matches that made it up. I love me some Dr. Death and Terry Gordy, and I enjoy them smothering their opponents on the mat, which is apparently an acquired taste. Scott Steiner and Gordy do some protracted mat wrestling to start, Scotty eventually gaining top control and sending Gordy sprawling into the ropes to break things up. Next, both guys hit each other with a loud shoulderblock – how is a shoulderblock that loud? That was a lotta beef smacking together there. Anyway, Gordy slaps Scotty, who slaps back, and both men rain blows upon one another until the ref can get them out of the ropes and back to the center of the ring. Doc tags in and tries to gain control with a single-leg takedown, but can’t manage to outwrestle a Steiner on the mat, as it should be. Eventually, Doc backs Steiner into the corner and launches a couple of knees into Scotty’s gut, which leads to a series of counters that end with Steiner scoring a sunset flip for two. Scotty sinks in a side headlock that Doc tries to counter into a pinfall attempt, but Scotty sprawls, keeps control, and then decides to tag his dopey bro Ricky. Jim Ross notes that Ricky has a degree in education from UMich, which is a staggering concept to me. Who the fuck would let their children anywhere near Rick Steiner, especially in an educational setting? So, here is why people don’t like these matches; the feeling out process tends to be very protracted. I buy it as I buy into the aura of both these teams and believe that just one mistake would the other team to do something so drastic that it ends the match, so it works for me psychologically, but I get why people are like, Hey, these dudes are spending a lot of time laying on one another. Anyway, Ricky and Doc trade tackles and lariats until Gordy tags in and scores a huge back suplex for two. Ricky fights back, but is in trouble from here; Doc tosses Rick outside to the ramp by using his tights as leverage as Scotty complains about said tight-pulling to the ref. Doc follows with a shoulderblock, but Ricky fires back with a punch and a sunset flip; Doc holds the ropes to block it, but Scotty fires a forearm at Doc’s dome. The ref counts the pinfall attempt and then admonishes Scotty (and is admonished in turn) as Jesse critique’s the ref’s decision to count a pinfall for what was essentially an illegal move because of Scotty’s interference. This is a cagey bout, and I actually wouldn’t change what the wrestlers are doing, but I again would have changed the order of matches. I don’t see why Sting/Cactus didn’t end this show. There is no reason that Ricky Steamboat needed to be confronted by Cactus tonight and, even if you wanted to have them confront one another, you could still have Cactus do it before he comes out for the main event. This tag match should have swapped spots with Sting/Cactus. Scotty and Gordy do this really good, movement-filled struggle; Scotty almost gets a bow-and-arrow, but Gordy sprawls and manages a tag to Doc; the heels leverage their ring positioning to make quick tags and keep Scotty down, though Scotty does manage a crossbody for two in there. However, he’s in the wrong neighborhood, so Doc and Gordy easily cut off his attempts at a fiery comeback. Ricky’s not too bright, so he draws the ref’s attention by getting into the ring, which allows Doc to kick Scotty right in the knee; Gordy follows up with a kneebar and cuts Scotty down with a lariat as Scotty gets back to a vertical base. His cover only gets two. As the match’s long-term FIP, Scotty does a good job of selling and timing his comebacks, most of the latter being aborted by the heels attacking his injured knee. I like the work a whole lot, and I think the heels work holds rather than just sitting in them, which is immersive to me, but other people simply might not like the mat-based approach. For example, Gordy working a single crab, thinking about transitioning into an STF, noting that Scotty squirmed toward his corner a bit, and choosing to go back to cinching in the single-crab before choosing to tag out worked for me. I buy that Gordy was tired from trying to corral this big dude Scotty and needed to get his partner to take over for him in that bit. Doc can’t hold Scotty back from crawling over while in a Boston Crab, though; Ricky hits a hot tag and fires off fists, then lands a diving bulldog from the second rope on Doc. Ricky clubs Gordy, who recovers and absolutely lights up Scotty with a lariat as Scotty goes to the second-rope. Meanwhile, Ricky is distracted and eats a lariat from Doc, who then hoists Ricky onto Gordy’s shoulders as Gordy sits on the second rope. However, Gordy is illegal, so when he tries to cover, the ref won’t count; that delay in getting up and letting Doc cover allows ricky to tag out. Gordy tags in and scores a pretty dropkick, but that only gets two as well. Rick is deep in trouble as Scott tries to crawl back to his corner; the MVC hit a double-shoulderblock for two as time winds down on the match. There are five minutes remaining in the contest as Doc hits a pair of rib breakers for two. The heels press their advantage, working against the clock since a draw won’t earn them the gold. Ricky tries to fight out of the corner, but is stomped down by the heels. Then, in what I think is a kayfabe mistake, Doc goes to a chinlock. He should be picking up the pace here and throwing bombs to try and get a victory. This is a mistake in the context of the match in my opinion and, as Capetta announces that there are three minutes left, I think that we should be in a more busy finishing run. Doc hits a sitout powerbomb for two and…goes to a front facelock. As much as I have enjoyed this match, I don’t like the layout of this finishing run. Even if they’re working toward a draw, the heels should be wrestling with way more urgency. Doc finally decides that, with under two minutes to go, maybe he should try his best move, but Ricky blocks the second part of the Oklahoma Stampede; Gordy tags in and trades very loud lariats with Ricky. This match sounds like it hurts almost as much as the Sting/Cactus match at points. Ricky makes a hot tag to Scotty with under a minute to go; Scotty cleans house and then scores a double-underhook powerbomb and a Frankensteiner, but the bell rings before he has time to cover. I don’t know about the layout of this finish, folks. Why did the champs have more urgency to get a pinfall than the challengers? I still liked this quite a bit, but the logic of the match broke down at the end. Tony S., Eric Bischoff, Jim Ross, and the entirely-too-lascivious Jesse Ventura send us on our way to end the show, and I will take this time to reflect that the show was awesome and, just a month after WrestleWar, had a far better undercard so as to feel that WCW’s midcard felt almost unrecognizable compared to what it was a month ago. However, Watts smartly covered for the weak midcard by having fewer matches between his actual good workers and just booking the good workers to go longer. I can’t say that most of his other strategies for organizing the card made much sense. Then again, when your only dud of a match is a six-man tag and you have two absolute classics back-to-back on your show, even the mistakes get glossed over pretty easily.

I've been having Google NotebookLM re-book a lot of WCW 1999 and 2000. I can report that AI is already a much better booker than either Kevin Nash or Vince Russo.

https://youtu.be/eiiaL5QBPiw?si=pzl36jRjHrTAyecG We missed out on Eddie/Luger in a longer feud. Between this and Luger having a neat little segment with Rey to set up a match that never happened because Luger got injured, I would have been way into Luger wrestling the cruisers more often.

Well, now I know what happened to Super Mario Odyssey 2. Nintendo made it a Donkey Kong game instead.

Yeah, you'd have to be selective about what you added. Hulk Hogan's WOOD IN THE HOOD promo would be the main event.

I don't think I could stomach that stuff myself. If I never see Hulk, Bisch, Piper, or Russo on screen again, I can live with that. They'd make up the bulk of that series. On another note, I uploaded my lists into Google NotebookLM and created a pro wrestling +/- for each year of the Nitro era based on the number of good matches and segments - the number of bad matches and segments as guided by the lists. Here is the outcome: WCW Year Ranking (Best to Worst) • 1. 1998: Total Score +114 ◦ Number of Matches/Segments on Good Lists: 161 ◦ Number of Matches/Segments on Bad Lists: 47 ◦ Calculation: 161 - 47 = 114 • 2. 1996: Total Score +96 ◦ Number of Matches/Segments on Good Lists: 101 ◦ Number of Matches/Segments on Bad Lists: 5 ◦ Calculation: 101 - 5 = 96 • 3. 1997: Total Score +78 ◦ Number of Matches/Segments on Good Lists: 99 ◦ Number of Matches/Segments on Bad Lists: 21 ◦ Calculation: 99 - 21 = 78 • 4. 2001: Total Score +45 ◦ Number of Matches/Segments on Good Lists: 50 ◦ Number of Matches/Segments on Bad Lists: 5 ◦ Calculation: 50 - 5 = 45 • 5. 1999: Total Score +28 ◦ Number of Matches/Segments on Good Lists: 104 ◦ Number of Matches/Segments on Bad Lists: 76 ◦ Calculation: 104 - 76 = 28 • 6. 1995: Total Score +24 ◦ Number of Matches/Segments on Good Lists: 28 ◦ Number of Matches/Segments on Bad Lists: 4 ◦ Calculation: 28 - 4 = 24 • 7. 2000: Total Score -24 ◦ Number of Matches/Segments on Good Lists: 68 ◦ Number of Matches/Segments on Bad Lists: 92 ◦ Calculation: 68 - 92 = -24 Based on the formula, 1998 emerges as the best year for WCW, while 2000 is identified as the worst. This ranking suggests a peak in 1998, with a significant decline in content quality by 2000. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I actually think 1995 is my favorite year of WCW Nitro, but of course it (like 2001, which I like a lot as well) is hampered by only having a run for three months of that year. I do like 1998 WCW a lot more than many people do, though, which is reflected here. Hopefully, NotebookLM will significantly help me with that list that Curt suggested for all the wrestlers who ever appeared on Nitro (and their debut dates).

WORST FEUDS We have zero new entrants! Hooray! This list is considerably longer than I expected it to be when I started this watch through! Boo!

BEST FEUDS We have one new entrant! Hooray! This list is shorter than I expected it to be when I started this watch through! Boo!

THE ABSOLUTE DIRT WORST Hulk Hogan may not be one of the worst wrestlers of all time (though I personally am starting to lean that way because of how limited and unimaginative he proved to be during his WCW run), but he is at the very least the most "reach exceeding grasp" wrestler to ever live. His awfulness is so profound that it inspired Kevin Sullivan and the Giant to newfound levels of awfulness as well - and that's only looking at the '95 and early '96 big shows we watched. He is all over this list for good reason: He was almost indescribably bad for the bulk of the '90s. But at least Hogan was useful back in the early-to-mid '80s. That's more than I can say for most of WCW's 2000 programming, which is only useful as a torture device.