SirSmUgly

I'm a big fan of the Mexicools. They would have been bigger stars in the United States if their careers were shifted fifteen years forward. Oh well. I don't really rate Vampiro or Gangrel, TBH. I think the fun of the Vampiro match was largely that Rey was willing to fold himself in an accordion for Vamp's moves, even though Vamp did work hard. Rey could probably have a good six-minute television match with me in 1999, much less Vampiro. I did a double-take! I have some negative feelings about 1999 Madusa that will probably become annoyingly clear over the next bunch of reviews. KISS Psycho Circus was a Dreamcast game! That's like the most 1999-2000 thing ever. Your point about a sudden new burst of relevance is well-taken.

Thunder Interlude – show number seventy-three – 29 July 1999 "The WCW Gang preps midcard Road Wild matches, makes me re-live way too much of the previous Nitro" It’s the last Thunder of July 1999…I’m already into August in the show just before I’m into August in real life…it’s going to be quite the run to get to the end of 1999 in the next six weeks, but I still feel good about my odds. Recap: This way-too-long Hogan/Nash deal that shares their history…Time for me to grab a cup of coffee… Two more weeks of shows after this Thunder before finally getting to Road Wild…Ugh… As Ernest Miller and Sonny Onoo come to the ring, one of the commentators (probably Tenay) promotes something to do with the band KISS…What a goofy band…I guess it’s time for the KISS Demon…Sure, why not, seems like a WCW thing to get some faded, washed old band from the ‘80s with outfits that Demolition would find gauche and give them a bunch of money for no reason… The Cat does his pre-match spiel and promises to beat his opponent within five minutes…Whoa, Barry Darsow is his opponent…This guy looks old…That hairline is (even more) tragic, that’s what's doing it…The Cat tries a sneak kick, but Darsow’s been there and done that before…He catches it…I guess Darsow already did his Pain Stewart/Hole-in-One gimmick because Larry Z. says that Darsow recently gave up golf and broke all his clubs…Or maybe it’s just Larry dropping an Easter egg and mentioning something he heard pitched for Darsow backstage…This match isn’t good…Darsow has never been that good as a worker…I like the Demos (speaking of the Demos), and Repo Man is funny, but outside of Demos matches, I’m not going out of my way to watch his stuff…Miller’s not all that good either, and I genuinely don’t remember if he ever gets legitimately good…The Cat puts on a loaded slipper (how’d he get them back from Buff?) and wins with a roundhouse in under five minutes…He and Onoo harass Penzer to give the match time, and he confirms it on the house mic… Hype video: Goldberg, and I guess this Megadeth song was not dubbed over in this package…I couldn’t tell you one song from that band, so I’ll assume this is how they sound and it isn’t a dub…Also, they sing the title lyrics in this video, so it's definitely not a dub…Ew, they replaced Goldberg’s theme with this?!...I’d heard that Goldberg was using this as a theme back in the day, but I wasn’t actually watching WCW at the time…My possibly faulty memory has Goldberg using his old theme again by the time he’s doing stuff like feuding with Totally Buff and teasing a title match with Booker T…. Recap…Madusa and Mona confront Randy Savage…Since Madusa is supposed to be retired courtesy of Akira Hokuto in kayfabe, I’m assuming that Randy Savage flew over to Japan, broke into her house, and threatened both her and Kensuke Sasaki until they petitioned WCW to reinstate her… WCWSN promo…Konnan’s not around right now because of legal shit…They’ve shunted the NLS/WTR feud onto this show…Wow, that whole angle died almost immediately after it started…Probably not a great idea to bust into Bisch’s offense all strapped up if you want to keep the PPV appearances coming!... Erik (“Eric,” according to the chyron) Watts faces Buff Bagwell…They have a pose-off that Buff wins…They have a taunt-off that Buff gets the better of as well…Watts is a goofy heel…Actually, you’d think these two brosephs in the ring would get along in storyline…Watts isn’t very good, but he works hard…He’s not bad or anything, but there’s not much there…Watts has a decent enough heel control segment, cutting off Buff comebacks a couple times…He even hits a standing moonsault…It’s nowhere near clean, but kudos to that guy for being that big and trying that spot… There’s an unnecessary commercial break in the middle of this thing…This overlong, somewhat awkward match finally ends when Buff barely touches Watts with a clothesline that Watts flip bumps for…Buff hits a Blockbuster and covers, then moves out of the way before a charging Ernest Miller can drop an elbow on him…Buff leaves the ring winning by either DQ or pinfall, who knows…He clotheslines Sonny Onoo on his way back up the aisle… Replay: Goldberg vs. Hennig from Nitro in its entirety…I am a huge fan of Goldberg, but film some more Thunder matches, you bums…No need to show this again… The Jersey Triad hits the ring…Pre-match mic nonsense from Page and Company…I mean, it’s dreadful…It’s supposed to be dreadful, I suppose…They play the dozens in the corniest way possible…These guys should at least steal some good “mama” jokes…Jamie Foxx on In Living Color had my favorite one I’ve ever heard about a fat mama playing hopscotch…Bam Bam Bigelow faces Booker T….Bammer misses a splash and eats a number of boots and forearms, but he’s able to hit a big boot… Huh, this match starts out pretty entertainingly…Booker dodges a headbutt, but he’s trying to get Bam Bam off his feet and can’t quote…He tries a spinning roundhouse, but Bam Bam catches his leg and transitions into a back suplex…The Triad helps Bam Bam with some light cheating on the outside of the ring…Bam Bam misses another corner charge and Booker hits him with a spinebuster (!!) going into the break… Back from break, Book lands an axe kick and hits a Spinaroonie…The Triad jumps in and sparks a DQ by blatantly triple teaming him…Stevie Ray runs down with a couple of chairs and clears the ring…Hey, that’s pretty smart, bringing down an extra chair for the guy you’re saving…A HARLEM HEAT chant breaks out…Stevie gets a mic and is pretty funny…He challenges the Triad to a match…Stevie asks Booker to help him…Stevie’s wearing an nWo shirt, so Booker asks him to take it off if he wants to tag up again…Stevie complies…They hug…The crowd cheers…Aw, that was kinda nice!...Harlem Heat challenges the Jersey Triad to tag title match at Road Wild…I assume they don’t win and Stevie blames Booker for the loss?... Hey, the B-Team is dead!...I hope, at least… Replay: Hogan and Sting tag up in the Nitro main event against Kevin Nash and Sid…Less than a year’s worth of TV time before Hogan’s GONE, thankfully…This Thunder is shameful nonsense… The Radicalz Minus Eddy come to the ring…They face Ric Flair (w/Asya), DDP, and Kanyon (w/Bam Bam Bigelow)…It breaks down immediately…Is it weird that we haven’t heard anything from Ric about losing the presidency yet?...And this is a taped Thunder, so the sense is that he’s out here not giving a damn about having lost it or cursing Sting’s name…Things calm down, and the babyfaces settle into early control of the match…Tenay and Larry Z. try to get over “The Revolution” as a name for The Radicalz Minus Eddy (and Plus Shane Douglas, I guess)… There’s a commercial break and suddenly, when we come back, we go from Malenko controlling the ring to Saturn as FIP…This show is so poorly cut that it defies belief…Show us the actual matches taped for Thunder without breaks and cut down on the Nitro replays…Come the fuck on…DDP eventually whiffs on a corner splash…He tries to recover and grab Saturn, but Saturn kicks away and tags Benoit…The finish is busy…Bam Bam tries to hit Benoit with a flying headbutt as Benoit covers Kanyon…Benoit moves, but gets tagged by a Flair loaded fist…Flair rolls Kanyon on top of Benoit for three…Shane Douglas hops into the ring after the match and does his whole THE YOUNGS ARE GETTIN’ SCREWED deal… Booker and Stevie re-uniting should have been on Nitro…On the other hand, Nitro should not be on Thunder…At least it only took me about fifty minutes to watch this show, I suppose…OWWWW…

I didn't wish for it! I wished against it while knowing it would happen!

Hey, the original storyline was 29 years ago! It's been done over four times as long ago as Cornette's rule. That should be enough for the internet era. Er, make that 24 years ago. But my point stands!

Show #199 – 26 July 1999 “The one where Wayne from The Wonder Years amplifies the pain” As luck would have it, Zellner and Bixenspan dropped a Between the Sheets three days ago on the previous week in wrestling. The downside is that I have to fast forward when they talk about something that I haven’t seen and don’t remember yet (I already know that Kevin Nash is going to switch alignments like he’s the Big Show over the next year – I was too slow on the trigger to avoid hearing that one). The reason I say this is that I was interested to find out that Scott Hudson as main PBP on Nitro was a two-week experiment, which explains why no one said anything about Tony S.’s absence from the desk. It apparently ends after tonight, but I liked Hudson on the previous Nitro. He was a fresh voice last week, and I think a three-man booth with he and Tony S., plus a color commentator, is a welcome addition to the show when it happens. I mean, as long as they don’t fuck up the choice for color commentary. It’d be just like WCW to get the balance right on PBP and then add, like, Mark Madden on color. In theory, of course. Only in theory. Also, that episode was already insane, and it cut Buff Bagwell in blackface. Imagine that! That episode as it is on the Network in 2024 doesn’t include it, which frankly I think should have been left for posterity so we can all be ashamed of our ‘90s edgelord selves as a culture. I went back and watched it on YouTube. There’s also someone in yellowface playing Sonny Onoo and an Asian model or stripper for some reason, and Buff is dreadfully unfunny on top of it all. I note that this recording includes the dubbed Ernest Miller theme, which means that it was in the Network version until NBC went on a rampage editing every instance of blackface out of the shows on their platforms post-George Floyd murder. Anyway, I’m going to go back and, uh, adjust the grade on the previous episode before continuing on with this review. Recap: All of last week’s big angles, most of which were weird. At least the crowd was hot for all that nonsense, I suppose. Unlike Macho’s new theme, which has grown on me, this new Nitro theme stinks worse every time I hear it. Recap: Curt Hennig challenges Goldberg to a match. Again. Gene Okerlund inflicts a Hulk Hogan interview on me. It’s bad. Hogan thinks that “Kevina” is a cute insult and uses it fifty-eleven times in this interview. Oh, wait, he switches it up and says “Kevette.” Super kawaii. Kevin Nash comes to the ring flanked by Sid and Rick Steiner. Hulk reiterates that he doesn’t need a tag partner to take out Nash and then, uh, borrows a Rick Steiner catchphrase. I get a mild kick out of Rick on the outside, who holds his arms out like HEY, THAT’S MY LINE, I’M GETTING THAT LINE OVER. Anyway, Sting turns heel by running out for the save after all three guys jump Hulk. Wait, I’m being handed a note. OK, this wasn’t a heel turn. SID gets a persistent chant from some fans near the mics because we’re in Memphis tonight. WCW management is trying to get DON’T MISS A MINUTE over as a tagline for Nitro. Scott Hudson drops said tagline and then immediately undercuts it when he shows a recap of what just happened in that first segment. Juventud Guerrera and Psicosis are a tag team tonight. Maybe make them a regular tag team? Maybe give them a manager to talk for them a bit? They face the worst members of the WTR – Bobby Duncum Jr. and Kendall Windham (w/Curt Hennig and Barry Windham). Hudson mentions that David Flair, now without the protection of the presidency, has been challenged to a U.S. Championship match by Chris Benoit. Yeah, maybe don’t draw this thing out and do the title change tonight. Duncum beats down Juventud to start. Juventud eventually fights back, but Duncum struggles at simple things like trying to back drop Juvi so Juvi can land on the apron. Now Kendall’s in here. Psicosis tags in and has a nice exchange with him; then,. Juvi springboards off the top and lands a dropkick on Kendall. Duncum rushes Juvi and Kendall lands a DDT on Psicosis, then takes control. Psicosis bumps around for this bum, and I am genuinely chagrined that they might actually job these two to the WTR, and furthermore to the two most useless guys in it, no less. Psicosis is the guy in peril since I think everyone in this thing is a heel, but the crowd gets behind him. There’s a missed tag spot in there, which leads to a double back elbow and double bulldog that puts Psicosis down for three. Fucking WCW. Psicosis should still be Cruiserweight Champ, and they have him jobbing to WCWSN fodder. That’s some nonsense. In the backstage area, Mona curls her hair and laments her firing from Team Madness. Madusa walks up and proceeds to cut a vile promo in which she asserts that a) she’ll be facing Mona at Road Wild (unfair for them because I suspect that it’s not the crowd for a women’s wrestling match that doesn’t involve mud or Jell-o) and b) Gorgeous George is really the slattern who has ripped Team Madness apart. Madusa talks Mona into attacking George, maybe? I don’t know. Is this sudden interest in a women’s storyline based on the WWF scoring a few hits with Sable and Chyna, and to a lesser extent, Jacqueline, Terri, and Miss Kitty? Vampiro (w/ICP) comes to the ring to face Rey Misterio Jr. I gave Nash praise for getting Rey over, but I now un-praise him for not capitalizing on it as he should have, though that criticism goes on down the line to everyone who booked this show until it was cancelled. I note that Konnan can’t even be bothered to come out here and second his buddy Rey even though Rey’s fighting his mortal enemy right now. They keep cutting to the ICP at ringside as Vampiro tosses Rey around in the early going, and man, this is the ‘90s-est shit I’ve seen in a while. Rey makes a comeback with a low dropkick and a bulldog, then lands a springboard dropkick that causes Vampiro to bail. Rey fakes a dive and gets a huge pop because he rules. I think people talk about what a low-point for presentation unmasked Rey is, but they forget that he is very over. This is a fun match because all of the offense is fun. Vampiro gets in the ring and murders Rey with a Uranage, then chops the hell out of the guy. In terms of the flow of the match, it’s not that great, but these dudes are just landing meaty offense on one another and bumping around effectively on everything. Rey hits a Bronco Buster, then goes after the ICP and turns around into a slam. Vampiro goes up, but Rey crotches him and tries a top-rope rana to finish it. Shaggy 2 Dope jumps up and holds Vampiro’s leg down so that Rey can’t get Vamp over; then, Vamp turns the rana into a diving powerbomb. The ICP immediately run in and stomp out Rey, and Eddy Guerrero runs down with a chair to make the save to huge EDDY chants. Well, at least they turned him babyface when it became clear that no one wanted to boo him, number one, and number two, what if WCW had pushed Rey and Eddy to the moon and tried to cultivate a Latin fanbase to help them find a way to survive, ratings-and-house wise? Is there an alternate universe where someone in charge was smart enough to do this, and does WCW live today in that universe because of it? Also, on an unrelated note, Konnan is a kayfabe bad friend. Violent J cuts a solid heel promo before backing away from the ring. I popped over to place this on my Good Matches for a YouTube Playlist list and was a bit startled for two reasons. First, this is the first match I’ve put on the list since Show #189, which is over two months’ worth of Nitros ago. Second, there were zero PPV matches on this list even though we’ve had two PPVs since then, but there have been ten Thunder matches that I’ve listed since that last Nitro match to make the list. I don’t think I’ll probably ever go back and watch all the WCWSN episodes there were during this time period – though who can tell what will strike my whimsy in the future – but the best way to view WCW in 1999 if you have even remotely the same taste as I do is to watch only Thunder and WCWSN, where you'll see the best wrestling and also pick up what happened on Nitro or PPV through the copious amounts of recapping that these shows do. Scott Hudson begs the viewer not to change the channel, but Virgil (w/Horace Hogan) come to the ring, so I don’t think his pleas are going to work. I guess the B-Teamers are breaking up because Stevie Ray comes out to face him. They had a long feud about who the leader was which was settled like two, maybe three months ago, and that’s all up in the air now. Virgil promises to kick Stevie out of the nWo before Stevie can leave them of his own volition. Stevie works babyface, fending off attacks from both Virgil and Horace. Scott Hudson promises to assault our ears on Nitro with a performer named Chad Brock while this nothing match happens. Let’s see – he’s a country singer. Thank goodness the Network is cutting out these fucking musical assaults on my ears. Stevie has few problems with Virgil in a too-long bout that ends when Horace gets involved and that doofus Mickey Jay doesn’t call for a DQ. Stevie dodges a team attack from the two, big boots Virgil, and hits him with a slapjack, then, uh, hits him with a Slapjack. In the aisle, Booker T. has already showed up with a chair and cut off Crush. Stevie wins it. I continue not to care about this Harlem Heat reunion that must not happen since Booker ends up losing his T. and becoming G.I. Bro for awhile for some INSANE reason. WCW has all these guys seen as homegrowns that the crowd is clearly ready to see elevated. Just elevate them already. Send the old dudes home to collect a paycheck if they don’t like it. I’m sure Bret, Sting, and Flair would have stuck around and help establish these fresher dudes. Sting barges into the Hulkster’s dressing room in the back. That’s all we see of things before a commercial. In a pretty good crowd shot, we come back to a woman holding up a THIS IS THE HOUSE THAT STING BUILT SIGN who goes nutty when Sting’s music hits. Scott Hudson got the directive to mimic Larry Sanders with constant NO FLIPPING requests, but louder and more intrusively. Sting gets the mic and introduces himself as the President of WCW. He takes a survey on whether or not he should make himself Hogan’s tag partner. The crowd is like, Okay, we guess so. Sting asks them again, but is cut off by “Rockhouse.” Hulk walks to the ring because we just haven’t heard enough of him talking tonight. Hulk is like I’m a good dude now, trust me. NO. Sting is a babyface moron idiot, so he trusts him. Funny enough though, when Hogan promises not to stab Sting in the back, the crowd boos a bit. Huh. At least Sting promises to get Hogan if Hogan screws him, and we know he will because he offered the same deal to Ric Flair about four years back (who screwed him) and he pursued revenge against Flair doggedly until the nWo busted in on his parade. FUCK, Jason Hervey is out here on color. Is this 1992? If so, why is Madusa suddenly useless? Where is Paul E.? Can we get a Ricky Steamboat or Ron Simmons match? Hervey can’t keep straight whether or not that was Robert Wuhl or Arliss at the desk last week and then shits on him and his show. I deeply hate what is happening right now. Are we starting a Jason Hervey/Robert Wuhl Arliss feud, or are we just desperately trying to make WCW look contemporary by bringing on the co-star of a show that ended, um, six years ago and has long been out of the forefront of the national consciousness? Prince Iaukea is a heel now, I guess. He slaps his opponent Lash LeRoux disrespectfully, and I’m interested in this match, so let’s have Randy Savage blow it up thirty seconds in and beat the hell out of these guys. You know what? It’s a bummer to hate seeing Randy Savage on my screen. It really is. I look forward to November of 1999. Leave the memories alone. Savage gets a mic and yammers a bit while Hervey doesn’t SHUT THE FUCK UP on commentary while the actual talent is talking, as faded as that talent is. Savage threatens Hulk and Rodman and basically wastes TV time. OH NO, now Madusa is going to have a mic battle with Randy Savage. This SUCKS. Madusa’s with Mona. They walk to the ring as Madusa struggles with her words, but eventually she blames George for convincing Savage to fire them. Dennis Rodman walks out onto the ramp as George backs away from the ring; George backs right into him, and then, get this – GET THIS – for the second time in like a month, a supposed babyface kidnaps her! What the fuck?! Hervey, as we go to break: THAT WAS COOL! No it wasn’t, you idiot. It’s the Dirt Worst. Back on Nitro, some ineffectual cops and security follow Savage around while he kicks open random doors. Gene Okerlund is back in the ring to make shitty Elvis Presley references and yammer on until Goldberg comes out, sans entrance theme. Hervey makes me miss Bischoff on commentary. That’s how irritating this guy and his whiny, high-pitched, nasal voice is. Goldberg gets a mic and says that Hennig sure seems to talk some shit when Goldberg’s not around, but they’re in the same arena tonight, so get ready to get fucked up. THANK GOODNESS Goldberg is back. This show desperately needs him in my humble opinion. Evan Karagias flirts with a couple of the ladies in the crowd as he comes to the ring. His opponent is Ernest Miller (w/Sonny Onoo), which gives me the opportunity to hit the mute button and get a break from this commentary. The Cat poses next to an I CAME TO SEE THE CAT DANCE sign. There are quite a few signs for the Cat every week. Dancing really was an easy path to getting over as a midcard babyface in the late ‘90s! The Cat talks some shit to Karagias before the match and offers a handshake that the Cat actually sells for a good thirty seconds before pulling Karagias in for a lariat. Scott Hudson puts over Buff’s impersonation of Miller the previous week. No, I don’t think “dead-on” is the way I’d describe that impersonation, Hudson, but okay. The Cat moonwalks into his Boogie Chop this time. He tosses Karagias over the top rope and then comically begs the ref for forgiveness so that Onoo can throw a few kicks in the background. Miller rolls Karagias for the most part. The Cat goes for the case that holds his ruby slippers and finds…bunny slippers. Buff comes to the top of the ramp with a mic and has apparently stolen Miller’s ruby slippers. At least he didn’t kidnap Sonny Onoo instead. Karagias rolls up Miller for three while Miller’s distracted; the Cat hops up and lands a Feliner on Karagias, then runs off in pursuit of Buff and his slippers. I’m not being a DVDVR contrarian here when I say that Buff is absolutely the diabolical heel in this feud at this point. Mikey Whipwreck makes his way out as Scott Hudson assists in correcting my long-held belief that Finlay was badly hurt in the junkyard match at BatB ’99 by noting that he was badly hurt in a random house show match against Brian Knobbs instead. That’s where he ate the Formica table bump that sliced up his leg. I choose to blame Knobbs for this. Whipwreck faces Lord Steven Regal (w/Dave Taylor). This has to qualify as a WCW-ass WCW matchup, right? Whipwreck and Regal have a nice series of hold reversals while Hervey and Hudson talk about Andy Kaufman and Jimmy Hart. They elide discussion of dirty old man Jerry “Puppies” Lawler, though. This is a slow opening, so the crowd is the quietest they’ve been all night. Regal works through a series of holds and locks on a kneeling crossface, then breaks it to throw knees and a European uppercut. Regal continues throwing strikes, but here comes Jimmy Hart with the First Family and the hardcore trophy. Hart challenges the two remaining royalists to meet them at Road Wild for the trophy. Whipwreck tries to jump Regal with a flash pinfall attempt, just having seen Karagias pull off the same deal, but Regal is able to avoid a sudden defeat and goes right back to twisting Whipwreck around while the crowd starts a BORING chant and then switches to a U-S-A chant. Welp, this match has gone off the rails. It actually didn't really ever get going anyway, and Hervey is just vile on commentary. I mean, it’s an all-time terrible performance. Usually, a random celebrity (using that term very loosely for Hervey) who is actually a wrestling fan will find a way to enhance commentary through sheer enthusiasm for the product, but Hervey can’t even manage that. Whipwreck manages one final comeback, but gets whacked with the flagpole by Taylor while running the ropes. One double underhook suplex and a Regal Stretch later, and Regal is the winner. Goldberg warms up in the back. Hervey still won’t shut the fuck up and is yammering as the show goes to break. Gene Okerlund is in the ring again, this time to interview the barely-sentient David Flair. Oh no, Torrie is out here too, so she’ll probably talk. Yuck. Dopey Dave does a mediocre impression of his pops, then asks Torrie to talk. Mega heel. Stop asking Torrie to explain herself, Gene. Shut the fuck up instead. Everyone in this ring needs to shut the fuck up. David Flair thinks he’s a lock to win, and Ric is established as not being in the building, so let’s hope this dumb shit ends tonight. Gorgeous George has gotten away from Dennis Rodman and tells Savage where Rodman is, so Savage runs out to Rodman’s trailer and tries to bust in while security blocks him. Hey, this Nitro is utter dog shit so far. Blipmos: Shane Douglas talks about how held down some guys who passed through ECW while he was there are and how he’s going to work and shoot and maybe work a shoot or two. Meh, I’m good. He doesn’t like Ric Flair, by the way. Goldberg is done limbering up. He smashes a locker with his head and walks off to kill Curt Hennig. Again. Goldberg kills Curt Hennig. Again. He puts Hennig in pumphandle position and then just flips him sideways. That seems like the sort of move you’d do if you weren’t taking someone seriously. Kendall grabs Goldberg’s leg so that Hennig can get the bullrope from Duncum. Hennig lands a shot with the cowbell end of the rope, but it merely annoys Goldberg. Goldberg bleeds from his forehead while he kills Hennig, then the rest of the WTR. This man has an aura, you know? It rules. I am decidedly not sick of Goldberg fucking dudes up. He spears every member of the WTR except Hennig; Hennig gets in the ring with a chair, then thinks better of it and splits as Goldberg wins by DQ. Hennig does eventually decide to tangle with Goldberg and loses that one; he gets launched over the top rope. My only complaint is that we didn’t get even one Jackhammer. Hype video: Kevin Nash versus Hulk Hogan. Bleh. This thing is LONG, folks. It takes for-fucking-ever to get through. Nash/Hogan is not a compelling enough matchup to warrant this. Is that Leilani Kai? Looks like it. She’s called Patty Stonegrinder though. She faces Madusa, who comes out in blackface even though she’s not feuding with Ernest Miller – no, wait, that’s just her tan. Madusa has gone complete Florida Woman – tanned like a brownish-orange cow hide, breast augmentation, inappropriate U.S.-flag patterned clothing that goes against the flag code. Unlike Mona/Alexander on Thunder, this match stinks. Madusa wins with a bridging German. DON’T TURN THAT CHANNEL, FOLKS! DON’T MISS A MINUTE of Shane Douglas versus Scott Putski. It’s so bush league that these new wrestlers are debuting without entrance music. Embarrassing. Especially for a company under the Turner banner! Douglas takes WAY too much offense from Putski. He works it nearly fifty-fifty before hitting Putski with a Pittsburgh Plunge for three. Speaking of entrance music, someone went to the trouble of digging out Chris Benoit’s entrance music from 1996 instead of just having him come out to Dean Malenko’s music. The production on Nitro in 1999 is all-time bad, and I don’t think we talk enough about how TNA-ish Nitro comes off at this point. Yeah, I know TNA came after WCW died, but that’s the best way to describe these shows. David Flair (w/Torrie Wilson and Asya) comes to the ring. Benoit, like Malenko, looks irritated that he has to lower himself to this caliber of opponent, which is kinda funny. Charles Robinson is the ref, so he tries to calm a rattled David down. David gets back in the ring and Benoit chops him. A couple of Benoit’s chops legit echo around the arena. Benoit hits offense for a while, then locks on a Lion Tamer. David taps out, but Robinson refuses to call for the bell. Benoit argues with the ref, then goes back to hitting offense; he lands a diving headbutt, but continues his attack while Kanyon, I think, comes out to watch. No, that’s DDP. Page runs in and hits Benoit with a tag title. *sigh*, David covers for three. The rest of the Triad, Saturn, and Malenko all run down and brawl. I am not a fan of any of this shit they’re doing with the U.S. title. Shane Douglas joins the babyfaces after they fight off the Triad. We come back to Rick Steiner sipping a Surge on his way to the ring; he defends the TV title against Chase Tatum (who just lost on Thunder, mind you) after doing his fucking pre-match mic work routine that sucks ass. Hervey yells HOODY HOO…NOT. I’m in hell. I’m in pro wrestling hell. This match sucks ass, but at least it’s short. Steiner wins with a diving bulldog. This show has gone on for what feels like days. Finally, finally, it’s main event time. Hudson is annoying on commentary while listing potential partners for Nash. Nash comes out wearing an Outsiders tank, which makes me think it’s not Hall, combined with Hudson being like IS IT SCOTT HALL?!?! Sting and Hulk Hogan end up facing Nash and Sid, in fact. What follows is a low-impact tag match that bores the pants off me. The match breaks down after a few minutes and the babyfaces rule the ring. Nash takes over on Sting for a bit when the match re-starts. He misses a charge in the corner, but hits Sting with Snake Eyes. Sting is FIP (of course). Sting has a couple of aborted comeback attempts before an awkward exchange with Nash on a corner charge sparks a hot tag to Hogan. The match breaks down again, and Sting squashes the ref on a Stinger Splash attempt to Sid. Wow, a ref bump, I can’t believe it. They never have those in WCW matches. Rick Steiner comes down the ramp with a steel chair and yams Sting with it. Meanwhile, Hogan sets up for a legdrop and is tripped by Steiner; Nash taps Hogan in the dome with the chair and gets a three count. Goldberg runs down after the match and attacks Nash, but Steiner hits Goldberg with the chair a few times. This wasn’t just a terrible episode of Nitro. It was a terrible episode of Nitro narrated by Jason Hervey. Needless to say, it was akin to torture, and Bischoff should be hauled up in front of a judge at the Hague for allowing this on his watch. -25 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

Maybe a heel could secretly slip shrimp into an openly-kosher wrestler's scrambled eggs as a way to escalate a feud.

Of course. Most episodes had three to five plotlines that tended to get tied together in a neat little ball, at least after they worked out the early-season wonkiness. A-plot: Jerry lies to George's college crush and says George is a marine biologist; George has to keep up the lie to get with her. B-plot: Elaine edits the book of an irritable Eastern European writer C-plots: Kramer is working on his drive; Kramer gives Elaine a malfunctioning electronic organizer; Jerry has a t-shirt that has survived the wash the most, so he loves it the most All those plots get wrapped together at the end (Kramer: "Huh, a hole-in-one!"). This episode of Seinfeld would have been blown up in 2024 after George's college crush got on LinkedIn before Jerry could alert George that Jerry lied about his profession; she would have found out the truth herself and never called him back. Also, Elaine would have a cell phone, and therefore wouldn't need Kramer's malfunctioning electronic organizer.

There's too much coming out this year for me. Echoes of Wisdom, Lego Horizon, M&L Brothership, Sonic and Shadow Generations, MvC Fighting Collection. I don't have a backlog to clear anymore. It's just like, I'm in the mood for a fighting game, I'll pop in this fighting game, etc. I do buy stuff and immediately play it, though. I don't buy and just add to a backlog anymore, so that helps.

I hope you're enjoying it. It definitely has me going at these games in a much different way than I ever have before. While I'm talking about this game, I sort of hate the original TLoZ. I feel like Link is more responsive to my d-pad presses in Link's Awakening or ALttP to such a degree that I actually got kinda heated at having to clear the first labyrinth as the last challenge. Getting at least an A-rank isn't that hard, but I have my pride and would like to S-rank or A++ rank everything eventually. But man, moving Link around feels terrible. As for Balatro, I a) cannot get the cards I need to bring my deck down to five so that I can unlock the last voucher, and I cannot b) get into the quintillions in terms of score (I haven't even reached the multibillions), and I'm getting sick of not getting useful long-term jokers at all, or getting them and then not getting the support cards to effectively plan around them. I might need to put it down for awhile.

It's sort of analogous to thinking about how many Seinfeld plot threads would have been completely undercut by the existence of smart phones or even less-advanced mid-aughts flip phones. /cue Nice Guy Eddie

Thunder Interlude – show number seventy-two – 22 July 1999 "The WCW Gang is entertaining, but they'd be more entertaining if they didn't cut whole FIP segments out of hot tag matches" Moline, Illinois has a pro team that has won some sort of championship and has its banners hung above the entryway…That pro team’s nickname is the Thunder…Ah, the Quad Cities Thunder…The only basketball team with that nickname that I recognize…That’s a nice bit of accidental synergy… Kaz Hayashi isn’t being forced to wear the Glacier gear anymore…That was a funny series of skits, but it went nowhere…It just happened with no follow-up…Glacier's not even Glacier anymore...He's in his Coach Buzz Stern gimmick now...They’re going to feed Kaz to Van Hammer…This is an enjoyable competitive squash because Kaz bumps like a maniac and uses his speed effectively to snap off offense where he can…He’s such a crisp athlete…Kaz targets the leg, but simply doesn’t have the weight to do much damage…Also, he tries to powerbomb Hammer…Oops…Kaz has moxie, at least!...As I said, this is fun stuff, especially because Hammer does some nice bumping for Kaz toward the end…Hammer rolls away from a top-rope senton splash and hits a spinebuster and Cobra Clutch slam for three…I dug it!... Lenny and Lodi are freaking out backstage about something… Recap: Madusa and Mona are on the outs…Rodman and Savage are also on the outs, for that matter…Man, watching it again, that segment with Wuhl-as-Arliss screaming PAY PER VIEW repeatedly while Rodman preens into the corner camera and Okerlund vainly tries to interview him is surreal…And then Mona and Madusa randomly brawling in one corner of the ring while Savage and George ignore them to yell threats at Rodman in the other corner…It was surreal… Hey, we’re getting a rare women’s match here in WCW…Brandi Alexander faces the lovely Mona…I guess she’s going to wrestle in the dress…I won’t be distracted by the dress…But uh, she looks great, that’s all I’ll say…Any woman that looks like that and also throws a sweet missile dropkick is a keeper…Mona comes out here and gets a babyface reception even though I think she was originally supposed to be the heel…Mona gets top control and gets a front headlock, but is countered into an arm wringer…Mona somersaults out of it…She gets up and unties her hair, so I guess it’s on… Mona hits a couple arm drags and a dropkick that sends Alexander to the floor…You know, if WCW had taken a women’s division seriously, that would have been a neat way to differentiate from the WWF…Then again, we’re probably a good decade away from women’s wrestling being something that most wrestling fans were interested in taking seriously…The composition of wrestling crowds is just totally different between 1999 and 2009…Anyway, Alexander dominates with offense back in the ring…Hair whip, vertical suplex, front kick, but no cover attempts…Mona finagles a sunset flip in there before getting worked over some more…Woof, Alexander hit a meaty short-arm clothesline in there… Alexander bends Mona over in a Boston Crab, but Mona wriggles out by using her legs and slipping through for a flash pin that gets two…Alexander re-asserts control and goes up, but she gets caught and pressed to the mat…Mona makes her comeback…She gets two on a side slam…Mona headscissors her way out of trouble on a rope run, lands a Muta-style handspring back elbow in the corner, and ducks a desperation crossbody attempt from Alexander…Mona hits a vertical suplex and bridges for three…While I’m slightly disappointed that we didn’t get a missile dropkick in this thing, that was very fun stuff…Thunder is delivering in the wrestling ring so far… Well, all good things must end, right?...Here comes the WTR…Ah, they showed the Goldberg/Megadeth thing in the original broadcast, which is why we come back to the crowd chanting GOLDBERG and Hennig hating on Megadeth…Hennig hates not only rap, but metal…Hennig calls out “Goldturd” *sigh*…Goldberg’s not at Thunder because he’s got better stuff to do, duh…Hennig challenges Goldberg on Nitro, and I am looking forward to Goldberg killing all four of these guys and maybe knocking them off TV for awhile… We’re getting a match in this segment, too…It’s Hennig against Chase Tatum…Did you know that Chase Tatum worked for OutKast when they were touring?...He was even in Who’s Your Caddy?, which I forgot…Man, we’re never going to get Ten the Hard Way…I mean, Andre should live his truth and put out as many experimental flute albums as he wants, but I still would like one more OutKast album…I enjoyed the Idlewild soundtrack well enough, but it's just not right to end things on Idlewild…Anyway, there’s a match, it’s not any good, and things degenerate into a brawl…Swoll tries to hit Hennig with his punch which actually is a heart punch this time…He misses and hits Tatum, and Hennig snaps off a quick Perfect Plex for three…OK, fine, we changed tempo on this show, now let’s have some good wrestling again… Lenny and Lodi are freaking out because they’re having a handicap match against Sid Vicious tonight…They hide while Sid walks past and sniffs the air like a hungry T-Rex…Lenny goes so far as to do a Looney Tunes-style sneaking walk as he pops back out after Sid appears…They accost a passing Jimmy Hart for advice on their match, and he advises that they set up immediate medical attention for after the match…That was amusing, actually… Recap: The Jersey Triad is going to feud with a re-united Harlem Heat, maybe…I have no interest in a re-united Harlem Heat yet…Maybe if this company had lasted past March of 2001, later that year, a short reunion would have been fun…Or if the WWE had managed one in 2003 or something… Ah, back to normal…Juventud Guerrera and Psicosis tag up to face Rey Misterio Jr. and Eddy Guerrero…I’ll say it again, and I have to be honest about this considering how much shit I've given him, Nash booking himself and Luger to feud with Rey made Rey look like a future main eventer by proxy, and Rey getting a clean fall on Nash cemented it…Of course WCW never went farther with him than that, and they should have in the final days of the company where they cleared the logjam of over-the-hill main eventers and had some space at the top of the card…And I can certainly critique some of the finer points of Rey’s “giant killer” run, particularly how little offense he got in against Bam Bam and Scott Norton (especially compared to how much he got in on Nash, who gave him a lot more than either of the two gatekeeper midcarders did)…But it worked…Successfully elevating Rey might be the one clear success of Nash’s tenure as head booker… Rey pops Juvi one after Juvi immediately tags out, so Juvi immediately tags back in to get some revenge…Or pose…Actually, he chooses to pose…There’s an early break after the opening action…It’s back and forth and includes a broken double-team attempt from the heels, followed by a successful babyface attack in which Eddy launches Rey onto Psicosis outside the ring, then gets two when he wraps Juvi in a flash pinfall attempt…The heels regroup outside the ring going into the commercial… Rey is the FIP when we come back, having just eaten a guillotine legdrop…We missed pretty much the whole FIP segment…Bummer and a half…Rey hits a counter facebuster and gets a hot tag to Eddy…Eddy has an intense, pacey hot tag…Juvi finally jumps Eddy in the corner to turn the tide, and then Rey tries to attack, but crashes into Rey…The heels try to shoot Rey into Eddy, but Eddy lifts a charging Rey and launches him into a headscissors on a charging Juvi…Psicosis charges and hits his signature corner bump…Eddy sets Psicosis on the top rope and launches Rey into a top-rope rana for three…That match was so fun, but we missed the whole FIP segment because of a fucking commercial break…And yet we got to see a billion-year headlock in its entirety in the Tatum/Hennig match…WCW, come on…I loved what I saw, but we missed the whole middle act, so I can’t quite recommend it… Randy Savage (w/Mona and George) hits the ring in street clothes…Savage challenges Dennis Rodman to a fight…He has also fired Madusa…He keeps babbling about running for POTUS…It sucked when Hogan did it, bruh…No need to do it again…Savage deposes Miss Madness ’99 from her position…He abuses her a bit, but no slapping this week!...He tells her to get down and beg for her job, but she gets fired anyway…Boy, Team Madness had a whole lot of potential, but the booking is unable to focus on anything good for very long to get maximum value out of it…I feel like I’ve written that a hundred times during this run of Nash-led booking…Savage promises to swing back around to targeting fellow heel Kevin Nash later on to end the promo… Rick Steiner defends his TV title against Sick Boy…RUN WIT DA BIG DOG…WANT SOME, COME GET SOME…DON’T LIKE ME, BITE ME…Also, he threatened Goldberg in there…If Steiner did more suplexes and lariats, he’d be watchable…But he doesn’t…He does bad submission work and lots of face gouging…Well, at least it was short…Steiner wins with the top-rope bulldog in a quick squash… Hype video: Berlyn is all about, uh, taking down the Wall and, um, Germanic pride (but not too much Germanic pride!)…Potential character catchphrase shown in the video: KNOW VICTORY, NO DEFEAT…They delayed Berlyn’s debut because he wore a trench coat and Columbine happened…Then they sent him in there against Duggan for his debut…Alex Wright was screwed, man… Recap: Kevin Nash is a heel again randomly, suddenly hates Hulk Hogan even though he loved Hulk Hogan two months ago…You know why I don’t buy this turn?...Because Nash was supposed to be so mad at Hogan, but he agreed to hand him the title to re-form the nWo…In no way has anything on screen since then precipitated any obvious change in Nash’s stance… Tenay and Larry Z. cut a barely-hearable phone interview with Kevin Nash…OK, they get the levels right…Nash challenges Hulk and Sting to a tag match on Nitro…He alludes that he’ll be bringing Scott Hall as his tag partner…Also, he probably made this call from Trader Vic’s…In kayfabe and also shoot… Recap: Who exactly is the WCW President?...Who the hell knows…I guess we’ll find out on Nitro… Sid kills off Lenny and Lodi…We get chokeslams, big boots, and two powerbombs…Lenny randomly rolls into 69 position after he gets powerbombed…It's fucking dumb… Ric Flair (w/Asya) faces Dean Malenko in the main event…Tenay talks as if Sting is definitely the new WCW President…We’ll see if it sticks on Nitro…This is a heel Flair formula match…But it’s against Dean Malenko and not, say, Ricky Steamboat, so it’s not as compelling as it could be…Bischoff thought that Benoit, Eddy, and Malenko were guys that needed to be pushed heavily, but not Saturn…Look, I’m not saying Saturn was a main eventer, but he’s like a billion times better than Malenko…Eddy’s a true main eventer, Benoit is a spot main eventer/upper-midcard gatekeeper, and Saturn and Malenko are solid midcard players and good tag team anchors… Flair gives hometown boy Mickey Jay some shine by working his ref shove spot into this match…Asya distracts the ref as Malenko gets a visual three count on a small package…Flair tries to bail, but Benoit and Saturn come down and block his way…That’s a neat touch…Remember, Flair kicked Benoit and Saturn out of the building on Monday, but I guess he doesn’t have that power now…The Jersey Triad runs down and jumps Benoit and Saturn in the aisle… Asya tries to get involved and is immediately clocked with a clothesline by Malenko…WCW didn’t get that what made Chyna such a badass, besides her considerable physical charisma, was that she actually was effective on the outside and when she interfered…Asya just gets beaten up all the time by dudes…Chyna landed nut shots, cage door shots, forearms, etc., and turned the tides of matches with believable offense in big spots…Even taking out the fact that I am a pretty big mark for Chyna, I can see why Asya ain’t shit compared to her…It’s partly that she doesn’t have a thimbleful of Chyna’s charisma, but it’s also partly how she’s deployed during these matches… Anyway, back to the match…Page runs in and tries to hit Malenko with a Diamond Cutter…Malenko shoves him away, but Flair slips in with a roll-up and hooks the tights for three…This was acceptable televised wrestling… Thunder started out hot and had two-and-a-half awesome matches before slowing down…But it continues to generally be a fun wrestling show…WOOOO…

Theoretical question: Is Jim Cornette's theory that you can re-run angles every seven years for a fresh set of fans dead because of the internet? I ask this because I ended up down a YouTube rabbit hole and watched Mark Henry fake his retirement and WSS John Cena, which is still a classic. But underneath the video, a bunch of comments were about AJ Styles doing the same thing earlier this year. Because of the Network and all the clips on YouTube, combined with WWE mythologizing its own angles so effectively, seven years isn't enough before rerunning the same angle, if it ever was. I assume that it was also easier to re-run angles in the territory days, which is where Cornette is partially coming from. If you're going to take a stock angle and run it again with different players, what would be the reasonable amount of time before it's fresh again, considering streaming and the ready-made archiving of pro wrestling on the internet?

Show #198 – 19 July 1999 “The one where Nitro is not at -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit, but still manages absolute zero The one with Buff Bagwell in blackface” I have zero idea where the WCW World Heavyweight Championship goes from here. Let’s hope this Hogan reign is short, though unfortunately it seems likely to go at least a month so that we can get this lukewarm Road Wild main event. Y’know, it was the build to last year’s Road Wild where the wheels came off creatively for WCW and, barring a couple of glimmers of a potential turnaround, they stayed off as WCW drove into a ditch and, uh, burst into flames when the gas tank exploded. Yeah, that’s how this metaphor would work. Hey, Scott Hudson’s sitting in for Tony S. tonight! I’d prefer that he replaced Bobby Heenan, but whatever. For some reason, both Dennis Rodman and Robert Wuhl (who vaguely I recall actually portrayed the title character in Arli$$ on this episode, somehow, even though I’ve never seen this episode of Nitro) are in the building. Recap: Ric Flair lost his mind, still hasn’t recovered it. Syko Sid Vicious (yeah, that’s how I’m spelling it, and I know that it’s a WWF nickname) opens the show. Huh, he opens the show against Hulk Hogan in a WCW World Heavyweight Championship match. Well, at least Nash is taking the first hour a little bit seriously. When does Sid get entrance music? I do get a kick out of Sid getting BOOOOOOOO’D and then getting a mic and yelling I CAN TELL BY THE CHEERS OF THE FANS THAT THEY FEEL THE SAME ANTICIPATION I FEEL. Honestly, it’s time to re-evaluate Sid’s mic work. I think it’s pretty good sometimes; he can be a funny dude. Oh, wait, he just opens the show yelling about Hogan, not having a match with him. Commentary did not make that clear. “Nash taking the first hour seriously” comment RETRACTED. The Nitro Girls dance. Fit Finlay is our current WCW Hardcore Champion, I guess? Maybe? They still don’t have a fucking hardcore belt! Finlay is still walking around on both legs, so good for him. Jimmy Hart shows up on the TurnerTron and crows about having stolen Finlay’s ugly trophy. You know what made the Hardcore Championship in WWF so cool? It was a cracked, fucked up, taped-over Winged Eagle belt. That belt has some STYLE in its weirdo way. The trophy is an ugly ripoff of that. They should have grabbed the Western Heritage States title from storage and mangled it if they wanted to get the same sort of feel for their trophy/belt. I just GIS’d the WCW Hardcore Championship belt, and it sucks. No feel. Anyway, Hart sends Jerry Flynn down to face Finlay. This crowd is hot for American goofball Flynn attacking Northern Irish HEATHEN Finlay. I am making some strong, maybe unfair judgments about the populace of Rockford, Illinois. This match is fine. I like Finlay’s jawbreaker! It’s a real good jawbreaker. Finlay wants to get hardcore with a chair outside the ring, but the ref stopping him allows Flynn to come back and really get this OBLIGATORY RINGSIDE BRAWL/THESE FELLAS GONNA RISK IT ALL/OBLIGATORY RINGSIDE BRAWWWWWWWWWWL *sax noises* going. Jimmy Hart comes back on the TurnerTron and yells intelligibly at Finlay while Finlay, uh, locks on a chinlock and, er, the crowd chants U-S-A. That’s the most boring possible combination of things to happen at this moment in this match. I don’t know who in booking or production decided to have a poorly calibrated TurnerTron sending out an annoying, high-pitched echo from Jimmy Hart during this match, but that person was wrong to make that decision. Finlay hits his forward roll slam and takes off for outside to find Hart in the parking lot. Hart hides under a production bus; Finlay easily finds him like the mom in Family Circus finds Jeffy hiding in the closet, hands over his eyes to make himself invisible. The First Family jumps Finlay and, yeah, it’s pointless television. J.J. Dillon calls the West Hollywood Blondes into his office. They think that Dillon is going to fire them for being a couple, but Dillon thinks they’re brothers and not lovers, so they’re safe! *snoooooooore* Gene Okerlund insists on inflicting a Hulk Hogan interview upon us. Fuuuuuuuuuck. Rockford, IL is like OH YEAH, WE’RE NOT SICK OF HOGAN’S ACT AT ALL, LET’S HAVE MORE OF IT PLEASE. We should contract Rockford. Contract them from the United States. We'll replace them with San Juan. There is one good thing about this segment: Bischoff is rehabilitating “Rockhouse” a bit by having a guy who has actually main evented in his career coming out to it. Okerlund creams his jeans while Hogan rips off his shirt. Hogan says some bullshit. He’s a babyface now. Whatever. Nash is still punting the first hour. Ain’t no one out here with any taste in pro wrestling watching Hogan in 1999. You’d better get out of here with this shit. Lenny Lane and Lodi are gay. You can tell because Lenny is skipping around and twirling his hair. That is the sort of behavior you see from gay men in public all the time. I was at the bank with my wife trying to get a home loan the other week, and in the middle of a complex discussion about interest rates, the associate we were working with got up and skipped while twirling his hair. It was a challenge for him because he was clean-shaven up top, but he found a way. We asked him about it, and he said, “Oh, I did that because I’m gay. Every hour on the hour. I'm compelled to. It's science.” This is a true story that is in no way an exaggeration meant to illustrate one of my many complaints about this dumb gimmick. Norman Smiley is the opponent for tonight, so I’m sure that he’ll do the Big Wiggle, but whomever he does it to will like it or something, and Smiley’ll be like EW UGH NO, I ONLY SIMULATE RAW DOGGING MY MALE OPPONENTS FROM BEHIND IF THEY DON’T ENJOY IT, which is a whole other level of problematic [Editor's note: Wait, no, he doesn’t, so that’s good]. Lodi gets tossed around, since he’s Smiley’s opponent. Lenny Lane does a Big Wiggle and Smiley is angry about the taunt steal, which allows Lodi to jump him. He and Lenny are able to get a little bit of work in on Smiley. It’s slow and ponderous. This match stinks. Some guy in the fourth row has come up with multiple signs to homophobically slur Lenny and Lodi. Smiley wins with a flash pinfall attempt. Smiley demonstrates the Big Wiggle to Lenny and Lodi, and they practice it and smile at one another because they will do it during their enthusiastic sex session later tonight oh God WHYYYYYY do these Nitros SUCK SO BAD. Wonderful, it’s Eric Bischoff on commentary! He isn’t a shitty commentator and an even shittier babyface who was at the end of his creative rope a year ago and has only gotten worse as he’s gotten closer to the end of his first tenure running WCW! That doesn’t describe him at all! Recap: Sting and Flair have had many wars. So, so many. Bischoff speaks. He puts Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Billy Kidman, and Sting into, and I quote him directly, “the same era of athlete.” This “new blood” pre-angle is total bullshit. What a dumb angle. I don’t know why they went back to it; it obviously stunk based on this trial period. Sting faces Ric Flair to try and stanch the audience bleed from Nitro when RAW comes on; before the match, Sting hits Charles Robinson with a Scorpion Death Drop and tosses him from the ring so that Mickey Jay can take charge. Sting and Flair then have the same match they always have, *yawn*. I’ll skip to the finish. Sting gets two on a superplex, but Arn yanks the ref out of the ring. Sting clears him out, but Sid runs to the ring and attacks Sting while the ref is down. Flair locks on a Figure Four as the ref recovers, but Sting fires up and turns the hold. He eventually fires up. After a short sequence, we get another ref bump when Flair pulls him in front of a Stinger Splash. Sting takes out Arn and Asya, then locks Flair in a Scorpion Deathlock. Flair gives up, but the ref is out, so Bischoff jumps in the ring and calls the submission for Sting even though he has no power in kayfabe, right? What the fuck is happening? Sid runs back down and attacks Sting and Bischoff, then turns mega-babyface by powerbombing Bisch. He was very gentle about it. Hulk runs Sid off. The crowd has been hot all night, by the way, but there’s a whole row of guys on the hard cam wearing Hooters and Miller Lite shirts, and I’m gonna be a fuckin’ snob and say that explains a lot about this crowd. Whatever, I’m a little bit classist, I admit it. But seriously, if WCW’s popularity was indicated in any way by the energy of this crowd, they’d have lived a lot longer. One thing Bischoff (and I guess Zane Bresloff) doesn’t get enough credit for is becoming very popular in the Midwest during the Nitro Era and building their business in a number of hot Midwestern mid-sized cities and towns. Rick Steiner’s music welcomes me to hell the DAWG POUND, WOOF WOOF. Steiner defends his TV title against Horace Hogan. What was on RAW at this time? Chyna/Road Dogg in a Dog Pound match, which is a good mirror to the Dog-Faced Gremlin having an OBLIGATORY RINGSIDE BRAWL *more sax noises*. Steiner bores me half to death even though Horace is trying hard. Hulk can’t even come out and help his goofy, but earnest nephew; he takes matters into his own hands and yams Rick with a chair a few times. In a very awkward spot, Rick gets back in the ring, and the ref gets back in the ring, but Horace just stands there with his back to the ramp, obviously waiting for a run in. Kevin Nash runs down after what feels like minutes and jumps him, then dumps him back in the ring for a Rick Steiner top-rope bulldog that gets three. Nash and Steiner give each other daps, so I guess Nash is randomly a heel now? Hulk comes down and grabs a mic, then wonders out loud why Nash is acting like this. Nash responds by saying that he doesn’t like Hulk anymore, so there! Psicosis deserves better, but he’s not going to get it. He’s going to job to Eddy Guerrero. We could be in month three or whatever of the Psicosis Cruiserweight Championship run, but instead, the belt is still on Rey and has thus almost disappeared from television as a prize since Rey has been tied up in the NLS/WTR feud. I don’t want to hear Bischoff say shit about how important the cruiserweight division was to him because he just let Nash tuck that belt on Rey and then proceed to ignore it. Psicosis does that great signature corner bump of his while Scott Hudson makes clear that Arliss from Arli$$, and not Robert Wuhl, star of Arli$$, will be here soon. Eddy dominates early and gets two on a tope con hilo. Psicosis and Eddy hit multiple switches and counters until Psicosis lands on his feel out of a tilt-a-whirl attempt and lands a lariat. These two are good at pro wrestling. Eddy does his signature bump where his legs bounce off the ropes on a monkey flip. Psicosis lands a tilt-a-whirl slam for backbreaker. They wander outside because of course they do. It’s a necessity in 1999. Psicosis slows things down and slams Eddy in the center of the ring, then goes up and lands a diving wheel kick for two. Psicosis tries a top-rope Frankensteiner, but celebrates and doesn’t cover at all; instead, he goes for a Tornado DDT and gets countered into a spinning neckbreaker. Eddy rapidly gets to his feet, goes up, and launches a Frog Splash for three. Solid TV match, as if you couldn’t guess. Parka and Villano V jump Eddy after the match, but Rey Misterio Jr. runs down for the save. You know that after last week when he harassed the luchadores because he’s mad that they didn’t stay in the lWo that he coerced them into joining in the first place, Eddy is the heel, right Nash? Well, maybe Rey hates masked luchadores too because he and Eddy shake hands and make peace. Stevie Ray tries to rally the B-Teamers in the locker room. Stevie asks the rest of them to watch his back as he confronts the Jersey Triad. Crush wants to know if Stevie’s casting them aside to re-form Harlem Heat, but Stevie blows him off. I’m surprised that the B-Teamers still exist at this point in 1999. The Jersey Triad comes to the ring. The Triad does some bad pre-match mic work. They do some awful playing of the dozens. Stevie Ray comes down, and the rest of the Triad sort of steps out of the ring and nudges Kanyon into being the guy to face Stevie. This match is short and is really an excuse for angle development more than anything. Stevie uses his power advantage to assert his dominance. He lands a press slam, a big boot, and a clothesline. Kanyon dodges a second clothesline attempt, but struggles to keep the advantage. Stevie dumps Kanyon to the floor as Kanyon tries punches in the corner, and that’s when they do their little obligatory ringside brawl thing. Kanyon gets some control again when it gets back in the ring, but eventually, he misses a splash and Stevie comes back. Stevie tries a Slapjack, then dodges an onrushing Bam Bam and DDP. Kanyon tries to jump Stevie, but gets shoved into Page and Bam Bam. He hits Kanyon with a Slapjack and huh, gets three before the rest of the Triad can break up the pin attempt. The Triad beats Stevie down until Booker runs down for the save. Hype video: Savage and Sid, and I guess the rest of Team Madness if it still even exists. Arliss of Arli$$ hypes a WCW-focused episode of Arli$$. Randy Savage comes to the ring with Mona and Gorgeous George, but not Madusa. Commentary is even more of a wreck than it was when Bischoff was out here, if you can believe it. Savage grabs a mic and threatens both Nash and Hulk. Savage says he's running for POTUS or something; who gives a shit. Savage is facing Billy Kidman in a battle of dudes with potentially SHOOT deadly top-rope finishers. Savage does creaky old man offense while Arliss won’t shut the fuck up about how much he loves Dennis Rodman. Kidman sends Savage sprawling to the floor with a dropkick, so Savage grabs a chair. He swings it at the announcing table, then sends a wave of complaints at Johnny Boone. Savage makes it back to the ring sans chair so that he can hit some more creaky old man offense. It’s all punches, chokes, and a Savage Elbow with him at this point. It’s a bummer. Though just as I type that last sentence, he takes a backdrop to the floor and shows a glimmer of the not-creaky and younger Savage. Kidman tries to follow up, but Savage hides behind George. That misdirection allows Mona to dropkick Kidman into Savage from behind. We get another OBLIGATORY RINGSIDE BRAWL or OBLIGABRAWL, as I might start calling them for the sake of brevity. The match makes it back to the ring, where Kidman gets two on a flash small package. I think Arliss is here to awkwardly set up a Savage/Rodman match that I’m pretty sure ends with a porta potty being tipped over with one or both guys in it. Mona whiffs on a missile dropkick and hits Savage instead, and Kidman follows up with a springboard bulldog that gets two. Kidman tries to speed up the match and leaps behind Savage on a backdrop attempt, but Savage turns around, sticks him with a boot to the gut, and lands a piledriver. Savage slams Kidman, then goes up and crushes him with a Savage Elbow for one, two, and nope, he pulls Kidman up and then calls for another Savage Elbow. The ref gets in his face and gets punched. Savage drops another elbow, then calls for a third. A boa-wearing Dennis Rodman runs down and hits Savage in the back of the head with his purse to a huge pop. What possible beef does Rodman have with Savage? I don’t know. Arliss gets in the ring and tries to wave Rodman off for some reason, but Rodman ignores him. Gene Okerlund comes into the ring and tries to mediate this argument. Rodman blows kisses to the corner camera while everyone else tries to cut a promo. Gonna be honest, this is like a fever dream. Did I drink a bottle of liquid codeine before I sat down to watch this show? I’m confused. I’m not entirely sure that I didn’t fantasize this whole segment. Savage cusses at Rodman, and then just for the fuck of it all, Madusa enters the ring and attacks Mona. This is baffling. It’s not even bad. It’s just fucking weird, man, so busy and weird. Recap: Konnan and Vampiro got beef. Konnan comes to the ring and hits the roulette. He is ready to fight Vampiro again. Vampiro gets in the ring and Konnan slaps him. Vampiro dominates from there until Konnan makes a comeback, at which point Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J – yes, the motherfucking Insane Clown Posse – comes to the ring to attack Konnan. Before that happened, Konnan hit one of the ugliest floatover bulldogs that I’ve ever seen in my life. Oh wait, Raven is here to watch. Rey Misterio Jr. runs out for another save while Raven watches. Vampiro plants Rey with a powerbomb. Are we really putting Raven with Vampiro and the ICP? No wonder he left for less money. This is the best creative possibility we have for Raven? Really? Recap: Hulk Hogan comes back, takes the big gold, shunts Randy Savage into a midcard feud with Dennis Rodman in a single night. Bummer, the WTR is here. I think this watch of WCW has made me dislike Curt Hennig, maybe? I don’t know, I can watch him from 1988 or 1992 and still enjoy him. But like with other guys – Bret, Savage – his end-of-career run has been a challenge to watch at times, let’s just put it that way. And while I like pre-WCW Hennig, I don’t like him that much. Barry Windham and Curt Hennig face Chris Benoit and Perry Saturn. Hennig tries hard and bumps around for Benoit, so he’s having a better performance than normal. Benoit and Saturn bash Hennig’s knees against the mat and double snot rocket him. Benoit hits the cables to get some momentum and is tripped by Kendall Windham; Kendall and Bobby Duncum Jr. attack Benoit outside the ring after Barry hits Benoit with a lariat from his spot on the apron. This triggers an FIP segment as we go to commercial. That segment continues when we come back, or at least until Hennig misses a charging elbow in the corner. Saturn receives the hot tag and holds off all four WTR members; Benoit sends Barry outside while Saturn tangles with Hennig. Hennig manages to escape a DVD attempt with an eye rake, but Saturn locks him in the Rings of Saturn, and the WTR jump in the ring to cause a DQ. It’s four on two, and Dean Malenko runs down and only makes it four on three, so the babyfaces are still down bad until Shane Douglas – speak of the devil - runs in and evens the odds. A light E-C-W chant starts after the WTR are cleared from the ring. Douglas gets a mic and cuts a boilerplate WE’RE CHANGING THE GAME AND WE’RE TAKING YOUR SPOTS, OLD FOLKS. Shane Douglas alludes to people like the HARLEY RACES and the RIC FLAIRS being a systemic problem that needs solving. Specifically Ric Flair is the guy he alludes to, actually. We are in an era of Nitro that is almost a complete blank for me. OK, I knew Shane Douglas was in WCW, but I remember zero about his run. I knew the ICP were in WCW, but other than the Awesome Bomb incident, I remember zero about their run. Add that to having no idea about where the titles are going, and this is some very new stuff to me. Hulk Hogan defends the title against Sid Vicious in the main event. This thing is going to get eleven-ish minutes. Huh. Honestly, I’d prefer one of the four-minute specials that Nitro usually churns out for its main events considering the matchup. Sid stalls for a couple of minutes anyway, and it’s hilarious because some fan tells him he sucks, and he yells back YOUR MOTHER SUCKS, FOUR-EYES! Sid fuckin’ RULES. This guy is the best. Crown him because the Hulkster sucks in every way. Sid thinks about a test of strength, but bails again and yells at Heenan over on commentary. It’s a good thing that Sid’s stalling is actually entertaining because that’s the only thing keeping me engaged. Finally, a match happens, and Hogan has reached the point where he’s unwatchable in the ring unless Vincent Kennedy and the WWF's road agents are producing his shit. That 2002/2003 run he had was a true miracle as far as I’m concerned. Sid attacks Hogan’s freshly-healed MCL while on offense. He locks on a Cobra Clutch, but Hulk fights out of it. Sid lands a big boot and goes for a legdrop, but Hogan dodges and Hulks up. He hits a big boot, but Sid wobbles without falling, so Hogan slams him and looks for the legdrop. He’s too busy calling for it to actually even attempt it, though, and Kevin Nash runs down and jumps him, drawing a DQ. Sting runs down for the save and drills both Nash and Sid with Stinger Splashes. Rick Steiner runs down to make the odds less even, and they embark upon a three-on-two beatdown for awhile…until GOLDBERG’s music hits and he trots out and fucks these dudes up. Goldberg RULES except for when he’s throwing dangerous kicks at Bret Hart’s head. Hey, I can like them both! Nash’s abrupt heel turn and friendship with Sid, a guy he’s been beefing with for the past month, make no sense and came out of nowhere. But, you know, this show wasn’t great, but other than that and I guess Arliss being a real guy and Eddy somehow being the babyface in his feud with the masked luchadores, it was coherent. Well, and Bischoff counting the pin in Sting/Flair even though I'm pretty sure he still has no power in storyline. OK, so it wasn't very coherent, but I don’t know. I guess that it was bad and incoherent, but it managed to be way less bad and incohernt than usual when the Nitros of the past three months of airtime are also taken into account. Plus Goldberg is back, so that’s a feel-good ending. 0 out of 5 Stinger Splashes. Buff Bagwell did a blackface sketch with a yellowface Sonny Onoo impersonator and a random hot Asian lady. Also, Buff did a terrible blaccent and made bad jokes. They cut this out of the Network showing at some point, but I saw it, it exists, and I reserve the right to change the grade of this Nitro. -22 out of 5 Stinger Splashes. Fucking WCW.

Mick Foley calls them "underneath guys" in his first book, which I like a lot because it describes what they do: Fight from underneath for most of the match. That they do it poorly before losing is neither here nor there.

They are so boring as to be almost non-descript. You can't scare me. I sat through Rick Steiner and Judy Bagwell as tag champs. BRING 'EM ON

Even Benoit used TALK TO THE HAND correctly. Benoit is better at doing this sort of thing than Eric Bischoff. Bisch couldn't even clear a bar that low. One of the weirder things about this watch is that I'm about twenty months out from WCW not being a thing anymore, but I keep realizing just how much notable stuff there is that still hasn't happened yet. Like, Bischoff is still on his first stint as executive producer of this company. Once they switch over to the new logo and set in the spring of 1999, it's like WCW stuffs a decade of stupid shit into two years of airtime.

Thunder Interlude – show number seventy-one – 14 July 1999 "The WCW Gang is a quiet wallflower standing in the corner of the party, bothering no one" It’s Thunder on Wednesday tonight…"When does Hogan/Nash happen?" seems to be the big hook for this show and maybe for the next Nitro…This was actually a hot matchup for the world title a year ago, but they put the big gold on Goldberg instead…They then proceeded to book Goldberg’s reign poorly before putting it back on Nash and throwing away the first one-on-one match between Hogan and Nash in an all-time dumb angle, so yeah… Now, of course, it’s lukewarm…Two babyfaces, neither of whom is Sting or Goldberg (your actual one-on-one money matchup between babyfaces for the title as far as 1999 goes), having a likely crappy match that I don’t care about…Bless your heart, WCW… Vampiro opens the show against Van Hammer…If WCW had a kayfabe phone book, they’d be one after the other in the listings…Just something to think about…I mean, to think about other than this match, which is quite dull…Vampiro just barely reaches Hammer on a crossbody to the floor…Obligatory ringside brawl…Other than the Hammer elevated beal toss, meh….Vampiro should feud with Konnan over which of them is the most awkward athlete…Vampiro wins with a small package, then gets leveled and Cobra Clutch Slam’d by Hammer after the match…I’m not sure that finish did anything for either of them…Why match these two up specifically at this point?... Hey, it’s a Rick Fuller sighting!...He’s dressed like a can of Monster Energy…Hey, it’s a Sick Boy sighting!…He’s dressed like the nondescript, least fun guy in the former Flock…This is another snoozer…It’s also too long, especially for a match between these two guys…The crowd is also BORED which you can hear underneath the absurd noise piped in during post-production…Fuller dominates most of this at a glacial pace…Sick Boy cleanly lands a springboard back elbow…Good for him!...Fuller catches Vick trying a moonsault and powerbombs him from that position for three…Well, at least “boring” is better than “atrocious”… Chase Tatum, Swoll, and Brad Armstrong (w/4x4) tag up to face Fit Finlay, Steven Regal, and Dave Taylor…It’s mid-July…If I recall correctly, Chase Tatum is out of the company by mid-August and Swoll is out of the company by mid-September…What a waste of time and money this NLS angle was…On the flip side, it’s a short angle, so at least I don’t have to suffer much before it’s over…Hopefully, everyone in the WTR also shuffles off TV (or at least onto WCWSN) sooner rather than later…Not meaning to be insensitive about Duncum Jr. soon leaving television because he fatally overdosed, of course… There’s a commercial break in this for some reason…It’s a match that is a slight cut above from the previous matches…Armstrong is FIP, which is the right move, obviously…There’s some decent offense from the heels in control because they’re all good wrestlers…Finlay goes to the well one too many times and clears himself out on a shoulder charge, but Armstrong stumbles toward the wrong corner and gets punched…It’s another too-long match, though…Armstrong gets a couple of flash two counts before finally getting a hot tag to Swoll…The match breaks down until, finally, it ends with Swoll landing his shitty uppercut for three…Tenay calls it a heart punch, but no, heart punches are cool and also hit the chest, not the underside of the chin…4x4 is wide as hell…We need more comically-wide dudes in pro wrestling…Where are all the Strong Mads in pro wrestling today?... Recap: Sting challenges Ric Flair for control of WCW… Did a bunch of midcarders no-show this taping?...I ask because they dragged Bobby Eaton out of mothballs for the next match…I like Eaton, but there are a lot of guys on this card who are barely WCWSN status in 1999, IMO…Eaton does the J-O-B for D-O-P-E-Y D-A-V-E (w/ Ric, Asya)…Well, per the discussion going on in this current month’s discussion thread, is it really a "job" if Eaton is clearly the better wrestler in kayfabe per the match?...Eaton syncs up with Ric and clearly agree to not try very hard before the match…Hey, it’s a living… David tries to heel, but he moves like a malfunctioning robot, it’s so strange…Heh, after Eaton lands a chop, Ric calls Eaton over on the apron and hands him a couple hundred bucks…Eaton punches and stomps David, so Flair jumps on the apron and goes back to the bankroll in his pocket…That was genuinely funny…David is just so bad at wrestling (in kayfabe in this context, to be clear)...He eats offense like he's a wrestling dummy…Eaton has such an easy time with Dave that he decides, What the hell, I’ll hit an Alabama Jam and win this thing…There’s a whole weird sequence where Ric moves Dave out of the way and puts Asya in his place…Eaton hops down and confronts Ric…Asya comes from behind and low blows Eaton, but accidentally hits Ric as well…They both sell pain as Dave locks a Figure Four on Eaton, who is quickly counted out by Charles Robinson…This joke has gone on too long, but Ric is at least trying to spice it up… I’m not sure that David Arquette winning the WCW World Championship is aesthetically worse than David Flair being awarded the U.S. Championship and holding onto it for multiple weeks…At least Arquette lost the title quickly and, in his case, it was all part of a swerve anyway…It’s also easier to swallow from hindsight since at least Arquette had a wrestling career on the indies that I guess wasn’t the worst?... Recap: Stuff what happened on Nitro…We also get to hear Ernest Miller’s un-dubbed theme… Mikey Whipwreck makes a rare appearance…He faces Billy Kidman, the guy who he debuted against a few months ago…Commentary talks about Kidman getting a “tainted win” over Regal on the Nitro four days into the future two nights ago…That whole match existed to get Bischoff over as a tough, no-bullshit babyface…That’s somehow even worse than having a Buff/Piper match built around getting Judy over as, uh, a tough, no-bullshit babyface… Tenay announces that Hogan/Nash for the title will be at Road Wild, which is the last Road Wild, I’m pretty sure…A month of build for this shit?...Ugh… This match is perfectly watchable…We get our obligatory wandering brawl at ringside…Kidman sparks a run of offense in the ring, but gets cut off with a DDT…Whipwreck charges the corner, eats a boot, but hits a floatover powerslam for two when Kidman tries to follow up…Larry Z. does a good job of commentating by questioning how big Whipwreck is after Tenay talks about Whipwreck winning this match and maybe getting a shot at Rey…He notes that it’s hard to tell considering Mikey's bulky attire, but Whipwreck might have put on more mass to absorb blows in the hardcore division instead of focusing on the Cruiserweight Championship…Whipwreck can’t put Kidman away and is too casual about a number of his covers besides… Kidman blocks a top rope rana by simply holding onto the ropes, then follows up with a crossbody for two…Kidman whiffs on a rebound clothesline and gets springboard clotheslined in return, but he blocks a powerbomb with a facebuster and crushes Mikey’s upper body with a somewhat wild SSP for the three…Solid TV match… Recap: Randy Savage is the greatest transitional champion of all time… The Jersey Triad faces the WTR – specifically Curt Hennig and Barry Windham – for the tag titles…I forgot that the latter were the first champs after the tag division reboot…You know, it’s weird that they never gave Scott Steiner and Buff Bagwell a long run with the tag belts before the reboot…Don’t let Page do his pre-match mic work…Aw, they let him do it…Page: “We make up the MOST ELECTRIFYING […] trifecta in sports entertainment history”…Does DDP just watch WWF shows and then regurgitate the language he hears on them or something?... This match is decent, but trading Benoit, Saturn, Raven, etc. for Hennig and Windham in 1999 puts a hard cap on how good this can possibly be…Bam Bam, Hennig, and Windham are the weak points, but they work hard, so it’s just fine…Page and Kanyon are pacey workers, and I think the WTR do a good job of keeping up with them when they’re in the ring…Page tries a Diamond Cutter, but Windham shoves Page out of it and right into the waiting Hennig standing on the apron… This match goes back and forth…Yeah, perfectly solid stuff in this one…Larry Z. is disgusted by this perversion of the Freebird Rule that Ric Flair is allowing in storyline…Aren’t we all, Larry Z.?...Wait, just after Tenay says that only the Triad can swap out partners because they have an agreement with Ric Flair, Kendall Windham drags his tired ass in here and Billy Silverman allows it…You know what’s cool?...Coherence…Coherence is cool…Barry ends up as the dude-in-peril…Hennig finally gets a hot tag…The match breaks down…Billy Silverman throws the whole thing out…The show ends with a seven-man brawl… This show was generally boring, but competent…There are worse ways to spend eighty minutes…WOO…

Even more than the promos, the Hitman cutting a searing look of pure hatred at the crowd while hugging Owen after making up with him is one of the best things I've ever seen in wrestling, full stop. It's tremendous.

Show #197 – 12 July 1999 “The one where Savage has a one-day transitional title reign to drop the gold to Hulk Hogan. No, wait, not that Nitro. The other Nitro where that happens.” Let’s Nitroooooooooooooooo, I suppose! Randy Savage is the champ again, but how long is that even going to last? I give it no more than two weeks, and I know one of Hulk or Ric will be lifting that belt off him. Now, I think Ric might have an actual back injury that he’s resting based on the fact that I think Dopey Dave/Malenko at BatB was originally meant to be Ric/Malenko, so that means – yuck – that Hogan is probably okay to work after MCL surgery. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Gene Okerlund is in the ring to talk to Randy Savage (by himself for this segment). Savage crows about taking the big gold off of Nash. The crowd chants for GOLDBERG. They get this bum Hulk Hogan instead after Savage challenges anyone who isn’t Kevin Nash to a title shot. Back on Show #137, Savage’s one-day transitional reign ends when Hulk Hogan beats him for the title. The more things change, the more they stay the same. My only comfort is that it’s 1999, so this particular Hulk Hogan title reign is probably not going to be all that long. I also love Heenan going LISTEN TO THE OVATION, which is muted because everyone in the crowd wanted Goldberg, not this idiot Hogan. Anyway, this segment goes on way too long and no one says much of anything useful. Hype video: To paraphrase Big Boi, Randy Savage is the champ, but only at this moment, maybe not tomorrow! Fourteen minutes in, and no wrestling yet. Just stills of the BatB ’99 main event. Bummer. Then, there’s a Nitro Girls routine. I love ‘em, but come on now. And now I’m muting my audio, and not because a wrestler with a dope theme song that’s been unfortunately dubbed over is coming to the ring. Stupid-ass Kevin Nash and his insistence on punting the first hour of Nitro is really annoying me. Eighteen-ish minutes in and Vampiro comes out to the ring to face Konnan. If someone told me that two wrestlers who made big names for themselves in Mexico were coming to the ring to wrestle, I would have said, “Well, good, at least we’re getting some dope in-ring action from cruisers in the first match.” WCW managed to fuck even that up somehow. Vampiro jumps Konnan before the latter's done with his Catchphrase Roulette while, to their credit, Heenan and Tony S. talk about prior beef between the two. Vampiro being mad at Konnan about not getting a part in a soap opera because Vamp speaks shitty Spanish is the dumbest shit ever. Anyway, these two actually have a decent, pacey match that ends after Vampiro bails out of the ring when Konnan hits a sit-out facebuster and then yams Konnan with a chair when Konnan follows. Vampiro continues the beating as the bell rings and lands a Nail in the Coffin. Huh, are we moving Konnan out of the NLS stuff and into a feud with Vampiro? Recap: Ric Flair and Dean Malenko have beef. They’ll wrestle tonight. Hey, it’s Ernest Miller and Sonny Onoo! I get a kick out of Ernest Miller stealing the nicknames of much more accomplished people in their fields for himself. The Cat promises to show the Nitro Girls how to dance and then actually does it; a couple of them should take notes. No offense, Kimberly. The crowd thinks that he sucks; he lets them chant, then tells them to shut up because he disrespects their socioeconomic status and because they are from Jacksonville. Miller thinks that Buff Bagwell was a terrible boxer at BatB and couldn’t win without his mom helping – both true! Miller says he’d fight both Buff and Judy, but Judy is a super-heavyweight, so she’d have to go down a weight class to fight him. MEAN. Buff comes out in a shirt that has a picture of himself as a genie coming out of a lamp airbrushed onto the back. Buff is in the Jake Roberts/Rick Rude class of using airbrushing effectively on his gear. Heenan says that Buff will be a big star someday, but as Conrad noted on either the last Georgia Dome Nitro episode or the BatB ’99 episode of 83 Weeks, he’s shoved out of any significant place within the pro wrestling business in about two years. I don’t even like Buff that much, but it’s a pretty wild fall from potential stardom to the unemployment line, probably to the point that he must be the guy most harmed by WCW being sold to the WWF. Buff poses. The crowd cheers. The Cat poses. The crowd boos. Buff loves Jacksonville. The crowd cheers. The Cat thinks Buff and Jacksonville can both kiss his ass. The crowd boos. Buff challenges the Cat to a match. The crowd cheers. The Cat jumps Buff from behind. The crowd boos. This is very textbook stuff from both guys, but it worked. The crowd is hot for Buff and his comeback. Sonny Onoo jumps in and Buff slams him, but that gives the Cat plenty of time to put on his slipper and kick Buff; Onoo recovers and counts a phantom pinfall. That was alright, folks. Heh. The Cat dances after the match and then chokes Buff a bit after doing the splits. Recap: Hulk Hogan needs the title back to feel good about himself, accosts Randy Savage. We just saw this thirty minutes ago! Aw man, Bischoff is on commentary again. Ric Flair (w/Arn Anderson and Asya) wrestles Dean Malenko. Bisch is such a star-fucker when it comes to Hogan, but then again, he put himself in a position to supplement his income in a post-WCW world by clinging to the S.S. Hogan like a barnacle. Bisch craps on Bill Watts for doing with Erik Watts what Ric Flair is doing with David Flair. Malenko comes to the ring with Benoit and Saturn, but Flair gets Doug Dellinger to eject the latter two men from the building. Flair works a prototypical heel Flair match with Malenko. It’s fine. You know all the spots, so I have no need to write them here. After Arn helps Flair quell a Malenko outburst and some basic Flair heel control leading into a babyface comeback, we head toward the finish. This all takes too long, by the way. Just get to the fucking finish. I am very bored. Flair actually hits, um, a diving back rake from the top and tries a sleeper; Malenko backs him into the corner and sandwiches ref Charles Robinson in between them. Johnny Boone comes down as Flair locks on a Figure Four, but gets turned. Flair is about to give up, but Asya jumps in and boots Boone in the ribs. Robinson comes to his feet and disqualifies Malenko for backing into him. The heels put the boots to Malenko until Sting runs down and clears the ring. Flair gets a mic and demands that Sting leave, but Sting is like, Nah. Then he says that "Space Mountain is on Viagra” because that’s Sting’s way of being edgy: mentioning Viagra. Sting is like You held down the young’ins like me a decade ago, and you’re still doing it. Whatever. Sting should punch Eric Bischoff in the throat for how he was booked from Starrcade ’97 through this year. Sting wants to wrestle Flair for control of WCW. The crowd is game for it, especially considering Sting is one of the rare babyfaces in this company who has survived all the wonky booking and stayed over. Ric says that if Sting can beat David Flair first, then Sting can get at Ric. Sting is fine with beating up dopey David to beat up Ric. Bischoff, in a hokey, overexcited voice: “David Flair is backstage wetting ALL OVER HIMSELF!” Shut the fuck up, Bischoff. Billy Kidman faces Lord Steven Regal (w/Dave Taylor and Fit Finlay). Regal is so good. In this match, he easily handles Kidman on the mat, but struggles as soon as Kidman gets moving. Kidman stops to try and arm wringer or a headlock, and that gives Regal the opportunity to reverse the hold or try flash pins from the position that he’s in. He gets three flash rollups while shifting his weight while he’s in a side headlock on the mat, for example. Regal’s always working, always looking for an advantage. It’s actually neat because after those three rollups, Kidman sprawls out a bit on his next side headlock so that Regal can’t use his weight to tip him backward. Regal launches Kidman over the top rope; Taylor and Finlay attack him with the flagpole and the guardrail, then roll him back inside the ring. Regal gets two on a double-underhook suplex, then locks on an octopus hold as we go to break. Regal’s still in control when we come back, using strikes and his cronies outside the ring to inflict punishment. Regal cranks a chinlock, yanking his forearm across Kidman’s nose. Tony S. says that Finlay and Taylor have been a bit part of causing “the suffrage” of Kidman tonight. See, Jacksonville was chanting U-S-A at these guys, but all they want to do is help their American buddy Kidman get the vote. Kidman tries to make a comeback, has a semi-sloppy series of flash pinfall exchanges with Kidman that only score two counts, and then drills Regal with a trio of dropkicks. And then, golly gee whillikers, there’s a ref bump and Kidman has to fight off three guys. He does; a chair gets involved, but it doesn’t go well for Regal, who eats it. Kidman goes up, the crowd cheers, and…Kidman whiffs so badly on the SSP that he hangs himself up on the ropes. The crowd dampens. You can hear one guy go HAHAHAHAHA, YOU FUCKIN’ CLOWN. Bisch jumped up from commentary to count the pinfall in the ref’s stead, but he’s in here checking on Kidman because that was a gross landing. Kidman is aware enough to small package Regal for three anyway; then Super Bisch shoves both Taylor and Finlay to the mat as they protest the decision. HAHAHAHA NO, fucking NO. No one likes you Bischoff. You are not cool. Fuck off. Bisch stands up to all three of the royalists while a bunch of jackasses hee-haw out a U-S-A chant in the front row behind him. Is this hell? Bischoff yammers on about a Nitro Girls search again as the Nitro Girls do a dance routine. I’m assuming that he got yeeted out of the company before that happened. We're only like six weeks away, aren't we. Thank God. Sycho Sid Vicious squashes Kenny Kaos. Hey, why would Vince drop the silent “p” in Sycho Sid’s name to simplify the spelling, but not go all the way and turn the “ch” into a “k?” Syko Sid looks a lot better and makes more sense if you’re going to do that sort of Kool Xtreme Letterz misspelling trope, in my opinion. Then again, this is a guy who spelled Road Dogg’s previous name “Jesse Jammes,” which I always pronounce as “Jesse Jams,” and actually spelled it “The Corre,” which I always pronounce as “The Cor-RAY.” Anyway, the crowd chants for Goldberg while Sid steals Van Hammer’s finish and uses it as a set-up move. This squash goes on for longer than it needs to, but we get a powerbomb, so that’s neat. Sid calls for a mic after the match and then talks just like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget as he asks a knocked out Kaos how it felt to get killed. He yells at Sting as the crowd chants for GOLDBERG. Dammit, I agree. I also want Goldberg to be on these shows again. He apparently showed up for the Megadeth performance on the last Georgia Dome Nitro. That explains the wild chanting for him during the main event of that show. Let’s get him on back here, please. I think Sid’s kind of an underrated promo, by the way. He’s surprisingly high-concept (at least for pro wrestling) in many of his promos. The Nitro Girls dance behind a screen while commentary is like WHOA, SO HOT. Then they replay part of the Sting/Flair thing from like two seconds ago. How does this show run for so much air time and fail to center wrestling or push some guys outside of a few main eventers and maybe a midcarder or two every week? Oh, here’s a midcarder getting some TV time every week: David Flair! He comes down here with his whole clique. Sting follows. David shoves Sting and chops him, gets no-sold, and is quickly hit with a Stinger Splash and locked in a Scorpion Deathlock. Charles Robinson refuses to call for the submission and gets hit with a Scorpion Death Drop. Arn and Flair attack and are woefully ineffective. Flair tries to hide behind Asya, and Sting hits both of them with a Stinger Splash. The crowd digs it! So, did this match have an ending, or like, what? Gene Okerlund presents our new WCW Hardcore Champion, a guy who just had to back down from physical confrontation with Eric Bischoff thirty minutes ago, mind you – Fit Finlay! Finlay says he won because he’s tough, unlike Americans, who are too coddled and have been made soft by these three things: 1) air conditionin’, 2) heatin’, and 3) Waffle House. Amazing. Bischoff says he’s never eaten at a Waffle House in a tone like he’s too fucking good for Waffle House. Heel shit. No one is too good for Waffle House. Anyway, a bunch of midcarders with no direction run down and there’s a huge brawl. Jimmy Hart steals the hardcore trophy and runs away. Fin. DDP does some shitty pre-match mic work with his compatriots in the Jersey Triad. Page challenges his opponent Booker T. to bring his best. Booker outmaneuvers Page early with a couple of arm drags, then sparks a DALLAS SUCKS chant. I'm sure some of the bright folks in this Jacksonville crowd thought that they were just a bunch of Jags fans hating on the Cowboys. Page stalls a lot before finally getting the action going. Booker hits some okay offense, but he looks off tonight for some of it. He tries a Houston Side Kick too close to the ropes, however, and he hangs himself on the top rope when Page dodges it. Page takes over with what I feel like is a subdued bit of offense as we go into a break. When we come back, great, Eric Bischoff is back out here. He claims that he called Brad Siegel and Harvey Schiller and got them to force Ric to face Sting for the WCW Presidency next week since David lost that match technically by DQ and not-technically by getting slaughtered. Page continues hitting offense. It’s okay, I guess. I expected a better match out of these two, honestly. It’s not bad, don’t get me wrong. It’s just not as good as I’d expect. Page works an abdominal stretch spot in which he cheats by using the ropes for leverage. You know why Scott Hall’s version of this spot is so much better? One reason is that when Hall reaches for the ropes, he doesn’t just grab them, he slowly snakes his free arm out and wriggles his fingers, slyly, moving closer and closer before he snaps his hand around the top rope. It’s the sneaky nature of how he sells the move and the anticipation that he builds up. Now Page is doing a sleeper. This match is a bummer, man. Booker gets out with a jawbreaker and makes a comeback with buckle bonks and kicks and stuff. Booker hits a flying forearm, but only gets about 2.5. Book shoots Page into the ropes again, but Page hits a leaping DDT to counter; the cover gets another 2.5. Page tries a corner charge and Booker attempts his leapover into a sunset flip; Page blocks it and sits down for two, but he sticks his arms out and gets leveraged over into a cover for two. We are in the finishing run here; Page hits Booker with a sit-out powerbomb for two, then hooks Book for a Diamond Cutter. Book shoves Page away and right into the ref for the thirty-eighth ref bump of the night. Booker hits an axe kick and a Spinaroonie, but Kanyon runs in and drills Booker with a Flatliner, drags Page on top of Booker, then revives the ref for one, two, and a well-timed 2.9 because I thought it was over. Booker gets up and manages to “hit” Page with a Houston Side Kick that misses by miles. Kanyon tries to throw powder in Booker’s eyes, but Book hits him and knocks the powder back into Kanyon’s face. Booker covers, but Bam Bam runs in and breaks up the pinfall attempt for the DQ. Booker eats a tower Diamond Cutter before the Triad uses athletic tape to tie Booker to the ropes. We cut to the back where *sigh* the B-Teamers enjoy the beating. Well, all except for Stevie Ray. Stevie storms out of the B-Teamer locker room and makes the save. It does get a pop and a HARLEM HEAT chant, so what the hell do I know about producing a compelling pro wrestling segment? Randy Savage (w/Team Madness) comes to the ring to transition the WCW World Heavyweight Championship right the hell back onto Hulk Hogan. In between, we had a promising heel Ric Flair title reign that got cut off before it could go anywhere. Then, we had a promising heel DDP title reign that produced a sudden burst of great matches before getting cut off before it could go anywhere. Oh yeah, and Nash was the distantly third-most popular babyface having a somewhat lukewarm title run, but even that’s preferable to Hogan as champ again. Do you like two washed dudes in their forties throwing punches at one another and having a lukewarm brawl? Mona and Madusa jump in and Mona slaps Hogan, but they should know better! Hogan loved attacking Sensational Sherri, and he likewise enjoys the chance to give them a double noggin-knocker. Then, for some reason, Mona and Madusa blame one another for that spot and get into a brawl while Bisch yells YOU GO GIRLFRIEND on commentary because he hates me; he hates all of us, really. This match is a total dud, of course. Hogan wins the title in a match that is too long during which he basically beats the shit out of Savage. It’s essentially an extended squash. This thing is awful. I’m throwing it on the Dirt Worst list. The match stinks, Hogan gets 80% of the offense, and Bischoff is fawning over him on commentary in a high-pitched and annoying voice. It’s an unpleasant experience. Hogan basically walks through both Sid and Savage to win it. At least Sting came down to help with Sid and Nash powerbombed Savage for the finish, I can say that. Nash gets on the house mic after the match and says that this is the second time that he's handed Hogan the belt, then says that he wants a title shot. I guess now he's mad at Hogan again? He calls Hogan a shark. Anyway, Hogan agrees to the match. I’d have given this a straight 0 out of 5 for not having much focus and no very good matches, but Bischoff is so awful, and Hogan is just too much. I just cannot take either of them being on television anymore. They completely ruin the vibes. -5 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

I think Bret is an exponentially better babyface than either of those guys because he's truly exceptional at fighting from underneath, and I'm not sure either of them touched his 1997/98 heel run (though they've both had excellent heel runs themselves). Bret is fairly well-considered an iffy promo, but if you asked me if he was better at promos than Shane Douglas or Jeff Jarrett, I'd have to think about it. Again, not to say that Shane or Jarrett are bad or have never done great promos, but they all seem spotty to me in terms of their promoing ability. I also think that "good match, solid hand" is maybe underselling anyone who is able to headline for a major company, or even a company on the rung right behind major, like ECW in the mid-'90s. In the context of every pro wrestler that's ever lived, all three are upper-level talents. It's like shitting on Brian Scalabrine for being a scrub in the NBA when he was one of the four hundred best basketball players in the world at the time, you know? And I criticize myself for calling Douglas "solid" without contextualizing what I mean by that, too.

I think it's obvious from these posts that I have genius ideas about wrestling am not as dumb as any of us thought about wrestling. No counterpoint needed, sir. I think Shane's an important part of ECW's story. I just said that his ECW run puts him in a space that leaves him less likely to be fondly remembered. It's not necessarily him, but all the acts around him that people tend to remember as more dynamic, while Shane is the steady heel anchor for the promotion (an important role, to be sure).

Great American Bash ‘91 notes (and a comparison): Over in the Nitro thread, I just finished writing up Bash at the Beach 1999. I truly loathed the show. It was WOAT-level stuff in my humble opinion . Now, I’m conducting a scientific test. Is BatB ’99 or GAB ‘91 the worst WCW PPV ever? I think this opening where a camera walks up, buys tickets, and enters the show in first person is cool, except for the fact that tickets are apparently still available for sale on the day of the show. There’s an East Asian family looking at the camera like WTF as it passes them? That makes me giggle. This was a better opening than the opening that showed all the Nash et al. nonsense which started BatB ’99. Plus, they get right to the action without a lot of talking. ADVANTAGE: GAB ’91. Steve Austin and Terrance Taylor get on a scaffold to face P.N. News and Bobby Eaton. Scaffold matches always suck. Yes, even the one exception that you’re thinking of. If P.N. News took a bump off this thing, the poor guy would probably drive his kneecaps up through his eyeballs. Other than the novelty of seeing such a heavy dude get up there, this stinks bad, but there is one shining jewel in the whole thing, and that’s Austin selling the fear and caution of being up that high. Or maybe he’s not entirely selling it. Put Stone Cold in pretty much anything wrestling-wise, and it’s at least a little bit watchable. Eaton captures the heel flag for the win. Even with Eaton and Austin up there being good at pro wrestling in whatever way they can (and PN News mostly just chilling out and watching the proceedings/”protecting the flag”), I would watch Ernest Miller wrestle Disco Inferno like a thousand times before I ever watched this again. ADVANTAGE: BATB ‘99 Eric Bischoff is pushed at his proper level on this show: Ringside interviewer. No, but seriously, as catastrophic as his run of creative oversight ended up being, and as poor an on-screen talent he was until Vincent Kennedy started producing him, he was great at moving toward WCW turning a profit in 1994-1995. If he was just the guy who worked television deals for WCW, he’d be remembered a lot better. I do actually think Bischoff has useful insights into producing television and working deals to get shows onto television. Paul E. and Arn yell about and at Missy Hyatt and Rick Steiner. There’s lots of downtime with talking and interviews because they’re taking down the scaffold, but this is all better than the countless video packages for feuds that I hate or Tenay trying to sell the rules of the stupid junkyard match on BatB ’99. ADVANTAGE: GAB ’91. The Diamond Studd is one of those guys, until I rewatched a lot of early ‘90s WCW, who I didn’t realize was doing so many of his Razor Ramon taunts as the Studd, well before he hit the WWF. It’s probably mostly hindsight, but early WCW Studd seems like he’s probably going to be a star. DDP isn’t bad either on the mic because he’s doing his unapologetically corny Jersey guy gimmick. Studd flicks his toothpick at the camera after some lady strips him. Can Studd carry Tom Zenk to something good? If this were 1994 Razor or 1998 Hall, undoubtedly. In 1991, he’s not quite as polished, but he’s got Page helping him cheat on the outside, and ultimately you’ve got two guys with high-end talent potential making Zenk watchable, even if they’re not fully formed. Hall lands a chokeslam and gets a pop because he rules at pro wrestling. See? Obvious future star. The only disappointment is Hall winning with a back suplex and a bridge after DDP interferes; I wanted a Razor’s Edge Diamond Death Drop. Anyway, heel DDP + non-AWA Hall = enjoyable. Rick Steiner + Van Hammer = not so much. ADVANTAGE: GAB ‘91 BALTIMORE! OZ IS IN THE HOOOOOOOUUUUSE! Say whatever you will about Oz, but at least the guy isn’t booking himself to kidnap and also bang all the ladies before having a mediocre PPV main event. Also, Oz’s entrance is fucking wacky; man, it’s amazing. Dusty, you nut. I get a kick out of Oz coming out to an “Another One Bites the Dust” expy. What the hell? That’s so discordant. I’m interested to see if Ron Simmons can get something out of Nash, who is not good in 1991, but who will probably try pretty hard. I actually kind of enjoy aspects of this match. For example, they fight over a headlock, and Simmons trying to power out is good because Ron Simmons is good at pro wrestling. He tries once and can’t win because Oz has the leverage, tries again and gets closer to escaping until Oz pulls his hair, and then finally gets a break on his third try. I also am a sucker for big dudes shoulderblocking one another. Baltimore is bored, though, and I’m not entirely unsympathetic to their feelings, but then Simmons hits three running clotheslines before finally knocking the very green (literally and metaphorically) Oz off his feet and sending him tumbling to the mats outside the ring, and they pop. See, that’s just good fundamental structure. Anyway, Simmons handholds Oz through a perfectly cromulent bout before clipping Oz’s knee and landing a flying shoulderblock for three. Now, was this match good? No. Did I have to watch David Flair suck at even bumping or selling pain during this thing? Also no. ADVANTAGE: GAB ‘91 Robert Gibson wrestles Richard Morton (w/Alexandra York, brick of a laptop) as the ROCK ‘N ROLLS EXPLODE. Gibson jumps Morton in the aisle and gets things started off hit. I’m sorry, if Morton is now this classy dude who hangs out with a suit-wearing Terry Taylor, he needed to CUT THE MULLET [™ Wesley Willis]. Is it weird that I look at Alexandra York in that ‘80s office drone get-up and get some Janine Melnitz vibes? You could tell Janine was cute and might cause you to fall right over if you saw her dressed in something more flattering than that late '80s office get-up, and the same goes for Alexandra. Anyway, this match was pretty solid! Morton getting rattled by that encounter on the ramp and stalling/consulting the computer makes sense. So does having the computer remind him about Gibson’s surgically-repaired knee; Morton targets it, and it’s all good structure. I will say that maybe considering the card being what it is, they needed to go full tilt for most of this match and keep the crowd’s blood up the whole time, but the general idea behind the match is good in a vacuum. Gibson sells that leg wonderfully, and they have a double-whiffed dropkick spot on the ramp that looks good and sounds great because they both hit the ramp. Morton finally figures out that using the computer to figure out a game plan is way more involved than just using it to clobber Gibson in the skull and wins it after doing the latter. This is obviously way the hell better than the eight-man elimination tag. Rey Misterio Jr. is a top-ten, maybe top-five wrestler all time, but he’s not about to turn water into wine Swoll or Kendall Windham into a watchable pro wrestler. ADVANTAGE: GAB ‘91 I forgot that there’s a six-man elimination tag on this show between the Freebirds and Dustin Rhodes/the Young Pistols. Hey, Brad Armstrong is also in this one! OK, this is my totally scientific comparison post, so this match will get compared to both the other elimination tag on BatB ’91 and the next match in the list on BatB ’91, the junkyard nonsense. Anyway, the Freebirds suck ass. Brad Armstrong is good and makes them barely watchable, but Hayes and Garvin are pretty much the worst. The original Freebirds are only any good because of Gordy in the first place. I’ve been watching World Class, and I don’t think I’m getting into the Gary Hart-booked stuff because I just don’t like a lot of the workers, most of the Freebirds included. Honestly, as bad as half the competitors in the eight-man elimination tag at BatB ’99 are, I’d rather watch literally all of them, including Kendall, Duncum, or Swoll, than Michael Hayes or Jimmy Garvin. Yuck. OK, as this match goes on, I’m coming to a decision. There’s way too much shitty offense from Hayes and Garvin in this thing for me. In a comparison of elimination matches, I’d rather watch Rey and Armstrong drag what they can out of that match in 1999 than watch Garvin and Hayes waste time posing and sucking at professional wrestling. Hayes doesn’t even fucking lose a fall; he gets eliminated for sending his opponent over the top rope almost accidentally, like a sudden reaction to someone coming at you. Man, that over-the-top rope rule sucked and WCW took way too long to get rid of it. ADVANTAGE: BATB ’99 Now, while this match is hot ass because of two-thirds of the Freebirds and the junkyard match has a bunch of better workers, the junkyard match is nearly literally unwatchable because of how it was produced. ADVANTAGE: GAB ’91. Oh yeah, two guys from each team get eliminated in like a minute-and-a-half after a long ponderous three-on-three prelude. The only two workers worth watching in this thing are left (sorry, Tracy Smothers fans) and Dustin drills Badstreet with a bulldog for the pinfall. Dustin and the Pistols 1 – Freebirds 0: Dustin and the Pistols win. One final note about this match: Fans in Baltimore sure do love DDTs! Yellow Dog/Johnny B. Badd is interesting. I didn’t watch Fall Brawl ’95 in my Nitro re-watch and plan to eventually go back and fill in the blanks on some of those early WCW PPVs that I skipped when I started writing those reviews. I have semi-recently seen Badd/Pillman on its own for probably the third or fourth viewing, and it struck me as not exactly good, but quite compelling. But that was 1995, when Badd was at the peak of his powers as a wrestler, and this is 1991. Pillman comes to the ring with an actual yellow dog. Badd comes to the ring with Theodore Long and a fantastic cape. Here’s what makes Badd so watchable: Marc Mero took this gimmick and just threw himself into it. This goofy character is somehow believable, even as cartoonish as it is. That’s down to Mero committing entirely to the gimmick. I’d say the same about this match that I said about Badd/Pillman at Fall Brawl ’95; it’s not good, necessarily, but it’s compelling. You can tell how green Badd is because he has slight timing issues sometimes (like when he sticks his arms out to be hit with a sunset flip a touch early and breaks the illusion). But still, I liked what I saw well enough, especially considering how green Badd is. I don’t like the DQ finish though (in favor of Yellow Dog after Long tries to get his mask off). The biggest problem for this match is that I look at the BatB ’99 card and it’s running in the spot that the Jersey Triad/Benoit and Saturn match ran. That's bad(d) luck for these guys. Page in 1999 is truly great, by the way. He won the world title and immediately started doing elite heel work in the ring, and he’s still having consistently great performances even as he's cycled down the card. ADVANTAGE: BATB ’99 Now, here’s where it gets a little tricky. You see, GAB ’91 has three more matches than BatB ’99, even though the shows run roughly the same time limit. Since GAB ’91 continues to run guys out on PPV who shouldn’t be here (fucking BLACK BLOOD?!), but on the other hand BatB found space for David Flair and Brian Knobbs on the card, but not Billy Kidman (who is very over even if he’s not my favorite worker), Chavo Guerrero Jr. (who got very over and then was completely ignored), or Eddy Guerrero (duh, put him on every show you can), it’s ADVANTAGE: PUSH as far as I’m concerned. So, what I’ll do is compare the next two GAB matches to the next BatB match, then the two GAB matches to the main event after that, and I’ll add a straight up main event of BatB '99/ very last match of GAB '91 comparison as well. Don’t question this approach; it’s simple statistics. I did all the proper equations. Trust me. Bischoff trying to get an interview with Missy Hyatt and listening lovingly as someone reads a card that Jason Hervey sent to Missy cracks me up, as does his response to the card's contents (“What a guy…not at all like the character he plays on ABC’s The Wonder Years”). Hilarious. What a dork. Then, he walks in on Missy in the shower to try and get an interview. Jim Ross and Tony S. are like heh heh heh. Oh, WCW, you are so creepy sometimes, you weirdo creeps. Big Josh faces Black Blood in a lumberjack match. This isn’t any good, but it doesn’t offend me or anything. As a bonus, it’s also too short to be boring or terrible. The lumberjacks brawl, which gets the crowd sort of hot, and Dustin breaks away from the pack and hits Black Blood in the knee with an axe handle; Josh rolls a hobbling Black Blood up for the win. Good night for Dusty’s kid! One Man Gang faces El Gigante. Why does Gigante come out with little people? Oh, for a spot where they bite Gang’s butt and stomach. Gang tried to bump around a bit for Gigante, but it wasn’t enough to make this watchable. Gigante wins it with a clothesline. Anyway, DUD. Like that’s a surprise to anyone reading this. This comparison is tough. Buff/Piper was booked all wrong, on the bad side. On the good side, Judy Bagwell was entertaining. On the bad side again, the boxing match itself stunk and Judy Bagwell was the only person who got over as a result of the match. Meh, ADVANTAGE: PUSH Nikita Koloff sucks. I love Sting, but it feels like Sting is still at least a year or two away in his development from being able to extract something good from a bum like Nikita. It also doesn’t help that this is a Russian chain match. I think Sting’s best quality, particularly at this point in his career, is his sheer explosiveness on offense. This type of match limits that quality because it’s worked around the chain and strikes. As much as I dig Sting, but his strikes are not why I watch him. This is a ponderous brawl. It’s boring, and if a Sting match is boring, multiple things went wrong. Sting matches might range in quality, but they are never boring unless something is seriously screwed up. The finish involves both guys stumbling into three corners, then Sting Stinger Splashing Koloff into the fourth corner. Yuck. That was really bad. Lex Luger meets Barry Windham in a cage for the vacant WCW World Heavyweight Championship. That moron Jim Herd not giving Flair his deposit back was somehow even dumber than that moron Jim Herd running one of WCW's only two reliable main event talents off to the competition. Windham’s heel turn in ’88 worked so well because he has little charisma and almost seems without passion, even when he’s trying to speak or move with passion. When he put on a black glove and was like YO, IDGAF ANYMORE, I JUST WANNA GET PAID, it was the only time in his career that I enjoyed him. He’s basically his generation’s Randy Orton: Great timing, excellent athlete, completely soulless and liable to bore the shit out of you. Both of them have their fans, but I think they’re ultimately mediocre. Neither guy ever put it all together, but they had glimmers of greatness that made me think they could have been all-timers (Windham with the black glove; Orton claiming a mental illness and punting everyone). WCW spells Barry Wind(h)am’s name wrong in their graphic. Oh, WCW. You low-rent chumps. Speaking of, look at that, uh, tag belt I think, with a World Heavyweight Championship plate hastily bolted onto the front. This match is just boring. It’s dull. It’s not bad, and it’s competently worked, but I can’t imagine caring about this. Poor Lex. Between this match and the SummerSlam ’94 match, he stayed having duds in big title match spots. At least he’ll always have the 8/4/97 Nitro title win. If he’d gotten a win like that eight years earlier, maybe his career is markedly different. As for the comparison, I will give the BatB match credit for being better than either of these previous two matches because it was relatively short and as poorly executed as it was, the gaga at the end of the match held more of my interest than anything that happened in these previous two matches. And what the heck is up with Luger turning heel and joining Harley Race at the end? That’s as bad as anything booked on BatB 1999’s card. ADVANTAGE: BATB ’99 Yuck, Rick Steiner (w/Missy Hyatt). At least this is 1991, so he’s less useless as a singles wrestler than he is in 1999. A couple of Dicks (Slater and Murdock) come to the ring and abduct Missy. At least it’s the heels abducting women in WCW here in 1991. Steiner wrestles Arn Anderson and Paul E. by himself since Missy’s nowhere around. This is too short to be bad, so there you are. The main event of BatB ’99 is longer and therefore worse. Plus, Paul E. is entertaining, and Arn is good. Steiner wins after landing a Steinerline on Paul E. ADVANTAGE: GAB ‘91 It looks like the final score is GAB '91 - 7, BatB '99 - 4 with TWO PUSHES. There you go: BatB '99 loses and therefore is the worst WCW PPV ever. It’s science. A couple of final notes: First, WCW’s best crowds throughout its existence are in Baltimore IMO, even though WCW books some true garbage on its shows there a ton of the time. Those are good fans, folks. Really good fans. Second, WCW in 1991 is going through what could be the worst transitional period that any company has gone through. They stabilize in 1992 when Rude, Vader, Steamboat, and Cactus are on the roster, combined with Watts putting together generally good television for about six months. But this television in ’91 is vile. I might do a WCW ’91 vs. WWF ’02 comparison thread someday because I’m a sick fuck, but also because I want to watch the two worst transitional years that I can think of seeing from a wrestling company and write about them.

Douglas was never the most compelling guy in the company in my watch. The guys who stand out are Sabu, Sandman, Funk, Foley, New Jack, and Raven. Shane's like the glue guy, not the guy who compels me. He's sort of like late-stage WCW Jarrett. Or TNA Jarrett. Useful piece, but doesn't have the star power of the guys who I really want to see. ECW has some huge personalities, almost overwhelming personalities in a lot of cases, and that's not Shane Douglas. And on the flip side, he's a solid, but not great worker, so he's less impressive than Benoit, Guerrero, Rey, Psicosis, etc. when they come through. Nothing about him really stands out.

SNK vs. Capcom Chaos is amazing for two reasons: The SNK art style being used on Capcom characters and the weird roster. Tessa? Mars People? Violent Ken? I wish SNK would make another one of these someday. I have an original Xbox copy of the game, but I think I'll get a digital copy just because.

He did! I've decided that he watched the tape back for this show and made the call to the doctor.