SirSmUgly

Love this comparison, especially in how they'd sell barely contained irritation with the whackjobs they had to deal with every damn week.

Bash at the Beach ’99 notes: It’s way too hot outside, and my home office has air conditioning, so I'mma just keep writing about WCW. I am over halfway through 1999 and WCW television hasn’t been able to drive me away yet! I saw, while looking up info on the WCW Mayhem video game at TV Tropes, that Russo doesn’t even fully-book a PPV until Mayhem in November. I continue to believe that he might just get too much blame for the garbage proliferating 1999 WCW. Team Madness was hot, but getting sucked into a lengthy feud with Nash and randomly adding Sting to it for some reason has cooled them off for me. Well, that and Savage going full physical abuser with George. Why would someone like Madusa put up with that? She’s well-established as a woman who isn’t going to put up with any physical abuse from a man. I hate it. Tony S. insists that the tag match is still a tag match even though it’s really a Four Corners match considering the belt is on the line. Why didn’t they just make this a Four Corners match in the first place, or failing that, have Nash declare it one on Thunder? That’s rhetorical. I know why. This is Nash-booked WCW and he’s all-time bad at that job. Some dipshit with a laser pointer has it pointed at a sunglasses-wearing Okerlund in the aisle as he pimps the WCW Hotline. I suddenly think of the Seinfeld episode during the Puerto Rican Day Parade where George Costanza is harassed by a guy with a laser pointer and Jerry talks about what might happen if the laser is pointed right between George’s eye and his sunglasses and the beam bounces back and forth between his eyeball and the lenses. That was a solid penultimate episode of Seinfeld (I don’t count the recap show before the finale). Mike Tenay stands in the middle of either a junkyard or your typical Fort Lauderdale neighborhood, it’s hard to tell. He explains how this match works: Escape the ring of cars, scale a rusty fence that might slice you open and give you a huge infection. Ernest Miller (w/Sonny Onoo) opens the show against Disco Inferno. The Cat does his pre-match Catchphrase Roulette. He also asks for another shot at Disco in a dance contest. Sure, why not, add random shit to this match, too. Hey, they didn’t dub over the Cat’s music when the contest starts! YEAH! It rules. The Cat once again crushes Disco in a dance contest, then attacks because he’s enraged and how shitty Disco’s dancing is. Disco easily ducks the Cat’s swing and wallops him, then whips him from corner to corner until the Cat slides to the floor. The Cat grabs a mic and declares that he is now serious about whooping Disco. Miller does some shadow kickboxing, turns around and talks shit to the crowd, and gets jumped. Disco lands atomic drops of the regular and inverted types, then scores two on a lariat. Disco tries an arm wringer, but the Cat hits a throat thrust and a kick, then lands an intricate kickboxing combo that knocks Disco out chokes Disco a lot. He also tosses Disco outside to eat some kicks from Onoo. There’s an obligatory ringside brawl that Disco uses to turn the tide of the match. Back in the ring, Disco tries to follow up, and Miller taps his testes with a forearm. Then, Miller lands a leaping roundhouse kick chokes Disco. To be fair, Miller stands on Disco’s throat to choke him and stomps down with the other foot, so that was at least a neat variation. Miller shoots Disco into the ropes; Disco leaps over the Cat and gets two on a sunset flip, but Miller lands a superkick as soon as Disco gets to his feet. The Cat takes about a year to celebrate that kick before covering; he unsurprisingly only gets two. The Cat lands a body slam and then goes for his boogie chop, but he misses. Disco grabs the chopping hand and bites it, then makes a comeback. He lands his second-rope dancing elbowdrop, but can only get two. They run the ropes, and Disco scores a side Russian leg sweep for two more. Disco shoots the Cat to the ropes again, but gets reversed and runs into a thrust kick. The Cat tries another thrust kick and lands it, but only gets a two count. He tries to duck down on a rope run next and gets caught with a forearm. Disco punches Miller into the corner; Miller rakes the eye and gets the red slipper from Sonny Onoo. Onoo distracts the ref, but as Miller tries to put on the slipper, Disco stomps on Miller’s plant foot. Miller drops the shoe and Disco picks it up and swings away. Onoo sees that things have gone terribly wrong and holds the referee for juuuuuust enough time before dropping to the floor; Disco’s cover only gets about a 2.7 as a result. Onoo gets back onto the apron and eats a Chartbuster, but that distraction allows the Cat to recover the slipper, put it on, and land a kick that ends the match. Miller hobbles away, then busts out of the cape and returns the favor from Thunder by dancing over his fallen opponent. This was acceptable, but maybe not the best opener. Mark Madden is annoying as he talks to Mills Lane at the WCW.com desk. Mills only gets one GET IT ON in during this segment. He’s slipping. Madden wants to know that if Tyson got to bite Holyfield twice before being DQ’d, how much will Mills let Piper or Buff get away with, which actually is a good question even though I don’t fuck with Mark Madden. Recap: Ric Flair hates hardcore wrestling matches, which is funny because that’s the type of match that he has his best performances in. Terry Funk/Ric Flair I Quit at Clash IX is Flair’s best match, and I don’t care what anyone says. Oh, this recap doubles as a recap about Van Hammer winning enough matches to earn a TV title shot. Speaking of the TV title, Rick Steiner/Van Hammer is up next. Rick insists on trying to get the same couple of stupid catchphrases over. He fails at this. Again. At this point, just toss the TV title in a trash can already. Hammer controls early and gets one on a floatover vertical suplex, then gets mauled. Rick Steiner is a black hole on offense. I know I make that point every time, but ol’ Ricky makes me sit through his offense every time. We get an obligatory ringside brawl that Steiner dominates. Back in the ring, Hammer gets a glimmer of offense before it’s back to the Rick Steiner show. The match goes back outside, and Hammer lands a weak chair shot, then rolls Steiner in the ring and goes up top. He gets two on a flying clothesline, then tries a body slam. Steiner bites Hammer on the abdomen to get out of it, punts Hammer in the balls, and lands a top-rope bulldog for three. DUD. Not fit for WCWSN. Tenay stands in the junkyard with Scott Dickinson, who is refereeing this catastrophe. Dickinson holds a Hardcore Invitational trophy that I would assume is the precursor to the actual Hardcore title that this company keeps teasing, but refuses to debut. If your budget is tight, Bischoff, maybe don’t pay Mills Lane to show up six days before BatB as hype for Piper/Buff and buy a belt instead. Recap: David Flair is the U.S. Champ. Could we not have done this with the Television title instead since Rick Steiner is already rendering it useless and saved the U.S. title for actual contenders? Dean Malenko takes on David Flair for the U.S. Championship next. Are we sure that Kevin Nash isn’t backchanneling with Vince McMahon and trying to put this company out of business on purpose? David Flair comes out with Torrie. So, wait, she was with David Flair, left him for Nash for a few days, and then came right back to him? And nobody in the Flair camp cared? Not even David "I love Torrie so much that I can't sleep with you Denise Robinson" Flair? What the fuck? Malenko is having flashbacks to three years ago at BatB when he was wholly unimpressed by his opponent – that time Disco Inferno – and he was feeling almost aggrieved at being lowered to face him. You know the score. Malenko dominates. Ric Flair and Company get involved. Arn destroys the ref and Charles Robinson takes the ref’s shirt. Asya steps to Malenko and gets booted, slammed, and put in the Texas Cloverleaf. Ric grabs the title, comes from behind, and clocks Malenko with it, then drapes David on top of Malenko for three. This angle sucks. You know why? Because unlike with Disco, who actually is a good worker, David Flair is dire at wrestling and is also a void of personality. No one wants to watch him. Recap: This WTR/NLS feud continues to bum me the hell out. Man, this recap is VERY LONG. The WTR (Hennig, Duncum Jr., the Windham Brothers) face the NLS (Rey, Konnan, Swoll, and B.A. Brad Armstrong) in an eight-man elimination tag. Ah, a proper Survivor Series match! This is one more Survivor Series match than the ACTUAL Survivor Series PPV had in 1998 (the WWF did manage to book three of them for Survivor Series ’99, though). The only “B.A.” that I officially recognize is Baracus, by the way. Konnan hits his Catchphrase Roulette before the match and shares that he expects the WTRs to fellate everyone in the NLS after the show. Neat! Barry Windham is wearing a t-shirt, his Stalker cargo shorts, and cowboy boots. What a doofus. This goofy-looking proto-Randy Orton. This match is barely watchable, I guess. Rey and Armstrong are the only guys who I really rate in this thing, so from that perspective, it’s better than it has any right to be. Rey in particular can create an effective mirage just with his bumping for the offense of any old bum he’s in the ring with. Wait, before I forget, Swoll wrestles this thing in Adidas basketball shoes. That seems about as nutty as wrestling in cowboy boots. I’ll run through the eliminations right quick: 1.) Duncum Jr. gets awkwardly pinned and eliminated after Rey lands a springboard guillotine legdrop and Swoll tries to figure out how to hook a leg and just about manages to do it. Some NLS members beat down Duncum in the aisle as he tries to stick around ringside. NLS 4 – WTR 3. 2.) Barry Windham hits Armstrong in the back as he bounces into the ropes; Armstrong stumbles forward into a Perfect Plex for three. NLS 3 – WTR 3. 3.) Barry saves Kendall when Konnan covers Kendall off a sit-out facebuster, but Rey springboard dropkicks Kendall forward into a sloppy Konnan small package that Barry can’t quite break up. NLS 3 – WTR 2. 4.) There are a lot of rampway shenanigans that end with Barry, um, getting carried away to the backstage area by Chase Tatum. Konnan follows. It’s a double DQ (?!). Who laid out this crap? NLS 2 – WTR 1. 5.) Barry Windham runs back out. Swoll kills both him and Hennig. Hennig tries to escape, but 4x4 blocks his path. Swoll grabs Hennig and hauls him back into the ring, hits a crappy uppercut, and then boosts Rey on a splash that gets three. NLS 2 – WTR 0; the No Limit Soldiers win. That match was too long and got pretty stupid at the end of it. Can you believe there are about ninety minutes left in this show? What does WCW possibly have for any sane viewer that it needs to go another ninety minutes? Recap: WCW’s Booking Committee has one of its “bright ideas,” has Hak declare a Hardcore Free-For-All in a junkyard. Hahaha, the camera focuses on Scott Dickinson shooting an airhorn to start the match. He’s behind a chain-link fence and has this hilariously creepy look on his face while he does it. Super GIF-able, that was. The Public Enemy is back in the company, I guess. They shove a car over. This match is shrouded in darkness, filmed on shaky cam and helicopter cam, and is nearly unwatchable. Why not run this match first, when the sun is still out? This is bullshit nonsense stunt-show fuckery. Just pre-tape it and do it safely, or at least more safely. I’m not even going to dignify this nonsense with involved PBP, and also, I can’t see enough to tell what’s happening consistently anyway. After what seems like months of weapon shots, dumb set-pieces, punches, and dives onto cars, Fit Finlay wins by climbing the fence and escaping the junkyard. This match almost cost Finlay his leg, and (less importantly) cost us probably months of Fit Finlay matches. SUPER DUD. Still seventy more minutes to go. At least it’s nice and cool in this office. Recap: The Jersey Triad starts beef with Saturn and Chris Benoit. I guess the Jersey Triad is a full on trios team and not just a stable in the case of this match, so I’ll bold their names. They defend the tag titles against Saturn and Chris Benoit next. This match will be solid-to-good at the very least, but I’m over this feud. DDP yammers before the match. Why does everyone need to do their pre-match shtick before the match, especially when it’s not that good? Konnan is allowed because it’s still over. Kanyon can ask his question. Nash gets a huge pop for “Wolfpac/Big Sexy in DA HOUUUUUUSE,” so keep that. Otherwise, no one else gets to say a damned word before their matches. Saturn and DDP brawl to start. You know, I get why Saturn and Benoit split this company. They consistently make my “very good matches” list and if there’s only one good match on a show, one or both of them are routinely part of it. I’d be disgruntled too, looking at all the crap this company is booking right now, if there were a lid on my movement up the card even though I'm counted on to make a bad TV show briefly enjoyable every three or four days. After the match settles down, Saturn brawls with Kanyon. Saturn did so much to try and help Kanyon free himself from the Flock, man, and Kanyon paid him back in scorn. Kanyon tries to take over, but Saturn is pesky; Kanyon tries to cheat, but gets chopped by Benoit against the ropes and hit with an overhead T-bone suplex. Benoit tags in and continues working over Kanyon. Benoit locks on a Lion Tamer (!!), but gives up on it and twists Kanyon around, then uses his knees as a fulcrum to catapult his opponent. Benoit and Saturn continue to isolate Kanyon. They double snot rocket him in there, too. We even get a rare hair beal in a men’s match! I generally enjoy this extended shine for the babyfaces to start. It’s just good isolation of an opponent with some explosive offense and a bunch of tags. By the time Saturn lands a guillotine legdrop on Kanyon and covers, Page has had enough; he runs in and causes a chain of events that ends with him circling back around while Saturn is fighting Bam Bam at ringside and jumping Saturn. Saturn now settles into the FIP role. We get a decent enough bit of control by the heels with some nice moves. Bam Bam lands a nice stalling vertical suplex, for example, right off the jump. One section of the crowd starts batting around a beach ball and everyone on the hard cam side watches with rapt attention. I think this show has lost ‘em, somehow! Security must have taken the beach ball away because a brief ASSHOLE chant starts. Saturn eventually manages to belly-to-belly Kanyon off the top rope and get a hot tag to Benoit. Benoit is the proverbial house afire, but eventually, Page lands a diving lariat on Benoit. He knows that this match has completely lost the crowd, so he then tumbles outside, jumps on the guardrail, and celebrates to get a reaction that is focused on them and not a fucking beach ball. Benoit now catches a beatdown. The Triad works him over in their corner for a while. This is not a bad match; in fact, it’s perfectly cromulent. But it’s just not the match that’s right for this position on the card. I think the junkyard match sapped whatever in-arena energy this crowd had. The section with the beach ball is literally chanting ASSHOLE or YOU SUCK whenever they see whichever security guard ended their beach ball fun. Oh, they’re reacting sometimes, but it’s not to whatever is in the ring. I’m sorry, but this is just an overlong match. WCW’s bookers once again depended on their best workers (and also Bam Bam) to dig them out of an aesthetic hole, and they asked for this one too many times on a card that was too bad for people to still care by the time this match occurred. It’s fine for what it is, but these wrestlers have had better matches in various combinations over the past couple of months. And I’m sorry, but the crowd being visibly distracted for over half the match by whatever drama is going on in the crowd hurt the hell out of this thing, through no fault of the guys in the ring. Finally, there’s a second hot tag. Saturn and Benoit hit dual top-rope moves on Bam Bam, but Page saves. The crowd senses the finishing run and starts paying attention to what’s happening in the ring again. Saturn gets two on a Northern Lights Suplex to Page. Saturn tries a DVD, but spins Page around; Page’s boots hit the ref and clear him out. Kanyon throws baby powder into Saturn’s eyes, but some of it gets in Page’s eyes, too; Page accidentally hits Kanyon with a Diamond Cutter as a result. The finishing run is pretty hot, as you’d expect from these teams. Benoit and Saturn come close to winning twice after the powder incident. First, Benoit pins Kanyon after that Diamond Cutter, but Bam Bam puts Kanyon’s foot on the ropes from outside the ring. Then, Saturn superkicks Page backward and into a bridging German from Benoit, but Page kicks out at 2.9. The match breaks down, and the ref is knocked out again. Page has a trash can, and he hits Benoit with it, but whiffs when he tries to hit Saturn and accidentally nails Kanyon again. Saturn stumbles forward to attack, but gets dropped by Bam Bam and DDP with an assisted Diamond Cutter. The ref turns over and counts three on Page’s cover. I do think this was a hot finish, but the three-on-two nonsense doesn’t make me hate the heels. It just makes me dislike the nonsense involved with this version of the Freebird Rule and takes away from these finishes. I also don’t love multiple ref bumps in the same match except for if they are exceptionally well done, and they were not exceptionally done in this match or anywhere near it. I think we’re now officially staring down the barrel of a WCW PPV on par with the Great American Bash ‘91. This could be the worst piece of shit PPV I’ve ever seen WCW put on, at least so far. It’s certainly the worst one of the Nitro Era so far. Recap: J.J. Dillon fucks over his buddy Roddy Piper by assigning Mills Lane to this Piper/Bagwell boxing match. Is Michael Buffer necessary to ring announce for Piper/Buff? That’s rhetorical. Michael Buffer’s Ring Announcing Quality Control: He calls them “Marcus of Queensbury” rules, and I expect better from my highly-paid ring announcers w/r/t pronunciation. What old-ass pop culture reference do you think Bobby Heenan made as Mills Lane came to the ring? Make a guess! I’ll put the answer in spoilers: Because of course he did. Roddy Piper (w/Ric Flair) comes to the ring. Buff Bagwell follows, and he’s wearing trunks. I think my man skips leg day more often than he should. I mean, just comparing to his upper body, of course, the guy is still in excellent shape. Buff gets on the house mic and introduces his corner person – his mom. HOLY SHIT, Judy Bagwell has an airbrushed shirt on that is AMAZING. It’s got her name on it and also Buff and Judy’s faces; Judy is wearing Buff’s stovepipe hat. I want it. Someone sell it to me. That shirt is easily the best thing about this show. So, this is a worked boxing match. Now, you know that I do enjoy worked shoots. I broadly enjoy Volk Han. I watched some of the UWF-i collections on YouTube last year and liked a lot of what I saw. Hell, I dug Miller/Flynn last week in that worked shoot kickboxing match. This, however, stinks. Piper stinks. Buff is okay, I guess. And visually, you look at Buff and then at Piper, and I feel like the only reasonable booking is for Buff to knock him out in fifteen seconds. Instead, Piper gets the first knockdown, *sigh*. After the first round, which ends with a cheap Piper headbutt, Flair pulls a “Sonny Liston’s corner in the first Ali fight” and surreptitiously sprays some shit on Piper’s gloves. Piper is able to get some of the substance off his gloves and into Buff’s eyes with a couple of jabs. This second round is Piper whaling away at Buff while Buff sells an eye injury. This is absolutely the wrong layout. If Piper was going to cheat like this, Buff should have dominated him in the first round. If that happens, and Buff gets a knockdown or two, Piper’s headbutt and the solution on the gloves would come off as desperation from an overmatched heel. Buff comes back and lands a flurry, knocking Piper to a knee toward the end of the second round, but this is just SO BADLY LAID OUT, holy shit. If I, a humble fan, can tell you why the psychology of those first two rounds is fucked, there is no excuse for anyone backstage at this show not to figure this out. Piper jumps Buff before the bell of the third round, so Judy Bagwell jumps in and *sigh* bites Piper’s ear. She then dumps the bucket over Piper’s head and Buff punches it, punches Ric Flair off the apron, and lands a Blockbuster in a boxing match that gets a three count as Judy Bagwell chases Ric Flair around the ring. JUDY BAGWELL is the person who got over after this match! I REPEAT: JUDY GODDAM BAGWELL IS THE PERSON WHOM THIS BOOKING ELEVATED. WHAT THE FUCK, WCW I actually think this show is so bad that I’m almost enjoying it in the sense that I want to see how much worse this can get. Recap: Randy Savage hates Nash, loves his ladies, shows the latter by slapping George around in true toxic dude fashion. Sid and Sting are also involved somehow. Also, Kevin Nash is pushing to be the worst booker in pro wrestling history. Wow, this main event is going to be at least fifteen minutes long. Buffer’s back out here with twenty-two minutes to go to introduce the combatants in this half-assed Four Corners match that is masquerading as a tag match. I’m sorry, is George wearing sunglasses to hide a shiner? Is that what’s happening? Is that what’s popping in the streets? Look, I’m not against this sort of thing as a potential storyline, but I cannot imagine a pro wrestling company from the U.S. other than MAYBE Lucha Underground that could find a way to pull this off. George is terrified by Macho’s pyro on account of the PTSD from being repeatedly punched by Savage. I think Savage is basically done in WCW by the time Russo assumes total control of the booking; can you imagine the tasteless shit these two would have gotten up to had they spent a considerable amount of time together? I bet in whatever alternate universe where Savage was able to wrestle into early 2000, WCW got canceled even quicker than they managed in this universe. Sting walks down alone, followed by Kevin Nash. Buffer makes the same minor errors when introducing everyone that he has been making about them for the past few months. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Buffer is not the problem with this show, not by a long shot. The crowd sorta chants for WCW’s only megastar at this point: Goldberg. Savage threatens to beat the hell out of George unless she plants herself at a specific spot at ringside. Look, I have to start with the question of why Nash would let Sting start the match with Macho. Does the belt only change hands if Nash is pinned? Wait, hold on, George stands at ringside as the camera gets a good view of George’s shiner, though commentary is careful not to say anything about it. Actually, that is really weird because they talk about how gorgeous she is, but they don’t notice, you know, the abject look of terror on her face when she comes out? The big-ass bluish shiner under her eye? How somber she is? That’s fucking weird, man, it makes commentary look like a couple of oblivious dickheads. This match – maybe you won’t believe me when I say this – is complete ass. Goldberg is WCW’s only megastar in July of 1999, but Sting is a level below that and is still way over. They fucked up their two potentially interesting heel stories – Flair using the presidency to keep his title; Savage not beating up anyone on Team Madness and instead using subterfuge and ringside fuckery to barely hold onto the title in a bunch of bullshit gaga-filled matches – and now it’s time to put the gold on someone who people give a fuck about. No, not Nash. Put it on Sting, let him have good matches with Page and Goldberg and Benoit and Bret when Bret gets back. Sting and Bret need a do-over for that Havoc ’98 abortion of a bout. Sting spends entirely too much time eating mediocre-to-shitty offense from the heels. This thing is too fucking long, and it’s only about fifteen minutes once it gets going. There’s some wandering ringside brawl nonsense. Sting needs to stop killing himself for this stupid match. Also, let’s get Mona into the WWF already. The ladies come in after Nash makes a hot tag. Mona and Madusa teamed up to shove Sting into the post earlier, so he gives them a double noggin-knocker and hits them with Stinger Splashes. He also hits Sid with one, but whiffs on a splash to Savage and hits Nash instead. Sid hits Sting with a chokeslam and rolls Sting from the ring. George gets on the apron while the crowd chants for GOLDBERG, enters the ring, and COMPLETELY whiffs on a nut shot to Nash, then takes another few seconds to line it up again even though Nash should have felt her stumble by him on that first swing. This time, her low blow lands. Sid slams Nash and Savage comes off the top with a Savage Elbow for the three and the title. That was so, so bad. I can’t even begin to tell you how badly this match stunk. Well, at least George doesn’t have kayfabe PTSD. On the other hand, she’s still in an extremely toxic relationship with a dude that beats her when she’s angry, so that’s a shame. What a difference a year can make. Bash at the Beach ’98 is a top-three WCW PPV in my estimation. BatB ’99? Well, let’s just say that watching it has inspired me to take a quick detour. I’m going to watch GAB ’91 in the next day or two and decide which show is truly the WORST WCW PPV EVER (so far).

Thunder Interlude – show number seventy – 8 July 1999 "The WCW Gang preps for a (likely?) underwhelming Bash at the Beach show" Bash at the Beach ’98 was a classic…I’m sad to say that I doubt that Bash at the Beach ’99 will reach those same lofty heights…But before we get there to find out, we have one more Thunder to go… Tenay asks if Kevin Nash can trust Sting…Um, yes?!...Probably, at least…I know Sting turns heel at some point in the next few months (weeks?)…But Sting can pretty much almost always be trusted…His heel turn should be because he’s sick of people acting like assholes and not trusting him… Recap/hype video: Kevin Nash beefs with Randy Savage and Sid…Sting is barely involved in any of this build-up…Savage has escalated the madness from only implied spouse-beater in the ‘80s to full-on spouse-beater in the ‘90s… Kevin Nash is in the house, so this Thunder might not have a chance to be good…He comes to the ring…He randomly makes the main event tag match at BatB a World Championship match…Nash gets boos for saying that he enjoyed powerbombing Sting…He said he watched the tape of the last Nitro back at the start of the show, but somehow missed that he’s been baited with a fake Sting…That’s dumb, but you know what’s even dumber?...Apparently, Nash’s tag partner can pin him in a tag match and win the world title…That’s definitely dumber…Incredibly stupid…See, Nash is well-read and has all these cute little witticisms in his promos, and he knows how to position himself perfectly, so he got the benefit of the doubt from me that he was also reasonably smart about pro wrestling itself…But no, he’s a fucking moron who doesn’t understand anything about pro wrestling that doesn’t involve getting himself over at all costs… Dean Malenko busts in on President Flair and his associates…I guess Malenko was supposed to wrestle Ric Flair on BatB?...When was that match even made?...Anyway, Ric has backed out of the match due to a nebulous back injury, and Malenko complains at him about it…Malenko is so boring, man… Recap: Eddy Guerrero harasses some luchadores, gets the legal system to help him… Lenny Lane (w/Lodi) comes to the ring…Lodi sign: BRING BACK BOY GEORGE…My wife had some UK pop culture show on with Boy George as a talking head, and dude was a pretty funny and incisive pop culture critic on that show, so I’m down with bringing him back as a pop cultural critic, at least…Eddy Guerrero comes down to try and beat the other West Hollywood Blonde this week…Lenny and Lodi hug, which is a heel tactic here in Birmingham, Alabama…Eddy working at high speed is one of the most aesthetically pleasing things in wrestling…All the masked luchadores run out while the ref is KO’d and beat down Eddy Guerrero…They stomp him out…Psicosis lands a guillotine legdrop and Parka lands a chair shot…Lane gets in the ring, pokes at the completely-out Eddy, and then decides that it’s safe to pin him…Lodi revives the ref and Lane covers for three…Haha, Lane and Lodi’s wild celebration after the match is actually really funny…Lodi is a consistently amusing guy and probably should have been deployed better as a joke lower-midcarder… Jimmy Hart runs up on La Parka and Silver King in the back and invites them into the WCW Junkyard Hardcore Invitational…He assumes that they said “yes” even though they speak Spanish, and he says that he doesn’t understand Spanish…Well, except Silver King is trying his hardest to communicate in English and is just getting talked over…He pleads, “Wait, Jimmy, wait” as Hart decides they’re in and runs off, somehow, I guess he has that power…Jimmy Hart as a comedic ball of chaos is pretty good… Gene Okerlund talks to Disco Inferno in the ring…They’ve made Disco Inferno/Ernest Miller for BatB…Disco: ERNEST MILLER STINKS…I think he’s pretty fun, myself…Disco, in short, basically calls Miller a Tae Bo ho and promises to win at BatB…I think it’s weird that they had the Cat face Jerry Flynn on Nitro instead of continuing to build a feud between Disco and Cat for the PPV… Van Hammer gets one more tune-up victory before BatB…He finishes off Al Green with a Cobra Clutch Slam and little fuss…Rick Steiner ambushes Hammer right after the bell and beats him down… Jimmy Hart sells Horace Hogan on showing up to a junkyard to fight…Hart: “Once in your life, why don’t you make your Uncle Hogan proud of you?”…OUCH…Horace is more concerned with B-Teamer internal politics, but he’ll show up “if the money’s right”…Hart: THAT’S A YES…Horace: IF THE MONEY’S RIGHT…Hart: THAT’S A YES *runs away*…Horace, defeated and now muttering: “You’d better make the money right”…Hey, that was really funny!...Jimmy Hart is also a nice guy to have around because he can land a punchline and is good in these comedy situations…Deploy him better, too… Recap/tribute video: Bret and Owen on video…Bret speaks in Atlanta on Nitro… Fit Finlay and his totally uninjured, uninfected leg are next up on this show…He faces off with Brian Knobbs in another short match that ends in chaos…First Family members and Regal Royalists run down first…Then, a bunch of other Junkyard Invitational contestants run down and set off a free-for-all brawl…It’s a boring brawl except for the part where La Parka tries to hit Knobbs with a chair, but Knobbs moves and the chair rebounds off the ropes and bonks Parka…He sells that move exquisitely… Gene Okerlund has the whole WCW on-screen executive group out here…Piper talks too much…Piper says he’s going to run over Buff like the Crimson Tide, which is a babyface comment…Then, he heels by pretending that he didn’t ask for a boxing match or taped fist match or whatever it is…He says a bunch of stuff that sucks…I get a kick out of Asya…She’s always trying to find the camera to pose…She is totally useless…Ric yells a lot…It’s pointless…He mumbles about Malenko and shtupping women in the crowd before booking Malenko/David Flair for the U.S. Championship at BatB… On mute... Disco Inferno is back in the ring to wrestle this time…Billy Kidman is his opponent…I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Kidman has been poorly booked ever since he and Rey dropped the tag titles…He’s actually very over…He’s a much better choice for TV Champion than Rick Steiner…You could have him out there as a fighting champion having solid eight-to-ten minute matches every show…This match is a perfect example of what I’m talking about…It’s a good three minutes of work before Ernest Miller and Sonny Onoo make an appearance… Kidman gets launched over the ropes and splats on the mats in a sick bump…We get a split screen in which Steven Regal invites himself to the Junkyard Invitational…He reminds us that he’s good at smashing cars up in hardcore brawls, if you’ll remember (Show #33)…Anyway, Miller and Onoo come out here…Miller hits Kidman with a slipper-assisted roundhouse as Kidman tries to follow up on a successful bulldog…The Cat tries to nail Disco next, but he hits Onoo instead…Disco hits Miller with a Chartbuster, then dances over his fallen body… The Jersey Triad comes to the ring…Page hits his pre-match catchphrases on the mic…He denies that the Triad has caught any losses over the past couple of weeks…We see some video of Saturn/Benoit from last Thunder and the six-man tag from Nitro…Page is upset about illegal men being pinned and DQs going against him… Dean Malenko Chris Benoit comes out alone to face one of these Triad dudes…It’s Kanyon whom he faces…Benoit gets the ref to send the rest of the Triad away from ringside…They’re very good at pacey counter-wrestling to start…Kanyon misses an elbow drop and is punished with a snap suplex…Kanyon runs away to get some space and get the jump on Benoit…Tenay says that TBS execs have banned Savage from Thunder tonight…This is a live show, so I assume that Tenay isn’t purely working and that Turner execs were displeased with Savage slapping Torrie and tossing George around, then implying that he was beating GEorge just off-screen as she screamed on Nitro… Inset: Jimmy Hart invites Mikey Whipwreck to the Junkyard Invitational…There’s a lot of stuff going on here, sorry…In the match itself, Kanyon clobbers Benoit with the title outside the ring and maintains control…Kanyon tries to ground enoit with a headlock back in the ring, but Benoit fights up…Benoit gets caught and lifted in this VERY COOL stalling flapjack-y style spinebuster…That should be a finisher, honestly…It was like Booker’s spinebuster, except on steroids…Benoit ducks a swing and hits a flash Full Nelson Suplex with a bridge for two…Kanyon is up first because Benoit’s taken so much damage…He is also hurt though, and he gets caught and superplexed as he climbs the ropes… The men both struggle to their feet…They throw punches and chops, and Benoit wins that exchange…Benoit advances to press his offense, but Kanyon grabs Benoit’s tights and yanks him face-first into the buckles…Kanyon now tries to press the offense, but Benoit ducks a swing and locks him from behind, then hits two rolling Germans…Kanyon blocks the third German and elbows his way out…Bam Bam runs out and gets on the apron…Kanyon tries to whip Benoit into thetag belt that Bam Bam is holding, but Benoit reverses…He goes up for a diving headbutt, but Bam Bam is able to get up and trip him…Saturn runs out and attacks Bam Bam at ringside… Again, lots going on right now…The camera cuts back and Benoit has caught Kanyon on the top rope again…Benoit shoves him off the ropes…Kanyon hits a back elbow and tries a vertical suplex, but Benoit wriggles away and into a flash Crippler Crossface…Bammer has disposed of Saturn for the moment and goes up for a flying headbutt, but he’s in Benoit’s line of vision, and Benoit easily moves…Bammer crashes into Kanyon, then is attacked by Saturn again…Meanwhile, Benoit goes up and drills a diving headbutt that gets three before DDP can slide into the ring for the save…Page is still able to hit Benoit with a Diamond Cutter before he can defend himself, though…Page also nails the ref with a Diamond Cutter… Saturn runs in and attacks Page, but Bam Bam hits him from behind…Page and Bigelow nail a tower Diamond Cutter on Saturn…That shit was GREAT, man, all the jibber jabber added to the match, in my opinion…Benoit would be a bolted-on main eventer if it weren’t for a) his inability to talk and b) the fact that he’s a legit homicidal nutbar (I originally wrote “homicidal maniac,” but thought better of it)… I guess we need to come down from that high, so here’s the WTR!...They should have stuck a cowboy hat on Mike Enos and put him in this group because it needs guys who can work…Barry is fine, Hennig is washed, and the other two stink…Here comes the NLS…Let’s see who is working this match…Konnan and Curt Hennig…These fellas have been off-and-on feuding since the middle of 1998…At no point has it been any good…Obviously the WTR and NLS tangle…This isn’t very long at all…In the melee, Barry Windham breaks away…He whacks Konnan with the cowbell while Konnan has Hennig in the Tequila Sunrise…The ref turns around from the brawl outside the ring and sees Hennig pinning Konnan…Hennig gets three and makes his escape…That’s the show!... This show was generally entertaining despite all the fuck finishes and also Roddy Piper being allowed to talk; it also had one legit awesome match…That’s good enough for me…WOOO…

I was thinking playable video athletes that you had to ban when you played with your friends, but yeah, Tyson would be up there if you add characters that can't be controlled without a Game Genie!

Great find! I would love an Owen Hart comp from this time period, maybe adding in his work in dying-days Stampede. I just realized why an instrumental of "Beat It" is playing during this thing. Goodness, Maffew. Goodness. Pro wrestling is weird. Come on, this is a misrepresentation. Nash isn't threatening to murder George. He's threatening to keep her as his sex slave. Totally different! It is, and it's grown on me. I thought George's voice was the voice of a random little kid for years until I played the theme on YouTube a week ago and realized that, no, it was just a grown woman with a high voice.

Show #196 – 5 July 1999 “The one that’s the final Georgia Dome Nitro” We’re coming upon Bash at the Beach ’99, and there are basically only a handful of matches made: the main event tag match between Sting/Nash and Savage/Sid, a Rick Steiner/Van Hammer TV title match, and the Jersey Triad defending the tag titles against Benoit and Saturn. BatB deserves so much than what’s been promoted so far. Recap: Nash kidnaps George, hands Torrie to Savage in response. Yeesh, did Savage lose that exchange. The Nitro Girls open our final Nitro in the Georgia Dome. I liked that WCW was trying to make the Georgia Dome their MSG. It’s a great arena setting for big shows! You can see that it’s far less packed than it was the second-from-last time they were here in July of 1998, though. Bummer. I think it’s somewhat tasteless to breathlessly promote Bret’s appearance like Tenay did on Thunder and like Tony S. does now. I’m fine with a little promotion, but maybe don’t be so excited about it considering the circumstances. Juventud Guerrera opens the show. He does his Juvi Driver signal where he fucks the air, then yells LET’S GET SOME JOOOOCE, BAYBAY, which makes me laugh. His opponent: The ever underrated, underutilized Chavo Guerrero Jr. Chavo walks out, immediately falls while trying to come down the ramp, and applauds himself. Late-stage WCW is embarrassing in big and small ways, and one of those small ways is that they redesigned a ramp for form over function, and multiple wrestlers either stumble or flat-out tumble while walking down it. Go behind, standing switch, headlock, and these guys are going to have a nice opening sequence that Juvi wins with a shoulder block and a glancing wheel kick. Juvi throws punches in the corner, but at about eight, Chavo grabs Juvi and dumps his head into the buckles. Chavo and Juvi trade chops, and after another series of counters, Juvi snaps Chavo’s head over the top rope and hits a missile dropkick. Juvi signals for the Juvi Driver early and goes for it, but Chavo slips out of the back and dives from the ring. Chavo considers just leaving, man, he doesn’t need all this shit. He gets on the apron and jaws at ref Scott Dickinson. Juvi takes the opportunity to hit a running elbow that knocks Chavo to the floor, but when he tries a baseball slide, Chavo sidesteps him, slams his head into the apron, and then dropkicks him. Chavo takes over back inside the ring, landing a chop and then a lariat on a rope run. He covers for two, then flips Juvi up and over into a Gory Special. Juvi tries to power out of it, so Chavo drops him in a facebuster, then lands an elbowdrop. He tries to follow up by shooting Juvi into the corner, but Juvi leaps over him and then elbows his way out of a standing switch. Juvi takes to the ropes and is able to spin out of a Chavo tilt-a-whirl attempt, but Chavo follows up with a lariat immediately. As an aside, there are kids sitting right near the mics who are firmly on Chavo’s side. One kid yells JUVENTUD SUCKS, GO CHAVO and then multiple kids start a CHA-VO chant that morphs into a GOLD-BERG chant for a second before dying out as a CHA-VO chant again. In other words, the kids are alright! Chavo lands a body slam and goes up, but he dives into a Juvi mule kick. Chavo is able to reverse an Irish whip, but Juvi gets a rollup for tow. They have a complex exchange that ends with Chavo flipping out of a powerbomb and the two trading flash pinfall attempts, then switching again until Juvi is able to land a counter bulldog. It was a sweet exchange. The crowd is kinda quiet, but they should be HOTTER for this HOT CRUISERWEIGHT OPENER. Juvi covers for two off the bulldog, then shoots Chavo into the corner. Chavo tries to leapfrog over a charging Juvi, but Juvi stops short and catches Chavo, then drills him with a Juvi Driver. Juvi goes up for a 450, but Chavo is able to crotch Juvi and then try a tornado DDT. That attempt turns into a Juvi Driver attempt that eventually turns into Chavo hitting a sort of sit-out front suplex, almost like an inverted Falcon Arrow. Juvi actually lands across Chavo’s knee, but that just makes it look a little more wicked. Chavo covers, but only gets 2.9. FUCK YOU WCW, YOU FUCKIN’ BUMS. Fucking Savage and Sid come out and beat the shit out of these two. FUCK OFF. The booking in this company fucking SUCKS. This match was headed for my good matches list, but of course WCW can’t help but book dumb fucking finishes and stupid-ass angles that get in the way of the good work that wrestlers are doing. Sid yells into the house mic. I don’t care. Nash shows up on the video board, wearing a Thrashers jersey and hanging out with Torrie. He proposes a match with Sid if his back holds up after all the fucking of Torrie or George or both (hopefully consensual) that he’s done. Savage yells at Nash while Nash sits there being droll. This is boring. George suddenly shows up next to Nash. So, like, is she there with him willingly now, or like what? Gene Okerlund interviews Ric Flair and his dopey son Dave in the ring. Flair is like, Aw man, Atlanta stinks. The crowd doesn’t care. You can tell Flair really is working this delusional old man gimmick because he calls WCW the “largest, strongest, most wealthiest” wrestling company in the world. Flair then strips the U.S. Championship from Scott Steiner, who if you’ll recall won the title in a tournament after it was stripped from Scott Hall for injury. My poor, poor U.S. title. Look at how they’re massacring my boy belt. Ric awards his title to his charisma vacuum of a son; Charles Robinson and some ladies bring the title down and give it to David; then, the ladies pretend to be attracted to him. Ric is like, Hey son, let’s bang these ladies together! Um, ewwww. Buff Bagwell’s music hits. If you wanted me to think that Buff Bagwell, U.S. Champion was a good idea, you’d get me around to that position by putting that belt on David Flair first. Some balloons drop from the ceiling a bit late to celebrate David’s championship “win,” and that probably needed to happen before Buff’s music hit. Buff cuts a crappy promo, but this crowd loves him, obviously. He can get away with it, especially in Atlanta. He wants a U.S. title match, so Ric gives him one with Charles Robinson as the ref for later tonight. OK, sure. The U.S. title got shot right off the rails when they put it back on an injured Bret Hart at the end of 1998…It went Bret > Piper > Hall > Vacant > Scott Steiner > David Flair. As DDP might say, GOOD GAWD. Steiner is the only guy who should have even had a sniff of this title. Titles might only be props, but they are important ones, meant to signify how seriously the crowd should take a wrestler, and the U.S. title could be credibly put on any one of like four or five guys who are good enough to run with it and are also close to breaking through (Booker T., Scott Steiner, Chris Benoit, and Rey Misterio Jr. come immediately to mind, and it would be five if Chris Jericho hadn’t officially given his notice by this point). If they’d just had Bret drop it to Booker at or before Starrcade and then had Booker drop it to Scott Steiner after three or four months, then maybe got the belt off an injured Steiner with an angle-heavy match where he doesn’t have to work much, it would have been fine. You could have Buff beat Steiner (even though I’m low on Buff) because the fans would buy him at that level, at least initially. I love the idea of Rey continuing his giant killer rep by finding a way to beat Steiner, maybe throw in some gaga if you feel that’s not credible. Whatever. The point is that this title has been booked as badly as the tag titles were before the reboot. It’s insane that they’ve done this with their second-most-important title, one that signals a guy who might be a world champ one day. And now Rick Steiner is on my screen to defend the TV title against Vampiro. WCW had me thinking they were going to put on a good show when Chavo and Juvi started things off, and they just yanked the football away as I was running up to kick it. They are Lucy. They are Lucy, and my dumb ass is Charlie Brown in this scenario. Rick Steiner grabbing a mic and trying to get over his awful catchphrases every time he enters the ring is actually pretty funny at this point, though. Steiner has the least fun stiff work as a singles wrestler. He also sells less than his more impressive brother, who knows how to show some ass every once in a while. Steiner the Lesser still doesn’t know how to put on his armbar octopus stretch-ish thing. Ditching the top-rope bulldog is a good idea, but maybe go with just a lariat for your finish since you’re swinging wildly when you throw it anyway, bud. I muted the audio just now, which means one of two things happened. You can probably guess which one of those things it is. Lenny and Lodi wear pink, which according to pro wrestling logic means they are so gay. They step through some doors into a room; the camera pans to show that the doors are labeled THE CLOSET. It’s what passes for comedy in 1999, but in 2024, it is a crime against humor, among other things. Hype video/in memoriam: Bret “Hitman” Hart and his bro Owen. They have some brief footage of Owen in what I think is a WCW ring, I guess from a brief tryout run in WCW at some point in the early ‘90s or late ‘80s. They also have some Stampede footage and pics likely shared by the Hart family. Gene Okerlund talks to a somber Bret Hart in the ring. He thanks the fans for their kindness and condolences and thanks WCW management for their kindness and patience. He remembers Owen Hart. It genuinely touches me. I’ll tell you, I’m not sure this was a good thing to put on television live. I think maybe it should have been a pre-tape. This dude is going through some shit right now in front of me. I feel uncomfortable watching this, like I’m being voyeuristic, almost. I didn’t skip it because I’m committing to watching everything in this run, but if I ever do come through again and watch this stuff in ten or twenty or thirty years or whatever, I’ll skip it the next time around. Also, I hope the guy that audibly yelled HURRY UP at Bret when he was trying to compose himself got painful, incurable genital warts. Eddy Guerrero speaks Spanish to monolingual dolt Doug Dellinger. He calms down and repeats himself in English. Someone allegedly stole his wallet from his pants when they were hung up in the locker room and he thinks a luchador did it. Dellinger just believes him and gets some cops to follow him to gather up the luchadores for questioning. I mute my audio for the other reason that I typically do as Ernest Miller and Sonny Onoo hit the ramp and make their way to the ring. I’m going to have to do this for Three Count, too, and I’m fine with that. I’ve committed to watching WCW until the bitter end, so the least I can do is play my favorite theme music instead of a bunch of shitty dubs. I forgot that Jerry Flynn challenged the Cat to a kickboxing match on the previous Nitro. Flynn’s with Jimmy Hart, so maybe he’s part of the First Family? I don’t know, but WCW’s insistence on pushing a dull dude like Jerry Flynn – as a babyface, no less – is weird. Flynn is good as a karate-kicking heel jobber, but that’s about his ceiling. This is worked in two-minute rounds. I actually dig stuff like this, and if it were Miller against someone who people cared about and who he could effectively get heat on, I bet it would work better. As it is, the crowd faintly chants for GOLDBERG. I think the worked shoot is pretty good, though! I enjoy it, at least. Tony S. even points out that the Cat came out here all business instead of dancing like a goof because this is his theoretical previous livelihood. The crowd switches to a HOLYFIELD chant. Wrong sport, idiots. I sort of want to watch random K-1 shows on YouTube. My friends and I got sort of into K-1 back in high school, in the same way that we “got into” UFC, where we’d get together and watch shows on VHS or downloaded from Napster or whatever when technology progressed to that point. The crowd is into the Cat throwing a crab kick and Flynn slipping on a kick attempt, sort of, I suppose. Miller lands a dope spinning backfist that sends Flynn to one knee. That ruled. The Cat scores with a flurry of body shots and then steps back and lands a spinning back kick to the solar plexus to get another knockdown. The Cat gets a third knockdown shortly after with a liver shot and then, after being backed off by the ref, steps forward and lands a cross between a hammer fist and a wild haymaker on a downed Flynn that looked great. Flynn wins by DQ, and he jumps the Cat for the cheap shot. Ernest Miller had been booked as a joke character for months, but this one worked shoot made him look like a killer. I think this worked for me to make the Cat just mostly a joke guy, but with hidden depths that opponents had better keep in mind, lest they eat a flash KO. The crowd was not into it, though. Tony S. calls the Goldberg bobble head that a psyched young fan is holding in the front row a “bobbing head” doll. Had we not standardized the name yet, or was it trademarked at the time? Lodi (w/Lenny Lane) comes to the ring. Lodi’s tights advertise his webpage, which I knew about, but never visited, I don’t think. Van Hammer comes out to kill the guy off. Van Hammer kills the guy off. It’s an okay competitive squash. I really do like that elevated beal. Lodi leaves the ring to get some water so we can get an obligatory ringside brawl. Lenny Lane pulls the rope down as Hammer runs them and tries to help out by giving Hammer a tiny beating. Lodi actually manages to land a running rana where he leaps up onto Hammer’s shoulders, then celebrates into the camera: DID YOU SEE THAT?! THAT WAS INCREDIBLE! Haha, that was genuinely amusing. Lodi can be a funny dude sometimes. Lodi tries again, but gets blocked and dumped. Lane tries to intervene, but eats a superplex, and Hammer follows up with a Cobra Clutch Slam on Lodi for three. Doug Dellinger harasses all the luchadores. The cops troop them out. La Parka asks PORQUE?, which is a good question, but he doesn’t have the English to assert his rights, so he grudgingly goes along with things. Gene Okerlund insists on interviewing Rowdy Roddy Piper in the ring. Piper takes about twenty years to come to the ring. Seriously, Nitro might have been cancelled and WCW might have been sold to the WWF by the time he’s halfway down the aisle. Okerlund grumbles about it a bit, and Tony S. makes me laugh by saying, “Don’t worry about it Gene, we can fill.” Piper mentions some pop culture stuff. I just can’t do this anymore; I can’t do the Roddy Piper is a Pop Culture Wizard thing. I think doing it for that top ten list (Show #189) broke me. He shouts out the WTR and gets their catchphrase all out of order. He takes out another list, DAMMIT, fuck, and it’s a list of questions that he wants to ask Sting. Some guy dressed like Sting and wearing a Sting mask comes to the ring. Piper asks this obvious Sting dupe if Sting is on Team Madness. Sting only answers with head shakes. What is the point of this shit? It takes Piper a whole lot longer to “smell a rat,” as he puts it, then everyone in the crowd at the Georgia Dome. Sting refuses to take his mask off at Piper’s request, so Piper attacks him and rips the mask off. Who is under the mask? I can’t tell, and the camera never shows it. Piper starts yelling about Buff Bagwell instead. He books himself in a taped fist match with Buff at BatB. What in the hell? OK, whatever, fuck it, we have a fourth match for BatB. Then, J.J. Dillon comes out with Judge Mills Lane (?!?!?!?!). What is WCW doing? If you’re going to have this match at BatB and go so far as to bring in Mills Lane, maybe book the match right after Piper wins that tag match by hitting Buff with a loaded fist and use the remaining two weeks before the show to build and promote it properly. And while I’m here, I have to point out that Piper: 1) supported the heel (sorta) WTR, 2) supported babyface (still, I guess?) Sting, and shit-talked babyface Buff Bagwell. Then, J.J. Dillon brought Mills Lane in even though Dillon’s on Ric Flair’s side and Flair and Piper made up. Why would Dillon bring in Mills Lane instead of assigning Charles Robinson to ref things and tilt the bout toward Piper? Finally, Mills Lane and Piper are antagonistic toward one another. Is Dillon a kayfabe moron, or what? He brought in a ref who already can’t stand Piper and made him the adjudicator for Piper/Buff at BatB. Unless Dillon turns babyface in the next week, it makes zero sense. Piper ends this by saying he’d be “meet[ing] Mike Tyson in South Park, but this time, Piper kills Kenny,” as if he’s a fucking AI trying to list a bunch of pop culture shit in the ‘90s to make a semblance of an insult, but he hasn’t been fed enough data. This was not only vile from a performance standpoint, but from a booking standpoint. It’s utterly bewildering. Are Nash and Bischoff complete idiots? For real. After that entirely too confounding segment, I’m glad to see Lord Steven Regal and Fit Finlay (w/Dave Taylor) tagging up together. Rey Misterio Jr. and Konnan (w/the NLS) are their opponents. Misterio is a total goof with his pre-match shout outs, but he’s so likeable that I can’t get too touchy about it. I'm pretty sure that he shouts out a couple of kids (maybe nieces or nephews or friends of Dominic) for learning to tie their shoes, which, if I'm right, is so nice, c'mon, it's why Rey is the best babyface ever. Regal/Misterio is a dream singles match that I bet happened in WWE in like 2009 or something on a random Smackdown and was awesome. After Regal and Finlay jump the babyfaces, Regal uses his knees as a fulcrum and swings Rey up and into Finlay’s strikes. I usually roll my eyes at leverage moves like those, but I liked that. They also combine on a Camel Clutch/Boston Crab combo on Rey. Rey dodges a corner charge from Finlay and I guess already we’re on to the hot tag because Konnan destroys the heels, hits a sit-out facebuster on Regal, and then shoots Rey into the corner to land a Bronco Buster on Regal. Ah, the WTR runs in and causes a schmozz; they help the royalists beat down the NLS. Well, at least the WTR wasn’t outnumbered for once when running in on this feud. David Flair (w/Ric Flair, Asya, and Arn Anderson) defends his hard-earned United States Championship against Buff Bagwell. Buff pointing and laughing at David as the bell rings does make me chuckle. He tries to induce a pose-off with David before just kicking him in the gut and hitting some sledges. David gets a reprieve when he lands a back kick to the balls as Buff pursues him in the corner, but he immediately runs into a back elbow and gets hit with a Blockbuster. Charles Robinson counts to two before he gets a sudden kink in his shoulder. Buff decides to lock a totally out David in the Figure Four. He fights off Ric and Arn and even cradles Ric while having Flair in the Figure Four. Malenko runs down and stomps out Ric and Arn; Asya tries to jump Buff and gets body slammed. Piper jumps in from somewhere and hits Buff with a loaded fist. It’s awkward because Malenko is right there and could easily stomp out a crawling David, but he doesn’t because that’s not the finish. David getting three is the finish. So, yeah, that’s what happens. Backstage, Doug Dellinger harasses the luchadores into a lineup. Eddy is a dick and says he needs the luchadores to take their masks off so that he can tell who stole his shit. Parka is like YO WHAT THE FUCK, MAN, and we get a dumb segment where the luchadores are shot from the back and Eddy pretends that each luchador is uglier than the last. Wait, no, I do chuckle because when Psicosis slips his mask up, Eddy reacts, then says, “Whoa, you’re a good looking guy, what do you wear a mask for?” Also, Prince Iaukea is one of the guys under a mask for some reason, and he and Eddy hug. OK, now I’m confused. Were they ever friends on screen? Heh, I have to admit that I laughed again; Eddy giggles when Blitzkrieg slips his mask off his head because Eddy wasn’t expecting a white guy – “Nah *dismissive wave*, it wasn’t him *laughs*." OK, this was still dumb, but at least some of it was amusing. I guess Eddy is continuing his harassment of the luchadores that abandoned the lWo the second he got hurt, but this angle is treading water for a guy who should be maybe at that U.S. title level along with all the other dudes I mentioned. He last held it in 1996, when his character work wasn’t at the same level as his in-ring ability. He’s better at character stuff now, so he should get another chance with that belt. The video gets all static-y and stuff, and the signal is pirated; we cut to Hak and Chastity at the top of a ladder. Hak talks about how he was born hardcore and hopes to die in that condition, basically. He hurts a lot of people and would like to hurt more people, but Ric Flair banned hardcore matches, so if they’re not sanctioned – oh no – he’ll have an unsanctioned junkyard hardcore match at BatB, and he’s inviting everyone and anyone who thinks they’re more hardcore than he is. PROTECT FINLAY! PROTECT HIS LEG! WCW really is the worst sometimes. Oh, look, I muted the show again, and yet Ernest Miller nor Three Count are anywhere in sight (unfortunately). I paid for a wrestling show, not a music show, WCW. You pricks. Wait, unless Three Count is lip synching their theme. I would definitely enjoy that performance. Hype video: Team Madness is cool, I think? The quality of their promos and segments varies wildly, but I can confirm this: Macho’s new theme music is sick. The Jersey Triad walks the aisle. They’re going to face Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, and Saturn in a trios tag. As long as Sid and Savage don’t walk in and powerbomb everyone, this is likely going to be the best match on this show. Benoit immediately hits triple rolling Germans and we go to break as he lands the third one. Then, we come back to Saturn as the FIP. Never mind, the layout of this match makes no sense with the early break. It’ll still probably be the best, but I did like that Flynn/Cat kickboxing match an awful lot. Benoit gets a hot tag and there’s a neat spot where he hits Bam Bam with chops and a lariat, but Bam Bam doesn’t quite topple over; he weebles and wobbles and Benoit has to leave his feet with a dropkick to get Bam Bam to leave his feet. I give Bammer credit for how he made the smaller Benoit earn that one. Benoit ends up in trouble next. They’re moving really quickly, and we only have about fifteen minutes left and the Sid/Nash title match to get to, so that makes sense. Bam Bam locks Benoit in a bearhug, and you know what, I think even as washed as Bam Bam is, he and Benoit have a sort of weird chemistry together. I bet they could have a good fifteen-ish minute singles match. Benoit works out of the bearhug, tries a sunset flip, and dodges when Bam Bam tries to stuff it with a sit down splash. Benoit hits the hot tag to Saturn, and after Saturn burns through some offense, the match breaks down. There are stereo small packages in there, and then Page is double clotheslined by Benoit and Saturn over the top; all three guts spill to the floor. Meanwhile, Malenko reverses a Kanyon Tombstone and hits one of his own. Bam Bam goes up for a diving headbutt as Malenko covers, but Malenko moves out of the way and Bam Bam crashes. Saturn lands a top-rope splash on Bam Bam; Benoit follows with a diving headbutt and covers for three. The finish was hot, but this match was just too rushed to really work. It was unfortunately not the best match on this show, I don't think. Michael Buffer is out here to introduce the main event. Oh yeah, Buffer knows that it’s Team Madness and not Team Savage now, so good for him! By the time that the combatants make it to the ring, there are only about eight minutes left in the video. Bonus: Nash gets on the mic before the match and wastes time by saying that Savage and the other two ladies have to leave if they ever want to see George again. I should just abduct people’s loved ones to get what I want, is what pro wrestling has taught me. Anyway, the crowd chants for GOLDBERG for the fifteenth time tonight. The match starts. It wasn’t particularly good in 1995, and it hasn’t gotten better in the four years since. Nash starts out on fire and hits a series of clotheslines, the last of which sends Sid to the floor. Savage immediately runs back out and Nash fights off both he and Sid. Johnny Boone, who is incredibly permissive, lets this go on until Savage pulls him in front of a Nash corner charge. Nash plans to Jackknife Sid and here’s another Fake Sting angle! It rules! I love Fake Sting angles! They’re number one and the best! Wow, Fake Sting tricks the whole crowd! They’re shocked! At least the real Sting runs down for the save. Some doofus tries to run into the ring from the crowd while actual Sting clears the ring. Sting tries to help Nash up and gets Jackknifed for his troubles. Nash gets his belt back, which I didn’t know was stolen from him until the Thunder after it was stolen, and grabs a mic from Penzer. He’s like YOUR GIRL IS IN MY DRESSING ROOM MACHO, and Macho runs back there for this show-ending angle that stinks. Wait, we don’t go back there. We see Sting walk away. Hold on, there we are. Oh, this is where the SEND FOR THE MAN corpsing intro from Botchamania comes from – Macho slaps a giggling Torrie Wilson, then beats the shit out of his significant other off-camera. So that happens. No wonder they didn’t ever come back to the Georgia Dome. When you’re WCW, and you put on a show so bad that you partially kill off Atlanta, it might be time for you to think about what you’ve done and change course immediately. I’m more than happy to consider that Vince Russo is a better booker than Kevin Nash, by the way. It’s entirely possible, and I’m open to that possibility. -22 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

We might be at the point where we need to re-evaluate Russo's first WCW run in the sense that even if it was all-time bad, maybe we need to give even more heat to Nash as a shit booker than we do Russo instead of Russo being routinely considered the absolute dirt worst. I think we're not alone in tagging Russo with failures that should be attributed to Nash (and to Bischoff by proxy, since Bisch has him in that position and has the final say on creative).

Thunder Interlude – show number sixty-nine – 1 July 1999 "The WCW Gang is much better when they're taped, not live" Tenay lets us know that we’re getting TV title and Cruiserweight title defenses on Thunder tonight to open the show… Recap: Manly man Kevin Nash overcomes about ten guys and gets the ladies, one willingly, one not so much… We come back to the arena, where Diamond Dallas Page hypes himself up and insults the crowd before facing Saturn in a singles match…Page stalls to start…Saturn chases him around the ring, and I think Kanyon is supposed to clothesline him in ambush, but Saturn trips right into him and knocks him down…DDP still jumps Saturn as he re-enters the ring, so it’s fine…Page tries a rebound back suplex, but Saturn flips out of it and lands an overhead belly-to-belly…Saturn sticks Page with a dropkick and sends him to the floor…Obligatory ringside brawl… Back in the ring, Saturn throws chops and punches…Page reverses an Irish whip as Kanyon gets up on the apron, but Saturn hits a dropkick on Kanyon and follows him to the floor to punch him…That distraction allows Page to spring over the top rope with a crossbody that scores…Page bashes Kanyon around at ringside, then distracts the ref so that Kanyon can jump Saturn…Page lands a tilt-a-whirl slam, but is casual about following up…Page lands stomps and chokes, with Kanyon taking pot shots from outside the ring as we go to a break… I didn’t see a clip from Universal Soldier: The Return set to a Megadeth song while going to break, but the original viewers did…Page continues his casual assault on Saturn…Page lands a lariat and celebrates…Page locks on an abdominal stretch and gets leverage from Kanyon…Kanyon sneaks up by ducking beneath the apron and plays this spot really sneakily in a heightened way that makes it entertaining…Billy Silverman is a slowpoke, but he finally does catch the cheating….He kicks away Kanyon’s hand and Saturn hits an armdrag and starts a comeback… Saturn wins a punch-up, then lands a superkick...A Saturn inverted atomic drop and springboard cross body block gets two…Saturn’s roll-up attempt gets two, but Page catches him with a boot to the solar plexus and a sit-out powerbomb for two…Page looks for the Diamond Cutter, but Saturn shoves him away and right into the ref…Kanyon wraps his title belt around the top buckle…This spot is a bit contrived, honestly…Saturn comes over and tries ten punches in the corner and Kanton drops him onto the belt…I get it, he wanted to be creative, but unbuckling the turnbuckle makes more sense than wrapping the belt around the buckle…Not a big deal, but it briefly takes me out of the match… Page covers and Silverman counts to 2.7-ish. Kanyon get in the ring and gets blocked by Silverman, which allows Chris Benoit to run in and land a flying headbutt to DDP…Benoit puts Saturn on top…Kanyon yanks Silverman out of the ring at the two-count, drawing a DQ…Benoit hits Kanyon with a suicide dive to a pop…Bam Bam Bigelow runs out to give the Triad the man advantage…Page lands a Diamond Cutter on Saturn…The Triad stomps out Benoit…They do a cool spot where they whip one another into Benoit…They end the carnage by landing a tower Diamond Cutter on Benoit and hitting a Flatliner on Saturn…I’m not a fan of all the screwy finish stuff typically, but I enjoyed it here, and I liked this match quite a bit… No offense to Megadeth fans, but Tenay promises a performance from them on Nitro, and I am hoping that it’s cut out…Megadeth is the overly litigious band, right? [Editor's note: Metallica, not Megadeth, duh]...If so, it likely will be excised from the recording…Metal music does not typically agree with me…Bret Hart will also be there, and he will probably make me sad when he speaks… Brad Armstrong and Swoll (w/the NLS) take on Disorderly Conduct…Konnan hits the Catchphrase Roulette…Did I just hear Rey Misterio Jr. call out his “jigga” Scott Hall?...The captioner wrote it as [INDISTINCT]…Misterio is such a cornball…Also, last they interacted, Scott Hall helped beat him in a Luchas de Apuestas in storyline…They should still be beefing…He also shouts out his kid/not actually his kid/his kid again Dominick…Swoll is obviously only comfortable with the very basics, but he does have a great look…I’m one of those guys who sort of ended up where Jim Ross has always been…Give me more washout football players in pro wrestling…Armstrong handles the bulk of the match… Armstrong plays FIP for a bit…Brad spits a piece of gum out of his mouth while taking a jawbreaker and commentary sells it as a tooth…It’s the little things that elevate a nothing TV match to something surprisingly enjoyable…Let me give credit to Disorderly Conduct as well…They hit some nice offense in their control segment…BA gets a hot tag and Swoll hits some body slams…Swoll and Armstrong combine on a corner splash-and-uppercut combo for three…Swoll shouldn’t be on TV yet, but that match was the best possible match involving both him and Disorderly Conduct…I enjoyed it, actually… It's nice to see La Parka on Thunder…Aw yeah, and he’s wrestling Eddy Guerrero…We’re into July now, so I think Eddy and the rest of the Radicalz are only around for six more months of television…La Parka and Eddy have a conversation, likely about the lWo…Park offers his hand, but Eddy slaps him, so Parka throws hands…Eddy turns it around and hits Parka with punches in the corner and a European uppercut…This is a fun, pacey opening with lots of nice counters…I wish they’d pushed Parka better…This is a good U.S. Championship feud in a better-run company… Eddy tosses Parka across the ring mat and Parka slides to the mats outside the ring…Eddy follows with a slingshot cross body block…The match slows a bit while they have an obligatory ringside brawl, but it’s okay…Eddy tries a tope con hilo to get back in the ring…Parka dodges, then dances, and turns around into a lariat and eats that tope con hilo from Eddy for dessert… After we break for commercials and a WCW Monday Nitro promo video, Eddy gets reversed on an Irish whip into the corner and stumbles out into an enziguri that scores a two count for Parka…Parka lands a running lariat, then locks on a chinlock that is interesting because he yanks at Eddy’s hair and lips and gouges his eye…Eddy works out of it with chops and a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker… They spill back outside where Parka grabs his chair and uses it to poke Eddy in the gut…Parka smashes Eddy’s head into the chair, then lands a kick…I guess this is legal since it’s outside the ring…WCW semi-consistently takes that tack with weapon use outside the ring…Park puts Eddy back in the ring and puts on a Camel Clutch, yanking at Eddy’s hair and lips again…Parka chokes Eddy against the ropes, and then puts Eddy’s ponytail in his mouth, bites down, and yanks back…Huh…Parka’s work in these chokes and headlocks is very cool… Parka tries a corkscrew dive from the top and misses…Eddy, in trouble for so long, decides to end this one ASAP…He hits a spinning back elbow to Parka, then quickly goes up and lands a Frog Splash for three…I really liked this match!... Pre-taped blipmo: Randy Savage keeps blowing up George’s phone like a lunatic…Nash calls him back and is getting a massage from some lady…Nash agrees to make an exchange of some sort with Savage…He tells Savage to meet him at some street corner…Savage is like WHERE THE HELL AM I EVEN GOING IN THIS CITY…I DON'T ACTUALLY LIVE HERE, YOU KNOW...Nash groaning in pleasure while getting a massage is unpleasant television, just FYI… Promo: WTR song stuff. MUTE. Thunder when it focuses on main TV angles in promos and skits is typically quite bad…Otherwise, it’s pretty good… The WTRs work an eight-man tag against Silver King, Villano V, El Dandy, and Damien 666…The luchadores are all good workers, so it’s much easier watching them work total bums like Duncum and Kendall Windham than it is the B-Teamers…Their bumping ability alone elevates a match from DUD to watchable…This match is just that: watchable…That’s good stuff when you have dudes in here like Kendall Windham struggling to hit a backslide…It’s tough when your three of your four down-home cowboy brawlers throw worse punches than El Dandy, though…Kendall Windham hits Damien with a bulldog for three… Randy Savage is at a pay phone in some alleyway somewhere…Nash calls him on his cell phone rather than a pay phone, which is kinda funny…He made him rush out to find a specific pay phone for no reason…Nash says that he wants to meet elsewhere in town and gives Savage directions…Savage freaks out…It’s hilarious…TWO BLOCKS LEFT?! KWIK PIK? WHERE’S THE KWIK PIK?!?!...Savage freaking out is always funny… Rey Misterio Jr. (w/NLS) indeed defends his Cruiserweight Championship against Blitzkrieg…Konnan and, oh no, Brad Armstrong take the mic before the match…Armstrong cribs his doofus brother on the other channel and sounds like a complete asshole…Rey and Blitz have an opening exchange that ends with a Blitz armdrag…Good stuff here on another exchange that ends with Blitz getting two on a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker…Lots of quick reversals here, but Rey ends up sending Blitz to the floor with a headscissors and then following up with a baseball slide…OOOH, after Rey ends up shot to the apron and hooking Blitz for a rana, Blitz turns it into a powerbomb on the floor…Blitz follows up with an Asai moonsault… Back in the ring, Blitz hits his standing moonsault combo for two…Blitz tries a short headlock and some chops, then lands a dropkick for two…Blitz goes back to the chinlock, then tries to go standing again…He runs into a Rey tilt-a-whirl, but clotheslines himself out of trouble when they run again…Blitz shoots Rey hard into the buckles…He’s a bit too comfortable, taunting the crowd and giving Rey time to recover…Still, he lands a vertical suplex for two…Blitz goes to the air on a springboard kneedrop attempt, but Rey rolls away and makes a comeback…A jumping splash in the corner scores, but Blitz lands a clothesline on a rope run… Blitz hits forearms and chokes in the corner…Blitz attempts to hit a powerbomb near the ropes and gets reversed into an awkward rana that spills them to the floor…Blitz is a good athlete, but you can tell he’s young…He’s not great when in heel control…Back in the ring, Blitz tries to hit a crossbody, but gets dropkicked out of the air…Rey lands a split-legged moonsault for two…Blitz blocks a whip out of the corner, but in a neat set-up for the Bronco Buster, he tries a somersault splash on Rey in the corner and whiffs, then falls into Bronco Buster position…Rey lands a top-rope rana right after the Bronco Buster for three…It dragged a bit when Blitz was in control, but there was fun stuff around that segment, and it was good enough that I’d suggest it to anyone looking for an enjoyable television match that runs eight-ish minutes… Randy Savage is standing outside a building that has an ad for classic ‘90s movie The Wood on it, if you forgot what time period we’re in…A limo pulls up and Nash gets out…Savage has been fantastic in this run of segments because he’s just babbling like a lunatic, total stream of consciousness…YOU’VE HAD ME RUNNING AROUND HERE LIKE AN IDIOT, he exclaims, and I just enjoy everything about his delivery and what he’s doing…He made these segments not just tolerable, but actually pretty fun…Nash is like, I know you want George back because she’s great in the sack, and I know she’s great in the sack because we banged, basically, and Savage is like YO, I’LL KILL YOU… Sid is in the background…Wait, when did Savage steal Nash’s belt?...That's the other part of the exchange...I forgot this happened, I guess…Savage is like GIVE IT TO HIM, so Sid swings with the belt and misses…Savage rushes Nash, but is repelled…Sting, or a guy in Sting facepaint, clobbers Nash…Sid ransacks the limo looking for George…Sid is hilarious, too…Not seeing her in the backseat, this is what he says and does: SHE’S NOT IN HERE, SHE’S IN THE TRUNK *runs to the driver’s window, knocks on it* OPEN THE TRUNK, STUPID…This right here is why Sid and Savage have so much promise as a pairing…They are entertaining as fuck when they’re saying shit off the top of their domes…Sid finds a person with a hood on them in the trunk and carries them back to a Hummer…Sting/"Sting" drives away in one Hummer while Savage drives away in the other… So, WCW…Who filmed all those segments?...A roving cameraman or what?...Maybe Tex in the Cowboy Hat filmed both these and the Ric Flair beatdown in an exurban Tampa field...But seriously, those segments were so dumb, yet fun because of Savage and Sid that I would genuinely recommend them for viewing…They’re going on the Dumb (But Entertaining) Moments list… Rick Steiner defends the TV title against Buff Bagwell in the Thunder main event…Larry Z. is smart enough not to assume that we saw Sting in those vignettes…Rick Steiner yells on the house mic before the match…He insists on saying his stupid-ass catchphrases…This match stinks because, I mean, look at the competitors…They have a pose-off before Rick jumps Buff during one pose…Obligatory ringside brawl…Steiner does some boring control before Buff explodes with a dropkick counter…Bagwell tries a standing frog splash, but eats Steiner’s knees… There’s a commercial break…We come back to Steiner choking Buff with a chain outside the ring…Back in the ring, he locks on a leveraged chinlock, using the ropes…This guy sucks, man…He’s awful as a singles wrestler…Chinocks and chokes, chokes and chinlocks…At least this match is short…That’s the saving grace for this thing…Buff makes another comeback that sticks a bit better…Not that much better…Steiner lands a kick to the gut and a Oklahoma Stampede…Buff shoves Rick away and Rick grabs the ref…David Flair runs down and tazes Buff…Steiner disengages from the ref and covers for three…Putrid… OK, so let’s see who Sid and Savage actually brought out of Nash's limo…Ew, it’s Torrie…She says, in an annoying voice, HEY, LEMME TELL YA SOMETHIN’, BIG SEXY IS A LOT SMARTER THAN YOU THINK HE IS…She stinks…But I liked the vignettes other than her or Nash…Though why is Torrie now so enamored with Nash when she was taunting him two months ago?...She's suddenly willing to put herself in Savage and Sid's hands to make Nash happy?...It makes no sense... Lots of good wrestling on this show, main event aside, and the main storylines (WTR/NLS, Nash/Savage feud) didn’t hurt the show like last week…The Saturn and Benoit/Triad storyline is unremarkable, but watchable, and it mostly produces fun matches…IMO, the consistently best show on WCW television is taped Thunder…WOOOOO…

I used to kill dudes with Vader in the FPW GBA games that I played an awful lot of, so good pull there.

People who have played sports games know that some video game athletes are on another level: Bo Jackson or QB Eagles in Tecmo Super Bowl, Michael Vick in Madden 05, Steph Curry in NBA 2K14, etc. What is the wrestling game equivalent? My answer is Goldberg in WCW/nWo Revenge. He's the only guy who got that faux-MMA combo move, and it just KILLS opponents. He is a fucking BEAST in that game and so hard to reverse or block because of all the options he has out of the standing combos. He also has submissions that are good at positioning the opponent so they can't get to the ropes, especially that rear naked choke in his moveset.

I rarely do speed-run challenges. The daily speed run challenges from Rayman Legends are a rare example of challenges that grab me. But yeah, this game is surprisingly addictive the way Rayman Legends is. Also, playing little blips and blurts of Super Mario Bros. 3 has reinforced my belief that it's still one of the two or three best games that Nintendo has ever made. I might play through it with no warping on my 3DS here and there over the next few weeks.

I think the whole marriage angle, after GLAAD had been marks about thinking the WWE would actually go all the way with that angle (at the time, I think they'd do it now because they understand that their audience is different), it looks worse in hindsight to me, but I suspect that you're right; I'd have to go back and watch early-aughts WWE to see, but no, I refuse. I'll watch 1999 WCW, but 2003-04 WWE, never again. I remember having my own head canon where Booker went to Regal and Finlay because he knew from his time in WCW that a) they were monarchists who would have loved to support an example of royalty to further their beliefs and b) they were still pretty tight because of their wars in WCW, so they had respect for one another. JBL was a very good color commentator for what seemed like the blink of an eye there before he ended up stinking at it like everyone else the WWE eventually overproduces in that position.

Show #195 – 28 June 1999 “The one with the main event that lets you know what a masculine and virile man elite main eventer Kevin Nash just happens to be” We recap all the major feuds going into this Nitro. They all stink. Bummer. I think it’s weird that Nash and Sting are having discord, but none of it is centered around the fact that Sting went out injured and Nash rejoined Hogan while Sting was gone. Am I wrong that it would be a much better basis for an “I don’t trust you” deal around the white Hummer accident than “Sting popped out of a totally different Hummer the next week to attack Rick Steiner, so he must have done it?” I forgot that Ric Flair is buddies with the guy who was handed taxpayer money to build the United Center. They get out of a limo with David Flair, who is now bleached blonde, as Papa Flair rants about his doofus son becoming the world champ later tonight. The taxpayer leech is pretty funny, though, as he chimes in and says that when David wins the title, he’ll build a bigger statue for him than the Michael Jordan statue they’re standing in front of as they deliver their delusional promo. It’s really funny, actually, as Flair yells THEY’RE NOT GONNA SAY “I WANNA BE LIKE MIKE,” THEY’RE GONNA SAY “I WANNA BE LIKE DAVE,” and then these two dudes chant BE LIKE DAVE over and over. Hilarious! The Nitro Girls are in the ring. Forgive me for being salacious, but Sharmell has a cute new haircut and is in the ring with Kimberly and Chae, and I enjoyed this little dance routine very much, is what I’m saying. Well, those two segments were great, so at least we’ll have them even if this show slides into the abyss, quality-wise. Tony S. promises us David Flair vs. Kevin Nash and a video for “Rap Is Cr*p,” so it’s probably the abyss. He also reads ad copy for sponsor Milky Way, whose new tagline is peak “edgy ‘90s”: Milky Way – Milk It! Man, 1999 was a dumb year. Lord Steven Regal and Fit Finlay come to the ring, Dave Taylor as their third. Taylor waves the Union Jack, so I guess that confirms Finlay as a Protestant loyalist. Or maybe he just ignores politics as best he can and feels no particular way about the DUP’s political rivalry with Sinn Fein. Who can say? We’re here for wrestling, not sociopolitical discussion, even if sometimes wrestling insists on adding that stuff into the show. They face the makeshift tag team of Chris Benoit and Perry Saturn. As the match opens, Tony S. reminds us that both Benoit and Saturn had some good-to-great matches with Booker T. last year over the TV title. Happier times! I am maybe higher on the first half of 1998 WCW than most people; I thought it was just barely a step down from 1997 for the company. I also have a firm belief that Bash at the Beach 1998 is the third-best WCW PPV ever, so there’s that in 1998’s favor, too. It’s funny, but three of the four best WCW PPVs in my opinion all had the word “Beach” in them (Beach Blast ’92, BatB ’96, BatB ’98). Maybe WCW should have only done PPVs on the Gulf Coast and they’d still be in business. There’s lots of circling and grappling between Finlay and Benoit to start; Benoit powers out of an arm wringer with chops and elbows. Benoit works a really good side headlock with Finlay right before we go into a break where he leverages his body weight to keep Finlay from working back to his feet. It’s the little things like that which take a headlock from boring to interesting. Alas, Finlay is able to get back to his feet and hit a short lariat off a rope run as we head to commercial. Saturn’s the one getting his ass kicked by the heelish British royalists when we come back. This was a suboptimal commercial break. We finally see Regal enter the ring; his offense is still excellent. After hitting some strikes, Saturn catches Regal coming out of the corner and hits an overhead belly-to-belly. He’s too out to get a hot tag, though, and Finlay tags in and reasserts control. Finlay ends up locking on a sleeper, but Saturn reverses it. Regal comes in, which draws Benoit. Randy Anderson turns back toward Benoit, and Regal takes the flagpole from Taylor at ringside and hammers Saturn with it. Finlay covers after a few seconds, but only gets two. That leads right into the hot tag; Benoit dominates, then snap suplexes Regal and lands a flying headbutt. Finlay runs back into the ring, but Benoit meets him and hooks him in the Crippler Crossface. Regal breaks it up, then trips an onrushing Saturn and locks on a Regal Stretch. Benoit breaks that up with a boot, and the match totally breaks down. Heenan and Tony S. note that Benoit and Regal are still the legal men, which means that Randy Anderson is going to get reprimanded in the kayfabe weekly referee’s meeting, because he spots Saturn drilling Regal with a DVD and counts it for three. In his defense, it was mayhem in there. Good match for what we saw, but the break made it feel incomplete. Ric Flair and Roddy Piper sit in their backstage office and talk about their plans. They’re all excited about it, but Van Hammer interrupts them. He’s on a tiny winning streak, so he asks for a title shot. Piper gives him a shot at Steiner. Unfortunately, he gives Hammer a shot at Rick, not Scott, as Scott hasn’t wrestled in a few weeks. Aw, poop. Gene Okerlund is in the ring to review Randy Savage shoot collapsing little Charles Robinson’s lung with a Savage Elbow before introducing Ric Flair and Roddy Piper for their weekly in-ring gabfest. At least Flair is actually pretty fun on the mic as a paranoid veteran. Backing up for a second: That Hammer/Rick Steiner match is apparently for BatB and not for later tonight, according to Tony S. BatB seems like a terrible card so far. Flair insults the local sports teams, then actually is the one to introduce Piper. Piper names a bunch of people, and I can’t be bothered to list them all. He does answer an apparent challenge from Howard Stern and makes barely any sense while insulting him. He says Stern is “hung like a pimple,” which is the only coherent insult in the bunch. Piper hypes a title match between a “young man with morals” and Kevin Nash under lumberjack rules for later tonight. The catch is that the live crowd doesn’t know who that young man is, I think. Flair says that “the political structure of this company will never allow me to be world champion again.” Um, you’re the in-story WCW President, Flair. What the fuck are you talking about? Why doesn’t anything make any logical sense on these shows? Anyway, Flair proclaims that David Flair will be champ in his stead. Flair wants to make up with Randy Savage and bury a near eight-year-long feud across two companies. Team Madness comes to the ring to respond. Flair says that everyone in the ring hates Kevin Nash, so maybe they can come together for one night to ruin his life. Flair pitches that Team Madness be lumberjacks for this match. One fan audibly says HELL NO, which cracks me up. Flair offers to reinstate the Savage Elbow, which Savage has been regularly dropping despite the ban, if Savage agrees. Charles Robinson freaks out at this and does the best mic work in the promo so far when he jumps in, lifts up his shirt, and shows his scar from surgery while yelling about having a chest tube running through his body for two weeks. Okerlund says GET HIM OUTTA HERE, HE HAD A PUNCTURED LUNG, WE KNOW THAT, the compassionate old bastard. Savage has decided that it’s more important to sink Kevin Nash than it is to have any standing beef with Flair. He asks Sid for his opinion – what a good partnership they have! Sid agrees by saying LET THE WILD RUMPUS START! No, wait, he yelled LET THE BANDITS RUN FREE. Flair reinstates the Savage Elbow, yells I WANNA BE LIKE DAVE a bunch of times, and then stops yelling so he can get his blood pressure down. Blipmo: Lenny Lane paints his nails and worries about being dragged out of the closet, but Lodi reassures him. Lenny figures that WCW is pretty open-minded. WCW? In 1999?!?! Hype video: Sting, Nash, Sid, and Savage headline Bash at the Beach this year. Woof. Lodi (w/Lenny Lane) faces Eddy Guerrero. Eddy is still working at a high level, but something’s off. He probably needed to take more time to come back because he doesn’t quite move like he did before. Of course, when you get injured like he did, you probably don’t move like you did before as a matter of course. The ref takes an early bump so that Eddy can fight off Lodi and Lenny. Eddy drills Lodi with a brainbuster, so Lenny comes in and covers Lodi to save him – in a 69 position of course, since gay dudes always do everything suggestively according to '90s wrestling logic – and Eddy drops a Frog Splash on both guys before covering Lodi for three. On the list of “regressive effeminate/gay men gimmicks” in pro wrestling, some are more watchable than others. This one is way more Billy and Chuck than it is Goldust, Adrian Street, or Gorgeous George. It’s not even as watchable as Adorable Adrian Adonis. It stinks as entertainment besides all of its other obvious flaws, is what I’m saying. Ric and Roddy plan out the list of lumberjacks for later tonight. They think they need three more guys. Piper actually is funny on purpose! He thinks hard – “We need some strength” – and comes up with Bam Bam Bigelow as a name. He thinks again – “We need some smarts” – and comes up with the wily DDP. And then he says, “And you know what, that new kid, he’s dumb enough to do it” and Flair responds, “Yeah, Kanyon!” That was actually a well-set-up joke from Roddy Piper in 1999 that didn’t rely on racism or sexism to land. Huh, now I’ve seen it all. Hak (w/Chastity) comes to the ring. Chastity has been watching the replays and knows that Tony S. is smitten with her and with alt-girls in general, apparently, because she blows him a kiss. Heenan asks who that kiss was for, and Tony quickly asserts that it was for him. Funny. Hak calls out Ric Flair because Ric banned hardcore matches. Ric doesn’t show up, but Bam Bam Bigelow does. Bigelow thinks that the crowd doesn’t like him because he’s from Jersey. You’re in Chicago, dude, not New York. Bigelow did get new attire. He’s got a black shirt that says GREETINGS FROM ASBURY PARK on the back and then black tights, no flames. He looks like the type of guy who would be a hardcore champion in a modern company, sort of dumpy, but obviously has been in a brawl or two. It’s an improvement over the outdated flame suit even if it isn’t that good on its own. Bam Bam attacks, beats up Hak, and chases Chastity off with a kendo stick in his hand. This match is a zero, but Chastity is entertaining. First, she basically did her own version of a chicken dance when Flair didn’t answer Hak's call, which cracked me up. Then, she put up her dukes and danced a bit when Bam Bam looked at her in the middle of beating down Hak. She’s pretty funny. Bam Bam finally misses a top rope dive, but Hak misses his own dive fifteen seconds later. Hak does end up countering Bam Bam with a jumping DDT. The other Triad members run down, and though he whacks them with a kendo stick and then uses it to hit a White Russian Leg Sweep on Bammer, DDP sneaks in and hits him with a Diamond Cutter while Kanyon has the ref distracted; Bam Bam covers for three. Kevin Nash comes to the ring to gab. His call-and-response catchphrase is still extremely over. He’s basically like, See, I knew the deck was stacked against me just because I’m a WCW outsider. He proclaims to have no backup since Scott Hall’s at home injured. Nash proposes that if David Flair wins, Flair gets the belt, but if Nash wins, he gets Torrie for 72 hours. How come when Scott Steiner says it, it’s bad, but when Kevin Nash says it, it’s good? Ah, the mysteries of pro wrestling. Why would dopey Dave agree to this? Anyway, babyface Kevin Nash is dreadful on the stick more often than not. The B-Teamers wander out. The WTR wanders out after them. This bums me out. The nWo is such an important brand to Bischoff that the last remaining group of nWo guys who come out to “Rockhouse” are going to do the job to these bums in the WTR. This sucks, man. It’s a sub-mediocre eight-man tag. I was forced to sit through Kendall Windham versus Virgil and Horace Hogan versus Bobby Duncum Jr. Yuck. Kendall and Duncum land a double-bulldog on Virgil for the win. These Nitros are just so long. It’s one thing to be bad, but it’s another thing to overstay your welcome while being bad. Tony S. has been hyping an Ernest Miller/Disco Inferno dance contest all night, and that’s next. Obviously, the Cat wins this one. It’s barely a contest at all. Tony S. and Heenan discuss who will judge the contest, but I guess the fans are going to do it because the Cat threatens to kick everyone’s asses just like he kicked Jerry Flynn’s ass if they don’t vote for him. The Cat dances. See, he obviously wins already. Disco laughs in the corner, but deep down, it’s nervous laughter. I know it. Disco dances next, and it’s clearly worse. Tony S.: “He’s not really dancing, he’s just moving his hips.” The Cat jumps Disco while Disco dances as commentary talks about Disco being a worse dancer, but the clear winner based on crowd reaction because Miller threatened them all. I guess this dance competition is now a wrestling match; Disco makes a comeback and lands his dancing second-rope elbow for two. The Cat takes control again with an eye rake and a kick. He lands his dancing chop. One thing I miss about the late ‘90s and pro wrestling is all the ridiculous secondary signature moves with dancing and posing and dumb shit that lead into, like, a chop or an elbowdrop. Miller dumps Disco outside, where Sonny Onoo works him over for a bit before Disco ends up in the ring and catching a beatdown from the Cat again. The Cat stomps. The Cat poses. The Cat stomps. He lands a kick to the chest, but takes his time to celebrate and only gets two on the cover. Miller whiffs on a corner splash soon after, and Disco makes another comeback and tries a Chartbuster. Miller pushes Disco away, but whiffs a kick and gets caught in a Chartbuster. Disco covers, but Onoo comes in; Onoo’s kick misses Disco and hits the Cat, but it pulls Disco away from Miller. Disco chases Onoo from the ring, then stomps Miller in the corner. Nick Patrick has to step in on a ref break, which allows Onoo to slip the ruby slipper to the Cat. The Cat puts it on and lands a Feliner, then covers for only two before Jerry Flynn runs in and breaks up the cover, then kicks Miller out of the ring. Flynn lays down a challenge on Nitro next week for a kickboxing match with Miller, I think is what he wants, and then says something naughty about Miller as he leaves. Did we need more of Ernest Miller vs. Jerry Flynn, really? Why we’re seeing the same show opener we saw a hundred or so minutes ago, I don’t know, but we are. It was funny and all, but no one is suddenly switching over from RAW to see this show, so I'm not sure it was necessary. Why are Buff Bagwell and Dean Malenko a semi-regular tag team now? Ric Flair rants over at commentary about Arn Anderson being the special ref for tonight’s main event. I can’t imagine that Nash can win with the deck stacked against him. I mean, you’d need a booker who really over-estimates Nash’s viability as lead babyface to stack the deck against him like this and then put him over anyway. Buff and Malenko face DDP and Kanyon (w/Bam Bam Bigelow) in a tag match. Page was having these great main events as a cowardly, yet canny heel, and they just yanked the belt off of him and have him working random tag matches now. What a bummer. This match starts off decent. Page and Malenko work at pace to start, and Malenko gets a couple of flash pinfalls for two. Bagwell and Kanyon go at it next, and they work a pretty solid sequence that Buff wins with a back body drop, a clothesline, and a neckbreaker. Buff dances, then tags out to Malenko, who loses control of the match in a pretty creative spot where Malenko tries another flash pin with a sunset flip, but Kanyon reaches out and tags page before going over; Kanyon doesn’t fall all the way backward and grabs Malenko’s neck, holding him in place for a DDP double-sledge. Then, the match loses me as Bam Bam tags in. YOU RUINED THE FREEBIRD RULE, YOU IDIOTS. Malenko is FIP, basically. 1999 heel DDP is a fantastic wrestler, though. He’s the best worker in this ring by a wide margin. This match runs through a better-placed break than was in the opening tag. Malenko eventually manages to score a headscissors on a Page tilt-a-whirl side slam attempt and makes the hot tag. Buff is a house afire as he destroys everyone; Malenko ends up clearing page out with a crossbody, but Bam Bam trips Buff as he goes up for a Blockbuster. Kanyon covers, but only gets two. The Triad works over Buff for a while. We get basically the same FIP segment we just saw with lots of triple-teaming, but with Buff in the FIP role. IT’s all fine, I suppose. The crowd is very into Buff finding a way to save himself. DDP and Kanyon try a less-impressive version of the PowerPlex, but Buff dodges Kanyon’s splash. Buff tries to get a tag, but Page grabs him before he can. Buff endures a front facelock for awhile, but is able to get a tag out of a Kanyon sunset flip attempt. About thirty seconds later, the ref gets crushed. Buff hits Kanyon with a Blockbuster and Malenko locks Kanyon in the Texas Cloverleaf even though he should see Bam Bam walking onto the apron toward him. Bam Bam breaks it up, helps DDP hit a Tower Diamond Cutter, and put Kanyon on top of Malenko for three. This was okay television, but I am not into the “Jersey Triad one-man advantage” stuff that they’re trying to get over in these tag matches. There’s some time-wasting WTR singing nonsense that I muted. Scott Putski has abandoned his pirate look and is now just a boring dude with an equally boring look. Sid (w/Team Madness) kills him. Tony S. says that WCW has a new tagline: WCW – It’s Out There! I don’t remember that tagline. I guess they abandoned WCW – Shut Up and Wrestle already. This company is run by idiots. Putski begs off as the ladies of Team Madness get on the apron as a sort of silent threat. Madusa touches Putski a couple times because Putski doesn't get that he's supposed to turn to her the first time she does it, and Sid jumps him from behind. This segment took a whole lot of time to deliver a decent squash. Sid took forever to get to the ring, and then there was all the opening stalling. The crowd chants for GOLDBERG again because he is way over and a lot of WCW fans miss the hell out of him. Chokeslam, powerbomb, Macho talks about Sid being the best big man in the sport, Sid yells for a bit, Savage lands a Savage Elbow on Putski and yeah, this was an oddly long segment. David Flair (w/Torrie Wilson and Ric Flair) is out first, followed by referee Arn and the lumberjacks. Team Madness passes by commentary and talks; you can barely hear Sid. Kevin Nash is back out here with only about six minutes to go in the show. Obviously, all the lumberjacks run in and attack him while Arn Anderson wipes his suddenly irritated, unable to see anything eyes. They barely even beat Nash down before they get David back in the ring to lock Nash in a Figure Four. Nash breaks it and punches David in his doofy face. He beats David up for a couple of minutes and everyone just lets him, I guess. Why wouldn’t they all jump in again? They finally do when Arn tries to punch Nash, but Nash fights off like five guys. David tries to use the taser, but hahahaha he walks over and pretty much hands it to Nash so that Nash can tase a bunch of people. Nash abducts Gorgeous George and holds everyone back by brandishing the taser, and I guess Torrie Wilson is turned on by all this and joins Nash as well. That’s our Nash; the ladies love him! Even the ones he abducts, eventually. Sting is randomly sitting in a black Hummer in the back, where he watches Nash dump George into a limo and leave with her and Torrie. I was going to ease up on this show, which was bad, but not quite as bad as normal, and then Kevin Nash booked that dumbass main event. I hated it deeply; this main event angle is almost as bad as the WTR/NLS stuff to me, which is saying something considering how much I hate the latter. -10 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

It's not like that, to my surprise. NES Remix had all the weird remixed levels and cross-over stuff like putting Link into a Super Mario Bros. level. This is just chunks of the games straight up, no remixing at all, and you do different tasks as fast as you can. The first SMB task is "get a Super Mushroom," and you just do that as quickly as possible and compete against other people online also doing it as quickly as possible. It's purely a game for speedrunners.

The Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition game is just a bunch of speedrunning challenges across a handful of NES games, and yet it's oddly compelling. It's best played in short bursts though. The game asks you to pick your favorite NES game at the start, and I had a brief psychological struggle before choosing Tecmo Super Bowl over Super Mario Bros. 3.

I agree, but I wouldn't say "solely," if only because the only thing Bischoff loves more than Hogan is the narrative that he birthed that era of wrestling from a creative perspective all by himself. Bischoff talks all the time about how over time, the cruisers grew upset about being put in a box away from the main event, to your point.

The Good Housekeeping match against Chyna is at No Mercy '99, and then he's in WCW right after that.

Now now, we can't be bringing logic into the storyline motivations of any of these wrestlers. This is WCW, dammit! I am in the process of writing about the next Nitro, and Regal is in the first match. No singlet for him or his moobs. For some reason, as I read what your vet tech said, I imagined that she looks like '90s Lisa Loeb. Am I close? And I am glad that your cat is on the mend. I hope you gave him some catnip so he could space out and maybe ease some of the pain. Seriously, if they wanted to say it was a hidden camera, they could have done that. They could have made the segment look the same as the end of the B-Teamer segments from Thunder a few months ago when they were revealed to be captured on a hidden camera. Consistency is all I ask for. Not to ignore your point about Morrus bashing himself to get over, but at some point, I'm going to have to write stuff like Hugh G. Rection and Major Gunns multiple times in these reviews. I've been posting reviews to this thread for over three years, but I still don't think I'm prepared.

Thunder Interlude – show number sixty-eight – 24 June 1999 "The WCW Gang gets real Nitro-y with it, proceeds to stink out the building" It’s instructive of at least some of Thunder’s current struggles that, in the Thunder opening, six of the nine guys featured on it have been out or making spotty television appearances because of either injury or bereavement (The Hitman, Scott Steiner, Scott Hall, Hulk, Lex Luger, Goldberg)…The booking is very, very bad, but the spate of injuries is doing no favors either… Recap: Silkk the Shocker has an on-air birthday party that is crashed by Curt Hennig…Hennig and the WTR run in on the tag title match later…I just noticed that Kendall Windham is now part of the WTR on the run-in…Yuck… Woof, now the WTR performs “Rap is Cr*p” at the top of the ramp…You know what, I praised Thunder entirely too much…The WTR tests my promise to not just fast-forward through any of these segments…We are in reverse WOOO territory off the jump…I repeat, we are in reverse WOOO territory…Just please get these bums off my television ASAP…Hennig does say one funny thing, though…As he leaves, he tosses in an, “Oh, and I didn’t lip synch that, either”…Heh heh… Psicosis starts the hard task of digging this Thunder episode out of unwatchability…Eddy Guerrero is his dance partner, so said task should be easier…Psicosis reels off some offense to start…Eddy’s supposed to be a sneering heel, but he’s getting huge pops and EDDY chants for his offense…Eddy locks on an abdominal stretch to take us into a commercial break… He’s transitioned to a knee bar when we come back…Psicosis gets back to a base and hits some punches…Eddy trips him and goes back to the knee…He dumps Psicosis outside…It’s an obligatory ringside brawl…Eddy regains control after losing it and tries a double axe from the top back in the ring…Psicosis blocks it and ends up hitting a wheel kick to knock Eddy back to the floor…In a nice spot, Eddy walks over and tries to yank his leg, but Psicosis just gets off the ground before he can and lands a split-legged moonsault…That’s a neat, logical way to get in position for that bump instead of just wandering over to take it… Psicosis continues his assault back in the ring…Eddy tries to counter a top-rope Frankensteiner with a tornado DDT, but Psicosis just tosses him across the ring, then lands the top-rope Frankensteiner on the other side of the ring…Psicosis counters a flying crossbody from the top with a flapjack…Eddy quickly goes up and lands a Frog Splash while Psicosis is dazed from the landing…That match started fast, got a bit slow, and then got progressively more enjoyable after the break…Good stuff…I really liked the sequences from the wheel kick on… Ric Flair calls Evan Karagias into his office…He’d like his dopey son David to break Goldberg’s winning streak…Ric talks Karagias up (Asya thinks your body is great, you’re a soap opera star)…Karagias isn’t into the idea of taking a dive, so Flair rants about holding all the young guys back except for his dopey son…Ric says that if Karagias doesn’t agree, Arn and Asya will give him the business…Karagias is reluctant to agree, so Ric just shakes his hand like they have a deal anyway… Recap: Team Madness had a spark, but now Nash and Sting and Luger and Sid are involved, and I like Sid, but I’m not sure I like this feud… Kevin Nash comes out in street clothes for a little talky-talk…Nash talks about how it’s been about three years since he and Hall came down south…He claims that he’s still being treated like an outsider and that WCW doesn’t want him to be the champ…Uh, okay, where is that coming from?...Is he teasing a heel turn due to paranoia based on that comment and on accusing Sting of being the Hummer driver because he popped out of a different Hummer on a different show?...Yep, he accuses Sting of being on Team Madness's side, which draws boos after he’s been getting cheered this whole time…He thinks WCW wants Sting to win the gold off him and has given him Team Madness as backup…I know Sting turns heel at some point this year, right?...Or in 2000?...YUCK if they turn him at BatB… Fit Finlay and Dave Taylor team up to face Chris Benoit and Saturn…Saturn’s been wearing traditional trunks for men lately…I guess it’s good for Saturn that Chris Jericho isn’t around to enforce the match stips from earlier in the year anymore…Then again, I think he made his point that he’ll wear what he wants to wear…Tenay says that WCW is going to fuck up even something as good as the Freebird Rule by letting the Jersey Triad enact said rule DURING MATCHES…That’s how you take a cool idea and make it incredibly dumb right there…Why wouldn’t an opposing tag team just go get another guy and declare themselves a trio?...Or get two guys and declare themselves a quartet?... This match makes for solid television…Benoit drills Taylor with a couple dropkicks, so Taylor decides to tag out…Benoit lets Saturn into the ring in response…Finlay tries a nerve hold and an eye gouge, which is low impact…Saturn lands an overhead release belly-to-belly…Much higher impact…Finlay finally takes over on Benoit going into a commercial break…Benoit continues to be FIP after the break…Saturn draws the ref, and Taylor and Finlay team up on a Boston Crab… Benoit and Saturn are a solid tag team, but I miss Raven, and I loved Raven and Saturn as a team…As for this match, the heel control segment is fine, if a bit overlong…Benoit wriggles out of a Finlay backbreaker attempt and gets a hot tag to Saturn…Saturn’s balance is off tonight, as he struggles with a tilt-a-whirl…He almost fell over on the overhead belly-to-belly earlier… Saturn and Taylor end up fighting it out…Saturn ends up ducking a punch and landing a DVD…Finlay breaks it up, but Saturn takes care of him…Benoit lands a flying headbutt that puts paid to Taylor…What the heck?...Lord Steven Regal came back to WCW?...He’s here to make peace between Finlay and Taylor after they start arguing…I knew he left the WWF for a few months in 1999, but I thought he came right back in late 1999/early 2000…I had no clue that he came back to WCW at all…Whoa… Recap: Flair and Piper fight some young guys…Relatively young guys…Malenko is nearly forty in 1999… Ric Flair and Asya enter the ring for an interview with Gene Okerlund…Flair insults Louisiana and Louisianans...Flair books Malenko and Bagwell against Sid and Savage for later tonight…He also promises a surprise for Kevin Nash on Nitro…He rants about turning the power on…Maybe he wants the lights to come up?...I don’t know, but we don’t find out the surprise…I suppose that would defeat the purpose of calling it a surprise, though... Lenny Lane comes to the ring twirling his hair…Yeah, every gay dude I know is constantly twirling their hair…Even the ones with short or no hair, somehow…Sorry, I just hate this fucking gimmick…Lane faces Curt Hennig…It’s a shitty gimmick EXPLOSION…The WTR surround the ring and make life miserable for Lane…Lodi throws in the towel to save Lane from a beating after three or four minutes…Hennig hits Lodi with a PerfectPlex when Lodi checks on Lane…This is what happens to Thunder when all the angles from Nitro are highlighted on Thursdays… Randy Savage and Sid (w/Team Madness) make their way to the ring…Savage declares that the main event tag later tonight will be a tune-up for the (in my household) heatless main event tag at BatB…Savage asserts that Team Madness is the most popular group in all of wrestling…He tosses out some names for the driver of the Hummer to make Nash more paranoid…He name drops Scott Hall and Sting specifically…Now Sid talks…He yells about the pain that they will inflict on Buff Bagwell and Dean Malenko…This all feels like yammering for the sake of yammering… Evan Karagias hits the ring to lay down for that doofus David Flair…So, get this…GET THIS…Tenay says that the camera in the backstage segment that set up this match was “eavesdropping”…Wait, hold on, Flair and Arn both saw the camera, acknowledged it even, when they were talking to Malenko backstage a couple weeks ago…And that was after months of inconsistency about the camera and when it was clearly there or hidden from sight or just ignored entirely…How in the hell could a cameraperson sneak into an office and get a perfect shot right in front of all the people in the room without being seen?...WCW is so fucking stupid…They still haven’t figured out how to portray the audience seeing things it theoretically shouldn’t see…When in doubt, just do what the WWF does and portray that we’re seeing a backstage angle because we need to see it, and viewers shouldn’t even think about the logic of how a camera got there… Oh, there’s a bad match in this segment…You knew that…Arn signals that Karagias should take a dive…Karagias hits a powerslam instead…Flair has to distract the ref so that Asya can distract Karagias…Arn slips David a taser...David uses it and wins with a Figure Four…DUD… Hugh Morrus (w/Jimmy Hart) is here, and yeah, that’s what I get for praising Thunder as a solid show in the Viceland thread…I’m an idiot and I asked for a Thunder like this one…Morrus works a hardcore match against Van Hammer…The MISFITS IN ACTION PRE-EXPLODE…Weapon shot, weapon shot, weapon shot… Morrus is busted open after a shot from a can lid… There’s a ladder and then another trash can, and then after that, a table…Hart jumps in and helps set up spots…This match fuckin’ SUCKS…Ric Flair randomly interrupts this garbage and declares that he's canceling hardcore matches in WCW forever…Oh, so he’s turning babyface now?...Morrus yells back at Ric, and this is so shitty…Van Hammer mows down Hart and Morrus with the table when they turn around…Flair wanders away half-yelling NO MORE HARDCORE while Van Hammer hits a front suplex on Morrus through the table and then randomly leaves…I guess this is a no contest… HOLY FUCK, stop showing up at Thunder, Nash…Stick to showing up and booking Nitro into oblivion instead…I like Nash…I counted myself as a Nash fan before this watch…But this booking stint is so bad that it defies belief…I’m re-thinking my Nash fandom… Savage and Sid are back out with Team Madness…They face Buff Bagwell and Dean Malenko…I do get a kick out of the staid Malenko standing there next to a dancing goofball like Buff…Buff and Savage stall a lot…Malenko tags in and does a little chain wrestling before hitting a back elbow and tagging Sid in to throw kicks and punches…Buff gets back in the ring, but eats a chokeslam from Sid…I’ll say this for Sid: He has a nice legdrop… Buff is FIP, but hot tags Malenko when Madusa tries to get involved and Buff dodges a Savage charge…Savage hits Madusa instead, and Buff gets the tag…Malenko gets two on a diving crossbody…Sid and Buff spill to the floor, and Sid wins that exchange…Mona hits Malenko with a sunset flip, but Malenko rolls through and locks her in a Texas Cloverleaf…Sid and Savage attack Malenko…Sid lands a powerbomb on Malenko…Savage attacks Nick Patrick…Mickey Jay runs out and calls for a DQ, so Savage and Sid hit him with a spike piledriver…Macho gets a mic and promises Nash and Sting that they’re in for more of the same when they meet on PPV…Macho demands that Sid powerbomb Jay…He gets his wish… Let's have ourselves a song: I like solid wrestling/It makes a real good show/I like exciting matches/And story beats that flow/I typically like Thunder/Except when it’s like Nitro/IIIIIIII HATED THIS CRAP…OWWWWWWWW, that show fucking hurt my love of pro wrestling…

I think the Steiners had better matches with the Quebecers and the Headshrinkers than the Harts. There are a lot of good WWE tag matches in the company's history, but if you ask me to name great tag matches, suddenly I freeze up a bit.

Heyman --> Russo and Ferrara ---> Vince seems plausible.

The Action Zone Clique tag is maybe my favorite WWF tag match of all time. That or the American Alpha/Revival tag I saw at an NXT house show.

I don't even give him that much. IMO the guy who got Vince to understand that he needed to update the product was Paul Heyman, indirectly, due to ECW. I could be wrong, but I think ECW is the brand to thank for modernizing the WWF, and frankly, Bischoff's claims that the WWF was trying to copy "the Nitro formula" are nonsense. WWF during the Attitude Era is, IMO, ECW-lite. And then 1999 - 2000 Nitro was WWF Attitude-lite, which is why it sucked so bad. A watered down version of a watered down version of ECW is probably going to be hard to watch!

Maybe the spiciest of takes on my part, but as delusional as Russo is, he somehow comes off as the more credible one when placed next to Eric Bischoff on these shows. Somehow, he's the guy who came out of the BatB 2000 DSotR sounding like he was the closest to reasonable. He said some batty shit in this mini-series, but Bischoff seems just one step more delusional than him.

Into July of 1999, March/April had a month of television across that time that was actually quite good, but the quality of Nitro plummets again soon after Spring Stampede '99. Nitro goes from "beating RAW every week in the ratings" to "competitive back and forth" to "getting destroyed by RAW in the ratings" in a year's time. It feels quick, but IMO the TV goes off the rails right after BatB '98 and from then until about Uncensored '99, Nitro especially is mediocre-to-bad regularly at the same time that the WWF is heating up. There's a short upturn after Uncensored '99 that lasts four or five weeks, and then it's back to hell. Nitro is terrible for something like ten months starting with the build to Road Wild '98 with only a short break in the middle. I've come to the conclusion that Bischoff's creative oversight is probably what pushed WCW to a point of no return, well before Russo gets involved. Thunder has been consistently pleasant, though. I've said elsewhere that my biggest surprise about re-watching the Nitro era of WCW is that Thunder is decent more often than not (at least through June of 1999) and has some surprisingly good eps sprinkled throughout. Which says something about the Bischoff creative era since from the jump, Bischoff wanted little to do with that show.