SirSmUgly

Show #209 – 4 October 1999 “The one in which we demonstrate the differences between high art (Bret vs. Benoit), low art (Sid's car-crushing shenanigans) and no art (Russo and Ferrara are on their way!)” Goldberg pulls up to the show in his car. Aw yeah, more car-related shenanigans! Sid theatrically steps out from behind a pillar that he was hiding behind and checks the number of the parking spot that Goldberg has pulled into – 22. This will become important later. I know this and I’ve never actually watched this episode. The screen cap spoils a certain couple of guys showing up to Nitro, but then again, it’s not exactly a surprise that Nash and Hall were coming back soon. We’re in October of 1999, and there’s still so much nonsense to cram into these shows before we get to the end of March in 2001. We haven’t even gotten to Russo quite yet, and then it strikes me that Russo is gone in January because don’t the Radicalz leave after Souled Out? Is Russo’s first run in the company three months and that’s it? For a creative leadership stint that seems like it’s taken on biblical proportions, it’s roughly a third of the length of time that Nash was destroying the company in a creative leadership position. We’re in Kansas City, and in the Kemper Arena, so we’re getting a banger of a Hitman/Chris Benoit match later in this show. Rey Misterio Jr. and Dean Malenko already in the ring for another match against one another. Though Malenko is nowhere near Rey’s best opponent, Rey is certainly Dean Malenko’s best opponent. Malenko uses his power against Rey’s speed and slingshots him to the floor while Tony S. talks about the rest of the Filthy Animals not being in the building tonight [Editor's note: Untrue, unless Kidman and Torrie simply hadn't arrived yet and were off getting busy in a Burger King bathroom or something at the time this match started]. Too bad. I would have liked to see an Eddy Guerrero match on this show. Back in the ring, Malenko manages to switch and counter his way into a legbar, but Misterio gets the ropes. Rey makes a comeback with a dropkick; he escalates things with a springboard onto the second rope and a rana after Malenko launches him on a rope run. Malenko grounds Rey after that spot, and this is reminiscent of an early PPV match they had where the crowd wants to see Rey hit explosive offense, but they are sort of sitting on their hands for the parts of the match in between those explosions. Well, at least until Malenko gets an inverted surfboard on. That’s a nice-looking submission hold. He transitions into a regular old surfboard, then shifts Misterio backward and bridges for two. Malenko lands a baseball slide into Misterio’s knee, then goes back to the legbar before transitioning out of it and doing some loose work where he runs the ropes and tumbles outside after Rey barely ducks. Rey follows up with a flipping plancha to Malenko outside the ring, then tosses him inside and tries to follow with a top-rope rana. Malenko blocks Rey’s downward motion and sits right down into a Texas Cloverleaf, but he never really locks it in, and Rey crawls to the ropes. Rey bursts up with offense again, but his rope run gets countered into a side slam for two more. They trade counters for two counts, actually, as Rey gets two by toppling over into a crossbody when Malenko tries to lift him, and then both guys crash into each other for lariats and dual cover for two. Alright, both men climb the corner again and fight it out, but this week, Dean knocks Rey to the apron before Rey recovers and dropkicks Dean. Shane Douglas runs down, knees the ref out of the ring, and prepares to use the chain on Rey. Saturn runs down, rips the chain away, and about the time that Dean begs off like he’s an ‘80s heel looking at the Hulkster get his third wind, I figure out that Saturn’s turning heel. In fact, Saturn punches Rey with the chain as Dean revives the ref. Malenko crawls back into the ring, having seen none of this, and locks on another Texas Cloverleaf as the ref signals that Rey is out completely. Malenko spots Saturn and Douglas at ringside, then sees the replay of the finish on the NitroTron and seems displeased about the whole thing. Well, at least the Saturn/Douglas vs. Malenko/Benoit tags should be solid television, as this opening match was, actually. Tony S. promotes a sweepstakes involving WCW Mayhem for the N64 and Game Boy Color (dud) and a chance to win a trip and tickets to WCW New Year’s Evil (which does actually happen; I got it confused with the NYE show that was supposed to actually be on New Year's Eve that never occurred). Disco Inferno was an over midcarder once, but it’s not 1997 anymore. Funny enough, Tony S. says the fans are “laughing and they are dancing and they are smiling,” and the camera cuts to a bunch of bored looking dudes and one person hitting the double thumbs down. The amount of dancing in the crowd shots was very low compared to two years ago. It’s time for the character to have a refresher, and no, I don’t mean an “in hock to Italian-American mobsters” type of refresher. Disco’s apparently had no trouble making weight this time around; he’s getting a Cruiserweight Championship shot. So, Psicosis is the Cruiserweight Champ somehow. I forgot to mention this, but they took the West Hollywood Blondes off television at the behest of someone from Turner with some damn sense. Now Psicosis is out here with the gold, but where did he win it? Let me go check this out. OK, from what I can tell, WCW just plunked the gold on Psicosis and claimed that he beat Lane for it at a house show (on Thunder, at least; on Nitro, Tony S. just says that he won it and leaves it at that). A cursory look at the house shows between this week’s Nitro and last week’s illustrate that Lane was only on one of them, tagging with Lodi in a loss to Brian Knobbs and Hugh Morrus in Huntsville, Alabama on the 29th of September. Wow, how quick was the turnaround on this decision? They couldn’t even fly Lane into Oklahoma City or Wichita, a couple of days before Nitro, and have him lose off-television to Psicosis? Holy shit, now Tony S., after eliding the whole thing about Psicosis’s phantom title win over Lenny Lane by not mentioning Lane’s name, then explicitly notes that WCW has hired Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara and suggests that fans who are curious about them should go to WCW.com for details. This is all a bit much to take in, let me tell you, and I’ve had to pause Psicosis’s entrance multiple times to write about all this nonsense, but now I’m ready to talk about actual wrestling that is actually happening in the ring, I promise. Disco and Psicosis fire fists at one another, but Psicosis takes him over with a headscissors and dropkicks him to the floor, then lands a baseball slide. Psicosis goes up and launches, scoring a crossbody to Disco on the floor. Psicosis continues his assault with a double-sledge, celebrates, and covers for only two. Disco finally dodges a corner charge and lands a swinging neckbreaker for two of his own, then goes into a chinlock. Disco runs into an elbow on his own corner charge, however, and is rana’d off the top rope for two. Disco gets a bit of purchase in the match again, but tries a double sledge and leaps into a wheel kick that looks gnarly and should get three, but only gets two. Psicosis goes up for a guillotine legdrop, but whiffs on it. Oh no, are they going to use Psicosis as a transitional champ to put the belt on Disco? GODDAMMIT, they use Psicosis as a transitional champ to put the belt on Disco as he hits a Chartbuster for three. Fuck off, WCW. You bums managing to book Psicosis into the ground is a true achievement in failure. Sid calls a tow truck and crusher service. “The car is in space twenty-two,” he says before cackling. Moses walks up and says that his match is next. The Outsiders walk down the arena stairs holding drinks and looking for their seats while the crowd goes truly nuts for the first time all night. They sit next to some ladies in low-cut dresses. Bobby Heenan walks over to cut an interview with them. Oh yeah, he is a broadcast journalist! He tries to get the scoops. Hall hits a HEY YO. The crowd applauds appreciatively. Hall says they were at a party down there and the crowd goes DOWN WHERE?! in an almost Pavlovian reaction. Hall has to check with Nash if he can actually indicate where “down where” is, then decides that he probably can’t and says DOWN HERE with his hand at his neck. It’s reminiscent of 2006 Shawn Michaels doing crotch chops around the middle of his ribcage. Heenan wants to know when they’ll be back. Nash points out that he’s retired before Hall does some shooty-shoot shoot bang shit by saying that Nash is working a retirement angle, but begging Hall to get in there and wrestle while he sits around, then claiming that it’s no fun in the locker room, so when it becomes fun again, he’ll be back. I mean, Hall’s way over, but I’m pretty sure the WCW locker room gets more fun when he’s out of it for good. Nash declares that WE’RE GETTIN’ THE BAND BACK TOGETHER, and no, no you are not. Don’t leave us with that ominous promise. Nash’s arrival, combined with the news that Russo and Ferrara have been hired, does have me excited for Nash to show up on one of the next couple of Thunder eps and pop off on commentary in the most unprofessional way possible, though. They already took Crush out of the KISS Demon get-up for whatever reason. I don’t care enough to look it up. I’m sure one of you reading this will tell me why they made that decision. Crush faces Sid in a match that must have happened on Coliseum Video in 1995, right? Anyway, this match has Crush hitting a stalling vertical suplex on Sid, so it’s not all bad or anything. It does have one of my least favorite transitions, though: One wrestler beats another wrestler up outside the ring, then tosses him into it and gets kicked coming through the ropes. Come on, now. Anyway, Crush hits a shitty piledriver, but Rick Steiner runs down and ref Charles Robinson lets he and Sid try to double up on Crush. They struggle to do so, but eventually, Crush gets distracted by beating up Steiner and Sid catches him from behind, then hits a spike powerbomb with Steiner’s help for three. Why is Charles Robinson allowed to ref Sid matches in kayfabe?! Kevin Nash sarcastically BOOs and then says LET’S BOO…BOOOO because nothing going on in front of him means anything at all. Jerry Flynn and Jimmy Hart walk out as Crush exits stage left; Flynn’s opposing Goldberg tonight. This week, Dellinger takes a startled step backward as Goldberg splits his forehead open with a door smash. In a cool little twist to Goldberg’s entrance, Sid stands in the background yelling at him as he makes his way into the Gorilla position: YOU’RE MINE GOLDBERG, I OWN YOU. Goldberg gives zero fucks about all that woofing, though. He’s too focused on killing a kickboxing geek. Knobbs and Morrus come out to the ring to watch Goldberg kill off their little buddy. Goldberg gets a bit too focused on talking shit to them after press slamming Flynn, and Flynn kicks him over the top rope and to the outside, where he takes a three-on-one beating. Morrus even drops a Savage Elbow off the apron, which makes this ringside beating way better than most ringside beatings. I will give Morrus credit for the one thing he does well. Speaking of credit, I credit Mickey Jay for figuring out how Flynn got anything going in this match and sending Knobbs and Morrus to the back. That’s good kayfabe reffin’. Meanwhile, Goldberg one-arm slams Flynn out of an armbar and then hits a spear and Jackhammer for three. It rules. He cuts a little promo after the match threatening Sid. Huh, their match at Havoc is for Sid’s United States Championship, which makes me think that Sid wins somehow, maybe? I can’t imagine that they put the U.S. Championship back on Goldberg in late 1999. Berlyn talks shit to Brad Armstrong in the back in German; Armstrong is like SPEAK ENGLISH IN AMERICA even though English is not the official language of this country, BA, you rube. Gene Okerlund interviews Harlem Heat in the aisle. They are glad to give Brian Knobbs and Hugh Morrus a tag title shot at Havoc. Boy, the tag division SUCKS. Booker challenges the Outsiders since a few of the fans are chanting for them, which is way more interesting to me than Harlem Heat vs. Knobbs and Morrus. Stevie says he’s not impressed by the Outsiders sitting with a “couple of hooches,” which gets an OOOH from the crowd; Scott Hall reacts in shock and then covers the ears of the hooch lady next to him, heh. That was good, but then Knobbs and Morrus jump Harlem Heat, and that’s less good. They brawl into the ring even though Harlem Heat are in street clothes. Is this a match? I don’t know, but Booker T. hitting an axe kick in slacks is pretty fun. Knobbs eventually batters both Heat members with a chair, including a headshot to Stevie. STOP TRYING TO PUSH THESE FIRST FAMILY BUMS. This beatdown goes on forever and sucks real bad. It's another Nitro Girls search segment. I don’t recognize the two ladies chosen for this contest. I get more skeptical each week that this search is going to bear any fruit, but I’m open to someone in one of the upcoming segments being, in retrospect, the obvious winner of this thing. Goldberg rolls his luggage out to his car, which is apparently untouched in spot 22. He gets in, starts the vehicle, and a car bomb goes off he backs out and leaves without incident. I betcha if Russo were booking this angle, a car bomb would have went off, though. Brad Armstrong versus Curt Hennig (w/Kendall Windham and Curly Bill) is our next contest. Bummer. Armstrong explodes with body slams and dropkicks as I guess the NLS/WTR feud sort of re-explodes?! Armstrong is a dope and wanders over to the ropes after Hennig bails; Hennig snaps his neck across the ropes and then takes over. Tony S. is confused about how a man from Minnesota can identify with Texas so strongly as Armstrong tries to come back, but attacked by Berlyn. He fends the erstwhile German off, but is quickly punched in the head by THE WALL, BROTHER while Kendall distracts the ref. Armstrong wobbles backward and right into a Perfect Plex for three. After the chaotic opening to this show, Rick Steiner showed up and things started to drag. Berlyn cranks Armstrong’s neck back after the match. Rey Misterio Jr. calls for his partner Billy Kidman, who is in the showers…with Torrie Wilson. Kidman catches up with Rey. I guess Torrie fell back out of love with Dopey Dave pretty quickly, huh? Sid gives his keys to Moses because the big man parked in a spot that the cops need access to; Sid asks Moses to move his car for him. I think we see where this is going. It’s going somewhere GLORIOUS. Juventud Guerrera wrestles Billy Kidman. Kidman traded in a dirty, ripped shirt for a clean white tee and got a girlfriend. This should be a lesson for a lot of dateless fellas who are bewildered about why they can’t find their match. Juvi and Kidman have wrestled about a billion times at this point, so I expect something at least decent. They do some counters and some more counters, but way less crisply than Rey and Malenko did at the start of this show. Juvi, who hits some chops and celebrates with his lascivious Juvi Driver taunt, gets dropped; Kidman hits the Juvi Driver taunt and receives a high-pitched SQUEEEEEEE for his troubles. Juvi spends a lot of this match swiveling his hips like prime Rick Rude, actually. I feel like this show has run out of steam, and ideally, a Kidman/Juvi match would bring some life back to the proceedings, but this is a paint-by-numbers bout with a bunch of counters of varying crispness done at a soporific pace. Also, Kidman is the babyface, but he suckers Juvi in on a handshake. That doesn’t quite make sense. Tony S. notes that Juvi is a bit full of himself, looks-wise, but that he is a handsome young man. Actually, the WCW Cruiserweight Division has guys who even I, a straight dude, understand why the ladies SQUEEEEEEEEE over. They have three or four handsome dudes in that division. Now, lady fans SQUEEEEEEEEEEing over Ricky and Robert, I’ll never understand. There’s an unnecessary commercial break in this thing, and when we come back, both men trade two counts. I suppose it’s my fault for expecting two guys who have wrestled one another a billion times to be able to have a good match in their sleep. Kidman comes to a full stop and struggles to make himself light so Juvi can hoist him up; then, when Psicosis comes out to hold Kidman in place so that Juvi can dive onto the latter guy, Psicosis blatantly shoves Kidman away before Juvi is close to landing. Yeah, Psicosis has stopped caring, and I can’t blame him. This match actually goes from “boring” to “sucky” in that series of spots. We get a close 2.9 for Kidman on a counter-dropkick; then, Juvi manages to switch and switch again with Kidman, then drop a neckbreaker. He takes forever to go up for a 450 and misses, then walks into a Sky High. Psicosis tries to get involved and is easily dispatched. Rey runs down and tries to get in the ring for some reason, even though Kidman is in total control, which allows Psicosis to effectively interfere and distract Kidman enough that Juvi reaches up and yanks Kidman off the top rope and into a Juvi Driver. Rey and Kidman clear the ring after the match, but that whole thing was nonsense. Man, everything about it sucked, and multiple spots looked awful, made no sense, or both. Moses finds an open spot for Sid’s car: parking spot #22. Moses gets out of the car loudly mumbling out a series of complaints about Sid's tyrannical nature: PARK MY CAR, MOSES. DO THIS, GET ME SHIRTS, GET ME PANTS. GOOD LORD. Ha! As Moses walks away, a tow truck pulls up. Uh-oh! Harley Race is the ring announcer for the Bret Hart/Chris Benoit match. Mike Tenay joins the booth, and yeah, it’s probably a good idea to get him in here instead of having Heenan trying to wisecrack his way through this match. Benoit and the Hitman embrace before the match as an OWEN chant starts. Alright, I’m ready for some tribute wrestling; let’s get to it. Oh, no, Heenan’s still here, making the occasional wisecrack. Oh, well. Hart and Benoit fight over a top wristlock, then over a hammerlock. The Hitman transitions into a side headlock, then gets shot into the ropes and wins a shoulderbreaker before running again and stopping short on a Benoit monkey flip attempt. Benoit kips up, and the men shake hands. They go to the Greco-Roman knuckle lock, and Benoit is able to power up from a disadvantageous position and land a knee, then twist Bret around and into a straitjacket before going back to the hammerlock and grounding Bret. Ah, a wrestling match with wrestling holds. How refreshing! Benoit and Bret continue to reverse holds, with Benoit using his superior striking ability to keep the upper hand where he can, but Bret is able to work out of a hammerlock and land a side Russian. He punches Benoit backward into the corner when Benoit gets to standing, then snap mares Benoit out of the corner and locks on a side headlock. What I like about this is that both guys work their holds and work for position constantly. It feels like an actual, you know, wrestling contest. Benoit gets back to his feet, but he struggles to do much against Bret when one or both of them are running; he punches his way out of the headlock, but then runs himself right into a knee lift. Bret drops a leg, then stands Benoit up in the corner and lands a shot to the gut and a couple of lifters. He uses headbutts and punches, but maybe standing and striking with Benoit is a bad idea. Benoit fires back with chops, so Bret says Fuck all that and yanks Benoit into a DDT, then goes up and lands a second-rope elbow for two. Bret goes back to work and shoots Benoit into the ropes, but Benoit is able to grab Bret’s knee when Bret tries another knee lift and roll through into first a pinfall attempt and then an ugly-looking Walls of Jericho as the Hitman desperately kicks out. Bret reaches out and grabs the bottom rope to break the hold. Benoit shoots Bret in and gets one on a back body drop; he then lands a back breaker and gets two. Benoit kicks Bret and sends him to ringside as we go to break. Back from break, Benoit is still in control; he lands an elbowdrop for two, but tries that again and whiffs. Bret is quickly up; he grabs Benoit’s legs and drops a headbutt into Benoit’s stomach, then lands a vertical suplex for two. Bret goes into a chinlock, but doesn’t think it’s doing much damage and transitions into a backbreaker of his own after only a few seconds. Bret targets Benoit’s back with stomps; Benoit tumbles outside, and Bret follows and rams Benoit’s lower lumbar into the apron. Bret deposits Benoit back into the ring and continues to methodically whale away at him with lifters. He shoots Benoit in and tries to lift him into another backbreaker, but Benoit spins around and hoists Bret up in a Tombstone; he lands it, but only gets two. Benoit next tries a Northern Lights with a bridge, but only scores another two count. He goes back to his best tool – strikes – and then whips Bret into the ropes and lands a knee lift of his own on the rebound for two. Benoit lands headbutts and a vicious chop in the corner, then tries another whip, but gets nothing but air on a dropkick attempt. Bret lands one elbow to Benoit’s face, then a second. He rips off a nasty back suplex on Benoit for 2.8. The Hitman backs Benoit against the ropes and lands a series of overhand rights and lifters that knock Benoit to the mat. He stands Benoit up and takes off into the ropes on the opposite side, but a wobbly Benoit is able to duck Hart’s splash attempt. Hart falls to the floor, and Benoit follows with a suicide dive as we go into a second break. We come back to Bret standing over Benoit as Benoit lays on the apron. Well, I wish we could have seen the transition to get to that point. Bret tries to bring Benoit back in with a vertical suplex, but Benoit hops behind and rolls Bret up for two, then is rolled up in turn for two more. Bret’s up first and lands a headbutt, then follows Benoit into the corner as Benoit heads for safety and applies a stomp and a boot against Benoit’s throat. Bret brings Benoit out from the corner and tries one lifter too many; Benoit hooks Bret’s arm and backslides him for two, but he’s the worse for wear and takes a number of shots to the small of his back when Bret makes it to his feet first. Bret hooks Benoit for a vertical suplex, and Benoit is able to finagle a small package for two, but the Hitman is up first again and lays in a couple of boots, then lands a swinging neckbreaker for two. Bret picks up the intensity a bit with a hard whip into the corner, an inverted atomic drop, and a superplex attempt. I say “attempt” because Benoit headbutts his way out of the last of those, then tries to quickly go for a diving headbutt. Bret stuffs it with a fist to the dome, then goes up and completes the superplex; he can’t make a cover, though, and we get a standing ten count. Bret gets to his feet and, rather than covering, tries a Sharpshooter. Benoit grabs the Hitman’s left arm as Hart uses it to twist Benoit’s legs and transitions into a Crippler Crossface, then attempts to swivel around and alter their positioning so that Bret can’t reach the ropes. He moves a bit and makes it harder for Hart to get to the bottom rope, but he doesn’t have the weight or leverage to move him far enough away to keep him from breaking it. Benoit lands three rolling verticals, and then calls for the diving headbutt to light boos, actually. Benoit goes up and drills it, but since it also hurts the giver of the move (unless you’re Bam Bam), Benoit takes an extra couple seconds to cover and only gets two. Benoit lands a back suplex of his own, but he moves like he’s both tired and somewhat out of ideas (kayfabe-wise, of course). A LET’S GO BRET chant breaks out. Benoit tries an Irish whip, but Bret stuffs it and lands a back elbow. The Hitman sticks Benoit with a piledriver, but Benoit rolls toward the ropes after taking it and is able to get a boot on one of them when Bret follows to cover. Bret looks for another whip to the corner; he gets it, and Benoit hits chest first, but when Bret tries a back suplex, Benoit flips out of it and lands a flurry of chops. Benoit tries his own whip to the corner and charges into a boot. Bret charges out of the corner and Benoit ducks Hart and hits two rolling Germans. Hart elbows out of the third, and when Benoit tries again, Bret flips around and clubs his way out of a Benoit Northern Lights attempt. Bret tries to pick Benoit up for a move, maybe a suplex, but Benoit grabs the arm and tries to snap on a Crippler Crossface. Bret first blocks Benoit’s ability to hook the move on by placing his leg between Benoit’s legs and taking away Benoit’s ability to leverage him to the mat; then, he maneuvers Benoit around and is able to rip his arm away and use it to lock on a Sharpshooter, then drag Benoit back toward the center of the ring. Benoit has no choice but to tap out. Bret points to the heavens as the crowd applauds, then shows the bullhorns to the crowd and hugs Benoit. That match isn’t a great match, I wouldn’t say. It took a bit long to ratchet up in intensity, and I think the feeling out process, while very good, maybe needed to give way to a more intense escalation maybe a minute or two earlier. It also has a commercial break that obscured a match transition, dammit, I hate that. But it’s very good, and it has two massive things working for it: 1) It’s an Owen tribute match that, other than Heenan being bad on commentary, is respectfully presented by WCW, and 2) it went three segments and had a clean finish, which is damned near unheard of in Nitro-era WCW. And I guess there's a 3) in that this match happens on the same episode that it's announced that Vince "ten-minute matches are too long and boring for the average American wrestling fan" Russo is about to make his way into the company. Anyway, really good stuff! I don’t want to take away from the goodness of the match, of which there is much, by damning it for not being great. When we come back, Gene Okerlund is in the ring to interview Ric Flair. Oh, and Hulk Hogan. This sounds like hell. Hogan sells a knee injury, and I realize that this is the first time that Flair and Hogan have been on this show, and that Sting hasn’t been seen at all yet tonight. Huh. They cut mediocre twin promos on DDP, the Total Package (who Flair disrespectfully continues to call “Luger” in kayfabe/Keeps forgetting not to call “Luger” IRL), and Sting. Hogan keeps saying “damn” to try and be edgy. Oh, and the “train/prayers/kick ass” thing. Embarrassing. Sid walks out to spot number twenty-two in the parking lot, sees that Goldberg's car is gone, and snarls YEAHHHH, I GOT HIM NOW, then giggles. Oh, poor, poor Sid. You sad fool. Hey, they shoot a close-up of Kimberly from the side as she watched Page come out for his match, and she doesn’t even look like Kimberly. I think she got some bad cheek fillers. Unnecessary, Kim, you already looked incredible. DDP faces Buff Bagwell in a battle between two guys who can’t help but do garbage mic work before their matches. Thanks, fellas, I love getting anti-hyped for a match. The crowd, on the other hand, loves babyface Buff because they’re idiots. Anyway, these fellas immediately initiate an obligabrawl, then do that one transition that I hate when Buff tosses Page back in the ring and follows after kicking his ass. Buff gets tagged in the nuts while punching DDP in the corner, and then Page hits an ugly-looking neckbreaker; I’m not sure Buff knew what sort of bump he was supposed to take, and Page sort of pulled off something that could conceivably be hurty, but I don’t know if that was his original idea for the spot. Page hits a run of offense, including a Scumbag Elbow for two. DDP slaps on a sleeper in the middle of the ring; Buff fights up before his arm falls a third time and comes back on Page with a series of punches, an inverted atomic drop, and a swinging neckbreaker. He looks for a Blockbuster, and Page does a counter where he holds onto the ropes and Buff is unable to yank him downward. Page looks for a Diamond Cutter; Bagwell shoves Page away and tries to club DDP on the rebound, but Page floats over and lands a Diamond Cutter for three. I did think the finish was quite creative. Tony S. talks about a Seven promo that I guess we didn’t get to see in this Network version of the show while Lex Luger the Total Package comes to the ring and poses. Unfortunately, for him, he’s only the second most physically impressive specimen in the ring because Elizabeth is standing right next to him. Heenan makes essentially the same joke on commentary, so I condemn myself. His tag team partner, Sting, comes out to, um, a pop. Their opponents are Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan. These crowds don’t want to boo Flair or Sting, are open to booing Luger, and generally cheer Hogan for reasons that baffle me. In other words, you get a lot of muted reactions when these four are in the ring together because crowds struggle to know how to react. Luger Package and Sting jump their opponents at the bell, and the match spills outside, there’s an obligabrawl between Hogan and Sting, etc. Honestly, I don’t care about any of this, and it’s the same shit every time anyway. Sting and Luger have a lot of value, and so does Flair if deployed in the right way, but these guys all clogging up the main event scene and doing a bunch of nonsense that is generally the same as the stuff they always do does nothing for me. The match eventually becomes an ordered affair; Sting turns around a series of Flair chops and beats Flair down…to a pop. Sting’s really got to stop agreeing to do whatever the booking committee asks him to do. Flair plays FIP for a bit. Flair went from babyface to crazed heel to babyface again in the first nine months of 1999. Boy, do people blame Vince Russo for a lot of stuff that really originated months earlier. Luger went from babyface to heel on the first Nitro of 1999, then turned face again after he came back from injury and aligned with babyface Sting before turning heel again for real and for true at Fall Brawl. Yikes. This match is a nondescript affair, if you haven’t guessed. I’ll just tell you the finish. The finish: Hogan drops the leg on Sting for three. Sid accosts Moses and asks where the heck poor old Moses parked his car. Moses informs him that he parked it in spot twenty-two. Sid once again kills it on his line delivery, and I’ll leave it to him to share his shock and concern in his own words: TWENTY-TWO?! TWENTY-TWO—OH MAN! OH MAN! GOLDBERG, YOU IDIOT! OH GEEZ! GOLDBERG! **kicks crumpled ball of metal that used to be his car** WHERE ARE YOU?! WHY ME?! WHY ME?!?! WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY MEEEEEEEEE?!?!?!?!?! Remember when Sid was bumming me out with all the run-ins and powerbombing of cruisers? He was just doing that to remind me that even when things seem at their lowest, good times are ahead. Sid is a philosopher. He’s a wrestling philosopher. (Also, I love that he thinks Goldberg fucked up his car again, but Goldberg had nothing to do with it this week. Sid hoisted himself by his own goofy petard.) Bret vs. Benoit and Sid being a goofball show that pro wrestling can be good in many ways, even ways that are diametrically opposed in how they achieve goodness. Also, Bret, Benoit, and Sid really saved this show from being a total dumpster fire (give some credit to Goldberg, too, actually). 2 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

WCW anglicized the names of most (all?) of the wrestlers with Mexican heritage by the end of 1997.

And this match is what I love the most about Baba. His best quality is being the straight man in the middle of a bunch of wacky nonsense. The way he keeps a straight face as he defeats every goofy trick the heels have for him is FANTASTIC. This match made me genuinely laugh multiple times, and Baba being a stoic Roadrunner to the Wile E. Coyote act that the heels put on was a massive part of that.

Aw, man, math? OK, I give up on this one. But you know, I think Comcast would be hard-pressed to show the straightforward math on buying NBA rights to put a bunch of games; I doubt that it will drive Peacock subs or new Comcast cable/internet subs to make up for the cost of the contract, but I also think it gives Comcast leverage with WBD in negotiations over subscriber fees and makes future competition for NBA rights even more untenable for competitors who only own cable channels and who aren't, like Amazon or Comcast, able to leverage endless cash to pay for sports league rights that won't be worth the money laid out for them. There are concerns immediately beyond "how much advertising can we sell to offset what we paid for these rights" that these rights buyers are trying to figure out. And I think WBD might calculate things in a not-too-different way. I don't think that they're going to look at spending 100M to make 13M as the only part of their calculus...maybe not even the major part of their calculus. They're not in the position that FOX was with WWE, in that WBD has a tangle with Comcast coming up over the subscriber value of their channel and FOX is free over an antenna. But feel free to tag me when AEW makes 75M/yr or less when re-upping with WBD because I obviously could be (will be?) wrong.

I knew it was Roland-Garros, but still wrote U.S. Open like a doofus. And to paraphrase the Hulkster, Monica Seles rules, Steffi Graf drools! (I agree with you about the level of advertiser making a massive difference, but I still think 100M/yr+ for AEW is a realistic and even likely possibility considering WBD's attempts to keep subscriber fees up.)

w/r/t AEW doubling their rights fees with WBD, the U.S. Open tripled their rights fees with WBD just days ago: https://www.img.com/sports/our-news/wbd-triples-us-french-open-media-rights-value-in-blockbuster-deal#:~:text=Discovery will take over as,till 2034%2C SportBusiness Media understands. That still leaves AEW a target for cancellation as Stef said, but I think it's likely that AEW doubles or even triples it's rights fees as WBD tries to show strength and fend off Comcast and other cable providers trying to cut their per-subscriber fees for TNT.

The music is pretty good, particularly the end theme. Love SMW, but wouldn't agree. When it comes to 2D Mario, I prefer both SMB3 and Super Mario Bros. Wonder. It's sort of like picking your favorite child, though. 2D Metroid definitely got better with each entry. I even like Metroid 2 on the Game Boy in the context of when it was made (of course, the modern remake is excellent).

YIKES He was not good. My hero (?!) Vince Russo had Hogan all fucked up on that call. I love it. I love writing these, and I'm glad that you enjoy reading them! Though with the fall coming up, the posting schedule's going to get a lot more spotty, unfortunately...

Alright, last week I finished up all the weekly challenges on Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition with at least an A, and I only need to get one more pin (for finishing the gold challenge at least three times) and do the Legendary Run at some point. Here are my thoughts on the NES games in this package after having speed run them a bunch (and preparing to do more of it to improve my times and participate in the weekly world challenges for the foreseeable future): Super Mario Bros. - Still one of the great all-time platformers, and it's nearly forty years old. Going from Pitfall or even Donkey Kong to this must have been akin to playing something like GTA III after having played through years of attempts at open-world 3D games (including Rockstar/DMA Design's own Body Harvest on N64). Like, what a leap for the genre. Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) - I remember how disappointed I was when I played this game as a kid. Learning that it was another game entirely with the Mario cast plonked into it made a lot of sense because at that point in time, 2D Mario games didn't stink, and this game stunk bad. It still does. At least it gave us Birdo, Mouser, Wart, and playable Peach and Toad! And I guess it gave us the trope that Luigi can jump farther, but is a bit harder to control, which really became fun in the 3D games (clearing Galaxy with Luigi is the most fun that that game ever gets). But otherwise, what a stinkfest. Super Mario Bros. 2 (JPN)/The Lost Levels - The wind effects are a neat idea, but I think there was only one challenge in NWC that included them. Otherwise, it's a perfectly fine sequel that just doesn't hit the same as the first game did. Super Mario Bros. 3 - Still the greatest 2D platformer of all time, don't @ me with mentions of Braid or Super Meat Boy or whatever inferior 2D platformer people pretend is better than this one. The Legend of Zelda - Link turns like a station wagon that's got bricks for wheels. Good game, but doing speed runs of chunks of it is not the most fun experience. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link - Here's the first game on this list that is more fun as a series of segmented challenges than it is as a full game. I played some of it on my 3DS after playing through the challenges and playing without a guide is an irritating and pointless experience, as it was for many '80s action-adventure or RPG games. But in chunks? It's incredibly fun! The combat, a thing I hated so much as a kid who never got very far in the game, is genuinely engaging and varied. It's basically 2D Dark Souls, and maybe I'd like Souls-like games better in playable challenge chunks than I do as full adventures. Metroid - This is also more fun in playable chunks, mostly because I don't want to make my own map. I don't think I liked a 2D Metroid, like liked it, I mean, until Fusion. From that point on, the series really got its hooks in me when it was in 2D. As a series of short timed challenges, though, you can definitely see why this gameplay was good enough to sustain the (very slow) growth and (relatively tiny) rabid fandom for this series. Also, Samus is just so cool, even as a little eight-bit figure. Samus with her helmet off is my current player image that I set for this game! Donkey Kong - Where's the pie factory?! Stupid RAM limits on NES carts. Anyway, this is a legendary game that doesn't really hold up and that's not really worth playing anymore (unless you're drinking a beer at a barcade and just havin' fun) if you can get your hands on a copy of DK '94. Kid Icarus - There may not be a wider gulf for me between a Nintendo character that I like a ton and the quality of his games. Poor Pit. This game isn't very good at all, and neither is the Game Boy game, and frankly, I hated the 3DS game (the rail shooter stuff was fun, but the on-ground segments were just awful to play). Make a truly good Kid Icarus game, Nintendo! It's been almost forty years! Excitebike - I don't think I've ever spent more time with Excitebike than I have until I played this game. You know what? Excitebike is fantastic. Why haven't I played more Excitebike? The Excitebike challenges in NWC made me put Excitebike 64 on my N64 collection list. Ice Climber - Supertrash. Would rather play Pac-Man on Atari 2600 than this. Balloon Fight - I refuse to tarnish the name of the late, great Satoru Iwata, may he rest in peace. Nintendo's been run by a bunch of bankers and financiers instead of a creative since his death, and while that hasn't harmed the quality of their output as of 2024, I still have much respect for Iwata and the fact that he loved video games as an art, and not just as a product to sell. I will say this for Balloon Fight: First, I liked it more than I ever have playing it in bite-sized challenges (though that's pretty much the game itself in full). Second, back in the days that Gameworks was a thing, they had a game called Sky Pirates. You'd get in a seat and play against three other people, moving the seat (and yourself) up and down on a vertical axis to try and pop the other players' balloons the most. That game was INCREDIBLY fun, and it was just a more interactive Balloon Fight. Therefore, I declare Balloon Fight to be an ultimately good game and Iwata's genius to know few bounds, even if the WiiU was a terrible mistake and I am not a huge fan of the 3DS either. Kirby's Adventure - I can't think of a bad Kirby game. Even the ones that I like less have neat art design. I don't like playing this game in speedrun mode because, frankly, I don't enjoy trying to get de-powered Kirby going at a clip quick enough to get these challenges done at an S-rank time. It's a good game, but it's not a good speedrun game.

I've heard him tell this story, and I think his approach makes perfect sense as a guy touring the world as NWA champion and making a bunch of untelevised title defenses. I'm not sure it makes so much sense when he's working on weekly television in the era where cable television is widely adopted. Well, that makes more sense. His unmasking just seemed to come out of nowhere without that context. Have you heard this apparently previously unreleased interview that Hogan did after BatB 2000? I was going to pop it into the thread when I got there, but this seems like a reasonable place to put it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzskCeAwV_E I feel slightly better about being a pro wrestling fan when I look at reality television. It's nice that pro wrestling is somehow the programming type with more class for once! I sometimes yell WHY ME?!?! in mock frustration like Sid is probably just about to do on the next Nitro, which I cannot tell you how much it excites me!

Thunder Interlude – show number eighty-two – 30 September 1999 "The WCW Gang sheds another promising wrestler, barely stays on the right side of the WOO ledger" Let’s Thunder, and you know what, this show needs a new opening badly…They still have the HOLLYWOOD sign and nWo Nash and Hogan all up in the video… After a little bit of chatter from the commentary desk, Juventud Guerrera comes to the ring as part of a trios tag match…He’s teaming with La Parka and an unmasked Psicosis…Silver King and Villanos IV and V are their opponent!...Hey, Villano IV was last seen as Kanyon and Raven were spiking him into the mat (Nitro Show #158)…Tenay mentions only that Kanyon was a part of that match since Raven’s in E-C-W, E-C-W now…La Parka dances and gets a pop…PUSH LA PARKA, YOU IDIOTS…WCW has all this talent that they can’t be bothered to properly push who should be part of a vibrant, interesting midcard…They gave Parka a little storyline feud against Disco awhile ago and that was it for him… Parka has awesome physical charisma and gets the crowd laughing as he makes fun of the Villanos just by strutting…Psicosis and Juvi nicely combine on a tag and a Juvi springboard missile dropkick…I’m going to keep complaining…The tag titles would be better served on a Freebird-rule using trio of Chavo Jr., Psicosis, and Juvi than they are on Harlem Heat…This is a solid opener…I wouldn’t call it a HOT CRUISERWEIGHT OPENER as the crowd has been conditioned not to care about any cruiserweight who isn’t Rey, Kidman, or Eddy…I’m not sure a HOT CRUISERWEIGHT OPENER is possible anymore here in WCW unless at least one of those guys is involved… Lord knows the men in the ring work hard to engage the crowd, though…Lots of nice, impactful moves and fun taunting…To their credit, they do work the crowd into things by the end…La Parka is a big part of that, but the heels are scummy enough that the crowd is into the finish…That, and they hit a bunch of dives to build up to a Juvi Driver/Guillotine Legdrop that gives Psicosis’s team the pinfall victory…Solid stuff… Power Plant student Adrian Byrd gets a run-out for a squashin’, and the person doing the squashin’ is Norman Smiley!...Byrd actually lands a dropkick and some stomps to start…No offense, but ain’t nobody here to see all that…Smiley quickly lands a swinging slam and hits a Big Wiggle…Yep, that’s what we’re here to see...Byrd gets too much damn offense in…This is far too competitive for my taste…We want to see dancing and weird European suplexes and holds, my dude…Pack that all into two minutes or so and we’re good…Instead, this match sort of stinks because Byrd is green as grass…Smiley finally locks a Norman Conquest on for the victory… Mona cuts an interview with Gene Okerlund in the aisle…She gets a nice pop here in Chattanooga…I think it’s definitely in part because of her work and her ability to cleanly hit high spots, but also as an admission of our baser natures, it’s the dress…The dress has got me all fucked up…She’s fine as a promo, but whoever came up with the Molly Holly idea for her in the WWF got it spot on because she’s got a “golly gee shucks, nice young Midwestern woman” thing going on that made the whole Molly Holly gimmick perfect for her… Brandi Alexander jumps Mona in the aisle and goes to town on her…This match was supposed to happen later tonight, but Mickey Jay comes out here and signals for that match to start now…Mona fights from underneath while Alexander mostly stomps and chokes and pulls hair...And nostrils…Mona scores a couple of flash pinfall attempts, but mostly gets beaten up…Mona comes back and tries an Indian Deathlock/chinlock combo, but Alexander gets to the ropes…Mona pulls a Steve Austin and lands a Thesz Press, then bashes Alexander’s face against the mat rather than simply throwing punches…Mona tries a series of slams and suplexes, but can only get two…Stomps, buckle bonks, handspring elbow, but still no three count for Mona…Mona sits Alexander up top and drills a top-rope Frankensteiner that finally does get three…WCW should build a Thunder-specific women’s division and make this show feel special in some small way… A pre-Shark Boy Dean Roll comes to the ring for a match against, uh, Frankie Lancaster…I assume that Sid is somewhere in the building…Frankie Lancaster looks like if Sam Elliott’s half-brother decided to juice up and become a pro wrestler…Larry Z. is fixated on the multiple bottles worth of baby oil that Lancaster used for this television appearance…I don’t blame him because Lancaster looks a bit ridiculous!...Ha, it’s not Sid, but Scott Norton (!!) who comes out here…I was thinking that we’d seen the last of ol’ Flapjack on our watch…Just in case this is the last time, WCW never did get the most out of him…And maybe I’m one of the few people (only person?) around here who enjoys mid-‘90s Ice Train, but I thought that Fire & Ice had some real potential as a team and was broken up after only about a month for no good reason that I could tell…Those bomb-fests they had against the Steiners were a lot of fun...Anyway, Norton murks these fellas and hands out powerbombs…I guess if Sid did it, Norton can do it, too…Norton grabs a mic and says that if Sid got Goldberg’s attention by doing this, Norton wants Goldberg’s immediate attention in the ring…Cool, I guess Goldberg’ll send Norton on his way out of the company… Goldberg comes to the ring for an interview with Gene Okerlund…He accepts Norton’s challenge for later tonight… Hugh Morrus and Brian Knobbs (w/Jimmy Hart) tag up against Lord Steven Regal and Squire Dave Taylor (w/Fit Finlay [!!!])…Good to see Finlay up and about…And what a sparkly shirt he’s got on, too…Regal takes a Pit Stop and wobbles around, trying not to blow chunks…Heh, Regal finding ways to make Brian Knobbs interesting in 1999, even while Regal is drugged out of his gourd…What a talent…See, Taylor takes a Pit Stop and he reacts like whatever so that he can move on to the next spot…If you’re wrestling a cartoon character like Knobbs, you gotta roll with it and be a cartoon yourself…Finlay rips a chair away from Jimmy Hart, and security runs out, and, uh, ejects only Finlay…I guess Hart’s manager’s license gives him more leeway or something… Meanwhile, Taylor smacks Knobbs with his flagpole…Back in the ring, Taylor headscissors Regal up and over into a standing senton on Knobbs…Such a complex setup for a simple senton splash…Knobbs is the guy in peril in this thing…This control segment with Knobbs being too broken down to even sell very well goes on way too long…He finally gets a hot tag to Morrus…The match immediately breaks down…Knobbs lands a pumphandle slam on Taylor…Regal takes Knobbs out, but Morrus sees his chance, goes up top, and lands a No Laughing Matter on Taylor for three while Regal is distracted…DUD… Gene Okerlund interviews the Revolution in the ring…Shane has to coax the other three guys to come to the ring with him…Douglas walks out pretty much alone, while the other three members hang back and come out together…Saturn doesn’t like that Douglas is taking shortcuts, and if he doesn’t want to stick to the agreed-upon “clean athletics” approach that they all agreed upon the first time around, he says that Shane can get to walking…Shane Douglas, huh, apologizes…I keep waiting for him to do something to immediately break his promise, but no…There’s no tossing anyone through metaphorical barber shop windows…Maybe Douglas is just too outnumbered to do anything right now… *sigh*, Okay, let’s get this Coach Buzz Stern thing over and done with…He escorts Luther Biggs to the ring…Biggs is essentially playing the gimmick of a portly goofball, and I think to myself that if Louie Spicolli were alive, he might be able to get this somewhat over if he were in the Luther Biggs role…Maybe…Bobby Eaton comes to the top of the ramp, looking perturbed…From wrestling the Fantastics and Rock ‘n Rolls to this?!...Biggs wins a hip toss and celebrates…This match is built around Stern coaching his doofus student against a veteran who should probably be doing better against this guy, but is apparently over-the-hill and struggling…This whole thing belongs on Saturday Night, not Thunder…Thunder could be consistently very good if only someone cared about it…It’s not like WCW doesn’t have the talent to make this a must-see show…They don’t even have to run every star out on each Thunder…Just have, like one or two stars show up to continue major angles and then primarily use Thunder to build midcard angles…Stern fucks up the timing on a run-in, I think…After Stern and Biggs bonk one another, the ref counts two and not three on an Eaton neckbreaker and pin…He calls for the bell anyway as Stern attacks first Eaton, then Biggs with a full nelson…Oh man, this is some dreadful television… Brad Armstrong is out here to face Horace Hogan, who I sorta forgot existed…We’re a long ways away from Flock Horace…Armstrong’s a solid worker and Horace always tries, but this is pretty much Dullsville…Tenay announces a match for Halloween Havoc while this borefest drags on…The Total Package/Bret Hart seems like bad booking…Both guys probably need a win after their re-debuts and Luger’s re-packaging…Horace has no B-Teamer or Flock help anymore, so he’s basically food…He misses a corner charge, and Armstrong hits a floatover Side Russian for three off the mistake… Rey Misterio Jr. and Billy Kidman are actually over, and it’s nice to have wrestlers like that on Thunder…Their opponents: Kendall Windham and Curly Bill (w/Curt Hennig)…What a vile tag team…Looking forward to these last three guys disappearing from TV so we can get more time for Three Count, the Jung Dragons, the Natural Born Thrillers (except for that bum Shawn Stasiak), and so forth…Let me get excited about a bunch of young talent that unfortunately doesn’t really pan out in the end…Though I contend that Helms, Palumbo, and Jindrak are bigger stars in the United States if WCW lives on under the Turner umbrella and Bischoff doesn't get put in charge of it again… Rey and Kidman should probably be your tag champs sooner rather than later…Harlem Heat is definitely over as a babyface team, but it’s time for Booker to move on…Rey does some nice bumping for these two stiffs from the WTRs…Hell, Curly Bill lands a stalling vertical…It’s impossible to look bad if you’re hitting someone with a stalling vertical…Rey is a miracle worker…He makes a comeback, springboard dropkicks Bill, and gets the hot tag in to Kidman…Windham cuts off Kidman’s comeback by barging into him…Kidman takes a beating and takes over as FIP…A Kidman bulldog causes a second hot tag segment…Kidman is able to help Rey a bit and keep him from falling to the numbers game as happened to him earlier in the match…Bill is able to go up for a top-rope attempt on Kidman after he drops him…Rey, who took out Windham with a dropkick, watches as Kidman gets up and crotches the very slow Bill on the top, then has Kidman lift him into a top-rope Frankensteiner position…He hits it and covers for three… Cagematch tells me that this is indeed the end of the line for Scott Norton in WCW…Man, the heady days of 1995 Nitro seem so long ago…Pre-nWo Nitro was so exciting, livid with promise and possibilities…And now a lot of those guys with promise who offered such tantalizing possibilities in those early days have left or are soon to leave WCW (Giant, Chris Jericho, the future Radicalz, and now Norton himself)…Bummer, man…These fellas just punch each other in the center of the ring to start until Goldberg lands a short right that sends Norton spilling over the top and to the floor…That ruled, man…That ruled hard…They have an obligatory ringside brawl in which they just try to clobber one another…Goldberg eats the post a couple of times, but whatever, he eats posts for breakfast… There’s this narrative that I hear passed around sometimes that crowds were sick of Goldberg by this point in his run…NOPE…Chattanooga loves seeing this guy eat a few posts, then decide to forearm Norton and return the damage…I’m not sick of it either, honestly…No offense to John Cena, who I’m a fan of, but Goldberg feels like the last true top-tier star that American pro wrestling has made…Cena’s great, but IMO, he’s at the top of the second tier and Goldberg’s toward the bottom of the first tier when it comes to American pro wrestling stars…Anyway these big dudes crash into one another back in the ring…They get up and run the ropes, but Norton whiffs on his lariat and Goldberg lands a spear on the rebound…Goldberg sells that his shoulder is injured, but that’s not stopping him from hoisting Norton up for a Jackhammer and a three-count…I enjoyed this…That’s a nice way to go out for Norton… This show mostly stunk once we got past the trios tag opener, but they ran some stars out here in the last couple of matches and brought this show back from the depths and to a WOO….

Show #208 – 27 September 1999 “The one in which Sid makes up for weeks of ruining matches with some clutch dialogue delivery in his segments” We’re almost into October here in WCW, and we’re back in Atlanta, but not at the Georgia Dome. We’re at the Thrashers and Hawks’s new arena, the former-Philips-now-State-Farm Arena. Hogan gets out of a limo and a bunch of kids dressed in Hogan gear come from nowhere and flood the limo. You know what’s going to happen next, but it’s still funny that Sting sneaks up from behind and in a kiddie voice says, “Hey Hogan, can I have your autograph too, huh, huh?” and apparently, it tricks Hogan, who ends up casually turning around and taking an attack to his head and his knee. We go from there into the regular opening and then the recap, in a reverse of the typical order of those things for the past few weeks. The desk hypes the show. Heenan is confused about who exactly is wrestling Psicosis tonight. He shows off his Photoshop skills by presenting a picture of a bald Kidman. Mike Tenay’s outside to interview Hogan, who blows him off because he’s too busy selling a knee injury. Hogan decides that he’ll forgo an ambulance ride to the hospital and stick it out tonight. Suddenly, we cut to Sting in the back, who is disappointed that he didn’t send Hogan to the hospital. Even more suddenly, we cut back to the arena, where Ernest Miller (w/Sonny Onoo) makes his way to the ring. Sign: THE CAT LIVES IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD (NO, REALLY). OK, that made me laugh. The Cat gets a mic and says that even though this is his hometown, he’ll still whoop everybody in here because they suck. He suggests that maybe some of the ladies in the crowd have the stature to be effective offensive linespeople for the Atlanta Falcons, and then in a MEAN camera cut, they show one of the larger young ladies in the crowd. UNCALLED FOR, Leathers! Miller demands a title shot and calls out Sting, declaring that he won’t leave until he gets a title shot. I assume he’s about to get Sid instead, but no, he gets Chris Benoit. Miller grabs a mic again and says that he guesses he’s just going to have to work his way to the world title from the bottom, then turns around into a series of chops. Miller is wearing leopard-print tights with GODFATHER written on the seat; truly amazing. If we’re going to have a joke secondary champ in this company, let’s make it Ernest Miller instead of Lenny Lane, please. Miller bails runs around the ring, gets back in the ring, begs off, and gets kicked. The Cat is able to lure Benoit in and bonk him into the corner, then hit a head kick from the ground. Miller lands a standing side kick and chokes Benoit with his foot a whole lot. The Cat lands a beal, thrusts his hips, and goes back to a choke. I love the Cat, but Chris Benoit probably shouldn’t be selling for him for an extended amount of time. Benoit leaps over on a rope run and tries a sunset flip; the Cat thinks he’s chopped his way out of it, but goes over for two and has to get back on top with another stomp. The Cat continues to control, hits a pelvis-thrusting elbow, no moonwalking, for two; then, he dumps Benoit to ringside so Onoo can kick him. Miller follows Benoit outside after that, but his whip into the guardrail is reversed. Still, he comes back with a cup of liquid to the eyes and some strikes and chokes. Back in the ring, the Cat breaks a choke and puts on a headlock that he uses the ropes to get leverage upon. Benoit fights back to his feet, hits a chop, and then gets his eyes raked. Miller shoots Benoit chest-first into the corner, then tries a Feliner as Benoit comes back out of the corner, but Benoit ducks it and lands a lariat. Onoo jumps in the ring and hops on Benoit’s back as Miller goes for the ruby slipper; Miller just tries to clock Benoit in the head with it, but Benoit shifts and Onoo takes the blow. Benoit follows up with a release German, a diving headbutt, and a Crippler Crossface in short order for the victory. Miller’s not very interesting in heel control and Benoit is supposed to be able to hang with Sting, so this match was laid out completely incorrectly. Hype video: Sid kills Sting, The Public Enemy, and a bunch of cruiserweights. Vampiro stalks out alone to face Buff Bagwell. Buff strips off his overalls and a certain portion of the crowd shrieks. Bagwell grabs a mic before the match and does some boilerplate babyface nonsense talking. The match these two have is sloppy, but watchable, as you’d expect. Buff is in control for most of this. Some guy holds up a SUCK ME, BEAUTIFUL sign for some reason. This is a very late ‘90s wrestling segment. Who is the ref? It’s a bald dude with a goatee who I don’t recognize. Is that Slick Johnson, maybe? If it is, I guess they got him something to do after that dreadful nWo ref nonsense from a year ago. Anyway, after a lot of Bagwell domination, Vampiro gets some control, but Buff fights up from a headlock. Vampiro hits a slam and a diving lariat, but only for two. He tries a guillotine legdrop next, but whiffs. Buff hits a pair of atomic drops, one inverted and one not, then lands a crossbody, but walks into an enziguri. Vampiro sits Buff on the top rope and tries a superplex, but Buff front suplexes his way out of it and hits a Blockbuster, as is the way of babyfaces who use top-rope finishes – we just saw this exact finish in a Booker T. match, if I recall. HAHAHA, so the desk does some talking, and then I am reasonably sure that it is SEVEN who cuts in. Seven: TONYYYYYY. Tony S.: WHAT?! Then, we get a short vignette in which we see a window and some clouds and I’m suddenly reminded that Dustin Rhodes spent a bunch of time as Black Reign in the aughts. Oh my goodness, the post-9/11 aughts are so weird. Anyway, this is going to end up offering viewers some amazingly bad vignette work that I am totally here for. Semi-legendary hype video: Lex Luger is dead! No, seriously, it’s Luger in a coffin, and then his spirit leaves his body and is reborn. Also Ms. Elizabeth is there to bury the old Lex and welcome THE TOTAL PACKAGE. All hail the Total Package! I love Lex’s theme music from his TTP era. Ms. Elizabeth comes out here live on TV after the video ends and throws off her mourning clothing to reveal herself wearing quite the dress. I think seeing her in that dress caused my body to start producing testosterone at the levels that it did back when I was fifteen. Lex TTP stands in the center of the ring and poses like he’s in the Arco Arena back in 1993. Luger is indeed bigger and more shredded than he’s ever been, though as with Scott Steiner, that’s going to cause his mobility and overall in-ring work to falter quite a bit. Steiner was able to compensate with character work and by hitting a lot of suplexes, but I’m not sure about how Luger will fare. Hogan is in the back, having someone work on his knee, which Hogan claims that he can’t bend. Hogan: JUST CUT MY DAMN PANTS OFF SO I CAN GET GOING. Sting runs in and pops Hogan in the knee with his bat again. Rey Misterio Jr. (w/The Filthy Animals) comes to the ring, and Dean Malenko (w/The Revolution) is his opponent in a call back to a typical 1996 Nitro matchup. Eddy tries to square up with Saturn and gets backed away. Malenko wants the Revolution to go back to the dressing room even though Douglas wants to be there for back-watching purposes, and Rey does the same with the Animals. Rey and Dean then have a throwback to one of their 1996 matches, something Tony S. notes. Lots of counters and switches and fast-paced exchanges start the match, and they arm drag one another and then go chest-to-chest in what is the best possible “two guys work a speedy series of counters to start and then have a standoff” spot. They come together and tangle again, and they end up both fighting over position on the top rope and punching each other at the same time like they’re Superman and Doomsday; both men fall to the floor. When they re-enter the ring, they continue to counter and counter and counter, occasionally scoring two counts on flash pinfall attempts. After some more counters, Rey tries a springboard rana and gets snatched out of mid-air and powerbombed for two; soon after, Dean stuffs some more Rey razzle-dazzle and hits a backbreaker for another two count. We go to split screen as Sid and Rick Steiner pull up in their car, and I swear to sweet fuck, do not send these bastards out here to break up this match. Thankfully, Rey does finagle a counter roll-up for three before they can bust up the match itself. This, by the way, was the best possible type of counter-focused match. Good work from them. They shake hands after the match. Much like Blitzkrieg and Kanyon’s work, you can point to matches like the ones Dean and Rey had in WCW as forming the basis for what a lot of modern fans consider peak workrate, for good and for ill. We go right into another match, this time Hugh Morrus (w/Jimmy Hart) facing off with Goldberg as Goldberg continues his march through the sorry-ass First Family. Morrus hasn’t had much for Goldberg since the latter’s very first Nitro match. I love, as we follow Goldberg in from the back, that Doug Dellinger visibly winces at the sound of Goldberg bashing his head against the door before coming out of his locker room. I am never going to get sick of this whole presentation and Goldberg’s aura in general. You can say that he had a police escort and the sparklers and all this ga-ga to help him, but as far as I’m concerned, Goldberg has the most physical charisma of any wrestler ever, straight up. I don’t know who number two is, but it’s not a small gap between that person and Goldberg. It’s the little things, not just the big power stuff. For example, Morrus tries to fight up with forearms, so Goldberg looks at him like he can’t believe Morrus is even bothering and then jams two forearms into Morrus’s jaw for the one that Morrus throws back at him. Come on, that’s just an awesome spot. There’s more than one way to be a great worker. Sid comes out and hits Goldberg with a chair behind the ref’s back, but it’s a mere chair. Morrus lands a Savage Elbow and has Goldberg in jail for a bit; Goldberg tosses out a couple of wild haymakers that miss entirely. If only Morrus was any good, he’d toss out some impact offense that might make Goldberg seem like he’s remotely in trouble, but other than the elbow and the No Laughing Matter, he is completely worthless, just awful in control. I sure hope he’s better at selling offense for long stretches when he turns babyface in a couple of months. Finally, after a boring chinlock and some aimless offense, Morrus lands a No Laughing Matter that Goldberg kicks out of at two. Morrus has nothing left after that; Goldberg manages to ignore a corner charge and land a spear, then hits a quick Jackhammer for three and gets out of dodge with a victory. After the match, Goldberg gets a microphone and invites Sid out to the ring for a few fisticuffs; Sid declines the proposal. We see an ambulance take off, but we didn’t see Hogan get loaded into it, so I’m guessing we’re getting a bait-and-switch and we’ll find out later that Shane Douglas attacked Eddy Guerrero with a lead pipe off screen or something of that nature [Editor's note: Nope!]. It’s another Nitro Girls search section that I’m going to gloss over. I’m curious to know if they’re going to actually find someone through this contest or if nothing comes of it. I haven’t recognized any of the women who have been trotted out so far. No spoilers on this, of course, please. Gene Okerlund hosts again. Kimberly and Sharmell are out here, too, and um, JamesMcAvoysweatingprofusely.gif. Evan Karagias makes his way to the ring; Berlyn (w/THE WALL, BROTHER) shouldn’t have too much trouble with the future Three Count member. It literally just dawned on me that he’s called THE WALL, BROTHER because he’s bodyguarding Berlyn and is therefore Berlyn’s Wall. Fucking dummkopfs in creative, that is some silly wordplay nonsense. There is a shot of some random fans of Uta Ludendorff in the crowd. Who makes signs for Uta? I’m judging your fandom, four people in the crowd with Uta Ludendorff signs. Anyway, she’s not anywhere to be seen because she was all wrong for her role. Actually, Berlyn’s whole entourage has been shrunk down to just THE WALL, BROTHER. Berlyn, who is not Alex Wright at all, no sirree, demands total silence from the crowd while he wrestles via David Penzer, just like Alex Wright used to. Karagias actually has a little babyface fire, so Berlyn quells it by suckering him in and poking him in the eye; then, a few seconds later, Berlyn hits a sick high knee. Damn, that was such a good high knee that I would have bought it as the finish. He also tosses Karagias around with an overhead release belly-to-belly. Karagias hangs Berlyn up on the ropes and makes a tiny comeback, but THE WALL, BROTHER hits Karagias with a slightly mistimed punch as Karagias barely keeps his footing while trying a springboard move. Berlyn follows with a reverse neckbreaker for three and a post-match neck crank. Brad Armstrong runs down for the save and gets clobbered. HAHAHAHAHA, Goldberg busts into Sid’s locker room, accosts the poor guy (named Moses, as we find out) who valeted his car, and then rips the keys away. OH YEAH, I KNOW WHAT’S COMING, AND I LOVE IT. Dopey David Flair sits backstage and tries to track down Torrie Wilson through a series of phone calls. Why don’t you head off and try to find her, David? Spend the next eighteen months or so looking for her, and report back on whether you located her on the first Nitro of April, 2001. The rest of the WTRs escort the Windham Brothers to the ring for another shot at the WCW World Tag Team Championships; Harlem Heat make it to the ring, and Stevie Ray has apparently recovered from that Rick Steiner 4x4 attack from the previous Thunder. I’m sorry, but I can’t get up for another matchup between these teams. Kendall is so bad, man, his strikes are bad and his timing is shit and he doesn’t space himself very well to take moves. Booker and Stevie have no problem working over Kendall and then Barry. Stevie gets two on a spinning kick to Barry, but whiffs on a corner charge as we go into a commercial. We come back and it’s Booker in trouble and Kendall in the ring with him. Kendall slaps on a chinlock, and yeah, let’s move it along to the finish. Booker works up from it and gets a crossbody for two, but Barry makes the save and then reasserts control of the match by tagging in and landing a DDT on Book. Book gets tossed to ringside, where Hennig and Bill work on him, before Barry dumps him back inside the ring. This is a looooooooooong heel control segment, but eventually, Stevie Ray gets a tag belt and clobbers Barry in the knee with it, which, um, allows Booker to cover for three? That’s it. That’s the match. Even Tony S. is sort of confused by the finish. It's another phone call segment! We zoom in on the Yellow Pages, turned to the TOWING section, and see Goldberg make a phone call to one of the businesses on the page. WELCOME. TO THA. SNORE FEST. ZZZ ZZZ. ZZZ ZZZ. I think about getting another cup of coffee and making it very strong as Rick Steiner walks down the aisle. This dope insists on trying to talk before the match every time out, and it sucks every time out. Steiner’s out here to sub for Sid and take care of Van Hammer, who challenged Sid as the winner of Thunder’s main event. It wasn’t exactly hard for Steiner to take Van Hammer down back at this year’s Bash at the Beach, and it’s not that hard now. Other than an overhead release belly-to-back, this match is a total snoozer of a squash and ends with a diving bulldog for three after Charles Robinson helps Steiner moot a brief Hammer comeback by helping to block Hammer’s Cobra Clutch Slam attempt, and yes, that spot’s as stupid as it sounds. An un-scarred Bret Hart comes to the ring and tells Gene Okerlund that Package's full-swung bat to the face only gave him a couple of stitches. OK. This is almost as bad as HHH using a sledgehammer as a weapon, but never actually swinging it and only using the handle to hit guys. He lectures TTP about the history of wrestling, respect for greatness, etc., etc. Ric Flair walks down to the ring while Bret is talking about how much he respects Ric in what is certainly a work rather than a shoot. Flair goes into conniptions and declares that he and the Hitman will take out the heels tonight by themselves. Let me guess, Hogan’s going to limp back out here and save the day [Editor's note: Yup!]. The crowd loves this crazy man Flair shit as he pantomimes wrestling moves, but I’m not into it. Bret is irritated when Flair threatens to fuck Liz and thrusts his hips, hahaha! He was sort of smiling at all the pantomime until then. Oh, man. Just let Bret work Benoit and Booker and Rey and Eddy in the upper-midcard if you’re not going to use him effectively in the main event, WCW. Unfortunately, David Flair tracked down Torrie quicker than I’d hoped. She pretends to be at the airport, but she’s actually chilling with the Filthy Animals backstage. It was so nice when those two weren’t on television for a few weeks. So, so nice. Sid walks up to Moses and asks where his car keys are. Moses says that Goldberg took the keys. Sid: GOLDBERG?! AW, MOSES, GEEZ. Sid is fucking hilarious. I love the idea that Sid's the kind of heel who'll powerbomb wrestlers that aren't even bothering him, but he merely gets a bit frustrated at the valet, whose name he's bothered to learn and remember, for giving his car keys to his archrival. Konnan comes to the ring for his first match in a minute or two. I guess he got his legal issues cleared up. Konnan hits the Catchphrase Roulette, which is still over. He’s facing one of the Revolution guys; Perry Saturn’s his opponent, specifically. They do some okay mat wrestling to start and trade control back and forth. Saturn gets a bit of momentum by working the arm in a series of armbars and keylocks and such. Saturn hits a fine keylock takeover, then tries a cross-armbreaker. They end up standing again and crash into one another; we get a standing ten-count and then a Konnan cover for two as we go into break. After the break, Saturn’s got Konnan set up top for an overhead superplex; he hits it, then goes back to locking the arm up. Konnan doesn’t give up, and Saturn again tries something different instead of sticking with the submission hold. He slams Konnan and lands a Savage Elbow for two. Saturn has lovely form on his Savage Elbows. Saturn finally gets caught leaping over Konnan in the corner; Konnan hits a flapjack to get some space before getting overhead suplexed on the ground, this time for two. Saturn takes his time going up, but gets caught and pressed off the top rope for two. Konnan scores a rolling clothesline for another two count, then drives a mule kick into Saturn’s gut and hits a sit-out facebuster. None of that matters much; Chavo leads a group of luchadores, including Psicosis, Juvi, and Silver King out to attack Konnan. Alright, so as the bell rings, we get a bunch of ga-ga. First, the rest of the Filthy Animals come down to even things up, and Saturn helps them until Shane Douglas runs down and drags Saturn out of the ring. Saturn is irate that Shane interceded, and he and the rest of the Revolution bicker with Douglas, who says that Saturn needed his help and is too stupid to accept it. I mean, who gives a shit about the Revolution? They’re a shitty group. However, I am glad to see them breaking up and would encourage them to break up more quickly so that Shane can be a heel because he’s a terrible babyface. Sid storms into the parking lot and walks up to his car. Oh good, he found it! However, he doesn’t have his keys, so he leaves to find those. Right after that, the fine folks at Auto Fund show up to tow his car away. Auto Fund, the number one towing service serving the Greater Atlanta area! After a DDP/Ric Flair video retrospective, Goldberg shows up and tells the tow truck driver, “You know what you gotta do. Just make sure you have it back here by eleven tonight.” Auto Fund also sells and buys salvage. We do our own auto crushing and disposal on site! Auto Fund: Atlanta’s one-stop tow-and-salvage shop! Diamond Dallas Page interviews with Gene Okerlund at the bottom of the ramp. Page claims that Atlanta loves him because he managed to score a hottie like Kimberly. He also claims that’s why Atlanta hates him. However, the reason that they’ll never forget him is because he delivers the goods, two-time, two-time, etc. Well, he changed it up, so good for him. Okerlund asks where Page’s “guys” are, but Page talks about the Total Package and Sting, not Kanyon and Bam Bam. Page threatens his babyface opponents in the main event. Psicosis wrestles Billy Kidman in a Luchas de Apuestas match, and let me tell you, I don’t like Psicosis’s chances considering the record of luchadores in these types of matches here in WCW. I’ll never stop saying that Nash and Company wasting Psicosis’s Cruiserweight Championship win is one of the second-tier biggest WCW fumbles of the booking in the Nitro Era. There’s no suspense in this match at all even though I’ve never seen it. Kidman tumbles to the floor after charging at Psicosis; Psicosis ducks out of the way, then follows with a springboard seated moonsault to the floor. He tries to press his advantage back in the ring, but dives right into a counter dropkick. Kidman signals that he’s going to take off Psicosis’s mask, which is when Chavo Jr. and Juventud Guerrera run down to the ring. That distracts Kidman, and Psicosis DDTs him for two. Both men trade moves as I wonder why you’d bring a bunch of masked luchadores in as themselves and not just unmask them from the start and give them different names. Anyway, this match is fine, but it’s focused on jibber-jabber more than it is on anything else, which makes me just want to take things to the finish. Psicosis hits a top-rope Frankensteiner for 2.5. Kidman fires up with punches, so Psicosis dumps him outside, and Chavo stomps him out before tossing him back into the ring. Psicosis crotches Kidman on the top rope, then goes up and lands a diving wheel kick for two more. Can anything put Kidman away? Not in this match as far as Psicosis is concerned, who loses a punch-fest, but is able to dodge a dropkick. He ends up walking into a Sky High that gets two, but dropkicks Kidman’s legs out from under him on a rope run. Psicosis goes up, gets caught, but lands a diving facebuster from the top for yet another two count. Kidman is able to catch Psicosis coming out of the corner and hit a powerslam, but Juvi yanks Psicosis out of the ring and Chavo hits a tornado DDT on Kidman behind the ref’s back. Psicosis gets back in the ring…and still only gets two. OK, sure. Psicosis and Chavo distract the ref again, but Kidman kicks out of the Juvi Driver that Juventud delivers at two. This sucks. I can’t believe we’re pushing Kidman as multiple levels above all three of these guys. Kidman hits a facebuster out of a powerbomb attempt by Psicosis, knocks Chavo and Juvi off the apron, then hits an SSP on Psicosis for three. They put Kidman, a guy who can’t even talk and is like the sixth-best cruiserweight on this show, essentially over three other cruiserweights who are all better than him. I don’t care that he’s over with the crowd; he’s not a guy who is going to be anything more than a fairly over babyface at the top of the midcard. Chavo has that ceiling as well, but Chavo’s far more versatile. I hated this booking, and the match was barely worthwhile to boot. Kidman rips the mask off on a rebound bulldog after Psicosis resists, and the Filthy Animals run down and clear the ring. Diamond Dallas Page, the Total Package, and Sting (w/Ms. Elizabeth) face off with Ric Flair and Bret Hart in a three-on-two handicap match, at least until Hulk Hogan drags his worthless carcass out here. Sting still appears to be pretty much over as a babyface. Michael Buffer’s Ring Announcing Quality Control: “The best there is, the best there ever was…” It’s a tiny error, but hey, I’ll point it out. It's funny that even though Sting is a heel and Flair is a babyface, they manage to wrestle the exact same way they usually do. Sting no-sells all his show and howls. Flair cheats to get an advantage. The only difference is that Sting responds to Flair’s cheating with some cheating of his own, but then again, Sting’s done that before as a babyface against Flair, too. Flair is one of the least versatile workers I’ve ever seen, even if I know if he wanted to, he could be versatile. I’ve seen him do it. Bret and TTP get in the ring next, and Bret exacts a bit of revenge, but Page knocks him over when he locks on an early Sharpshooter. The heels commence upon a series of quick tags to work over the Hitman. Tony S. tries to get over that Sting’s secretly been a dick this whole time, which really is never going to work, but he does redeem himself a bit by being put out that Liz sent a memo to all of WCW’s announcers that Luger should only be referred to as the Total Package on commentary. Bret gets a flash pinfall attempt in there, but mostly just takes a beating. We’re coming to the end of Bret’s WCW run, and WCW’s absurd misuse of him over two-ish years is legendary, at least in my mind. They spent month after month trying to establish him as a heel for some dumb reason and barely put him in any dream feuds. Flair eventually gets a hot tag and actually hits a run of effective offense on Sting, of all people. Bret holds off Page and Package while Flair locks a Figure Four on in the center of the ring. That’s when Liz hands Luger the foam bat; Luger jumps Bret from behind and chokes him out with it, then gets in the ring and slams it down on Flair’s throat. The bell rings for a DQ; David Flair runs in and clears the ring. Oops, no, sorry, he’s immediately dropped and stomped out. Then we see a shot of an empty ambulance that has returned to the backstage area. The babyfaces, and I guess David Flair is included in that group, take more of a beating until a gimpy Hogan limps out here in a leg brace. Hogan knocks down all three heels, grabs the bat, and batters Page and Package with it; Sting bails. Wow, Hulkster, our conquering hero! I’m glad they made sure that Hogan looked strong! Sid walks out to the parking lot with his keys and his duffel bag, spots his crushed automobile, and then delivers this dialogue in the awesomest way possible: OH MY GOD! WHAT HAPPENED TO MY CAR?! *hops on top of crushed car* GOLDBERG! WHERE ARE YOU? GOLDBERG!!! GOLDBERG!!!!!! *raises arms to heavens* GOLLLLDBERRRRRG!!!!!! I’m tempted to give this show five Stinger Splashes just for Sid’s performance, but alas, as much cheesy goodness and unadulterated joy as it provided me, it’s not going to carry this show over 3 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

Watts did tons of fuck finishes on Mid-South TV and even at big shows, but it was generally compelling. I think you can get away with this type of booking if you're on fire creatively, like almost any other type of booking. I also tend to think that "how are they going to book their way out of this talk" is extremely limited to a small pocket of fans that we find ourselves in. We're like the wrestling fan equivalent of having taken a literary criticism class and trying to apply Derridian discussion of signs and signifiers to Dan Brown thrillers, you know? This is especially bad in the back half of Nitro-era WCW. I find myself wishing that wrestlers would fast-forward through the cursory work to get to the finish on most Nitros and PPVs. But again, that wasn't a problem for me watching Mid-South TV main events, or even for the first couple years of Nitro-era WCW. While I think most things are complex, I really do think that for the most part, "are you telling compelling stories that the fans are invested in" solves 99% of the issues with booking a lot of fuck finishes, schmozzes, etc.

I do get this, but at the same time, Rey and Psicosis have been in the company for three years at this point and doing impressive stuff more cleanly than Blitz did. I'm not sure it was all that much of a breath of fresh air, and it's especially true when I see Blitz and then I see Eddy working more quickly and crisply against the same opponents that Blitz is working against. Blitz in WCW isn't as impactful as, say, seeing Taka ratchet up the level of work in 1997 WWF if we're talking about a wrestler's work in the context of the general pace and agility in the work of the rest of the roster.

I'll say this much: I don't want to see Baba selling after having watched quite a bit of him over the past two or three months. That's when I'm the least interested in Baba. The tag match, if you watch it, will illustrate when I'm personally most interested in watching Baba.

Here you go, my friend. https://youtu.be/Bh3RGfRAuc8?si=RDZOfDLOMUE48SOp

Thunder Interlude – show number eighty-one – 23 September 1999 "The WCW Gang vacillates between surprising and unsurprising, good and bad, mundane and enjoyable, and ultimately comes out on the right side of the ledger" Let’s get a Thunder in here…I see 2000 looming and I know that once mid-September hits, these reviews are going to slow up considerably until the new year…On the flip side of things, I’m getting closer every day to BatB 2000, which I’m genuinely excited for…BatB ’98 is a long time ago, and that was really the last point during this watch at which WCW strung together more than a couple of weeks that got me excited to see what was next… Ah, a live Thunder…I love it… There’s some Nitro recap, which I don’t love, and some hype for both Halloween Havoc and the upcoming Nitro…Well, at least they’re doing some proper hypin’…I did not remember Psicosis losing his mask during his WCW run, by the way…I don’t even think he’s around WCW that much longer, anyway… Bummer, Eurodance music hits the speakers…The West Hollywood Blondes, so named on the chyron for the first time that I’ve seen, come to the ring…That dolt Lodi spelled Bret Favre’s name incorrectly on one of his signs…He also spelled the word “rules” incorrectly, but he did that on purpose and for the benefit of sign space…One of these guys is wrestling Billy Kidman, who I am pretty certain had long hair all the way throughout his run…It’s Lodi that Kidman wrestles…Some lady holds up her I LOVE KIDMAN, SOOOO SEXY sign, and this dude really was quite the heartthrob babyface...He and Rey both…I feel like heartthrob babyfaces don’t exist anymore in American wrestling, do they?...The heartthrob babyface feels like a prominently Southern affectation when it comes to wrestling… Anyway, Kidman springboards onto both of the Blondes on the floor and establishes a hierarchy in which he is definitely better than both these guys, and thus by association, better than the Cruiserweight Championship (also true, based on his booking lately)…Lane trips Kidman on a rope run, and Kidman throws, like, the weakest punches ever at Lane so that Lodi can hit him with a springboard legdrop…Lodi never really does a great job at keeping extended control…He does score a near fall on a bulldog...Lane does his best to help from his position outside the ring…Lodi even returns his own dive onto both Kidman and Lane standing on the outside… Lodi whiffs on a guillotine legdrop back in the ring…Kidman runs through his own little 4MoD, scores two on a rebound bulldog, but gets distracted by Lane on an SSP attempt and superplexed for two…Eddy comes down and keeps Lane from continuing to cheat…Kidman busts out a diving Frankensteiner for two…Chavo comes out and argues with Eddy…We already did this over a year ago…Anyway, Eddy and Chavo argue based on, I suppose, Chavo still having beef with Kidman from the tag tournament earlier in 1999...Meanwhile, Kidman doesn’t even need an SSP to down Lodi…He lands the Sky High, which is a better name for it than Rydeen Bomb, and gets three… Booker T. and Stevie Ray do a little walk-and-talk backstage…They split off, and Sid and Rick Steiner walk into the camera’s view coming from the same direction that Stevie went…Rick’s got a 2x4 that it’s implied he and Sid used on Stevie… Mike Tenay stands on the ramp, waiting to interview Harlem Heat. Uh, I’m not sure they’re both going to make it out here, buddy…Yeah, Booker’s out here alone, looking troubled…Booker says Stevie’s on his way to the hospital, and Stevie let Book know who gave him the business. Booker challenges Sid Vicious to a match later tonight…Book says Sid and his little streak are on FRAUD WATCH…That makes two wrestlers in this company who are on FRAUD WATCH… I sense that WCW isn’t sure what to do with the couple of women on their roster…They bumped Mona/Madusa from Road Wild…Was Madusa hurt or something?...Mona hits the ring to wrestle Brandi Alexander again…Look, Savage got Mona some TV time, and she was good with the time she got, but maybe it’s time for her to head on over to Stamford…WCW doesn’t have anything for her, though I sense that someone with influence with WCW's booking would like to give her something worthwhile to do…She’s re-matching Brandi Alexander again…I mean, it’d be nice to get the blowoff to the Mona/Madusa feud…The women trade flash two counts early on…Mona dropkicks Alexander, and Alexander bails… Mona walks over to follow up, and Alexander trips her, drags her to the floor, and hits her with a short-arm clothesline…Alexander takes Mona over to the bottom of the ramp, away from the protective mats, and slams her…Alexander brings the proceedings back to the ring and hits some chokes, strikes, and a hair whip…A snap kick puts Mona down for two…Mona tries to counter an Irish whip, but ducks down and into a gutwrench suplex for two more…Mona leaps over a charging Alexander in the corner and then hits a Sonya Blade-style headscissors…It’s time for a babyface comeback driven by chops and monkey flips…On the second monkey flip, Alexander dumps Mona and covers, then puts her feet on the ropes for leverage and gets three… WCW Mayhem for the N64 comes out in like three hours from the end of this show…I doubt that GameStop was staying open for a midnight release for this game… Next up: Perry Saturn…He’s facing Chavo Guerrero Jr., and thank goodness they’re giving Chavo something to do…I guess he’s still heelish?...There’s a lot of “shades of gray” stuff going on around him and Saturn…Larry Z. talks about Saturn taking a cheap win over Eddy even though he appeared to be upset about what Shane Douglas did to put him position for that win…There’s a nice, crisp opener worked around armbars, headscissors, and lariats that Saturn wins…Saturn whips Chavo in and Chavo manages to bail out of the ring instead of bounce back toward Saturn… I am still in awe that they got Chavo so over in the middle of 1998 and then just never really followed up on any of that…Chavo gets back in the ring and they get their spacing wrong on an Irish whip reversal…It’s fine, nobody’s perfect…Chavo keeps trying to leapfrog or duck down on rope runs, and eventually, Saturn gets wise to it and suplexes Chavo off a leapfrog attempt…Chavo bails again and tries to sucker Saturn in, but that doesn’t work either…Saturn gets two on a vertical suplex, then puts on Rick Steiner’s armbar/neck crank combo better than Steiner ever did before letting Chavo back to standing to try something else… Finally, Chavo is able to dodge Saturn and land a dropkick to he knee…Chavo hits another dropkick to the knee, then lariats Saturn to the floor and follows with a successful slingshot crossbody…Chavo gets two when he rolls Saturn back in the ring, then applies a headlock…Saturn fights up from that pretty quickly and whips Chavo from pillar to post, then lands an overhead suplex and a springboard forearm smash and a release belly-to-belly *whew*, all of which only gets two…Saturn sits Chavo up top, which is when Eddy comes down and tries to swing at him…Eddy accidentally hits Chavo, but Saturn backs away after dispatching of Eddy…He considers getting another cheap win, but that gives Eddy time to come into the ring from behind and knock him forward and into Chavo…Chavo topples over, bonks his head into Saturn’s jewels, and covers for three…Weak finish, but it did progress this feud, at least… Charles Robinson leads out the United States Champion Sid Vicious…I don’t know why some tastemakers (was it RD Reynolds most prominently?) take shots at Sid upping his streak numbers randomly…Sid is a fucking heel…Of course he’s going to lie and embellish…That’s not the issue with this angle…The issue is that they’ve killed off a lot of the value of their cruiserweight division by having Sid run in on them…Sid cuts a promo in which he takes the “Billy in Family Circus” path to accepting Booker T.’s challenge from earlier…I did laugh when Sid shared his disgust that Booker and Goldberg do hospital visits and “sob over these people” (looks at the crowd with disdain)…Charles Robinson laughs evilly in the background…Their insistence on making him a heel ref in this specific instance is strange… Blipmo: Coach Buzz Stern roughs up his student Biggs…He promises to show up on Thunder with his doofy student… Recap: Lots of Nitro main event stuff… Prince Iaukea is a babyface tonight…Van Hammer’s going to roll him, probably…Iaukea jumps on Hammer and even gets two on a rollup…Hammer blocks one whip, then another, but he ducks down and gets jabbed in the eye…Hammer keeps escaping Hammer power moves and even gets two after schoolboying Hammer out of a back suplex attempt…Once Hammer lands a boot, though, the tenor of the match changes…Hammer lands a big boot, then puts Iaukea in the Tree of Woe and boot chokes him…Hammer lands an elevated beal toss, a body slam, and a double sledge to the solar plexus, then puts on a chinlock from the camel clutch position…Iaukea only gets back in the match after kicking Hammer in the junk…He fires off as many strikes and moves as he can, and even hits a reverse slam for two…Iaukea tries buckle bonks, but Hammer shoves him off and lands a spinebuster…That’s all she wrote, as Hammer hits the Cobra Clutch Slam for three…Hey, that was a well-laid-out little nothing TV match…I enjoyed it… Someone holds up a GIVE FLAIR THE PENCIL sign…Nah, we tried that in 1990, didn’t work...Hammer grabs a mic and says that Leathers and Co. are “trippin’ in the production truck” because he’s grabbed a bit of interview time for his own…He wants the winner of Booker T./Sid on Nitro, basically…This guy is such a goof, but I enjoy him… I don’t enjoy Rick Steiner, though, and unfortunately, he’s up next…I legit zoned out when he talked before the match, and I refuse to go back and re-listen to what he said…Eddy Guerrero is his opponent…It really bothers me that Eddy’s going to sell a whole bunch for bad Rick Steiner offense…Eddy slaps hands like a babyface…Eddy tries to wrestle the guy and, uh, no, don’t try to shoot the leg…Dropkick him, stupid…Seriously, Eddy gets shoved around and launched after trying to get into a grapple-fest with Rick Steiner, which makes zero sense in kayfabe…Eddy eats a clothesline for two…Lots of face ripping and headlocking from Steiner…We get an obligabrawl outside the ring…Eddy can’t get anything going and is basically portrayed as a good level or two underneath Rick fucking Steiner…He finally gets a counter-rana in, and Sid runs in…You know what, I’m good, fuck this match…Billy Kidman runs down for the opposite of a save…He runs down for an endangerment…Kidman can’t face crush his way out of a Sid powerbomb…This sucked…Why they continue to treat their under 6’3 crowd like this, I don’t know…It’s unconscionable booking of multiple stars and useful pieces… Evan Karagias comes to the ring to face Lenny Lane for the Cruiserweight Championship as Larry Z. goes on a nutbar political rant regarding tax cuts…He wants a tax cut for everyday folks, but a new tax on criminals to offset it…He wants a fraud tax and an embezzlement tax…Um, so are we taxing the money that people actually embezzled?...That wouldn't make sense...If someone commits fraud and already has to forfeit the money they defrauded, what the hell else are you going to tax them on?...Maybe he’s thinking something like “also penalize them fifty percent of their net worth,” but what if they have little or no net worth?...What then, Zbyszko?… There’s an early commercial break in this match, so I’ll get back to paying attention to it as it picks up instead of considering Larry Z.’s proposal…This match stinks…Lenny Lane stinks…Evan Karagias stinks…Karagias does manage to powerbomb Lane, but he fucks around and finds out when, instead of covering, he celebrates and then takes his sweet time going up top…Lodi trips him and Lane covers for two…Lenny and Lodi run through some of their crappy gimmick-specific spots, then Lenny and Karagias badly fuck up a slingshot spot before Lane lands a Breakdown for three…Grab the Cruiserweight title and throw it in a dumpster right next to the TV title at this point…Chavo Jr. vs. Shane Helms seems farther away than ever… It's Booker T. and Syko Sid Vicious (w/Rick Steiner) in the main event…I don’t think Booker’s going to be replicating his off-TV clean victory over Sid tonight…They actually have a pretty good up-tempo brawl to start…It spills outside the ring, where Sid takes a bump into the crowd (!)…Hey, an interesting obligabrawl!...They fight into the crowd on a Thunder, no less…Booker bonks him off a table full of monitors out there…I didn’t expect this match to have that much energy…Booker tries to springboard off the guardrail onto Sid, but Sid catches him and eventually dumps him across the rail throat-first… Larry Z. calls for his “crime tax” again as Sid claws at Booker’s face in the aisle…Booker fights out of that…It goes back and forth, with Steiner cheating where he can outside the ring…They finally make it back to the ring, where Booker ducks a big boot, then hits a Houston Side Kick, an axe kick, and a Spinaroonie all in succession…Booker goes up for a missile dropkick, hits it, and covers for one…two…Steiner yanks the ref out of the ring and dispatches of him, and Charles Robinson runs down and helps Steiner and Sid as they double-team Booker into oblivion…Sid wins after a powerbomb…NO MORE HEEL REFS, PLEASE…Man, Sid worked his ass off for Booker, though…He must have liked the guy…I cant believe it, but this match made me want to see Booker/Sid in a longer feud…I never thought these two would have chemistry…I think, despite the dumb ending, I liked this a lot…Maybe it's more charming uniquity than straight up good match, but it deserves some love... Rick Steiner is terrible and the Cruiserweight title is in hell…The workrate midcarders are being oddly portrayed and used as fodder all too often…And yet, I enjoyed this show well enough anyway…WOO…

There was a Sheik/Baba match in one of the 70s AJPW playlists on YouTube that I would have picked that also supports some of my thoughts about what I think that Baba does really well and what I don't like so much about him that is also shorter. I prefer Baba in tags by a huge amount, though, and I'd spotlight five or six Baba tags I've seen between YT and Daily Motion before I highlighted one Baba singles match.

This is more than fair. I think my bias against the PWG go-go-go style is another reason that I'm underwhelmed w/r/t Blitzkrieg's run. I'm an annoyingly vocal detractor of modern American wrestling, and I think PWG is right behind WWE and ECW in terms of influencing what the modern American wrestling scene looks like, for good and ill. The Young Bucks seeing Blitzkrieg and Kanyon and deriving from that a sense that the best wrestling is in hitting unique spots, no matter how contrived or out of the flow of the match that they're wrestling, is pretty damning when it comes to how I see both those guys (and I like Kanyon, and it's not his fault that he worked the way he did to try and stand out and just happened to influence the evolution of what American wrestlers and wrestling fans think of as "workrate"). Anyway, you're absolutely right.

Show #207 – 20 September 1999 “The one that proves that Nitro can still be competently booked this late into 1999” I just can’t buy that Ric Flair is disappointed in Sting for clobbering Hulk Hogan with a baseball bat. Even in a genre on entertainment that features quickly-shifting alliances, there’s just no way I can get comfortable with Flair feeling this way about a guy who he’s pretty much off-and-on feuded with for the past five years. It worked to get the right crowd reaction in the moment, but come on, just thinking about it for two seconds reveals the absurdity of this storyline beat. Alas, it's what the holding committee has to deal with while booking this show. Also, that foam baseball bat made a heck of a foam baseball bat sound when Luger popped Bret in the face with it. Hype video narrated by a conspiracy-minded narrator: Sting’s been planning since like 1988 for this heel turn somehow! There’s a long game, and then there’s nonsense. I love that the narrator is like WOW, WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, HE JOINED THE WOLFPAC SO EASILY even though they were babyfaces trying to fight the Hogan-led nWo and WCW had failed miserably at that for two years, and also his best friend Lex Luger convinced him to do it. This narrator definitely thinks that fluoride in his local water source is an alien conspiracy to control our brains by attracting fluoride-dependent cordyceps to our bodies. If he mentions “Jewish space lasers” at some point, I won’t be entirely surprised. Sting and Hogan will face off for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship at Halloween Havoc. No title change, please. Tony S. and Heenan pretend that Sting has always been a grimy dude. Come on, you’re not going to sell that at all. Leave that nonsense to the conspiracy narrator dude. Juventud Guerrera and Psicosis come to the ring in a tag opener, and I just assume Sid’s going to come out here soon. Their opponents are Rey Misterio Jr. and Billy Kidman. Please don’t kill off four cruiserweights that have value by feeding them to Sid. Please. Tony S. promises that Goldberg will be out to wrestle right after this match, and now I’m even more suspicious. Is Goldberg going to bust in here to stop a Sid assault on these cruisers? There’s a pair of signs that say AUSTIN DROOLS, GOLDBERG RULES, and that is a little too close to something Hulk Hogan would say, come on, fellas. I am seriously on “does any of this matter” watch and don’t even want to try and talk through what’s actually happening in this match because I’m too focused on the crowd indicating that Sid is on his way out. Juvi’s tights say BABY JUICE on the seat, so either he and his significant other have just had a child, or he’s gettin’ real weird with it and shouting out to an, um, alternative version of the pro wrestling audience. The crowd is very into Kidman and Rey hitting offense and are hyped for Rey to fight up from the ass kicking he ends up getting as FIP, an ass kicking which includes a combo powerbomb/guillotine legdrop (!!!!!!) that puts him down for two. Rey manages to backflip out of a Psicosis suplex after evading Juvi and get a hot tag; Kidman dives on Psicosis while he and Juvi talk with one another frustratedly about letting Rey out of their grasp. This match is fun as hell, just three minutes of non-stop action. Kidman face crushes Psicosis out of a powerbomb and goes up for an SSP, but Juvi has dispatchedof Rey and slows Kidman by grabbing his leg. Kidman and Juvi fight while up top, and while Kidman shoves Juvi away, Juvi recovers enough to shove Kidman off the top and right into a Psicosis dropkick; Psicosis covers for three in quite the upset. Psicosis and Juvi back down the aisle, right into Eddy and Konnan, who kick the shit out of these dudes. There’s a huge EDDY chant as they stomp out Juvi, and Kidman tries to take off Psicosis’s mask. Chavo runs in to break that up in a babyface-seeming move that garners a CHAVO SUCKS chant. Psicosis says something about his mask in Spanish after Chavo makes the save, and Chavo translates by claiming that Psicosis said he’d put his mask on the line in a Luchas de Apuestas against Kidman. Psicosis is utterly confused by this inaccurate translation. Anyway, are they going to unmask Psicosis next? This company is very dumb. That’s even more apparent based on the fact that they look like they might be about to turn the Filthy Animals heel. I’m going to assume that even WCW’s booking committee can’t be that stupid, no matter who is running it. I know, I know, but I need to have faith for my own well-being. Chavo proposes that they have this match next week, but Kidman wants to do it now. Chavo and Psicosis refuse to have that mach now to loud boos. What the fuck? So, uh, who exactly is the babyface and who is the heel in this whole thing? The Filthy Animals came off as sore losers, and Chavo went from seeming like a babyface for stopping a petulant four-on-two beating in response to a clean loss to seeming like a heel for putting Psicosis’s mask on the line even though Psicosis didn’t want to do that. Meanwhile, Juvi and Psicosis wrestled that match like heels, but I guess are faces now? FIX THE BOOKING, KEVIN SULLIVAN Recap: Goldberg has put out a challenge to Sid, who suddenly isn’t willing to make his way out to the ring at any and every moment once Goldberg is around. Brian Knobbs (w/Jimmy Hart) is Goldberg fodder for the first time that I can remember seeing. Hart gets a mic and pretends that Jerry Flynn didn’t do anything at all last week and got speared for no reason, gosh, why is Goldberg such a meanie? Then, he gives the mic to Knobbs like the true heel prick that he is. Knobbs insults the Bengals – low-hanging fruit, but at least Jeff Blake was a fun QB there for awhile – and then says ASS because he’s edgy like his buddy the Hulkster. Goldberg gets a security detail on his way to the ring. Knobbs thinks that Goldberg’s scared when the latter takes a while to bust out of his locker room and make his way to the ring, but no, he’s just talking the long route. FUCK ME, this crowd in Cincinnati goes BANANAS when they catch a glimpse of Goldberg. They’re so loud, the audio gets scratchy because of the pitch of their cheering. Holy shit. Can you believe a company with a megastar like this managed to bleed profitability this badly? Goldberg goes right at Knobbs, so Knobbs grabs a chair and hits Goldberg square in the dome when Goldberg follows him to ringside, then peels off four or five more chair shots to the body. This is a sick obligatory ringside brawl. Knobbs is able to whip Goldberg to the rail, but he gives Goldberg too much time to recover while moving the ring stairs; Goldberg blocks a bonk to the post and whips Knobbs into it, then into the stairs at ringside before tossing him back in. Jimmy Hart jumps in the ring with his megaphone and drops it when Goldberg grabs him; Knobbs hits a few shots with the megaphone, then turns to the crowd and signals that he’s going for a Pit Stop. He turns back around right into a spear, Jackhammer, and SPLAT. That was kind of a batshit squash that was only enhanced by the crowd eating it up. I can’t tell if it was a charming uniquity or flat out a good squash. I need to consider this. After the match, Goldberg gets a mic and wonders where that soft punk Sid is. He calls Sid “a little girl,” a label befitting someone who is soft and weak and dodges challenges in the general opinion of 1990s pro wrestlers. Goldberg says that no one out-intimidates him and offers a challenge to Sid for Halloween Havoc. That was, while not great, an alright promo, mostly because Goldberg is so intense that he doesn’t have to be witty or the smoothest talker to cut a decent promo. Gene Okerlund interviews Ric Flair after a short video package and recap in which we learn that Sting is actually going to defend the big gold belt against Chris Benoit later tonight. Flair wants to fight Sting tonight. No, it’s Benoit’s turn. Get in line. I sat through a dumb battle royal two weeks ago to get this match. In fact, here comes Benoit, who gets slight boos when he says HOLD ON A SECOND HERE. Benoit thinks Flair getting a shot at Sting is cool and all, but he’s got a contract, dammit! Flair doesn’t care about Benoit's contract, which illustrates exactly why the Horsemen fell apart…again. Benoit talks into the camera as he addresses Sting and says he’ll be coming to his title shot alone because he wants to prove something to himself, so don’t bring Luger. Yeah, I’m sure Sting’ll hold to that. Benoit leaves, and Flair also leaves to find Sting. OK, let’s see if and how this segment pays off later tonight. There’s more Nitro Girls search stuff when we come back from break, specifically a video package of the search as it happened in Cincinnati earlier that day. After that, Gene Okerlund – no Rachtman, so an improvement – calls Kimberly and Tygress out to run through some more of this Nitro Girl search. There are two more ladies from Ohio who get video packages, etc. Chris Benoit faces Sting, which begins shortly after RAW would have started on USA, I think. Sting gets a mixed-ish reaction, probably 60/40 babyface pop? It’s hard to tell. Tony S. pimps a six-man tag for the next Nitro: Sting, Lex Luger, and DDP against Hulk Hogan, Bret Hart, and Ric Flair. Well, I appreciate that they’re trying to promote a week ahead to keep people coming back! Wow, forward planning. That’s how I know Bischoff’s not in the front office anymore. This opening rules, man. They run with one another; Benoit’s kick is caught and Sting ducks an enziguri. They run again and Sting blows right over Benoit with a shoulderblock. Benoit bails while Sting howls and the crowd mostly cheers. Benoit signals for a Greco-Roman knuckle lock then sticks a boot in Sting’s gut, but his follow-up Irish Whip only ends with two Benoit whiffed lariats before Sting hits Benoit with a lariat of his own. Benoit bails again and considers his options. Sorry, Benoit, you’re not on this level quite yet. Benoit re-enters the ring warily and circles Sting. He tries to engage again, ducks a lariat after getting behind Sting on a standing switch, and hits a release overhead suplex. Sting no-sells that and dropkicks Benoit when Benoit turns around. Benoit bails again, realizing that this is a lot different than wrestling Booker T. or Rick Steiner for the TV title. There are levels to this shit. This is actually really good stuff. I think Benoit’s facial expressions need work; he’s trying to sell the dawning realization that he needs to find another level within him, but he’s not any good at it. He does sell it with his work, as he gets back inside the ring and immediately goes at Sting’s leg with a dragon screw, kicks, and an Indian Deathlock/chinlock combo. Sting survives that, and Benoit changes tack and slams Sting’s knee into the mat. Benoit has Sting hobbled, so he starts leaning on strikes; he puts Sting in the tree of woe position and baseball slides into him to a mass of boos. Benoit tries it again, but Sting pulls himself up and Benoit slides into the post. The Stinger quickly goes outside and yanks Benoit by his feet into the post. I think it’s more 75/25, maybe 80/20 cheers-to-boos for Sting at this point. Sting lands an inverted atomic drop, then a regular one. He kicks at Benoit’s hamstring and thigh, then lands an elbow drop for two. Sting tries to hoist Benoit up into powerbomb position, I think, but Benoit is dead weight and Sting drops him. Sting goes back to another inverted atomic drop instead; Benoit tries to fire back with a lariat, but Sting is up first; his face shows surprise that Benoit had that in him. Sting goes to the chinlock, and I feel that some of the energy of this match has dissipated since the botch, but Benoit fights back up, chops Sting, and eats a knee when he follows up with a charge, and that brings the feeling back a bit. Sting sizes up Benoit and lands an elbow, then a second. He rolls Benoit away from the ropes and covers, but only gets two. Sting hoists Benoit up and hits a front suplex (!), but his cover once again only gets two. Sting shoots Benoit in and tries another knee to the gut, but Benoit hooks his leg and rolls him up for two; Sting, who is now a heel, responds to that flash pinfall attempt by getting up first and landing a lariat, as is the way of WCW heels everywhere. Sting goes back to the chinlock, and Benoit fights back to standing and elbows his way out of it, looks like he’s coming back, and…whiffs on a dropkick that Sting stops short on. This is a very good match, I think. Sting howls again and takes his sweet time covering, so he only scores two. Sting casually pulls Benoit up, but Benoit is playing possum, even falling back onto his face, to sucker Sting in for a small package that gets two. Sting is back up and in control; he stomps Benoit in the gut and goes up top for a huge splash that eats knees. Commentary is selling that Benoit is playing possum effectively and suckering Sting in. Benoit fires off a lariat, goes up, and lands a diving headbutt, then covers for about 2.7. Both men are down; they get up at roughly the same time, but Benoit lands a boot and then hits two rolling verticals; he sets up for a third, but suddenly snaps from that position into a Crippler Crossface. Unfortunately for him, Sting is right near the ropes. After a break, they get back to standing and switch until Sting shoves Benoit out of a sleeper and right into Nick Patrick for a ref bump. Man, that sucks. Anyway, Nick Patrick is out and fails to count when Benoit lands a piledriver and covers for a visual three count that the referee doesn’t see. Sting gets back up and whiffs on a lariat, then finds himself pinned by a bridged back suplex that gets another visual three count before Lex Luger runs down, waffles Benoit with the foam bat, and watches as Sting covers Benoit while Ric Flair runs down and a groggy Nick Patrick counts the three. Flair jumps on Luger, but DDP jumps in out of the crowd and hits Flair with a Diamond Cutter; Hulk Hogan runs down and clears the ring. Despite the fact that Sting is still getting oriented to working as a heel, there was one semi-ugly botch, and there was another tiresome ref bump spot (though it at least gave Benoit two separate visual three counts), this was good stuff, a nice long match in which Sting seems to be both a level above Benoit and Benoit seems to be slowly closing that gap. Sting always has the best matches with guys who are positioned as a level beneath him, but rising – see his match with DDP in 1998 (Show #133) as a prime example of this. Feud Sting with all the rising midcarders. Give me Sting/Eddy on Nitro soon. Shiiiiiit, Sting/Rey would be amazing. I bet none of this ever happens. Did we even get Sting beating up annoying heel Chris Jericho on a WCWSN or anything?! Scott Armstrong is out here, so maybe Sid will make his first appearance of the night? Nope, probably not, because Armstrong is facing Berlyn (w/THE WALL, BROTHER). Tony S. hypes a DDP/Flair match for later tonight. I yelled at Kevin Sullivan from the future a bunch of bulletpoints ago, and he’s apparently received the message because he's now booking and hyping reasonable matchups up to a week in advance. Good for him! I knew I’d talk some sense into him from 25 years later! I guess Uta’s performance on commentary last week finally got her bumped from the whole presentation because she’s nowhere to be seen. The crowd chants ALLLLLEXXXXXX while Berlyn freaks out, insistent that he is NOT Alex Wright, damn you, they’re two totally different people. I do think THE WALL, BROTHER has a great look in the suit and sunglasses. He’s got “white Mr. Hughes, except he looks like a serious bruiser instead of looking like he’s eternally constipated” energy. Berlyn dominates while THE WALL, BROTHER tries to pick his shot with his taped-up fist. Other than a roll-up and a flurry of offense off a Berlyn whiffed splash, Armstrong can’t get much of anything going. Berlyn dodges a dropkick and European uppercuts Armstrong into the ropes, then engages the ref so that THE WALL, BROTHER can land a sharp punch; Armstrong bounces back into a Berlyn reverse neckbreaker for three. Berlyn then locks on a chinlock after the bell rings until Brad Armstrong, who is no longer a No Limit Solder, runs down and backs them off. Pre-taped promo: In a pretty funny sketch, the Dead Pool gets off the ICP tour bus; Violent J and Vampiro coach up Shaggy 2 Dope before Shaggy’s Cruiserweight Championship match later tonight. I have to say that Violent J and Vampiro are legit funny. First, they tell Shaggy that in his match, he needs to “fly,” and Vampiro repeats that direction while waving his arms in the air to illustrate. Then, the portly J says that Shaggy isn’t even really a cruiserweight and that he, J, is more suited for the division. Vampiro looks at him, says, “You’re not a cruiserweight,” and then briefly glances at J’s gut and then looks back up at him to drive the point home. Holy shit, these dudes have genuinely good chemistry together. This Nitro has been quite good even since the confusing first match and its weird presentation of the character development and alignment for the wrestlers involved. I guess Sullivan and Co. needed to get the rest of Nash and Bischoff’s garbage ideas out of the way last week before trying to pick up afresh where the previous dudes left off. Recap: Sting/Luger and Flair end up beefing after last week’s in-ring confrontation. Gene Okerlund is in the ring to talk to Diamond Dallas Page. Well, not every segment can be a winner. Page garners some cheap heat by comparing Pete Rose to himself in an unfavorable light to Rose. Okerlund is so tiresome. Earlier, he mentioned the Trinidad/De La Hoya decision as a way to talk about the quality of judges in the Nitro Girls Search, which Tygress basically no sold while a flicker of confusion about how to respond to that comment went across her face. Just now, he mentions Jerry Springer running for mayor, and you’d have to really try to make it work in context. Just because you're in Cincinnati, you don't have to mention people from the city, stupid. Page ends up cutting a decent heel promo somehow. He compares himself to Ric Flair, claims that he’s done what Flair has done in pro wrestling in a shorter amount of time, and compares his moves and taunts to Flair’s, judging his to be better. Wow, Page was solid on the stick. This must be a pretty solid Nitro, huh? This Halloween Havoc promo includes footage of Randy Savage and Kevin Nash. It occurs to me that Savage is almost done. He’s about two months out from being out of WCW for (almost) good, excepting one small appearance in 2000. Why did he leave WCW? Did his contract expire? They couldn’t find something for this guy and his non-existent hips and knees to do? As for Nash, I wonder how he’s going to get back on screen after losing his career to Hogan, and I don’t mean “randomly shows up and does hilarious, but unprofessional color commentary on Thunder,” which I assume is coming up in the next couple of weeks. Blitzkrieg is also almost done with WCW; he’s facing Evan Karagias tonight. Oh WCW, you lost Blitz and kept Karagias. That’s how it goes for this godforsaken company, huh? This is a match for a Cruiserweight Championship shot on Thunder. Look, if we don’t get the Blitzkrieg/Shaggy 2 Dope title match we all want and need, I can safely say that WCW deserved to go out of business. Karagias grabs Blitz on a leap, then hits a powerslam for two; he catches Blitz on a run and press slams him for two more. I do like the idea that Karagias is the power worker who acts as a base for the flippy guys in the division, but unfortunately, he’s not very good. This match is also unfortunately not very good; at one point, Blitz backflips over a charging Karagias, then sells that he’s staggered and jammed his knee for an uncomfortably long time before Karagias figures out that he’s supposed to go over and kick the guy. Karagias does hit a nice dive to the floor, but he looks like a guy who is always thinking about what he should be doing next, especially on offense. Blitz tries a Sky-Twisting Moonsault and whiffs. Karagias tries his own top rope move, gets stopped, and blocks a Blitz rana. Oh, I see, here’s where they got me to let my guard down: Sid comes out here as Karagias lands a top-rope splash on Blitzkrieg for three. Sid beats up the number-one contender to the Cruiserweight Championship, so while he does his thing, let me say something that may be unpopular: Blitzkrieg does some cool stuff in the air and would maybe make an impressive gymnast, but he’s not actually very good at all the important things that make a wrestler good, like using his body to express emotions or the little connective things to tie together all his flippy-doo spots. He’s very young and inexperienced, to be sure, but I’m surprised at how much of his WCW run has been no more than cromulent. He had a good match with Rey and was in that awesome Four Corners match, but again, Rey, Psicosis, or Juvi might have been able to drag me to a watchable match at that point, so Blitz being in a good match with Rey and a great match with all three of those luchadores doesn’t really credit Blitz all that much. I actually think the fact that Blitzkrieg had good TV matches with Super Calo and Van Hammer means more than any of his highest-end matches in his run. There was something there, but he got out of the business before he could develop it beyond spot-monkey status for the most part. I also acknowledge that guys doing flippy aerial spots on TV every week is so common that watching Blitzkrieg in 2024 just doesn’t hit the same. Oh yeah, Sid basically said he wouldn’t fight Goldberg unless Goldberg backs up off him until Havoc, or he’ll back out of their match. Hype video: Benoit and the sorry-ass Revolution hit decent offense and lose a lot of matches. Perry Saturn (w/Dean Malenko and Shane Douglas) and Eddy Guerrero (w/Filthy Animals) have a rematch after Saturn eked out a win on last week’s Nitro. The RADICALZ PRE-EXPLODE ONCE MORE as Saturn presses Eddy, but gets rana’d out of another press in turn. Seriously, these fellas are on their Smackdown 2: Know Your Role shit tonight. They get in each other’s faces, and their respective stablemates get on the apron. Saturn tosses Eddy outside and into the guardrail, and Douglas tosses Eddy right back into the ring. Saturn applies a chinlock as we go to break again in yet another Saturn/Guerrero match. At least when we come back, Eddy is just fighting up from the chinlock. He hits an arm drag and a springboard tornado DDT. Eddy working at high speed, this crisply, every week after he returned probably earlier than he should have from a life-threatening auto accident is fucking insane. It might be one of the craziest ongoing athletic feats that I’ve seen from a wrestler ever in my life. Eddy hits a rope-walk rana for two, but tries to leapfrog Saturn on a corner charge and gets belly-to-belly suplexed for two; Saturn goes up and lands a gorgeous Savage Elbow for a perfectly-timed 2.9. Tony S. genuinely raves over Saturn’s form on that elbow. This match is rapidly moving up my “best sprints ever” list, even with the commercial break. Saturn signals for a DVD, but Eddy slips out of it and gets a victory roll for about 2.5; Saturn responds with a lariat, then sits Eddy up top. They struggle over a top rope move, and Eddy ends up punching Saturn into a seated position and landing a top-rope Frankensteiner, then going up for a Frog Splash that gets nothing but mat. Saturn gets up and charges at Eddy, but Eddy ducks and Saturn launches to the floor. Konnan comes over and tosses Saturn back into the ring, but Saturn takes exception to that and gets in Konnan’s face. Everyone on that side of the ring draws the ref’s attention, which allows Shane Douglas to enter from the other side of the ring and deck Eddy with a chain-wrapped fist. Saturn sees it and admonishes Douglas for doing it, then reluctantly pins Eddy before going back out to remonstrate with Shane: YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO DO THAT! Shane’s response: WHATEVER, WE’RE MAKIN’ MONEY. Huh, that was the first time Shane’s been entertaining during this whole run. Anyway, I loved this. Heck of a sprint, even with the break and all the end-of-match fuckery. Hulk Hogan comes out here to cut a bad promo on Sting. He keeps trying to get “train, say my prayers, kick your ass” over, and it’s so fucking goofy, man. I love that the Hitman lost teeth in last week's baseball bat attack according to Hogan, but somehow, he'll be back next week. Hogan declares that God is on his side (seriously!) and hypes next week’s Nitro main event. Gene Okerlund, who is trying to direct this interview, asks about how Hogan can be friends with Hart or Flair. Hogan is like The Hitman keeps shooting all over the internet how much I suck, but we still have a common goal, HAHAHAHA. This was bad, but I mean, for Hogan, it was semi-acceptable. I’ve enjoyed this Nitro, but yeah, at this point in the three-hour experience, I’m just out on sitting in front of a non-PPV wrestling show for this long. Even with limited commercials, I’m still here for two-and-a-half hours every Nitro. That’s too much of one show. I truly believe that ninety minutes is the perfect length for a wrestling show, but two hours will be nice, too. Thunder is generally more watchable than Nitro most weeks, and show length is a part of that. The Dead Pool brings their own signs to the ring in a mockery of the West Hollywood Blondes. A faint ICP chant starts up. It’s Shaggy 2 Dope! It’s Lenny Lane! It’s the WCW Cruiserweight Championship on the line! If you’re going to book a whole division into the ground, do it entertainingly, I say! That fucking plant runs into the ring before the match and eats a right hand from Lodi, then gets handcuffed and frog marched out of the arena. OH, THAT’S IT, I’VE HAD IT, AAAAAARGHGARH, yells the dorky plant as he’s dragged away. Shaggy’s hockey jersey has the name MOSTTASTELESS and the number 1 on it. I’m not sure that this is actually happening right now. I ask once again: Am I dreaming this ICP-related wrestling event? Shaggy hits a nice powerslam, but whiffs on a guillotine legdrop and nearly doesn’t turn all the way over on a sit-out powerbomb. Lenny does a Goldust cover for two. They run the ropes and Shaggy ends up finagling a bulldog for two. They awkwardly, at least based on the camera angle, both go up top, and Shaggy ends up landing a running powerbomb for two, then managing an awkward victory roll for two before Lodi ends up yanking him off the apron. Lane takes over momentarily, but Shaggy flips out of a back suplex attempt. We're at the finish now, so here’s how that goes: Lodi is on the apron, holding the belt threateningly as Vampiro stands in front of him on the floor, jawing at him for tripping Shaggy earlier. Meanwhile, Shaggy rolls up Lane for two, but Lane kicks away and Shaggy is propelled forward. His head hits the belt as he knocks Lodi off the apron and into Vampiro, and he falls backward into a Lane rollup for three. It didn’t get to the level of charming iniquity, but boy, was this stupid in a good way. They booked the wrong winner, though. Hype video: The lovely Nitro Girls dance, some better than others. Okerlund is in the ring again, now mentioning Marge Schott because we’re in Cincinnati, don’t you see. Then, he has the fucking nerve to call Rick Steiner to the ring for an interview on top of annoying everyone with random Cincinnati references. Rick says he only respects two men: Sid and his brother Scott Steiner, and look who it is! Scotty comes to the ring. Oh good, the Steiner who can talk is taking over for his far less entertaining brother. The contents of Scott’s medicine cabinet must be worth thousands and thousands of dollars at this point. Steiner says Fuck a home run record chase, I'm chasing Wilt’s record for sleeping with women. He invites any interested women to the back to help him chase the record and says, I swear to you, that he’s gonna “push the pink pony” all night. HAHAHAHAHA. That’s like the worst Ginuwine song lyric ever. Furthermore, Scotty is disgusted that the Hulkster’s all happy-go-lucky now and that he’s not allowed to leave the nWo until former leader Scott Steiner says he’s allowed. Then, he hits this gem of a line: SO I DON’T CARE WHAT GOD YOU’VE BEEN PRAYIN’ TO, BUT YOU BETTER PRAY HE STRIKES ME DOWN BECAUSE YOU CAN TAKE ALL THE VITAMINS YOU WANT, YOU CAN SAY ALL THE PRAYERS YOU WANT, BUT BY THE END OF THE DAY, YOU’LL BE KISSIN’ MY ASS. Holy shit, Scotty. So, is the Jersey Triad still a thing or what? Kanyon guzzles a Surge on this way to the ring, alone, to face Booker T. (w/Stevie Ray). Kanyon elbows his way out of a wristlock to start and throws a few punches, then wins a shoulderblock. He gets on his wheels again, but runs himself right into a dropkick and bails. Stevie mean mugs Kanyon, who backs away and re-enters the ring. The crowd fires up a KANYON SUCKS chant. I think he’s got good timing and some neat moves, myself. Kanyon shoots Booker in and really struggles to keep up with all the leapfrogs and duck downs; he eats a flying forearm and a roundhouse kick in short order. Booker tries to follow up once Kanyon bails again, but he gets whipped into the guardrail and bounced around at ringside a bit. Kanyon even spits liquid in the guy’s face. Gross. Kanyon suplexes Booker back into the ring and continues his assault. He lands a top-rope Rocker Dropper for two, but misses a lariat; he tries another, but gets hooked and pulled in by Booker, and we get our first appearance of the Book End on television! Booker follows up with a Houston Side Kick and an axe kick, then Spinaroonies up and goes to the top. Kanyon gets up and cuts Booker off, then attempts a superplex. Booker blocks it, super front suplexes Kanyon to the mat, and lands a missile dropkick for three. Nice little televised bout, that was! There are only about eight minutes left when we come back, and that’s before they play the Halloween Havoc promo again. Flair jumps Page in the aisle and they have an obligatory stage-side brawl in which they fight in the crowd a bit and Page bumps around for Flair’s punches. Flair eventually beats Page up down the aisle and back to ringside, transitioning this to an obligatory ringside brawl for a few seconds before Flair dumps DDP into the ring. Page makes his comeback here, landing a swinging neckbreaker and hitting strikes. Page continues to control the match and lands a Scumbag Elbow for two. I mean, between this and the Book End in the previous match, it continues to be wild how many wrestlers are cribbing one of their contemporaries right now. Has wrestling ever seen so many guys taking spots from one person? Page locks on a rope-leveraged chinlock and throws punches at Flair, but he’s too casual about pressing his advantage and lets Flair punch and chop his way back into control. Flair hits a back suplex, then runs the ropes, avoids a DDP boot and a DDP clothesline, and hits a low blow that allows him to lock Page in a Figure Four. Here comes Sting, who runs in and whiffs on an elbowdrop. Flair locks Sting in the Figure Four, which is when Luger runs down and wallops Flair in the solar plexus with the foam bat. Hogan runs down and takes on all the babyfaces, but Sting sticks Hogan in Hogan’s reconstructed knee with the bat and whales away until Flair chases him off. That was a solid show, and I appreciate that it actually paid off the Benoit title shot and did some reasonable progression of angles, even if I’m not sure exactly how we’re supposed to view the Filthy Animals after the segments they were in tonight. Still, they’re correcting course a bit and, importantly, they’re about to turn Shane Douglas heel, which is how it should have been from the jump. I feel good about Nitro for the next month or two! But only for about that long. 3.5 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

This is probably fair. He has his moments (carrying a young Lashley to something fun at Judgment Day '06 is the first thing I thought of), but mostly he thrives off working with equal or better workers and having a volume of fun TV matches to his ledger.

So, I watched quite a bit of '70s and early '80s AJPW recently, and I have some definite opinions about Giant Baba. I'm picking a match that I don't think is great or anything, but it is a match that helped me form a lot of those opinions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dePUrYgakc0&list=PLTP0s7JwUsGxCKXdAoFWFwpnUnHrrsfe9&index=33 Giant Baba and the Destroyer vs. Karl Kox and Dick Slater. If that's too long for you, I have another Baba match that I think I want to show you.

They should absolutely just have turned the WTR babyface, especially spending so much time in the Midwestern and Southern United States. Booker has a rep for being overrated that I think is unfair. The biggest knock against him is a long career with few "great matches," but you can say the same about Tito Santana, a guy who most people agree is pretty great. Booker has a high volume of very good matches and is rarely hard to watch, a lot like Tito, and he didn't exactly get a ton of shots at having great matches in his career. He was teaming with Stevie until 1998, immediately had a great match with Benoit and a few very good matches with guys across the board in the midcard, got injured, had what I think is at worst a borderline great match against Scott Steiner at Spring Stampede '99, got injured again, and then ended up back in a tag team with Stevie just in time for Vince Russo to show up and book the whole show into hell. Those circumstances aren't his fault. He also spent a chunk of time in 2000s TNA and was never put in the "have great matches" position in WWE, though something like his '06 run on Smackdown basically was him being a good match machine. I'm not saying that Booker's a super-worker, but he's consistently very good for a long stretch and has a physical charisma that, by itself, puts him a cut or two above your typical wrestler. Eddy's WCW run is strange in that he's having awesome matches early, but his character work as a babyface is mediocre. The second he turns heel, he looks like a star, but Bischoff throwing hot coffee directly at Eddy (I hope this sentence gets back to Eric Bischoff and sets him off) leads to this weak lWo angle, and once he comes back, they have him come back as a heel even though the crowd desperately wants him to be a babyface. Per your point about the Filthy Animals/Revolution, I think this is exactly the sort of midcard morass that Eddy (rightly) thinks he's better than! He's very over and at this point is good for an awesome match every outing; the crowd loves him, he's better at working babyface, and he probably shouldn't be going 50/50 with Malenko or Shane Douglas at this point. I think that, while Eric Bischoff should get most of the scorn for driving WCW into the ground like this before Russo could even get a sniff at booking the shows into oblivion, it cannot be understated just how much blame Kevin Nash should get for using his booking committee tenure to drive off a whole bunch of future main eventers and upper-midcarders because they're too short for him. You can't really blame him for Jericho leaving - that's on Bischoff with an assist from Goldberg - but Nash booking Eddy and Benoit so wonkily made it much easier for them to leave when Kevin Sullivan shows back up in January to take over from that dope Russo. Benoit's booking as part of the Revolution alone should be a fireable offense. And again, I'm not some "Benoit was a superworker who should have been world champ forever" guy! If he was just a solid upper-midcard gatekeeper his whole career, that'd be fine with me. It's a good spot for him! But booking him like a midcard chump in a group for midcard chumps is malpractice. Don't even get me into how and his bookers he made Eddy and Rey feud for two months with the Dead Pool in a mostly heatless feud. I should have put a "no spoilers" tag on that post because I didn't know Candido showed up in WCW and would have loved to see this match with no foreknowledge of it happening. That's on me.

Thunder Interlude – show number eighty – 16 September 1999 "The WCW Gang is cancelled...Only by Hurricane Floyd and only for a week, not forever (yet)" Let’s not Thunder because it’s a recap show due to a hurricane canceling the taping…I already saw this shit once, and you can’t make me watch Randy Savage and Kevin Nash fling feces at one another again…You can’t!...I won’t allow it!... I just went right to the end of this show to keep the auto-play going, and you know what, it's on the Network and part of the catalog, so there's no reason not to add it here... This recap show gets no rating, which is a good thing for it since it’s mostly made up of all the garbage from Nitro over the past three months…

Show #206 – 13 September 1999 “The one that seems suspiciously the same as the previous ones for the most part” I’m pretty excited to see a) heel Sting and if he actually gets booed consistently, and b) whatever this Kevin Sullivan-led holding committee does in the next four or six weeks before Vinnie Ru comes through and crushes the buildings. And by “crushes the buildings,” I mean “runs creative into the ground again.” Let me add that c), I want to see whether Nash or Russo is the worse head booker. I’m sure Russo has it in him to book a PPV more diabolically than Nash booked Bash at the Beach 1999, but he’s gonna have to really pull out all the stops to be that bad. Oh, goody! We’re still in North Carolina. I want to see if a traditional WCW market will boo Sting and cheer Hulk Hogan. WCW in 1999 has nonsensically turned guys heel who the crowd desperately wants to cheer. First Flair, then Sting, and I think they turn Bret AGAIN at some point toward the end of the year. Oh WCW, you are so dumb. Hell, I think turning Nash heel randomly should count as well. Why in hell did Nash decide to turn heel when he did? Utterly baffling. Page is the only guy who made sense for a heel turn after Scott Steiner sonned him so bad in the ring (kayfabe) and on the mic (shoot) that the crowd turned on him. Recap (which plays the Nitro theme over the top of the audio): Sid spoils last week’s Benoit/Malenko number one contendership match; Benoit and Malenko will hook it up again to open the show, which I guess counts as a HOT CRUISERWEIGHT OPENER, almost, if you squint a bit. I’ll take it considering it’s 1999 WCW. So, the winer of this match has to turn right back around and face Sting later tonight, as far as I can tell. Shane Douglas and Saturn finally figured out that they should patrol the ring to keep anyone from running in. Benoit and Malenko do some okay opening chain wrestling; Benoit lands an enziguri, but it means nothing as Malenko mechanically works through a bunch of counters that feel nothing like a competitive fight before spilling to ringside with Benoit. They throw punches at each other, but Douglas and Saturn break it up, calm things down, and get them in the ring before they get counted out. Back in the ring, Malenko hits a hip toss into an armbar. Benoit tries to roll out of it, but Malenko also rolls through on his roll-throughs and keeps control; Benoit switches to using power rather than guile and lifts Malenko, then topples backward and slams him to the mat. Both men get to their feet, where Benoit lands a lariat for two. Benoit hits some chops and tries a dropkick; he misses, and Malenko snatches his leg and rolls through into a legbar that Benoit breaks up by grabbing the ropes. Malenko has switched his focus to Benoit’s knee and locks on a standing grapevine, then eventually transitions into a full legbar on the mat, though again, Benoit gets the ropes. Malenko gets Benoit to standing and tries to run a bit, but when Benoit reverses a corner whip, Malenko tries to leap over the ropes and hit something from the top rope; Benoit stops him and hits a superplex. After a standing ten count, both men struggle up and hit a double-clothesline; they end up covering one another, and Silverman counts a double-pin that both kick out of at two. Both men then trade victory roll attempts for two; Benoit tries rolling Germans, but Malenko gets two off countering the second German into a victory roll for two. Malenko tries to follow up, but gets tossed chest-first into the corner; he stumbles into a back suplex. Benoit signals for a diving headbutt, but Malenko catches him up top and tries to hit a superplex of his own that Benoit is able to roll through and cradle Malenko upon landing to counter for a three-count and a World Heavyweight Championship spot. Malenko congratulates Benoit on his victory. That match was perfectly fine. They tried to do a lot of counter-counter-counter stuff, but it really came off as mechanical and, to paraphrase Peter Griffin, this match sort of insisted upon itself, if that makes sense. Gene Okerlund introduces Ric Flair, and do you think that Winston-Salem is pissed that WCW waited until the night AFTER Fall Brawl to trot Flair out to the ring for two years in a row? Who the fuck in the Turner/WCW front office hated the poor souls in Winston-Salem so much? Flair rants about how dope his life is right now and claims that he is FREE AT LAST. He must be dreaming because he’s still in WCW and not the WWF like he apparently wanted to be. Maybe he's just happy about Bischoff being gone. Anyway, he calls Hogan out for a future bout and then turns his attention to Sting. He says that when Sting came in, Sting was “the franchise,” but Flair was and always has been “the man.” Flair tries to pretend that he’s disappointed by Sting hitting Hogan with a bat to win the title, but the crowd popped when he mentioned it. Sting and Lex Luger come to the ring, and look, if you’re going to try to get this Sting turn to stick, you’d probably need Ric Flair to be a babyface in North Carolina against Sting to make it happen. But no, Sting raises the world title and gets applause! Well, let’s see what happens next. Flair’s like GET OUTTA HERE, THIS IS MY SEGMENT, but Sting grabs a mic and talks anyway. Sting rightfully points out that Flair fucked him over like fifty-eleven times in the past decade. Flair’s face is like, Uh, yeah, let’s not bring that up. Sting shows Flair some love for being his greatest rival and a guy who helped mold him. Sting basically is like that old anti-marijuana ad from my childhood: IT WAS YOU, ALRIGHT! I LEARNED [TO CHEAT] BY WATCHING YOU. Ric Flairs who backstab wrestlers raise Stings who backstab wrestlers. Sting says that because of what he owes to Flair, Flair will be allowed leave the ring without getting his ass whipped. Now, look, this isn’t gonna work because Sting is one hundred percent right about everything. Ric insults Sting’s delivery of “kiss stealin’,” etc., then pretends to leave peacefully before coming back to the ring and yelling NOT because it’s 1999, you see. Actually, maybe Sting is ninety-nine percent right, because he says that Flair and everybody else has been in power, and Lex convinced him that it’s time for them to run with the ball. Sting, you had the presidency and you gave it up, my brother in pro graps. Anyway, the crowd thinks LUGER SUCKS as Luger tells Flair that Gretzky, Jordan, Elway, and Sanders went out gracefully this year – holy shit, all those guys retired in 1999? – and then suggests that maybe it’s Flair’s time to do the same because otherwise, he’s fixing to get his ass beat. Flair says he thought about retiring, but he saw last week’s show, and WCW badly needs him. Then, he questions Sting about what Sting’s beef with him is and how Luger fits into this beef. He respects Sting, but he’s not stepping aside for anybody, he reiterates, and that’s when Luger clocks him and Luger and Sting put the boots to Flair. Luger signals for a Torture Rack, lands a clothesline, and in fact racks Flair. What a cool move the Torture Rack is. I love that thing. Sting follows up with a Scorpion Deathlock, but here come Hulk Hogan and Bret Hart, who are friends again, I suppose. Well, this segment did its job; Hogan gets applause for running in to make the save. Luger and Sting decide that discretion is the better part of valor and vacate the premises. That segment did get the reaction that the bookers knew they had to try and get, and I’m intrigued to see where Sting/Flair/Luger goes. It was a long talking segment, but I ultimately liked it. Wait, no, Hogan talks for a bit, so that brings things down. Hogan pretends that he thinks what Sting and Luger did to Flair is egregious like I forgot what happened in the first three months of this year w/r/t Hogan doing his own egregious shit to Flair and Flair's kid. He challenges Luger and Sting to a tag match against himself and Bret Hart, and he shows how badass he is by saying “ass” five times and also the word “damned.” WHOA, THE HULKSTER’S ‘90S TUDE IS TOO MUCH, DUDE. We swing backstage where Sting and Luger talk about how Luger’s still injured and can’t wrestle, so they won’t agree to the match. This was better before Hogan talked, but it was still a solid bit of talking overall. After some stills from that mediocre Fall Brawl main event, we see Berlyn’s Benz roll up. Berlyn’s getting his match against Buff Bagwell tonight. Hey, standing behind Berlyn, is that THE WALL, BROTHER?!? I believe it is! Annoying-ass Riki Rachtman is out here to do this Nitro Girls search segment. Thank goodness, Kimberly and Spice come out here and are way more pleasant to listen to. There’s a video and they picked one of the ladies from Miami and are picking a lady from Utah or North Carolina or somewhere. Look, if you’re going to do this, maybe don’t stack it right on top of a long talking segment. Who formats this show? J.J. Dillon is on the phone trying to find out if Lex Luger is cleared to wrestle. In fact, Luger has been cleared for the past three weeks. Whoopsie! There are some athletes in the front row, but the only one I recognize is Eric Montross. Man, did I watch a lot of basketball in the ‘90s. More Fall Brawl stills, this time Sid/Benoit, lead into our second match at forty-five minutes into the show. That match is Erik Watts versus Disco Inferno. Since Sid was very recently mentioned, let’s see if these fellas wrestle to a finish other than a no contest. Watts and his wide pants land an early uranage, but Disco quickly kinda-sorta lands an inverted atomic drop, and then Watts is confused about how to bump for a swinging neckbreaker, so that’s about how things are going right now. This match is too back and forth for me because Watts isn’t very good, even though he's trying hard. I don’t know, if I’m Disco, I’m not taking turnbuckle powerbombs for this goof. They mock each other’s celebrations and, uh, did the truck start sweetening the crowd right in the middle of this match? What the heck is up with the audio? Production cuts to a BORING…WHERE’S SID? sign as Disco finishes Watts with a Chartbuster that we barely cut back to in time while Sid, in split-screen, cuts a promo that we can’t even hear, and then it goes full-screen to Sid, and then it cuts away from him in mid-mutter so that Disco can talk about how great he is and Sid can come in and attack him. Craig Leathers, you are a fucking goof. This was so bad in every way that I think it merits inclusion in a list, and not in one of the good ones, either. Anyway, Sid cuts a promo in which he declares to be smarter than everyone thinks he is and hits some powerbombs. Seriously, that’s it. I have no clue where they’re taking the U.S. and TV titles, or the Tag Team titles, for that matter. I can at least see where they can make a babyface cruiserweight by having them overcome Lenny Lane and Lodi working in tandem to cheat, and theoretically, they could make someone by having that guy beat Rick Steiner. The problem is that they haven’t built a babyface that is currently positioned beneath Steiner to elevate with a TV title win [Editor's note: WCW found a way to prove me wrong in a sense, but still fuck it up], and that goes double for Sid and the U.S. title. Boy, this company has booked its titles into the ground. Awful. Hey, Silver King! He’s an excellent performer. Double hey, it’s Norman Smiley! He’s also an excellent performer! And wouldn’t you know, they have a fun little TV match to start. They trade moves, and Silver King hits a flipping legdrop, but runs himself into a nice lariat. Smiley dances a bit, then as Silver King tries to roll through for a flash pinfall attempt, Norman catches him, rides him, and slaps his ass. Then, because Bischoff is gone and Turner S&P is distracted, he hits a Big Wiggle that is interrupted by Silver King clobbering him from behind. Silver King even hits a springboard moonsault, and *sigh* Sid is back out here. You know what, why do I even care? I can’t believe that I got excited about this match. I thought I was safe since Sid had already come out here and had only been coming out once to do this run-in garbage on the latest shows. WCW, you are not going to make me hate Sid, but you are going to make me dread his appearances in the short term. I feel like since Kevin Sullivan passed away the other day, I shouldn’t shit on him from the future, but *SteveBuscemifuckallthat.gif*, FIX THIS SHITTY BOOKING, SULLY, DAMMIT. Lord Steven Regal and Squire Dave Taylor hit the ring for a tag match against the Windham Brothers (w/Curt Hennig and Curly Bill). Regal and Kendall start the match and fight over a full nelson while Tony S. and Heenan talk about Curly Bill’s resemblance to Cleavon Little's character in Blazing Saddles, and yes, that was the joke last week, Heenan. Man, I love Blazing Saddles. I hope someone cutting a promo on the WTRs drops a “y’know…morons” on them. Anyway, this match exists and is fine. Kendall does okay at keeping up with the standing switches and counters and stuff that the Englishmen like to do. Barry gets in and Regal wrestles rings around him; Hennig gets on the apron and yells at the ref, so Regal clocks Hennig and Taylor throws a punch at him after he falls off the apron. Taylor locks a standing grapevine on Barry and grabs Regal’s hand for leverage, so Kendall rushes in and breaks that up. Barry is able to make a bit of a comeback and lands a back suplex on Regal after the latter tags in; Curly Bill grabs Mickey Jay’s attention so that Hennig can get back on the apron and land a cowbell shot to Regal’s dome. Barry covers for three. That was cromulent. Jimmy Hart leads Jerry Flynn to the ring to the slaughter because Goldberg is escorted to the ring from the back in street clothes. Oh, I see, Iaukea was going to wrestle Flynn, but Goldberg just shoved that little guy right off the call sheet. Goldberg grabs a mic and apologizes (!!) to Jerry Flynn, then politely asks for a few seconds to talk. Huh. What a classy guy! He’s super-annoyed that Sid keeps talking shit and ruining matches. That makes two of us, bud. He gives Sid props for being big and good at wrestling, but he’s sick of Sid running his yap. Wow, Goldberg is like the best babyface ever. This guy rules. I’m on his side. Goldberg points out that Sid’s record is on FRAUD WATCH like it’s Shane Douglas, then threatens to “stomp a hole in [Sid’s] ass.” YEAHHHHHH FUCK SID UP, MOSTLY-POLITE GOLDBERG EXCEPT FOR THE CUSSING! Anyway, Goldberg is going to chill and wait for Sid to get out here, but we go back to the split screen and Sid is like, Nah, I’m going back to the hotel room and ordering room service; I'll wrestle you when I want to wrestle you. Goldberg decides that he’ll get Sid sooner rather than later. That dipshit Jerry Flynn, who lost like five matches to Goldberg as a part of Goldberg’s streak, decides now to attack Goldberg and enjoys a spear, Jackhammer, and a SPLAT. More Fall Brawl stills: Harlem Heat win the tag titles. Harlem Heat’s opponents tonight are this bum-ass team of Hugh Morrus and Brian Knobbs (w/Jimmy Hart). What an awful team. I disagree with bringing Harlem Heat back together and putting the belts on them just to break them up again and feud them more directly, but sweet fuck, PLEASE do not put the tag belts on Morrus and Knobbs. Holy shit, no. Look, I’m already dreading HARLEM HEAT EXPLODING again, but the First Family is complete dogshit and needs to be doing jobs in the lower-midcard to everybody and anybody. I am a fan of Stevie Ray. Huge fan of the guy. Could listen to him jabber on in an interview or on commentary forever. But man, he, Morrus, and Knobbs as three-fourths of this match is a bummer. As with pretty much every tag match they’ve had since getting back together, I’m just waiting for Booker T. to hit a bunch of crisp offense. I genuinely think Booker’s got a top-three missile dropkick all-time. Speaking of dropkicks, Booker lands a dropkick that hits both Morrus and Knobbs and the crowd pops huge, holy shit. I didn’t know North Carolina was fucking with Booker like that. There’s a commercial break here. We come back to Stevie in peril. Jimmy Hart throws punches at Stevie outside the ring while Morrus holds him; Booker chases them away. The whole affair finally gets back into the ring, where Morrus lands a Savage Elbow for two. Morrus and Knobbs tag and then both land running splashes in the corner on Stevie. Stevie finally makes it to his corner when the heels try one double-team maneuver too many and get double-clotheslined. Booker hits the hot tag and fights off both of his opponents. He lands an axe kick on Morrus and a roundhouse kick on Knobbs, then goes up for a missile dropkick. That’s when the Windham Brothers run down and spoil the match; Harlem Heat fight them off and the First Family besides. Huh, Harlem Heat was way over tonight. In one heck of a WCW-ass WCW matchup, the Insane Clown Posse (w/Vampiro) face off in a tag match against the West Hollywood Blondes. This is amazing. Lodi tries to troll the crowd by wearing an East Carolina football jersey instead of wearing a Duke basketball jersey. I mean, that is a woeful failure in heel tactics. No one gives a fuck about East Carolina football, dude, including probably most of the campus of East Carolina. Shameful. So, before the match, a plant runs in and tries to get next to Lodi, and security chases him down. It’s the same plant who has been doing Lodi parties and toppling over the rail these past few weeks. This is dumb. This is such a weird fucking match. Violent J press slams Lane! Shaggy atomic drops Lodi into Lane, who grabs him in a bearhug, and Shaggy dropkicks the whole mass of humanity! The Blondes double-suplex Shaggy damn near into the ropes as an ICP chant fires up! Oh, you know this is going on the Charming Uniquity list. It’s maybe the best example of this type of match. At the point that the Blondes land a combo kneelift/legdrop for two, I’ve decided that I’m so blessed. WCW existed for too short a time, but even at its worst, it gave me gifts like this. Shaggy gets a hot tag, yells WHAT DO YOU GOT at Lenny, and slams him. Tony S. opines that the Posse should maybe get a shot at the tag titles. OH YES, PLEASE book Harlem Heat vs the ICP. The Blondes regain control and hit a double DDT on Shaggy, who surprisingly has solid timing and kicks out around 2.8. The only bad thing about this match is the finish, in which Lodi is supposed to whiff on a crossbody into Shaggy while Lane’s got Shaggy up in a vertical suplex position. He does it, but it is a visual mess of a finish in which Shaggy covers Lane after the clash of heads between the Blondes. They got too creative with that one; I get the idea, but it looked terrible. Chris Benoit gets a WCW World Heavyweight title shot against Sting, who also has to wrestle twice tonight since that tag challenge is on for later. Benoit talks before the match for some reason. He says that after his loss at Fall Brawl, he laid in bed thinking about it, and “all the demons came out.” Well, not ALL the demons, buddy. You still have a few in there you’re saving for later. Benoit thinks that Sid actually tapped out at Fall Brawl, so now we have another “did he tap out or just hit the mat in pain” deal like they did with Benoit, Booker, and the TV title in 1998. Benoit lets it go, and it's funny that he’s going to beat Sid for the big gold in a few months and then we’re going to have a “was his leg under the rope” controversy. Benoit calls Sting out next. We don’t get Sting, who rules. We get Rick Steiner, who sucks. I guess, according to Rick Steiner, Sting just decided, You know what, I won’t be defending the world title tonight even though WCW's championship committee put together a whole battle royal just to get me a challenger tonight, so Steiner challenges Benoit to a TV title match instead. OK, I can see Benoit beating Steiner, even after the loss to Sid. Sure. But look, this is a bullshit bait-and-switch. It fucking SUCKS. Again, why do I care about any of this? Why did I look forward to Benoit/Sting for most of this show? I should have known better. WCW does this fuck shit all the time at this point. They tease shit and hype shit and it’s all Sid run-ins or "bonus" Rick Steiner matches. Steiner does slow brawling and continues to be a detriment to every show he’s on, minus that Thunder where he did some interesting cheating in a tag match. Benoit sells a whole bunch and eats a ton of moves, including an admittedly dope-looking release German where Benoit damn near lands in the cheap seats. The cover only gets two, so Steiner tosses Mickey Jay out of the ring. Get this – GET THIS – Benoit gets like ONE move in, which is a roll-up that gets three while Steiner is still looking at Jay on the floor after tossing him, EXCEPT that Steiner actually kicks out at 2.7 when Jay scrambles back in the ring to count. FUCK OFF, WCW. That was total dogshit. Imagine protecting a bum like Rick Steiner this heavily. Unbelievable. Hype video: The sorry-ass Revolution. What a failed stable. Perry Saturn (w/the Revolution) faces Eddy Guerrero in our next match. I’m done with this show. How badly can one company book its midcard? This is insane. Meanwhile, the WWF manages to book a bunch of midcarders as reasonable threats, though a level or three below the main eventers, with continuing competence. So, before they lock up, Rey Misterio Jr.’s music hits. Yay, Rey is walking under his own power! He comes out with Billy Kidman and Konnan (the latter of whom we haven't seen on television in weeks), who all join everyone from the Revolution at ringside. Are we going to transition into a Revolution/Filthy Animals feud, and if so, who will be the heels? There are guys on each side who people like, or otherwise, I’d say it’s easy: Turn the group that has Shane Douglas in it heel. The match in the ring is fine. Eddy and Saturn go at it, and Eddy locks on a sleeper early. This is when we go to break. No, wait, no break. Tony S., poor guy, having to deal with production. No wait, we are going to break after all. Tony S. is always looking like a jackass due to shoddy production cues, and I feel for him. We come back to an evenly-matched bout. Eddy hits a suplex on his future Radicalz mate, but gets a vertical suplex blocked and reversed. Saturn tries another one, and Eddy leaps out and gets a sleeper, which Saturn reverses into a sleeper, and they decided to work this match around sleepers. That’s interesting, but we missed another sleeper spot during the break according to Tony S., so whatever they’re going for doesn’t quite hit for me. It ends up that Saturn hits an overhead suplex from the top, then rolls over and gets two. They get back to their feet and continue to counter and counter their counters. Saturn manages a flying forearm and goes for a DVD, but Eddy counters it into a Frankensteiner, then lands a suplex and goes up for a Frog Splash. He dives and rolls through as he sees Saturn move. He runs back at Saturn, who puts him on his shoulders for another DVD attempt. Eddy slips out of the back and tries to roll up Saturn, but Saturn sits down on it and gets three. Eddy is unhappy about the count, and the Revolution and Filthy Animals end up facing each other down in the ring as the segment ends. What we saw was solid, but that match probably needed a) three or four more minutes and b) not to have a break in the middle of it. Berlyn (w/Uta and THE WALL, BROTHER) comes to the ring to face Buff Bagwell. Tony S. is SHOCKED that Uta joins commentary for some reason. Buff Bagwell, who is only near-worthless because he does have value as a heel, makes his way down the ramp as Uta speaks American English-accented German on commentary. Buff stinks and Alex Wright deserves better. This match is fine, mostly because Wright eventually sort of figured things out and is a solid heel worker at this point in his career. Buff hits three clotheslines, then goes up top, but Berlyn kicks the ropes and crotches Bagwell, then lands a superplex. Berlyn stomps Buff and THE WALL, BROTHER sizes up Buff for a punch, but that dope Billy Silverman actually spots him and warns him away. Berlyn scores a two count, then locks a sleeper on Buff, who fights up. God, Buff sucks. He was in poor position to take a dropkick earlier and then is in poor position to take a clothesline. This guy is complete ass. Just awful. Please turn him heel again. Silverman catches THE WALL, BROTHER sizing Buff up for a second time, and Buff makes a comeback shortly after with punches, buckle bonks, and a diving lariat. Buff lands some more offense, including a swinging neckbreaker, and throws a few corner punches. Buff presses his advantage, and runs toward Berlyn, who ducks and hits a Hot Shot; THE WALL, BROTHER avoids being spotted by the ref a third time and punches Buff in the head as Buff hangs over the rope, which sends Buff stumbling backward into a reverse neckbreaker that ends the match. Buff couldn’t have just done this job last night? What a dope. Hype video: Sting’s breaking bad, everybody! Or maybe he’s just doing to Hogan what Hogan did to him. I love this video, though, which intimates that WCW fucking over Sting back in 1996 led him down a dark road. Video narrator, talking about Sting’s change in attire in 1996: BUT WAS THE BLACKEST CHANGE IN HIS HEART?! This video goes full conspiracy, and it’s actually enjoyably bananas. It asserts that Sting might well have been driving the white Hummer and even that Sting came up with the Fake nWo Sting and might be contracting that guy again to confuse and harm his enemies. I actually dug it, it’s so absurd. Michael Buffer introduces our tag team main event between Sting/Lex Luger and Hulk Hogan/Bret Hart. Luger comes out in street clothes – hey, he did claim to have not bought his gear bag earlier as he feigned injury, so that’s a nice touch. Meanwhile, Bret and Hogan are loosely aligned again for some reason. Bret attacks Luger while Hogan goes after Sting, and we get an opening brawl outside the ring. Hogan and Sting make it into the ring and I guess are the legal men. Sting sells a lot for Hogan punches, which I guess is exactly what he did back when he was the babyface and Hogan was the heel. Same song, second verse/A little bit louder and a whole lot worse, and all that. Bret tags in and proceeds to have a sequence with Sting that is a million times better than any sequence they had while they were feuding in September and October of 1998. Yeah, let’s run that one back in the next three months before Goldberg cryptically tells the Hitman to WATCH THE KICK. They end up crashing into one another with a double-clothesline, and in a neat spot, Sting gets up first and tags Luger. I was going to say that I was surprised that Hart didn’t move at all in that time, but he was playing possum and moves when Luger tries an elbowdrop, then easily makes the tag to give Hogan a clearer initial advantage. See, it’s the little things about Hart’s work that rule so hard. Luger controls Hogan after a burst of offense anyway, and Hogan is in peril. Sting tags in and launches from the top with a nice splash that only gets two. Sting attacks Hogan’s knee, a popular target in kayfabe since Hogan had a shoot MCL issue to take care of. The nominal heels, though only Luger seems to be fully accepted as one, attack Hogan’s knee. The fans do chant for Hogan while Luger’s in control, but are reluctant to cheer when he comes back against Sting. Heh heh, WCW bookers, you fellas love booking yourselves into corners. Into stupid, stupid corners. Hogan once again has to come back against Luger, who lands a shot to the knee and tags out. Sting comes in and hits a suplex, but Hogan no-sells it, so Sting has to go back to targeting the knee. This match is fine, mostly because the targeted leg attack from the heels is solid and whenever Bret’s in there, he’s so smooth and seems reinvigorated as a babyface. Hogan eventually bails himself out of a jam by hitting a double-clothesline on his opponents and getting a hot tag to the Hitman. Bret takes care of both guys, and the crowd was excited for the hot tag, but they’re not fully engaged for Bret taking it to Sting, though he gets some cheers as he goes through the 5MoD and makes a series of pinfall attempts on Sting. But you know and I know that none of this matters because it’s WCW and there’s never going to be a clean finish to this thing. On cue, DDP runs down and tries to enter the ring with a baseball bat. Hogan meets him as he enters and makes him drop it, but Luger picks it up and waffles the Hitman in the face as Hart has Sting in the Sharpshooter; Sting covers for three. A trainer runs down to help Bret sell the facial injury as the heels make their escape. Turn Sting heel and book your promising midcarders (at least the ones that you haven’t ran off to Stamford yet) into the ground. I thought Bischoff wasn’t in charge anymore? -3 out of 5 Stinger Splashes