SirSmUgly

Promos, Spots, and Skits that Aren’t Quite HOLY SHIT MOMENTS that Are Worth Watching/Adding to Your Playlist WCW just isn't a promo or skit company, which really hurt it as it tried to match the WWF at the WWF's strength and failed miserably.

HOLY SHIT, THAT WAS CLASSIC Promos, Spots, and Skits Very few additions here, but two things: One, WCW stumbled into a satisfying reveal of who impregnated Ms. Hancock, and then they dropped it anyway. Two, Bret Hart should be considered one of the elite worked-shoot promo guys in wrestling. CM Punk wishes that he could cut worked-shoot promos half as good as the Hitman does.

Charming Uniquities WCW was not very charming in 2000, which is a sign that not only were the wrestling matches not long enough or eclectic enough in talent matchups to get interesting matches, but also that the matches built around angles were failing. That last part was mostly because the lion's share of WCW's angles this year were flaming basura. On the flip side, Terry Funk/David Flair might haev been the best angle-focused match on this list overall, which is especially impressive as it came in the worst three-month run of creative that I've seen this whole watchthrough.

Very Good (and Sometimes Pretty Great) TV and PPV Matches that Make Entertaining Candidates for a Nitro-era Playlist on YouTube Two observations. First, Thunder has been the better show for wrestling matches since 1998. Second, the infusion of young talent - including from the Power Plant - helped add to this list, especially in the second half of the year. As much as the Power Plant gets (deserved) mockery, it did bear fruit outside of Goldberg as the company started to wind down.

It's time for our end-of-year updates! First: SmUgs’s Standouts – My Favorite Matches This list didn't change very much! Only one match was added since last year, but at least it's a top-level PPV opener.

Thunder Interlude – show number one hundred and forty-one – 20 December 2000 "The WCW Gang ends their dreadful year by producing a moderate success for a show" With the exception of the Ruschoff Era Reboot review shows, I have skipped all year-end review shows in this series (and have not added them to the number count when I number the shows), so this is the last show of the year for 2000 WCW, a year that absolutely killed off WCW in every way possible…I like watching good wrestling shows, but a project that I’m going to get to in maybe three or four years will be a 1991 WCW Yearbook, with the underlying theme being a comparison between it and 2000 WCW to truly figure out which was the nadir for WCW programming…But there are a couple of other projects (and some time away from WCW overall) to get to before that…And before even that, we have to get to 2001 WCW in this series…So howsabout we Thunder?... CEO Ric Flair loves his pre-show addresses…He runs down the card, much of which was made on Nitro in a shocking amount of pre-planning for this company post-1997…It’s a tag team number one contendership battle royal…Shane Douglas and KroniK vs. the Misfits in Action in trios tag action…And Scott Steiner with another defense of his world title, though CEO Flair is not revealing who it is yet…CEO Flair also promises to reveal Goldberg’s opponent(s) at Sin and an appearance from his mystery dude… Thunder’s opening, which is slightly less ugly than Nitro’s, is up next… Chavo Guerrero Jr. defends his WCW World Cruiserweight Championship against Jamie (K)noble in the opener…I absolutely love that Chavo’s now using Eddy’s theme…Chavo Jr. slaps a few hands before realizing that he’s supposed to be heeling…Aw, nice guy Chavo can’t help himself…Before the match, he addresses Sugar Shane Helms…He tosses out a hypothetical to try and convince Shane to save his title shot at Sin by sabotaging Noble…The desk is unsure of Chavo Jr.’s very obvious motivations…C’mon, Stevie, you were a heel for years…You should get this… Noble lands a dropkick and a body slam to start, nails a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker, gets top control on Chavo, then transitions from an STF into a couple of flash pinfall attempts…This is fun stuff, wrestled at a nice pace…Chavo takes a headscissors that spills him to the floor, and he backs off and tries to break Noble’s momentum by wandering around outside for a few seconds… Chavo can’t get anything in on Noble, who is quicker on the draw than him…Noble ducks a few Chavo strike attempts to get two counts on another pair of flash pinfall attempts…Chavo gets a double axe in, but when he shoots Noble in, Noble catches him with a clubbing forearm…Chavo finally remembers that if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying…He blocks a piledriver attempt, trips Noble, and then knees him right in the balls…He continues his cheating ways with a couple of two-handed chokes that he holds all the way up to Jamie Tucker’s count of four… Deliberately, Chavo continues to throw forearms, but Noble fires up with punches of his own, ducks a couple of lariat attempts, and lands a reverse neckbreaker…They both take time to receover and are both up at the same time…Noble wins punches, then a backbreaker and a back body drop…Noble lands a lariat and looks ascendant…Chavo begs off, but no dice…Noble puts Chavo up top and looks for a superplex…That’s when Shane Helms, worried about losing his number one contendership, sneaks out and holds Noble’s leg…That block helps Chavo send Noble to the mat…He follows with a Frog Splash and then a brainbuster for three…Very good match, and I'm elevating to the Good Matches list on its own merit…However, it doesn’t hurt as an added cherry on top of this good match that Stevie is absolutely confused about Chavo’s clever verbal gambit from before the match started…Stevie, after the match: “How do we know this was not a ploy by Chavo?”…Tony S., in a somewhat bewildered response: “We do know that it was a ploy by Chavo”… Back from break, Hacksaw Duggan enters the ring in his street clothes, holding a mic and looking penitent…Duggan briefly pauses as he notices the two fans sitting near the commentary area heckling the shit out of him with a DUGGAN SUCKS chant…When Duggan says that he’s not going to make any excuses because he’s an adult by saying “I’m over twenty-one,” one of the hecklers stops chanting to accusatorily say THAT’S TRUE…Hahaha, these hecklers know where to hit a guy who has basically complained about ageism in the booking room on television before…Right in his metaphorical kidney… Duggan in fact says that the higher-ups were trying to get him to retire, which becomes the motivation for his heel turn rather than being mad about the crowd chanting for GOLDBERG after GOLDBERG blitzed him a few months back…Actually, it makes sense that both of these things might have had an influence on him...Duggan reels off a list of things he’s shared with the fans…Heckler, insistently: YOU STILL SUCK…It’s funny because it’s happening to Duggan…And I say that even though I think Duggan in 2000 has been a shockingly useful character!...Duggan apologizes to his friends, his family, and the fans for being such a cad and resolves to leave WCW… After a break for advertisements, Mike Awesome stops Duggan from leaving and asks him to stick around WCW, at least through the end of this Thunder taping…Awesome offers Duggan a ride home after the show…Huh, is Awesome going to kill Duggan’s career under the guise of friendship at some point tonight?... After another break, General Rection forgives Duggan for making tough choices to keep his job…They hug it out… Here is the list of our tag team battle royal competitors: Two Count, the Jung Dragons (w/Leia Meow), Meng and Kwee Wee (w/Paisley), the Harris Bros., Jamie (K)noble – still selling injury from the opener – and Evan Karagias, Rey Misterio Jr. and Billy Kidman, The Perfect Event, and Jindrak and O’Haire (the latter two teams both accompanied by Mike Sanders and Reno)… OK, so in this battle royal, one member being eliminated means both members are, unlike in the tag battle royal earlier in the year…The order of eliminations is as such…The Jung Dragons go first…Noble and Karagias are next out…Stevie tries to question Tony S. about why Tony thinks he’s overused the word “natural in his commentary about this match…Tony S., not taking the bait: “You ask some dumb questions sometimes”… Two Count are third eliminated, and before there’s a fourth elimination, Vito jumps Reno at ringside and feeds him a steady diet of soupbones…Johnny the Bull is back, too, and he clobbers Mike Sanders with a kendo stick, then faces off with Vito…They hug, reuniting the Mamalukes before we go to a commercial break…Wait, hold on, you may be asking yourself (as I did), why would the Bull be mad at Sanders?...If you’ll recall, Sanders sent the Bull to attack his future opponent Kwee Wee on Thunder in Australia (Thunder show number one hundred and thirty-one)…The Nitro after that show (Nitro Show #262), he destroyed his ankle on a bad landing after a Kwee Wee monkey flip…So it seems that his motivation would be attacking Sanders because Sanders used his powers derived from the commissionership to send the Bull out there to attack Kwee Wee for him, which eventually got the Bull injured...That’s solid motivation to spark a babyface turn…Hopefully, Vito has learned not to alienate his allies for a taste of midcard gold this time around… We come back from a commercial break to find that the Harris Bros. have thankfully been eliminated, as have Kwee Wee and Meng…Our final teams are the two Thrillers teams and the one Animals team…Rey is a pesky lil’ guy and hangs on whenever the Thrillers get close to tossing him out there…Hold on, is this how Palumbo and O’Haire end up being a tag team?...They eliminate Kidman, and so, as I recall that Palumbo and O’Haire are our final WCW tag champs (I think), it must be that we get Stasiak and Jindrak eliminated at the same time and Sanders saying that Palumbo and O’Haire are the intended tag team… Or maybe not…An out-of-breath and disoriented Sanders gets in the ring and calls for the bell as the Thrillers all celebrate together…Tony S. helpfully notes that CEO Flair isn’t actually in the building tonight (at least not anymore, as it turns out)…Sanders cuts a ponderous promo about how awesome he and his charges are…I suppose they saw Two Count try to sneak a double-contendership opportunity and decided to try it themselves…It didn’t really work for Two Count since they were forced to wrestle one another to decide it…**Tobias Funkë voice** but maaaaaybe it’ll work for them… Sanders: “At Sin…you need to take those belts, you need to shine ‘em up really nice”…Tony S. “You can see the cliché coming from all the way down the Chattahoochee on this one”…Stevie Ray, having only discerned the word “hoochie”: “The what?!”…Tony S. patiently explains that it’s a river, not a type of looked-down-upon sexually active woman…Anyway, Sanders goes on and on and on, but actually, the point is that he says that he’s sending out some combination of these four guys out to face the Insiders, and Page and Nash won’t know until the show…How can CEO Ric Flair let this one stand in kayfabe?...C’mon… Prime Time Elix Skipper is looking to build a house tonight…His opponent is Konnan (w/Tygress)…I get a kick out of Stevie lamenting that his six-year-old daughter beat him in WCW Backstage Assault for the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation One entertainment systems…Especially because she was using Booker, and he was using himself…This caused me to go check the roster on the game… OK, quick diversion here…Wrestlers in WCW Backstage Assault for the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation One entertainment systems who are not being used on WCW programming in any fashion at the point that it is being shilled on this Thunder episode…Asya, Bret Hart, Chris Candido, Chris Kanyon (I sure hope he comes back for the last three months!), Elizabeth, Eric Bischoff, Hulk Hogan, Kimberly, La Parka, Madusa, Mona, Scott Hall, Tank Abbott, Torrie Wilson, Vampiro, and Vince Russo…Kanyon and Torrie have a chance of coming back, and of course, Bischoff shows up one more time over the phone toward the end of the company’s existence, but everyone else here is long gone…Honestly, only sixteen out of fifty-eight wrestlers on this game's roster not being on television isn’t too bad…How did Juventud Guerrera not get onto the video game’s roster, though?...We have space for Bischoff, Russo, Dellinger, and Sarge, but not THA JOOOOOOOOOCY ONE?...Ah, one more THA JOOOOOOOOOOCY ONE for the road before these reviews are finished…Glad I got that out… Back to the action, please don’t job Elix to fucking Konnan…Konnan works a style that he is too big and clunky to do very well…Tenay calls his flash pinfall for two “an attempt at a roll-up” on cue, just as I type that…And equally on cue, Konnan tries to run up the ropes and doesn’t make it…Skip saves it by stomping him out while yelling LOOK AT YA, then letting Tygress know that Konnan AIN’T SHIT…I do like that Elix matrices under a lariat, but Konnan just locks him in place for an inverted DDT as he bends back upward…This match is something of a Skipper showcase, much like the opener was a showcase of how fun Jamie (K)noble is in the ring…Skip gets a handful of two counts, including on a lovely missile dropkick… HAHAHAHAHA…Stevie shits on Scott James’s refereeing by asking if he “went to the Bronco Lubich school of reffing”…HAHAHAHAHA, fantastic…Skip continues to counter the lumbering Konnan’s aerial attempts…As Skipper lands a springboard guillotine legdrop, I think, Wow, this guy is still wrestling in Jordans…Nutty choice…Why not just wrestle in Timberlands next?...Wait, I think Shad Gaspard actually did wrestle in Timberlands…Insane stuff from Shad Gaspard there (R.I.P.)…The crowd thinks this match is BORING, but I think it’s solid…It’s not fluid or anything, but look, it’s Konnan…Both men trade flash pinfall attempts for two until Konnan suddenly clears out Elix with a lariat and goes immediately into a Tequila Sunrise, a move that he's using on television for the first time in what feels like ages…It manages to make Elix tap out…Skipper was fun to watch in this one…He shouldn’t have jobbed to fucking Konnan, though… Crowbar (w/Daffney) faces the limping Bam Bam Bigelow, who is selling lingering injuries from when he crashed through the hood of an ambulance a day ago three days ago at Starrcade…I don’t think Crowbar should have much trouble with an injured Bigelow despite the size difference…Alas, Bigelow tosses him around even with the bad knee to start…I dig a spot with Bigelow yelling AWWW, SHUT UP at a shrieking Daffney, then hitting a vertical suplex in which he merely drops Crowbar rather than going down with him…Yeah, I’d be minimizing my landings too had I gone through an ambulance a day three days ago… Crowbar finally gets an attack in on the knee and targets it going forward…Bigelow still gets control and has Crowbar pinned against the railing…Daffney comes over and rakes Bammer’s eyes…It merely pisses him off, but his attention is now on Daffney, which gives Crowbar a chance to recover and score a chop block…Back in the ring, Crowbar goes up for a finish, but Meng shoves him to the mat in revenge for the wrench shot on Nitro…Bigelow manages to get to his feet and quickly hit a Greetings to get out of dodge as the winner… Norman Smiley enters the ring for a match against Goldberg…Tony S. shills the Goldberg jersey furiously, considering they have a few more weeks to sell them before Goldberg leaves WCW television…In one of the segments that has been cut, someone told Smiley that he had a booking tonight even though he thought he was off…We’ll find out when we hit the newest running segment in these reviews later on…Norm was nervous about facing Goldberg when he was last booked against him, and he was right to be…Smiley has nothing for Goldberg, who quickly goes SPEAR, JACKHAMMER, SPLAT for the victory… After the match, Totally Buff pops up on the TurnerTron and lets him know that they’ll be facing Goldberg and Sarge in a tag match at Sin…They’re confident that they can send Goldberg packing by beating Sarge in that match…This is actually a clever way to put some danger in that match and in the nu-Streak angle…Goldberg responds in the arena by suggesting that he will murderize both members of Totally Buff…OK, so I misremembered, didn’t I?...Does Sarge knife Goldberg in the back at Sin?...Or does he do it at SuperBrawl when Goldberg is wrestling a handicap match against Totally Buff?...I recalled Goldberg being retired in a handicap match, but memories are faulty…We’ll see soon enough… There are many things that I don’t fast forward through for these reviews that I would if I were watching without intent to write about these shows…Shane Douglas’s promos are near the top of that particular list…He thinks Richmond sucks, and so does Tenay over on commentary…Tony S.’s arch THEN LEAVE in response is pretty funny, though…Douglas’s shtick is basically Mike Sanders’s shtick except with more HAHAAAAAAAAs…So, Douglas introduces KroniK before their match with the Misfits in Action… One of the strengths of trios tags are that they hide the deficiencies of the workers in them even better than standard tags do…I do like that Cpl. Cajun tries a Bourbon Street Blues, begs off when Adams eats his punches for lunch, and uses that space he gave himself via begging off to hit Adams with a punch to the balls…Someone’s been listening to Chavo Jr., huh?...Cajun actually gets himself out of a jam with a neckbreaker to Clark and a tag to SGT. A-WALL…This match is fine for what it is…The match breaks down…Clark hits Cajun with a Meltdown, but Rection and Douglas are the legal men… Rection basically headbutts Douglas on a No Laughing Matter, but Clark breaks up the pinfall…Then, as the ref looks at Clark and Cajun going at it outside the ring, Adams swings a chair at Rection when Rection is shot into the ropes…It smacks Rection in the back, and the general stumbles into a Franchiser for three…After the match, Douglas and his hired guns beat the Misfits down… OK, so at some point, CEO Ric Flair revealed that the Cat gets the shot at Scott Steiner’s world title…This seems an appropriate place to plunk our recurring segment titled This week in stuff the morons at the WWE Network cut from this episode of Thunder: Crowbar and Daffney have a backstage interview with Gene Okerlund…CEO Flair gives the Cat a title shot before leaving the building to meet with someone…Okerlund harasses the Natural Born Thrillers while interviewing them…More Okerlund interview business, this time with Scott Steiner and Midajah…Okerlund, Jarrett, even more interview time…Ah, this was important: A-WALL and Cajun are upset with Rection for forgiving Duggan, but refusing to forgive Chavo Jr.; though Rection fairly enough points out that Duggan apologized and Chavo Jr. didn’t, A-WALL and Cajun are dissatisfied with that justification…Norman Smiley gets super excited over another Glacier promo before being informed that he has a match tonight…Shane Douglas makes his payment due to KroniK while they all interview with Gene Okerlund…Mike Tenay interviews an evasive CEO Ric Flair about his mystery man’s identity, among other things…The Cat and Ms. Jones have a backstage interview with Okerlund…I don’t know, maybe someone at the Network just hates Gene Okerlund or something… Backstage, an injured Rection yells out that he’s not PLAYING WITH DA FRANCHISE, NO MAAAAAAAH… Team Canada is here so that Lance Storm can lecture the United States about how much it sucks, particularly the electoral college…I could tell him all about why the electoral college exists, in major part to protect the interests of the wealthy slave owners in slave states, since they had lower populations than industrial free states, but that probably would only make him more certain that he’s right about how bad America sucks…Storm thinks that Duggan makes poor choices…Duggan storms out with his 2x4, HUSSing like he’s the Berzerker…He squares off with Storm and Skipper…Mike Awesome runs down here to ostensibly back Duggan up, but it’s a ruse!...In fact, this is such a ridiculous turn that IT’S A SWERVE, BRO, even though Russo is nowhere around…This nonsensical turn came out of nowhere…I do get a kick out of Stevie Ray going all Bill Watts and mispronouncing it as DOOGAN before correcting himself, though… After the break, Gene Okerlund grills Team Canada…Elix Skipper cracks me up because after Awesome declares that he’s thrilled to be out of leisure suits and into maple leaf-decorated garb, Skip goes YAEEY YEAHHEEYYY like he’s Ice Cube at the beginning of “We Be Clubbin'”…Skipper is kinda on fire tonight…Storm tells Duggan that it might be wise for him to leave the company before Awesome breaks him in two… Alright, it’s main event time…The Cat (w/Ms. Jones) meets Scott Steiner (w/Midajah) in a title match that will be under five minutes sans entrances…This is a Nitro Special main event, but on Thunder…In under five minutes, we get an obligabrawl, a fight between Jones and Midajah that Midajah loses, and an appearance of the mystery man at the top of the ramp…The Cat actually hits a Feliner, but Steiner kicks out right at two on the cover, hits a suplex, and locks on a Steiner Recliner to retain his title…After the match, he chases after the masked mystery man as the show ends… We’re off to 2001!...WOOO…

Show #271 – 18 December 2000 "The one where WCW probably wishes that Scott Steiner was both emotionally and physically healthy enough to build their show around eighteen months earlier than he was" Because of pre-emptions, this is the last Nitro until the second week of January. Let’s say goodbye to the year 2000 on Nitro. I’m torn because on the one hand, I’m incredibly happy to say goodbye to what probably wase been the worst calendar year of television either the WWF or WCW have ever put on the air. On the other hand, the only spring stampede in 2001 will be the one where McMahon stomps all over Fusient in the race to purchase WCW just so that he can book the brand into oblivion. You can see why I’m torn. Then again, this year was so bad! Cold open: CEO Ric Flair hypes what was a mediocre Starrcade before booking Buff Bagwell against Bill Goldberg and hyping a reveal for Scott Steiner’s opponent – or opponents, he teases – at Sin. Recap: Stills of the mediocre Starrcade that CEO Flair was just hyping. Here’s our ugly Nitro opening! Shane Helms gets a jobber opening as Tony S. (joined at the desk by Hudson and Madden) fills everyone in on the Helms/Moore tie victory in the Starrcade ladder match. CEO Flair has decreed off-screen that the two winners wrestle one another to decide who the true number one contender to the cruiserweight belt really is. Moore enters the ring and shakes hands with Helms. Madden puts both guys over – in fact, as Shawn Michaels was often billed as “the wrestler of the ‘90s,” Madden calls Moore “HB2K.” Only one of those claims bore fruit, as it turned out. The feeling out process is solid; Helms hits a rollup for two, and Moore follows with a sloppy roll-up of his own for two. Moore gets a further four straight two counts on flash pinfall attempts, so Helms gets sick of all that shit and launches Moore to the floor by his hair. Helms walks over and gets tripped by Moore, who then drags him outside the ring and, as Helms stands up ready to fight, slides back inside the ring. Moore continues to absolutely hornswoggle (not Hornswoggle) Helms, trying a sloppy sunset flip powerbomb and then tripping Helms when Helms blocks it by holding onto the ropes. This culminates in a Moore running rana off the apron. Back in the ring, both men fight over a top rope move; Helms manages to hoist Moore over his shoulder and hit a super powerslam for two. Helms tries to put away Moore with power, but can’t; Moore then ducks a Sugar Smack and scores a corkscrew body press for another two count. They hit another series of reversals out of arm drag attempts until Moore hits a Rocker Dropper Showstopper (he actually has a specific name for his version, but I forget what it is) for two more. In an attempt to put his tag partner-slash-opponent away, Moore sits Helms up top for a super rana attempt, but Helms knocks Moore to the mat and follows with a diving sunset flip for 2.8. Moore gets Helms running again, but Helms stops on a duckdown, hooks Moore and drills him with a Vertebreaker for three. After the match, he helps his fallen buddy up, which is when Chavo Jr. attacks. Unfortunately for him, it’s one-on-two, and Moore puts Chavo in the fireman’s carry position from behind for that team TKO that Hudson claims is called a Nightmare on Helms Street, so sure, why not, we’ll use that name for it going forward. This was a sloppy match, but both guys tried hard and it was certainly watchable. We cut to the M.I.A. locker room, where Rection yells at Cpl. Cajun for trying to help a backjumping prodigal son like Chavo, which Cajun did at Starrcade if you’ll recall. Cajun just rolls his eyes at this dope. I like that Rection finally won the United States title, but people still don’t respect his goofy ass. After the break, Tony S. shills the Goldberg jersey while Scott Steiner and Midajah make their way to the ring. Steiner gets a live mic and jabbers on about how much better he is at being world champion than Ric Flair ever was. He claims that he’s so big and bad that he’s complicating Flair’s job, in that the CEO can’t find a wrestler who is willing to fight him. He also drops this line as he yells at Flair, which, look, I’m just going to write it word for word: “Why don’t you convince Diamond Dallas Page to get a sex change so that he has the balls to come out here and face me?” I mean, WOW. I could write a whole essay just unpacking this line. Steiner continues to berate Page for being “white trash” and a “jabroni” and drops THIS line: “When Diamond Dallas Page comes out here and says BADA BOOM, BADA BING, BADA BANG…I don’t even know what the hell that means. SEND HIM BACK DOWN TO THE BUSH LEAGUES!” This was the sort of verbal assault that, had WCW put the belt on Steiner and let him do this in early 1999 when people were still watching this show, might have kept more people tuning in. It was the type of promo that fans of the era would have eaten up. WCW bringing more guys in to do WWF-style promos but keeping their longer matches probably would have been the secret sauce to stay competitive. Then again, Scott Steiner couldn't keep himself on television in 1999. Such is life! After this sudden assault on DDP as a human being, Steiner demands that Flair tell him who his opponent at Sin is right now. Flair is mockingly obsequious in his opening remarks to Steiner, giving him all sorts of plaudits before suggesting that he’s got to keep pushing Steiner to be the very best. Steiner suspects that Flair is trying to fuck him over, but Flair presses on by announcing that he’ll be booking Steiner to defend his title in a Triple Threat Match at Sin. One opponent will be determined via a four-person tournament tonight. Flair withholds the names of the competitors to keep Steiner from getting to them before their bouts. Flair stops here to mention that he’s also got a mystery man – is this Road Warrior Animal or is this the other opponent? – and thus enrages Scott Steiner. Well, enrages him more than he typically is. Steiner promises to find out who this mystery man is or die trying. No, that’s not accurate. Let me rephrase: Steiner promises to find out who this mystery man is or beat the shit out of Ric Flair while trying. Yeah, that’s a much more accurate paraphrase of Steiner’s vow. Hold on, let’s stop here for just a second. I didn’t recall Sin being a triple threat. Let me think here. What I recall is Steiner/Sid working a singles match and then Road Warrior Animal coming out at the end and not really needing to help Steiner beat down Sid all that much considering Sid’s injured leg. I also remember being very let down by the reveal that it was fucking ROAD WARRIOR ANIMAL, AKA the boring yell-y one of the Road Warriors. I vividly remember trying to see what news I could find on expiring contracts just to get a sense of whether or not it could be an upper-carder or main eventer coming over, and I think I even was hoping it was Rob Van Dam at the time, but no dice. Also, doesn’t CEO Flair become Evil CEO Flair at this event? What a clusterfuck of a show, and I’m still five shows away from it, including this one. Recap: Buff Bagwell joins Lex Luger in his quest to rid WCW of Goldberg. So, is Lex Luger a San Antonio Spurs fan, or does he just like their warmups? Luger and Buff chat with Gene Okerlund in the back. Buff explains the motivation for his heel turn. First, he reads a dedication from Goldberg’s book: “’To Buff, you are the stuff – Bill Goldberg.’ And by the way, Bill, ‘stuff’ is [spelled with] TWO ‘F’s, YOU BIG GOOF.” Then he basically says that WCW sucks ass, so he decided to join up with Luger. That’s, uh, incomplete motivation. The implication, I presume, is that Buff wants to kill off WCW’s cash cow as revenge for not getting pushed more or some nonsense like that. Scott Steiner suddenly busts in on this interview and scares the shit out of Lex Luger: “Luger, you know Flair; he’s been screwin’ me, he’s screwed you, find out who the mystery partner is! *points at Buff* Find out who he is! HELP ME OUT, MAN!” Steiner’s chaotic energy is very entertaining tonight. Luger’s choice to respond with a placating “I’ll be there for you, Scotty!” cracks me up, too. Luger and Buff decide to make haste and maybe go the opposite direction that Scott Steiner was going in, so this interview is abruptly over. Meng (w/Kwee Wee and Paisley) gets a hardcore title shot against new champ Terry Funk. Put the camera on Paisley more, dammit! Funk shows up on the TurnerTron and calls Meng “a monkey-faced moron…with flat feet and [a] banana nose.” Wherever he is, there’s a fence or a cage or somesuch. Meng slowly jogs backstage, the ref and his designer buddies following. Meng finds the fencing area backstage, and we get a garbage dump of a match. It’s the same fuckshit everyone is used to from these matches. One kinda neat spot is a punch-drunk Funk tossing a trash can over his head as he stumbles away from Meng, it landing on Meng’s head, and Meng no-selling the blow so that he can pick up the can and beat Funk with it. They make it back out in front of the crowd, where Meng exposes that Thunder is shot along with Nitro each week when he pulls up the skirting on the apron to get a table. Someone’s got an AUSTIN 3:16 SAYS GOLDBERG’S NEXT sign, and dammit, we never got that match. Meng destroys Funk, but Crowbar runs in and clobbers Meng with his golden wrench; Funk topples on top of Meng for three. Hey, Crowbar is back in his junk clothes! He grabs a mic and tells Funk that he’s back in his grungy duds instead of that ‘70s nonsense, so that signals a perspective change which has him ready to put a hurting on the Funker at Sin. Jeff Jarrett practically jumps out of his skin when Scott Steiner comes up to him, yells out a garbled angry accusation at Jarrett for accidentally KABONGing him at Starrcade – I can only guess this because he points angrily at the KABONGing guitar that Jarrett is wielding while sputtering out a garbled ball of vocal rage – and asks Jarrett if he’s one of the qualifiers for the Sin main event. Jarrett denies it; Steiner then demands that Jarrett help him figure out who CEO Flair’s secret mystery dude is before leaving. Jarrett waits until Steiner is way the hell down the hall before yelling GET OFF MY BACK, which is probably smart! After some stills of Reno nonsensically being the one to have hired KroniK to beat up both Vito and, um, Reno, we get Vito standing backstage with Gene Okerlund and cutting a bad promo on Reno. Daffney is so proud of Crowbar for finding himself again; they walk past Mike Awesome, who wants to know where Crowbar's dope leisure suit is. Crowbar says that the ‘70s gimmick almost destroyed his career and sense of self and suggests that maybe Awesome should consider dropping it as well. They part as friends. Lance Storm (w/Major Gunns) is in the first mini-tournament match; he talks about getting a chance to get the only WCW belt he hasn’t yet won, though was he a tag title? Maybe the only singles belt he hasn't yet won is a more correct suggestion. He makes an election jibe, but Tony S. is suuuuper-bored with all that shit. Agreed. Storm’s opponent is Rey Misterio Jr. (w/Tygress). This would be good if it got some time, but they’re wrestling this at top speed, so it probably won't get enough time. Slick Johnson poorly positions himself and gets crunched by Storm on a spot. It wasn’t a ref bump; Slick looked like a dolt as a shoot and not as a work. Storm gets knees up on an Asai moonsault to stop the flood of Misterio offense and goes to work with a superkick and a stalling vertical suplex. He can’t put Misterio away, though; Rey rolls outside and Storm follows, where they have a brief obligabrawl. Back in the ring, they counter and counter and nearfall and nearfall until Storm decides to sink in an abdominal stretch and throw punches at Rey’s taped ribs. Rey reaches into his reserves and hip tosses his way out, but his follow-up splash fails. Storm backs Rey into the corner and throws punches at his ribs, but his Irish whip into the other corner is blocked twice; Rey ends up hitting a headscissors the second time and a somersault seated plancha when Storm rolls outside the ring after that move. Rey follows up with a springboard guillotine legdrop back in the ring, but it gets 2.5. Rey goes on the run and gets his bulldog attempt countered into a Canadian Maple Leaf; he can’t turn his way out of it and is forced to tap out. Decent match, if a bit rough around the edges. Madden intimates that Lance Storm has replaced Bret Hart as THE elite technical wrestler from Calgary, and no, he hasn’t, but it’s a nice way to put the guy over. Mic in hand, Mike Awesome comes to the ring for the other qualifier into the Sin main event. He macks on the ladies, but he realizes that after destroying Bam Bam at Starrcade and talking to Crowbar, he’s maybe more feeling Career Killer-ish than ‘70s Guy-ish right now. Awesome’s opponent is Jeff Jarrett. Uh-oh, someone told a little fib to that nutbar Scotty Steiner! Actually, Jarrett should probably finish this early before Scott Steiner and his lead pipe make it on down here. Awesome gets an early two count off a nice flying shoulderblock. Jarrett quickly gets on top of things with knees and boots, but he gets corralled on a leapover attempt and release back suplexed. Awesome tries to follow up, but is caught with a jawbreaker and sent to the floor for the obligatory ringside brawl that is such a signature of your typical WCW bout. Jarrett starts the obligabrawl on top, but Awesome changes all that after whipping Jarrett between the apron and the rail and bashing Jarrett onto the commentary desk. It’s only when Awesome tries a power move of some sort on top of the table that Jarrett is able to get in a forearm to the balls; he wisely takes the match back to the ring after that. This is another decent match that isn’t hitting the level of “so good, I would suggest that you watch it,” but that is an enjoyable enough time. Awesome gets a close two count on a regular powerbomb, then combos a diving lariat from the top and a double-underhook facebuster for another two count. Awesome looks for an Awesome Bomb that Jarrett slips out of; Awesome charges Jarrett, but Jarrett boots Awesome back into ref Charles Robinson. Jarrett grabs his KABONGin’ guitar, but Awesome knocks him down and takes it away from him. As Robinson stops him from swinging it, Jarrett crawls to the apron, reaches down, grabs another guitar, and then swings it at Awesome when Awesome advances and Robinson is looking elsewhere while disposing of the first guitar. That KABONG gets a quick three for Jarrett when Robinson turns around and sees Jarrett’s leveraged pinfall attempt. This was alllllllright. Scott Steiner runs up on Jarrett backstage when we come back, and actually, Steiner is even more sinister because he’s not yelling: “Jeff, Jeff…you lied to me, man.” Jarrett immediately explains that CEO Flair would have taken him out of the match had he owned up to being a participant and that he’s trying to get into the match at Sin to back Steiner up as Steiner’s only friend in the company. It works, somehow. Promo: Glacier is still on his way back, and we cut to Norman Smiley watching this promo in the locker room. He gets hyped and dances because Glacier, “a real hero,” will be here soon. Again. Gene Okerlund interviews Shane Douglas, who is okay with having not won the U.S. Championship yet because he’s got a long-term plan to destroy Rection and the M.I.A. He challenges the Misfits to a match against him and two partners on the upcoming Thunder; he came up with the cash to hire KroniK, who step into the picture and assure Rection and Company that they’re going to catch a beatdown on Thunder later tonight on Wednesday. CEO Ric Flair talks to someone over the phone about his big surprise for tonight; Mike Awesome destroys tables in the back and calls the Filthy Animals “a buncha lightweights” when they try to calm him down. Konnan exclaiming WHAT A SAP at the departing Awesome got me to laugh. Alex Wright is all by his lonesome tonight as he wrestles the Cat (w/the lovely Ms. Jones). The Cat does not enjoy Wright’s dancing, and he makes that clear. Madden, who has once again been comparing the Cat to every black TV character from the ‘70s because he knows the Cat will come at him verbally and maybe even physically no matter what he says or doesn't say, is then the recipient of a small FAT ASS chant after the Cat says he’d rather see Madden dance and then asks the crowd to help him request that Madden cut a rug. It’s all puerile stuff. Wright and the Cat proceed to have the same match everyone else has had tonight, but worse. They have a typical obligabrawl, and as with the previous match, it also makes its way over to the commentary table. They get in the ring before having a second obligabrawl. Ms. Jones runs a distraction by trying to kick Wright; her kick is blocked, but it allows the Cat to get a kick in, though Wright just takes back over anyway. They get back in the ring, and Wright cinches in an armbar that the Cat fights up from, though Wright drops him again and goes back to an armlock. Wright gets up from that, but continues to dominate for another couple of minutes until the Cat scores a flash Feliner after slipping out of the back of a Wright Snake Eyes attempt to win this match. The babyfaces celebrate with a dance. It’s rad. The match? Not so rad. The Thrillers get out of a limo; Sanders is ordering some escorts or something. Elsewhere backstage, Scott Steiner randomly kills off the losing teams in the Starrcade opener and also Elix Skipper. *whispers* I think he’s mad. The Thrillers now make their way out to the ring, where Sanders does his typical “trailer trash” shtick at only an above average clip compared to, say, Scott Steiner. On the other hand, he does it better than the rest of the Thrillers would. I mean, this guy’s nickname is appropriate! He goes on and on about the physical attractiveness of he and his compatriots. This feels a whole lot like filler. He meanders around to saying that even though the Thrillers don’t have the tag gold, they’re here and feeling good and the Insiders are licking their wounds at home. Finally, fucking finally, he uses his commissioner powers to book the Insiders in a tag title match at Sin against…wait, hold on, it's CEO Ric Flair interrupting that announcement. Madden makes me laugh by declaring that the number one contenders are Flair and Blackjack Mulligan when Flair’s music cuts in right at the reveal of Sanders’s announcement. Flair says, “I knocked down more women in 1981 [in Richmond, VA] than you’ll ever have in your life.” Ew. That right there is part of the reason that antibiotics are less able to fight disease today, I’m sure of it. The CEO books one of these fucking tag team battle royals for the shot at the Insiders. Jindrak and O’Haire have won one of these earlier in the year (Nitro Show #259), so I like their odds. We get a repeat of the Starrcade stills of Buff Bagwell, Lex Luger, Sarge, and Goldberg, which leads into Buff vs. Goldberg on tonight’s show. Bagwell, who explicitly named Totally Buff in his earlier interview, has come out here alone, but I assume that it’s only a matter of time until his running buddy makes it out to join him. Oh, yeah, there’s Luger hiding behind the apron with a chair; Goldberg stalks Buff, who backs off and circles the ring until Luger can pop out and clobber Goldberg. Totally Buff commences upon a beatdown until Sarge runs in and attacks Buff, though Luger lands a chair shot to the head on Sarge. At least Sarge’s diversion gives Goldberg, the winner by DQ I presume, time to recover and clear the heels out with Side Kicks of DOOOOOOOM. Our main event for the night will determine the third entrant into the Sin main event: Lance Storm (w/Major Gunns) does some more pre-match mic work before Jeff Jarrett joins him in the ring for a brief bout. Storm gives Jarrett his props, but points out the one flaw in Jarrett’s game, namely that he’s not from CALGARY…ALBERTA, CANADA. By the time Jarrett gets out here, we’re fewer than seven minutes from the finish, so let’s just talk about the finish. After a okay, but rushed match, in which Storm survives a Figure Four and both men trade flash pinfall attempts, Slick Johnson initiates a standing ten-count after a superplex. Jarrett covers at eight, but Storm kicks out at two. Jarrett tries an enziguri, but Storm ducks and holds onto Jarrett’s leg, then tries a Canadian Maple Leaf, but Jarrett sees it coming and immediately crawls to the ropes. Storm stands Jarrett up and tries to shoot him into the ropes, but Jarrett halts his progress and, rather than whipping Storm in on a reversal, simply stops and hooks Storm for a Stroke that gets three. Scott Steiner storms out here with a mic and tells CEO Ric Flair that he’ll be performing a free colonoscopy on the CEO with his lead pipe as soon as he gets back to his office. Cameras follow Steiner to the back while Steiner accosts Jimmy Hart; Steiner eventually finds the CEO’s office, but Flair isn’t in it. Steiner spots Flair at the end of the hall and rushes him, but the fully-covered mystery man pops out the other side of a door and batters Steiner as the show ends. This was a decent enough show, though after months of complaining about aimlessly-long wrestling matches back in 1998 and the first half of 1999, I would like to change my position and ask for those matches back again, please. 2.5 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

I think (from what I can glean) wrestlers value her work, but I don't think the general fandom values it enough.

I presume Nintendo will diversify their shipping and add an extra step to ship from China to a holding warehouse in a country not affected by tariffs. If there is one thing Americans are actually good at, it's consumer spending.

My hot take is that 1998 Sable is fine. She's actually a decent enough athlete to pull off a high spot when she needs to, and the crowd ate up her lady Goldberg act. Mero, Jacqueline, Luna, and Goldust don't get enough credit for how much they helped her get over, though.

They do not as far as I know. I presume they will be shipping from Vietnam at this point, though of course, things will evolve. Taiwan Semi has started a couple of plants here, right? Even if one is in Arizona, which is strange considering how much water you need to make chips. I wonder if more established chip companies will open up factories in the United States.

Not all their stuff in their supply chain is sourced from tariff-targeted countries either, though with the chaos of policymaking, who knows what'll happen.

Starrcade 2000 notes: If WrestleMania is the granddaddy of ‘em all, Starrcade is the older brother of the granddaddy of ‘em all, except Uncle Starrcade dies of neglect before its time and Grandpappy WrestleMania is left receiving all the family glory. Hype video: Starrcade is pretty interesting, though it’s missing two of the guys on its promo poster (Booker T. and Sting), and having those guys on this show would make it far more interesting to me. We open with the Six Man Ladder Match Scramble; Chavo Jr. walks out here to Uncle Eddy’s former theme and joins commentary to watch the action. As Two Count is next onto the ramp, I think to myself that this Shane Helms babyface push came out of nowhere, didn’t it? That’s not how I remember it, but that’s how it happened. Jamie (K)noble and Evan Karagias are next to the ring, and the Jung Dragons (w/Leia Meow) complete the set of competitors. As this match starts with two competitors in the ring and everyone else standing around waiting for tags, which is absolute fucking NONSENSE, like what in fuck is this match even supposed to be, Tony S. talks about a pre-show incident between Scotty Steiner and Sid that has caused them to be forced away from one another until the main event. The match in the ring takes a couple of minutes of orderliness for itself before it breaks down entirely and has all six guys scramble for ladders so that we can get to the car crash stuff already. OK, so now the match is a scramble, except the teams are working together. Kaz hits an Asai moonsault on a ladder, which obviously hurts him more than it hurts his opponent who is barely laying under the legs of the ladder. This match is just a giant stunt show in which guys take ladder bumps to diminishing awesomeness. I feel like the first Edge and Christian vs. Hardy Boyz match pretty much said all that needed to be said about multiman ladder matches. Do people still like the TLC matches that include the Dudley Boyz? I think I enjoyed them as a teen watching with his buddies and OHHHHHHing at every ladder bump, but I’m old and cranky now. I prefer a ten-minute struggle over a leg bar to a match full of high spot overload. This stuff was all much cooler back in 2000, though. Yang does a whole ladder contraption deal with a couple of ladders so that Karagias can walk across a ladder wedged into another ladder and catch a springboarding Kaz for a powerslam. The crowd is enjoying the spotfest well enough, and I get it! It’s a very good one of these! Shane Helms hitting a neckbreaker on Noble off the ladder is a visual treat, in particular. Leia Meow eventually blindsides Noble as Noble tries to climb, which buys some time for everyone else to recover. The Jung Dragons use four ladders to build a sort of scaffold, which actually is a good kayfabe idea and also maybe a shoot stable construction for more spots. Two Count recovers and knocks the Dragons’ heads into the ladder, but Noble and Karagias catch Two Count on top of the scaffolded ladder and beat them down. This sets off another round of high spots on the scaffolded ladder. Karagias takes a pretty sweet bump after Yang kicks him off the ladder and he lands on the top rope before tumbling to the floor. Finally, Yang turns to Helms, also on the scaffold, but Moore uses the ladder to hit a headscissors while Helms tosses Knoble away. This leaves Two Count alone on the scaffold, and they shake hands and both pluck the contract at the same time while Chavo complains about two guys managing to win a title shot in a match where only one person was supposed to win a chance to take his gold. This was a solid spectacle if you’re into that sort of thing. In the Team Canada locker room, Hacksaw polishes his 2x4; Lance Storm tries to convince him that the American fans will never accept him after he turned on them, and even if they did, the office was going to cull his contract as a cost-cutting measure anyway before Team Canada saved him by bringing him in. He leaves Hacksaw with a Canadian hockey jersey and, I suppose, his thoughts. Well, what few thoughts a dolt like Hacksaw has rattling around in that dome of his, at least. Jeff Jarrett and the Harris Bros. demand that Commissioner Sanders make their street fight against the Filthy Animals a Bunkhouse Street Fight, which all amounts to the same fucking thing anyway, so Sanders agrees. While chilling in the sauna – well, not literally chilling as it’s quite warm in there, but colloquially chilling, as in they are quite relaxed—KroniK accepts another job from some mysterious dude. They’re so excited to complete this job, they’re willing to get paid after the job instead of up front. Also, Adams is high as hell, man. That’s what he said! Lance Storm (w/Elix Skipper and Major Gunns) has his big match against the Cat (w/Ms. Jones). I forgot to mention that Mark Madden is on this show, so he still hasn’t been fired just yet. He thinks that Hacksaw is making a big mistake by turning his back on Team Canada over on commentary, and Storm obviously agrees as he addresses the crowd in the ring. He also thinks that the 2000 federal elections in the United States were essentially, and I quote, “a pathetic attempt at democracy because the truth is [that] the man with the most votes lost.” I mean, this man tells no lies, which is really why these fans hate him. They hate the truth. They hate freedom. They hate justice. The Cat does his typical thing where he insults Storm and also Madden since Madden is in the arena, then promises to kick his opponent’s ass. He and Ms. Jones get in the ring and dance. Eventually, Storm makes his way back into the ring and we get a match. Storm probably needs to win this. I think he’s a lot like Mike Awesome – fun to watch, ultimately empty calories, probably best utilized as part of a tag team – but he’s quite useful to 2000/2001 WCW as an upper-card heel who can consistently have enjoyable matches. I like the Cat an awful lot, but he’s not very good in the ring, and he also can eat as many losses as the bookers feed him and still stay over. Early on, Major Gunns trips the Cat, which draws Ms. Jones over, and eventually they get in the ring and square off; Miller and Storm stop them from fighting as the crowd BOOOOOOOs. Things settle down again and Storm embarks upon a solid heel control segment in which he cuts off a couple of Cat comebacks. We even get a WCW-in-’99 Special spot in which the Cat rolls up a cocky Storm (yelling at the crowd: “This is how we wrestle…In Calgary, Al--*gets small packaged*) and then storm is up first and takes over with a clothesline. The Cat makes a comeback that sticks, especially when he presses an onrushing Storm up into the air and then boots him right in the junk on his way down. He next looks for a Feliner, so Skipper hops on the apron, clubs him, then drags him outside. Skipper is doing alright for himself until Miller grabs a bottle of water and clubs him with it; Storm then comes outside to save Skip and start an obligabrawl with the Cat, which he dominates. Ms. Jones tries to intervene, but her high kick smacks ref Slick Johnson right in the head as Slick tries to get the combatants back into the ring. Major Gunns hits another really nice dropkick on Jones. I am stunned that Gunns isn’t particularly good at anything except for that dropkick, which looks great. Jones gets back up more mad than injured, though, and she whips Gunns into the guardrail. Pretty much everyone is down, but eventually, Storm gets the Cat back in the ring and follows him with a springboard dropkick. He covers, but Skipper isn’t able to get Slick back into the ring, and Storm only gets a visual three count. Storm hits a series of two counts, but the crowd is more focused on Hacksaw Duggan, who walks out to the ring with his 2x4, looking conflicted. He gets in the ring, makes to hit the Cat with his 2x4, and can’t bring himself to go that far. He just clubs the Cat forward, and Storm, trying to pull him into a sunset flip, instead rolls through and locks on a Canadian Maple Leaf. After the match, Duggan and the rest of Team Canada stand tall. Well, except for when Skipper and Storm jump Duggan, at which point Duggan is less standing tall and more slouching in the corner and getting his ass kicked. The Cat makes the save, but a depressed Duggan has his head down, probably wondering if Turner is giving severance packages to midcard guys who they really can’t use anymore. That match was just the right amount of overbooked for my tastes, by the way. Mike Awesome’s back to driving ambulances; he’s brought one to the arena tonight. Buff Bagwell is on backstage interviews tonight for some reason. Buff complains about this being the only way the company could figure out how to get him on this show, then invites the Filthy Animals in to talk about this whole bunkhouse match deal. My favorite part of this interview is Buff casually saying “What up, Rey Rey?” while making sure not to leave Rey hanging on a low-five. Reno, Vito, and Marie/a walk down the hall; the Thrillers razz Reno for hanging out with Vito instead of them, and the two groups have a verbal confrontation that isn’t very crisp on audio before walking away. Daffney is not a fan of Crowbar still wearing his ‘70s duds; she thinks that he’s been a little soft ever since he switched up his style. Crowbar disagrees, but as they walk together and talk about it backstage, Terry Funk sprays a fire extinguisher into Crowbar's face, and the hardcore title match begins somewhere in the production area. They do a dumb spot where Funk puts Crowbar on a rolling trunk and then gently shoves it for a little while while Crowbar relaxes on it. This match is what it is. They do fight in the loading area of a moving truck, though, which is cool because you can do that exact thing in WWF No Mercy for the Nintendo 64. You could really cheese the opponents in a handicap match by standing in the truck, as you couldn’t be attacked from behind and the opponents would often come at you one at a time, making it much easier to damage one to the point that you could pin them. Oh, there’s a match here. Funk hip tosses Crowbar out of the truck and through a table set up on the ground, so there’s that. We’re about a month away from this title not being a thing anymore, and I personally am ready for Meng to go be Haku and to take this title with him. This was an ill-devised division that I suspect caley was right about w/r/t it being created almost totally in reaction to the WWF’s own hardcore division. But before that happens, Funk snatches a pair of handcuffs that Crowbar was wielding away from him; he uses them to cuff Crowbar’s hands together. Funk then tees off with a series of chair shots to Crowbar's head, all for this stupid title in this dumb division in this dying company, a title that won’t even be active for more than about the next month to boot. Funk hits Crowbar in the head with a fan door all the way down the ramp. Then, he lands more chair shots to the head. This is fucking idiotic; it's probably an attempted reference to Rock/Mankind at the '99 Rumble except this is entirely pointless in every way because these chair shots are being used in a match that is not exactly the same as Rock/Mankind in terms of dramatic effect! Daffney yanks Crowbar off a table when Funk prepares to moonsault him through it, so the Funker grabs Daffney; Crowbar gets a chair and hits Funk, then uses his cuffs to choke the guy. Crowbar places Funk on the table, gets in the ring, and slingshot splashes Funk through the table for two. That’s about as close as he gets to victory, though Daffney tries to help by tossing a chair into Funk’s face, which leads to Crowbar getting another two count. Funk eventually goes back to the ol’ "unprotected chair shots to the head" strategy, then piledrives Crowbar onto the van door and covers for three and the title. Daffney is despondent. Gene Okerlund lectures Team Canada for their dastardly attack on Jim Duggan, but Storm says that he was planning this out for a few weeks. He also claims that Americans are always Americans and can never change their spots, which I think is interesting considering that the extremely American Mike Awesome will be accepted into this group in the next couple of months. Major Gunns blows the one line she’s supposed to say at the end of these interviews (“Gene, don’t blame yours—don’t bl—don’t blame Canada, blame yourself!”). Okerlund’s response is to suggest that she might also blow (and/or ride) his wrinkly old peener. Gunns is, and you won’t believe me when I say this, not interested in the least. In his locker room, Lex Luger prepares for another match against Goldberg by unpacking his gear bag. Total Package t-shirt, muscle pump, and brass knucks – yeah, this guy definitely packed the essentials. I feel like Vito was kind of over as a fightin' babyface midcarder at one point earlier this year, but now he’s not because he’s stuck with Reno, who is boring as shit. Marie/a escorts them out here. KroniK speaks before the match; Adams insinuates that Marie/a is the one who has hired them. She seems baffled by this claim. Hudson guessed it was her about three minutes before Adams made the claim, so if it was her, he pulled a “Heenan at the end of the Bash at the Beach ’96 main event” right there. A few PPVs ago, KroniK wrestled the Mamalukes and had a good tag match with them. This match swaps Reno for the Bull, which seems like probably a tiny upgrade, but this angle with Marie/a has been wedged into it, so they have to stop for spots with her. This is still a watchable match, but Adams asking Maria for his cash while Maria denies ever having hired them isn’t particularly engaging. Plus, now I just want to get to the end of the match to see what the reveal is here for who hired KroniK, which is a mystery that I have moderate interest in seeing the solution to. As Clark cranks a headlock on Vito, The Thrillers saunter onto the rampway. I mean, Johnny the Bull could be the guy behind the payments if he’s ready to wrestle after cracking his ankle into multiple pieces. I actually hadn’t expected him to make another WCW appearance after that ankle injury and knowing how little time the company had left. Vito could also be the guy, but he’s been getting his ass kicked as the FIP for quite a while now, and who would logically want to take an ass whipping like this to double-cross his opps? Vito could have tagged out and let Reno be the guy who got his ass kicked. As it turns out, Reno was the guy who paid KroniK; he hits Vito with the Roll of the Dice on the hot tag and then demands that ref Jamie Tucker count his pinfall attempt even though he's on Vito’s team. Oh WCW, you are so fucking dumb. I’m glad we got at least one more match where the guy making the pinfall shouldn’t have been able to legally do so because one of them is on the other's team/ the guy getting covered isn't even booked in the match. Reno got his ass kicked for weeks to pull this nonsense on Vito for some reason, so think about the logic of that little storyline beat for a second. A distraught Marie/a watches KroniK destroy Vito with a Meltdown and a High Times after the match while Reno rejoins his buddies in the Thrillers. This was pretty stupid, actually. Gene Okerlund gives Two Count their plaudits after their tie victory in the opener. He asks who will be taking the title shot; Helms says that they’re both number one contenders. Chavo moseys up, insults Two Count, and then suddenly physically attacks them. He has ten pounds of gold to use as a weapon, so he lays them both out and says that his experience and guile will win the day over both of these greenhorns. Buff Bagwell asks the Misfits in Action if they’re going to break up; Rection ignores that question and instead yells at and about Shane Douglas and Dominic Denucci and, yes, Chavo Jr. As Bam Bam Bigelow and Mike Awesome make their way to the ring for an Ambulance Match, I think the problem with this show, and why it ultimately will not be the final good-to-great WCW PPV, is that it’s too reliant on gimmick matches and matches built around angles. After Awesome sheds his ‘70s gear, Madden claims that he got a lot of ladies to shed their ‘70s gear back in the day, and Tony S.’s disbelieving laughter is pretty much perfect. Meanwhile, this match is watchable, I suppose. It’s the same ringside-brawl-and-weapon-shot match we’ve seen a hundred times tonight already. I think it’s a sign of the disorganization in WCW and the efficiency of the WWF machine at this time that WCW signed all these ECW guys and couldn’t figure out how to get the most out of them, but the WWF basically got the Dudley Boyz over almost immediately upon their entry into the company. Yeah, yeah, there’s Taz(z) on the flip side of that, but I think my point is made. Or maybe the problem is that WCW didn’t get Bubba, D-Von, or RVD, though I’m not sure if even the former two are good enough to get over as a tag team automatically in this dysfunctional-ass company. RVD, as I’ve suggested a few times before in these reviews, would get over anywhere in a matter of weeks. Boy, does this brawl wander! It wanders to the ambulance, where Bigelow slices himself up punching through an ambulance window; then, it moves back to the commentary desk. Awesome puts Bigelow down and goes after a table. Hudson and Madden have both claimed that Awesome has never won one of his specialty Ambulance Matches, but I’m pretty sure that’s untrue. I refuse to go back and check for the exact show that disproves this, but I’m pretty sure that’s untrue. Awesome takes a bump through his own table that he set up, and these two finally move the proceedings back to the ambulance. Bigelow is knocked through the gimmicked hood of the ambulance by a siren swinging attack from Awesome. Mercifully, this sucker is over. It wasn’t bad, but it was bland and same-y. Gene Okerlund interviews Reno, who cuts a dull promo on Vito. Commissioner Sanders is then asked about The Perfect Event’s tag title defense; Sanders kicks it over to Palumbo and Stasiak, which should be a fireable offense since these two absolutely suck on the stick. Nothing of value is said. HAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAww fuck, it’s the Franchise. We review General Rection making a face turn by kayfabe injuring Torrie and taking her off television before turning heel again by being sorry about it. Wait, hold on, I’m being handed a note. Apparently Rection has been a face the whole time? Okay, sure, whatever. Douglas stinks it up on the mic before the match. He’s mad about Torrie being hurt and makes a far less entertaining “figure out your federal elections, you idiots” remark than Lance Storm did earlier. Madden, who earlier pretended to be a Canadian citizen in support of Lance Storm, goes off about Shane Douglas being one of the many great athletes from his hometown, listing off a few of them, before Tony S. flummoxes him with a “Are they from your hometown in South Canada?” To quote Shane Douglas: HAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. This match is what it is, by the way. It’s a match between one dull, but competent worker with a bad finish and one crappy worker with a couple of good spots and a very good finish. You get what you get. Rection locks on a bearhug and Madden notes that “Bruno, you may hate me, but you gotta love this.” An eternal beef that was sparked over a Torch column about David Sammartino admitting to taking steroids: Bruno and Madden were probably two extremely tiresome dudes to spend time around, huh? Rection locks on the bear hug and Douglas struggles to survive while in it, which is the reverse of what you’d expect considering the face/heel alignment of the men in the ring. Douglas eventually kicks out of a pinfall attempt after trying to bite his way out of the bearhug and getting squashed instead; he blocks a No Laughing Matter attempt and takes over with some mediocre offense. Douglas does manage a two count of his own, but he spends about a decade yapping at the fans before covering, so that’s a kayfabe mistake from a guy who is often portrayed as a ring mastermind. This match meanders on, enters a state of obligabrawl, and eventually leads to a second No Laughing Matter attempt from Rection; Douglas rolls away and Rection splatters himself. Douglas wraps a chain around his fist, but he swings and misses entirely. The chain goes flying; Chavo Jr. sneaks down, grabs the chain, and then draws ref Charles Robinson over. As Robinson talks to Chavo, Chavo tosses the chain to Douglas, who wraps it on his fist…and is disqualified when Chavo tells Robinson to look at what Douglas is up to. Douglas hits both guys with chain-assisted punches and Franchisers until the other Misfits race down and run him off. Heck of a finish, fellas! Maybe have proper finishes in Starrcade matches rather than simply continuing storylines via wonky finishes. After they come to, Rection and Chavo yell at one another. Rection bladed for this dumb, crowd-killing finish like an idiot. Gene Okerlund interviews Scott Steiner and Midajah; Steiner is one of few legitimate stars on this show, and I’m glad that he’s here to cut a nutty promo about beating Sid tonight and about having sex with many ladies who are into him after he's done beating Sid tonight. Another promo that’s drawing Glacier’s re-debut out: It’s a newer, longer Glacier promo! I almost wish that WCW had mimicked what they did in 1996 and kept running these forever, except this time, the last promo runs on the 3/26/01 Nitro promising Glacier’s return on Nitro next week. Buff Bagwell interviews the Insiders: Buff makes fun of how broke and nondescript the Thrillers are while Nash tries on Buff's hat, and look, the Insiders should probably win this thing in three minutes or fewer because TPE is a joke team. Page is still bad at talking, just in case you were wondering. He ends early, so Nash and Buff kill some time by very explicitly talking about killing some time. It's yet another match fulla plundah and ringside brawling here on Starrcade, this time the six-man tag in which Jeff Jarrett and the Harris Bros face the Filthy Animals (w/Tygress) in a Russo-like match: A Filthy Animals Street Fight Bunkhouse Brawl Match. And yes, all those words have been stated by participants or commentators when describing what this match actually is. There’s a popcorn machine and a makeshift bar with stools out here as part of the plundah, by the way. Tygress joins commentary and guarantees a win. The fellas in the match do the same shit I’ve seen in most every match tonight. At least the opener had a bunch of dives; the rest of this show is endless weapon shots. I don’t even have the energy to recount more of this shit to you; let me just talk you through the finish. So, after Jarrett goes through the bar and Rey and Kidman actually do some interesting double-team wrestling moves in the middle of this mess and Jarrett powerbombs Rey into a dumpster, the ref suddenly starts enforcing tag rules (much to Tony S.’s complete disbelief). This is a reverse of the first match, which started out enforcing tag rules and then forgot about all that “legal tag” nonsense two minutes in. I mean, sorry for not getting to the finish, but Jarrett insists on a protracted sleeper spot to spark a babyface reversal and hot tag in the middle of a…Filthy Animals Street Fight Bunkhouse Brawl Match. That was a completely incoherent spot for the type of match this is. So anyway, a Harris Bro bashes Kidman in the head with a bottle as Kidman tries to hit Jarrett with an SSP, and Jarrett follows up with a Stroke on Kidman for three. Bad match! Promo: It’s WCW Sin for the first and final time in January! I am not excited about Sid’s leg exploding. I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve been dreading getting to this specific injury since I started these reviews. Buff Bagwell interviews Sarge backstage about how everyone from the office to “the booking committee” (*sigh*, call it the “matchmaking committee” please) thinks Sarge is cool, man. Sarge cuts a promo on how much he doesn’t like Lex Luger, but Luger jumps Sarge from behind in the middle of it. Buff backs Luger off. To help bridge to the next match, we get protracted yammering from a desk that includes Scott Hudson, so suffice it to say it’s bad. After this, we get a pre-tape that hypes the Insiders vs. The Perfect Event. The Wolfpac theme brings out the Insiders; The Perfect Event (w/Commissioner Mike Sanders) soon follow, and after that, CEO Ric Flair walks to the top of the stage to make a brief executive decision. Said decision is to bar Mike Sanders from moving any closer to getting into the ring on threat of stripping the gold from TPE and awarding it to the Insiders. CEO Flair botched the explanation of the stipulation and tried to clarify by repeating it, but that only made things less clear until Tony S. helpfully explained what the fuck our tongue-tied CEO was trying to say. Palumbo and Nash have a decent opening in which they go about fifty-fifty before Palumbo misses a legdrop, and Nash gets a tag to Page. If they were working an angle where Palumbo is being held back by the less-talented Stasiak, that would be good for establishing that Palumbo actually has some potential, unlike his sub-mediocre partner. Wait a minute, they did work that angle, and then it was just a swerve all along. This is an alright match, though! For one, Page is good and Palumbo is decent. For two, Nash tries hard when he’s in the ring. For three, it’s a proper tag match with no weapons-based jibber-jabber. It’s not a Favorites List level of bout or anywhere near it, but it stands out amongst the samey mediocre weapons brawls from the rest of this night (again, outside of the energetic opener, which was easily the best of the plundah matches). Page ends up in FIP jail after eating a Palumbo superkick Jungle Kick as he has Stasiak hooked for a Diamond Cutter. They work some pretty good cutoff spots. The one leading to the hot tag is my favorite; Palumbo loses a punch-up with Page and then low-blows DDP in desperation. He also swings on Nash, but when he goes back over to grab Page’s legs, Page kicks away and gets a hot tag. Nash is a metaphorical house on fire after the hot tag; meanwhile, Page has rolled to the floor, where Sanders is able to attack him without stepping a single foot in the ring. Stasiak is able to knock Nash backward as Nash tries to Jackknife Palumbo, and Palumbo rolls Nash up for a well-timed 2.85 on Nash’s part. Meanwhile, Sanders gets on the apron, which is technically not in the ring, but Nash knocks him to the floor. Stasiak clobbers Nash with one of the tag belts and then tries to do the same to Page outside the ring, but Page blocks it and drills Stasiak with a Diamond Cutter. He hustles back around the ring as Palumbo tries to cover Nash and drags Palumbo off of Nash. O’Haire and Jindrak rush Page at ringside and the numbers game gets to Page, but Page manages to crotch O’Haire as he goes up to try a Seanton Bomb. Nash recovers after this and scores a big boot and a Jackknife on Palumbo for three. WCW World Tag Team Championship title change count: 17 (VACANT > David Flair and Crowbar > The Mamalukes > The Harris Bros. > VACANT > Buff Bagwell and Shane Douglas > KroniK > The Perfect Event > KroniK > Vampiro and Great Muta > Rey Misterio Jr. and Juventud Guerrera > VACANT > Jindrak and O’Haire > Boogie Knights > The Perfect Event > The Insiders > The Perfect Event > The Insiders)… This is going to sound faintly silly, but I think that’s been the best match on this show by a significant margin. If you watched this and preferred the opener, I wouldn’t challenge you on that opinion, though. After the match, Nash gets on the house mic and shouts out Scott Hall. I think at this point that I’m listening to a version of this show, maybe the VHS release version, that has juiced the audio. There’s just way too much noise based on how the hard cam side is reacting to things. Hype video: Goldberg/Luger has been a pretty solid feud, actually! The matches aren’t living up to the build, but I’m okay with that because I’m enjoying the build from week to week. Michael Buffer’s still making that WCW money. First up, he introduces Lex Luger and Goldberg for this No-Holds-Barred, No Disqualification Match that probably is going to have too many weapon shots and too much ringside brawling for my taste. Is this where Buff Bagwell turns heel and aligns with Lex? Yep, they start with a brawl outside the ring. That is what is. They move back inside the ring – the commentary table manages to survive a Goldberg onslaught – and Goldberg continues to dominate. Luger tries to bail on the match, so Goldberg walks him down in the aisle and continues to beat Luger down before finally being pushed into a post as Luger slips out of the back of a powerslam attempt. Yep, here is Buff Bagwell, having an animated conversation with a determined Sarge as they walk down the ramp. Luger’s got Goldberg back in the ring, but Goldberg turns it around fairly quickly. He sets up for a spear, so Luger pulls the ref in front of him. Goldberg stops in time, and as Buff pulls the ref out of Luger’s grasp, Luger loads his fist with the knucks, knocks out Sarge as Sarge stands at ringside, and then wallops Goldberg. He only gets 2.5. Buff goes up top to ostensibly help Goldberg, but Luger ducks Buff’s Blockbuster and Buff lays out Goldberg. Luger tosses Buff and then calls for a Torture Rack. Alas, Goldberg blocks it by hooking the ropes and hits a Roll of the Dice on Luger. We miss Buff clobbering Sarge at ringside. Goldberg lands a spear while Buff grabs a chair and chokes Sarge. Goldberg hits a Jackhammer for three and is immediately clobbered with an unprotected shot to the temple from Buff. Bagwell lands a few more chair shots, dances, and helps Luger away from ringside. I don’t get this: Why wouldn’t Buff save Luger from being pinned since he was free at ringside and could see Goldberg setting up for a Jackhammer? Anyway, Goldberg gets his first win at Starrcade since 1997! He celebrates with a young fella in the crowd who is missing his arms in a heartwarming little spot. Short hype vid: Scott Steiner and Syko Sid try to out-lunatic one another. After the package ends, Tony S.’s shocked WHAT IN THE WORLD at some young woman’s SCOTT STEINER: MY BOOTY DADDY sign cracked me up. He then names Ric Flair vs. Vader, Hulk Hogan vs. Sting, and Kevin Nash vs. Goldberg as some of the big title matches to headline this show in the past. I feel like he should have reached back for at least one example from before 1994, right? Syko Sid Vicious and Scott Steiner (w/Midajah) tangle for the big gold belt in our main event, and Michael Buffer once again does just fine with his introductions. Bonus: Buffer’s intonation on the phrase “HIS FAVORITE FREAK, the lovely Midajah” is fantastic. Sid is wearing full-length tights, and I have to tell you, it’s throwing me off, man. Sid rules the ring with a series of strikes early and sends Steiner rolling to ringside for space after a couple of lariats. Re-assessing the situation, Steiner asks for a test of strength and actually initially wins it, which is pretty rad. I also like Madden cribbing Superstar Graham’s boasts about POWAH whenever Steiner does a strongman spot. Sid works back to his feet and gets leverage on Steiner, popping him up and over in a body drop for two. A Sid legdrop gets two more. Sid is trying to get out of dodge with the title, but after hitting a big boot, he makes a miscalculation by hitting a lariat that sends Steiner to the floor. Primarily, that’s because you can’t win the gold out there, but also, Midajah is nearby with a lead pipe, which she lays into Sid. Steiner grabs a chair, pops Sid with it a couple of times, and yells FUCK YOU at a fan in the crowd while Tony S. says “as usual, Steiner with some unkind words for the fans” in what is some pretty classic understatement. Steiner rolls Sid back into the ring and lands an elbowdrop and a ribbreaker. Sid’s able to reverse an Irish whip, but he follows Steiner into the corner, where he eats a boot and then a belly-to-belly suplex. Steiner locks on a Recliner, but it’s far too close to the ropes, and Sid grabs the middle rope and gets a break. Steiner rages at ref Slick Johnson for a bit, but decides instead to hit a vertical suplex that positions Sid back in the center of the ring before going back to the Steiner Recliner. Sid starts to stand up in the Recliner; Midajah senses danger and goes up top, but Sid breaks the rest of the way out of Steiner’s clutches and moves; Midajah clears out Steiner. Sid follows up with a chokeslam and covers for 2.5-ish. Both men wearily get to their feet, and Steiner stumbles backward into a Sid Shinonomake. Arms flailing in panic, Steiner lashes out and hits Slick right in the face, spurring a ref bump, as Sid turns the Shinonomake into a slam. Rough night for Slick, who is on his second ref bump of the show. Somebody needs to check him for a concussion alongside poor, dumb Crowbar. Alright, we’re in the end game. Midajah gets on the apron as Sid completes a lateral press for a visual three count. He spots Midajah and pulls away to confront her; Steiner retrieves the lead pipe and swings for the fences as Sid stalks toward his FAVORITE FREAK. Steiner clubs Sid down with the pipe and covers and Charles Robinson hustles to the ring, but Sid kicks out at 2.5. Jeff Jarrett speeds down with a KABONGing guitar in hand and swings it at Sid; alas, he hits Steiner. To make up for that, he yanks Charles Robinson out of the ring to save Steiner on the resultant Sid pinfall attempt, and though he whiffs when he tries to club down Robinson, that gives Steiner time to kick out when Robinson slides back in the ring to count. Steiner is completely desperate; he goes low twice, then overhead suplexes Sid and puts him back in the Recliner. Sid tries to hang on for as long as possible, but he passes out before he can budge Steiner even one iota toward the ropes. There was so much gaga nonsense, but I did like this match in spite – or maybe because of? – it. I also appreciated the reminder that Jarrett and Steiner are still buddies. Starrcade was entirely overbooked, and that certainly prevented it from reaching the heights that it could have. One thing that I feel wrestling creatives really didn’t understand during the Nitro/Attitude Era was that at some point, if you overbook every match, that feels as drearily same-y as having two nondescript dudes in plain trunks trading holds for fifteen minutes every match would. It’s also the case that the more overbooking you do, the higher degree in difficulty to pull off a great finish or to nail the common story structures of a match in this region of the globe. You pull attention away from the drama of a close kickout because the viewer, whether in the arena or at home, has to split their attention between the action in the ring (which should be centered on the actual contestants) and whatever jibber-jabber is happening outside the ring. And finally, I can only watch guys bash each other with crap for so long before I’m inured to it. Honestly, by the tenth chair shot to the head, who cared anymore? They meant less and less with each shot, so guys were just scrambling their brains to the same effect as if they just put a guy in a wristlock. I think this era of pro wrestling absolutely ruined pro wrestling in general for me. I’ve gravitated toward less-is-more styles of wrestling, and especially after this year of WCW PPVs, I’ve appreciated more the protracted shine-FIP-cutoffs-hot tag-finish build of a well-laid-out tag match. Insiders/The Perfect Event wasn’t even able to escape having at least one of a) a bunch of weapon shots and ringside brawling or b) a gaga-ful finish full of interference, but what they built before the gaga and jibber-jabber at the end was probably the best example of what made WCW wrestling so appealing before it booked matches more in line with the zeitgeist and lost the one thing that it did much better than its major competitors. All that said, if you’re going to watch a full PPV from 2000 WCW, Starrcade is probably the best one from bell to bell, with only maybe Slamboree anywhere near it in terms of bell-to-bell quality. Honestly, Slamboree’s main event was better than anything on Starrcade, and it had higher highs as a whole, but it also had much lower lows. I think I’d rather sit through Starrcade again as a whole. Either way, they’re the only two PPVs from WCW all year that I’d ever again consider sitting through the whole thing.

At this point, it's hard to parse which billionaires are the least objectionable ones. On a gaming note, if Team Asobi is finished with updating Astro Bot's content now that the final free DLC world is out for the latest challenge galaxy, let me just say that it's my favorite game of the PS5 generation and if we're including the Switch's run from late 2020 on, it's my favorite game on either of those consoles or PC in the last five years. I was watching someone play Super Mario Sunshine on a stream, and it makes me wish that Sony and Nintendo would reach an agreement to let Asobi remake that game from the ground up since Fludd = Astro's Rocket Boots. Obviously, that'll never happen, but in the alternate universe where it does, I bet Sunshine goes from "not good" to "exceedingly great."

I'm guessing $450. I think there's never been more of a gap in terms of who can afford this sort of cost and who hasn't. I'm on the coasts in a major city where a bunch of the professional class has zero or one child and is married to someone else who also earns, often also in the professional class. I feel more and more like these products are made for people a) who have college degrees, b) small families, c) and are professionals d) living in what Richard Florida would term "superstar cities." Around here, I'll see plenty of people with Switch 2's right after launch, much like I see people driving fresh Rivians or fucking Cybertrucks if they have zero taste at all.

Thunder Interlude – show number one hundred and forty – 13 December 2000 "The WCW Gang decides to gently coast into their final Starrcade" Welcome to Thunder!... That’s actually what Commissioner Mike Sanders says to the camera as he makes an address to the crowd from his office in a pre-tape…He verifies that he’ll be booking Sarge/Luger as he promised and then pits Chavo Jr. in a match against The Perfect Event, asserting that if Chavo can’t find a partner, he’ll have to go it alone… CEO Ric Flair is watching Sanders’s address on a monitor in his office…He turns to the camera and, uh, is this also a pre-tape?...It doesn’t matter…He spices up Sanders’s booking by decreeing that Lance Storm has to sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” tonight per his deal with the Cat on Nitro and then takes all restrictions on contact away from Sid and Scott Steiner…His final decree is that he thinks Sanders is using his commissioner's office to cause an ABUSE OF POWER, YOU SUCK…Then, he abuses his own power by booking Sanders against DDP…Sanders is reacting to Flair as Flair talks, so both of these guys are pre-taped…Anyway, Sanders seems displeased with Flair’s final booking decision… It's our typical Thunder opening… Evan Karagias and Jamie (K)noble get a jobber entrance while Tony S. hypes tonight’s card and then the Six Pack Ladder Match at Starrcade…Two Count sprints to the ring, and we get a, hey, lookit here, a HOT CRUISERWEIGHT OPENER…OK, so it's two-thirds true...It’s not actually hot…Ah, the Jung Dragons also sprint to the ring, and it’s a giant clusterfuck…Konnan is on color with Tony S. and Mike Tenay tonight…Leia Meow has decided that the best tops are the ones with barely any fabric to them…Teenage me (and teenage zendragon) were probably trying to find a brick wall to run through while watching this back in the day… There are many dives and also some spots with a ladder…It’s basically a MOVEZ~ exhibition instead of a match with meat to it…I never get the logic of the spots where they lay a ladder across the top rope and then do a move from atop it…You’re like a couple of inches higher than where you would be if you were just standing on the buckles!...Karagias and Noble hit a double superplex from the top of a ladder lain across the buckles, and somehow that extra two inches incapacitates Shannon Moore completely…Karagias steals the pinfall from Noble and gets the win…WCW’s odd couple argues after the match… Lance Storm pleads with CEO Flair that he doesn’t know the words to the United States anthem and therefore cannot sing it, as obviously, he wouldn’t want to bring disrespect upon the U.S. and its mediocre poem about the British beating the shit out of us in the War of 1812 made into a subpar anthem…Jim Duggan is an absolute rube, a complete thicko, and so he “helpfully” and excitedly says that he knows the words and can teach Storm in time for his performance tonight…Storm’s sarcastic “Thanks, Jim” in response got a laugh out of me… Chavo Jr. is feeling himself, and why wouldn’t he?...He’s not stuck with the Misfits in Action, for one thing…He’s also the Cruiserweight Champion again, for another…He doesn’t even have a tag partner, but he’s still confident in himself…The tag champions make their way down next…Chavo thinks he can take The Perfect Event by his lonesome, and in fact, the front row starts a CHA-VO chant to encourage him…I mean, honestly, I get it...TPE isn’t what I’d call a threat in kayfabe!...The Misfits watch Chavo pretty much roll Stasiak on a backstage monitor…Palumbo yanks the rope down on a Chavo rope run and takesthe match over… In the back, Lash LeRoux gets up to go help Chavo, but General Rection stops him…Konnan pokes holes in this dumbass dual-leadership storyline by asking why CEO Flair doesn’t just fire the commissioner…Good question!...Chavo fires up, but the numbers game continually kills his comebacks…Chavo’s newfound aggressiveness keeps him hanging on…This match is probably longer than it needs to be…It’s as long as it is so we can cut back to Rection barely restraining LeRoux from helping Chavo…Chavo actually gets a visual three on a roll-up, but the count is delayed… LeRoux yells at Rection for not helping Chavo, but Rection yells right back about Chavo deciding to go his own way…Chavo finally goes down to TPE's team pancake that looks like complete garbage...One hundred percent basura…Shawn Stasiak is a black hole into which things such as fun and hype disappear entirely… Sid calls into the desk while driving to the arena…He promises to be there before the show is over, and when Tony S. lets him know that CEO Ric Flair will allow him to mix it up with Scott Steiner, his excitement is palpable!... Bam Bam Bigelow shoots what is an absurd shot at Marie/a…Come on, man…You have no hope…In Bam Bam’s defense, he does ask her out without being weird, and her response is that she throws water in his face…Bam Bam, with a hangdog look on his face: “Aw, what’d you have to go and do that for?!”…Then, Vito and Reno jump into the picture and beat him up…I mean, “What does a guy like me have to do to get a date with a girl like you?” isn’t disrespectful or anything…There was no need to be all extra…Just say “I’m not looking to date right now” and keep it moving…Damn… Lex Luger is very relaxed before his match with Sarge…Like, “yawning while reading WCW Magazine” relaxed…Maybe they shouldn’t have had him yawn while reading their flagship publication, actually… Meng demands a match with Scott Steiner…CEO Ric Flair makes the match for tonight, and for the world title to boot… Team Canada comes to the ring…Jim Duggan is stomping around the ring while Lance Storm tries to talk, just asking to get his ass kicked by the rest of Team Canada…Storm says that as a Canadian, he’s a man of his word, unlike that scumbag American the Cat…Storm prepares to sing and asks for the U.S. anthem to be played, but instead, he gets the Cat’s theme…Of course, the Cat is joined by the extremely, incredibly lovely Ms. Jones…This show was definitely “run through a brick wall” fuel for me when I originally saw it…The Cat and Jones lay out a picnic to enjoy while Storm sings…Konnan shits on both Storm’s and Jeff Jarrett’s shirt designs, which of course, WCW has been trying to shill lately… Storm forgets the words like two lines in and starts filling in with BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAHHHHH…The Cat demands lyrical accuracy…Storm tries, but he’s only got the first two lines down…He knows there’s something about rockets in there, but otherwise, it’s all nonsense…The Cat asks Duggan to sing it, and Duggan does, extremely poorly to boot…I mean, he does know the lyrics, but he realizes that the music and where he is in the song are slightly off…The Cat hates it so much that he throws hot dogs at Duggan to get him to stop… Storm convinces the Cat to challenge Duggan, which happens after a break…I should hate this, but I don’t, really…Duggan, who has re-grown his beard and become more unkempt and unruly as he has become more American, isn’t very interested in fighting Storm’s battle for him…He backs off, so Storm and Elix attack the Cat instead…Duggan pushes Storm and Elix away…This is a hot mess, and it’s also a waste of Storm…Simply spotting a couple of plants with a HACKSAW COME HOME, WE [HEART] YOU sign convinces Duggan to hit Storm with his 2x4 instead of the Cat…Duggan rips his Canadian jersey off his burly body, but the Cat takes the chance to hit Duggan with a Feliner while Duggan has the jersey over his head…The Cat covers and scores a pinfall because what the hell, why not?...You gotta go to the pay windah when you have the chance, dammit!...Skipper and Storm attack the Cat after the match…This wasn’t good!...But I don’t feel the venom for it that I probably should…After Team Canada leaves, the Cat helps Duggan to his feet…Duggan is still over as a babyface, by the way… It's Sarge/Luger up next…I’m not sure about this peppy theme for a guy with only one Bob Holly-like facial expression like Sarge has…Luger comes out to his babyface theme from 1997…Sid’s back on the phone, complaining about the traffic and his shitty MapQuest directions to Tony S….This Thunder hasn’t been good at all, but it’s also not complete nonsense…It’s just a show that doesn’t know how to build on the Nitro that came before it…This is where Thunder being in sort of its own sphere is a negative…Now that WCW creative has strung a handful of solid Nitros together, they don’t have experience with continuing a strong Nitro build through to Thunder… Sarge goes right at the cocky Luger…Luger rolls outside, grabs a bat that he stuck under the ring, and clocks Sarge in the head with it while ref Charles Robinson tries to back Sarge off…Luger gets back in the ring, preens, and puts the knocked-out Sarge in a Torture Rack for the victory…Luger’s TTP theme plays now…WCW production is having an adventure back there tonight, huh?...After the match, Luger grabs a mic and uses it to taunt Sarge while stomping him out…Goldberg isn’t here tonight is laid out in the back, which I would have known if this Thunder wasn’t cut to ribbons by a bunch of idiots at the WWE Network, so Luger points out that Goldberg isn’t saving Sarge from this ass kicking before going back to stomping him… DDP cuts a promo about how Mike Sanders might think he’s an old man, but that, as R. Kelly might suggest to a teenaged Aaliyah, age ain’t nothin’ but a number. A trainer checks on Sarge; Sarge sells a rib injury more than he sells a concussion… After having kicked the crap out of Bam Bam, Vito and Reno (w/Marie/a) saunter to the ring to do the same to KroniK…I seriously have no idea whether I missed the reveal that the trio of Italians was related or not…Did we ever find out why Vito and Reno were beefing in the first place?...The mobsters actually manage to keep Adams isolated for a bit, but an Adams full nelson slam cuts all that nonsense out…Reno is now your FIP, but it doesn’t last long… This honestly is a perfectly acceptable televised tag bout…I do like that Vito and Reno wrestle with purpose and aggression…A brawl between Vito and Clark spills out to the floor, where they throw blows at one another…That was moderately intense, but Adams ends up following this up with a sedate chinlock on Vito in the ring…That’s for a reason, though…We cut to a shot of the desk, where Jeff Jarrett and the Harris Bros. come over the railing…Jarrett KABONGs Konnan and then says into Konnan’s headset that there’s more where that came from for Konnan and the Animals at Starrcade… Considering that Konnan was on color and the matches are longer this week, I presume that about fifteen guys made it to this show…We get a second hot tag from Vito to Reno, and shortly, the match breaks down…Clark gets rid of Vito, and then saves Adams from a Reno Roll of the Dice attempt…KroniK splatters Reno with a High Times (to a babyface pop) and scores the three count…There are worse ways to spend time, but now these fellas have to wrestle each other again at Starrcade in four days…The problem is that this was probably the best possible bout they’ll have against one another…After the match, KroniK chokes out Reno, but Vito uses a kendo stick to knock them away…Alas, KroniK manages to snatch the kendo stick and use it themselves…Reno fires up, and eventually, security has to flood the ring and pull apart the competitors… The Thrillers huddle up in the back…Sanders prepares to SET IT OFF to prevent getting his ass kicked by DDP…After a break, we see the Thrillers stalking Page in the hallways…Page doesn’t even notice…After another break (and probably some cut content), we see the Thrillers leave Page’s locker room, where Kevin Nash (or someone/something that resembles him) is laid out… DDP has a remix of his “Smells Like Dallas Page” theme that is worse than the WWE Network replacement theme that I’m used to hearing by now…Mike Sanders comes to the ring, and production cuts to a sign that says THRILLERS YOUR GOING TO FEEL THE BANG…Is it just that wrestling fans can’t ever use the proper version of your/you’re on their signs, or does production simply manage to always find the signs that fail to do this?... Page casually rolls Sanders…They obligabrawl, and Page grabs some dude’s beer and swigs it, then spits it in Sanders’s face…Sid calls in again and inadvertently shills both McDonald’s and Wendy’s while explaining that he’s entirely fucking lost, that fucking MapQuest, DAMMIT…What a strange series of interludes from Sid…Our big bad babyface can’t find the arena somehow…Especially considering that it’s the exact same arena that he set up a parking lot brawl at on the previous Nitro!...Sanders gets a few blows in, but is summarily pancaked and drilled with a Diamond Cutter…Jindrak and O’Haire rush the ring…Page manages to land a Diamond Cutter on Jindrak, but O’Haire waits for him to get back up and scores a superkick…Page manages to escape further damage with a jawbreaker and keeps O’Haireunder control until Chuck Palumbo makes it to the ring…The numbers game finally gets to Page, who eats a Seanton Bomb…They place Sanders on top of Page and count to three because they are dickheads… Even this late in the game, it’s time for a new segment, sadly. This week in stuff the morons at the WWE Network cut from this episode of Thunder: Kwee Wee, Paisley, and Midajah do a skit which is part of an ATV sweepstakes that WCW is sponsoring…Kwee Wee is laid out backstage, presumably due to his conflict with Midajah in the previous sketch, and an angry Meng wants revenge…Sarge cuts an interview with Okerlund…Storm is a reluctant student for Duggan’s impromptu anthem lyrics class…Before his match with Sarge, Luger uses that baseball bat to knock Goldberg out backstage...Scotty/Sid hype video…A pre-tape to highlight Sarge, Power Plant Trainer…Scott Steiner ridicules the very lost Sid in a backstage interview with Okerlund…Vito and Reno also cut an interview with Okerlund…Daffney and Crowbar are cut from this show because life is cruel, but WWE Network editors are crueler; Daffney tells Crowbar that to beat Terry Funk, he needs to drop his new duds and go back to his comforting (and comfortable) greasy and stained blue jeans…On the other hand, maybe the WWE Network editors are as kind and merciful as they are cruel because they also cut a Shane Douglas sit-down interview with Mike Tenay as well… Meng (w/Paisley) meets Scott Steiner (w/Midajah) for the big gold belt in our main event…Scott Steiner abuses a mic that doesn’t work, gets another one, and basically calls Sid a coward for not being at an arena that Sid surely knows how to get to because he’s done it before…He then tells Sid that what he does to Meng tonight will portend poorly for Sid at Starrcade…Meng proceeds to beat the crap out of Scotty to start this match…Steiner has to bail to catch a breath…That allows him to reset, and he controls upon re-entry into the ring…Meng makes a comeback and hits a couple of second rope splashes for two… This is actually a decent little five-minute bout between a stout gatekeeper and a dangerous world champ…They spill outside, where they have an obligabrawl…Midajah jumps on Meng’s back and gets dumped…Paisley jumps on Midajah, but Steiner removes her and goes back to work on Meng…They re-enter the ring, where Steiner goes low to break Meng’s Tongan Death Grip…As Steiner follows with a suplex and a Steiner Recliner for the win, Sid makes his way down the aisle…Steiner meets him there and they brawl, mostly to Sid’s advantage…Sid deposits Steiner in the ring and dodges Steiner counter-attacks, then scores a chokeslam…And it’s on to Starrcade!... This show wasn’t particularly good, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t bad…It was just sort of there, existing, being vaguely okay…I didn’t have to watch Shane Douglas, so that definitely keeps it on the positive side of the ledger, if anything…WOO…

Lee Marshall was terrible in WCW on commentary, but he was actually a pretty fun backstage interviewer. My general rule is: Marshall at the Thunder commentary desk is awful; Marshall at the Compuserve desk is pretty good.

This is the first I've heard of this WWE ID thing. It bums me out. If only given a binary choice, I'd take the salary-suppressing NWA cartel over a single corporate conglomerate sinking its roots into almost every facet of the rest of the U.S. wrestling business. I'd take it one hundred out of one hundred times. I'm incredibly happy that AEW exists, and I don't need to watch the shows to feel that way about its existence.

Desperate babyface commentator Bischoff in 1999 operated at a level of vileness that might be unmatched in any company anywhere. Bisch is one of those WCW guys along with Booker and even Eddie who didn't excel as a talker until they went to WWE.

Show #270 – 12 December 2000 "The one that caps off an effective build to Starrcade in only three weeks' worth of Nitros" Jeff Jarrett KABONGs an Emeril Lagasse expy to start the match. It’s shitty. I just defended Jeff Jarrett in the HOT TAKES thread, and I’m regretting it now. Recap: Scott Steiner is still totally fuckin’ bananas, folks. ADRENALINE, **BRAMP BRUMP** Nitro is on Tuesday this week for some reason. Good news! Stevie is on color. Bad news! Scott Hudson is also on color. I wonder if we’ve seen the last of Mark Madden. Lex Luger daps up Commissioner Mike Sanders; Before the camera's cut on in his office, Sanders made a match between unnamed wrestlers at Luger’s request. I’m guessing that Braun the Leprechaun is making a return to a Nitro ring sometime soon! CEO Ric Flair addresses the crowd here in Louisiana at the top of the show. He’s got a couple of proclamations to make about Scott Steiner and Syko Sid; the first one is that Steiner and Sid are allowed in the building tonight. The crowd cheers! The second one is that while they're in the building, they’re on a no-contact restriction tonight. The crowd boos! The third one is that Flair’ll be suspending them and maybe even stripping titles if they step over the line and go at one another in the arena tonight. He teases that maybe Sting or Booker will be back in the building and looking for Steiner, and for that matter, so might Arn Anderson. Finally, Flair books Steiner/A-WALL for the world title tonight; Tony S. fills us in that they crossed paths earlier, and we’ll have the tape of that confrontation at some point in this show. Here comes Commissioner Mike Sanders, who is still upset with CEO Flair for pitting him against a very focused, very crafty Chavo Jr. on Thunder. Sanders says that he’s got his own matchmaking plans for tonight; the crowd chants ASSHOLE, and of course Stevie claims that he can’t hear what the crowd is chanting and asks Tony S. what they’re saying (Tony S.: “I’m ignoring you”). After spending time insulting anyone and everyone in this arena, Sanders finally gets around to booking that match: The Perfect Event vs. Jindrak and O’Haire vs. the Insiders. Flair tosses his jacket down, struts, and then books Sanders against Syko Sid Vicious tonight. Sanders thinks THAT’S BULLSHIT, and he thinks the pile of said bullshit is especially steaming when Flair says that he’ll fire any Thriller who interferes in that match. Flair went a bit nutty while exercising his power there; this bodes ill. Pre-tape: Cpl. Cajun’s like WHAT’S UP CHAMP as Scott Steiner enters the building. Steiner responds by saying, “Not much, just another day at the office. How’re you doing?” Oops, no, he beats the shit out of Cajun while yelling I DON’T LIKE YOU; I DON’T EVEN KNOW YOU. Sorry, I don’t know how I got that all wrong. A-WALL saves his little dipshit buddy and brawls with Steiner until security breaks up their little scrap. Syko Sid tells Gene Okerlund that he’ll be breaking Rick Scott Steiner into tiny little itty-bitty pieces at some point, whether tonight or at Starrcade. Jindrak and O’Haire steal the monitor from Goldberg’s locker room; meanwhile, Sarge shows up with his gear and crosses paths with Disco, who jovially insinuates that WCW’s got this diminuitively short guy booked against Lord Littlebrook for a newly-created little people division. Sarge immediately throttles this dipshit and yells EVERYTHING’S A JOKE TO YOU, HUH? LEMME HEAR YOU LAUGH! Disco, it’s almost needless to report, doesn’t laugh. Lance Storm (w/Major Gunns) has left Jim Duggan in the locker room this go-round. Actually, as Storm tells us when he enters the ring, it’s Storm and Gunns in a Mixed Tag Match against the Cat and the lovely Ms. Jones. Storm ups the stakes by suggesting that if the Cat loses tonight, he must walk out on Thunder and sing the Canadian National Anthem. Stevie takes the chance to say that the most overplayed song on Nitro isn’t “O Canada,” as Tony S. suggests, but instead is a particular song that isn’t ever played on air, which suggests to me that he’s done with DJ Ran’s limited range of deejaying skills. Hmmm, we cut to see Santa Claus walking the aisles with a bag full of ostensible presents, and I wonder if Hacksaw’s going to pull off another gorilla suit incident at a televised wrestling show in Louisiana. The Cat and Ms. Jones walk out; the Cat responds by calling Major Gunns a (BAWK BAWK) “chickenhead,” which is really uncalled for and shocks even Stevie. Stevie being taken aback by this particular pejorative being used toward Gunns should tell you something. Then, the Cat says that he's fine with accepeting Storm's stakesas long as Storm agrees to sing the (much worse sounding) United States National Anthem on Thunder if he loses. That Santa, by the way, is lurking around in the background of the shot now, sort of like the serial killer in Too Many Cooks. It’s sinister, man. I personally find Santa Claus to be an incredibly creepy character, what with the constant surveillance and the bag full of plundah. Seriously! I’ve never been a Santa Claus fan! Major Gunns opens this bout by landing a surprising dropkick on Ms. Jones. You probably won’t believe me, but it was a gorgeous dropkick. She seemed to sort of hover in mid-air while she planted her boots in Jones’s spine (as Jones was distracted and looking at Storm at the time). Jones comes back, and Storm makes a tag to Gunns standing on the floor after he helps her bail out; Stevie is apoplectic about this break in tag team protocol at the desk. Tony S. actually remembers that Russo relaxed how strict referees should call matches back in the spring and reminds Stevie that this relaxation of rules is still in effect. So, the Cat hits Storm with a Feliner, but Gunns reaches into the ring and helps put Storm’s boot on the ropes. She follows up by continuing to be helpful and distracting the ref, even if that distraction is because Ms. Jones runs over there and instigates a CATFIGHT YAKFIGHT. Wow, Gunns has been an incredibly positive influence upon Storm’s attempt to win this match! Elix Skipper runs in and is a net neutral; his attack is turned back by the Cat, but he doesn’t actively harm Storm. Jim “Santa Claus” Duggan, however, is a complete negative. From off camera (I can’t believe the production truck missed this shot after so effectively teasing Santa getting involved earlier), Santa Duggan pulls the 2x4 out of his sack and HO HO HOpelessly overshoots Storm when he tosses it into the ring. The Cat catches it, beans Storm, and gets three when ref Jamie Tucker finally diverts his attention away from Gunns. Hacksaw shrugs like the doofus that he is. Well, it certainly wasn’t a gorilla suit attack, now was it? 1984 Duggan would never have blown that spot in kayfabe. Paid announcement from Jimmy Hart: Tony S. intones “Oh, no,” which gets Stevie to laugh. Thank you for understanding how I feel, Tony S. Cpl. Cajun talks to Chavo Jr. on the phone and tries to reassure Chavo that General Rection will understand what Chavo is trying to do with his change in attitude and philosophy, but Rection basically bullies this guy off the phone. He tries to fire his troops up: A-WALL has Steiner, and in a new development, Cajun is booked against Shane Douglas. Let’s see if Rection's leadership sticks. Commissioner Mike Sanders laments CEO Ric Flair booking him in a match against Sid; Sanders makes fun of the Insiders for being old before telling his fellow Thrillers that he’s making the Triple Threat Tag a Four Corners Tag and adding KroniK, who he recently hired for this purpose, to the mix. This irritates Reno, considering that KroniK has kicked the shit out of him twice in the last two shows, but Sanders doesn’t care. Reno storms off, and only O’Haire seems to sympathize with Reno’s stormy attitude. Crowbar and Daffney join commentary, and it is obvious that Daffney loves this idiot because she is dressing like a woman from a hippie compound in 1968 for him again. He’s here to watch Norman Smiley lay down a hardcore challenge; Stevie asks Tony S. at the desk why Smiley is out here wrestling a hardcore match since he quit hardcore wrestling a few months ago. Good question, Stevie! Smiley provides an answer when he starts his in-ring promo by noting that he’s only had any sustained success in the hardcore division, so he’s going back to that division. He offers an open challenge to anyone in the back in a hardcore bout and then addresses Crowbar by saying that if he wins, he’d like a title shot. Meng (w/Paisley) answers that challenge. OK, so in his promo, Norman Smiley boasted that he was the only two-time hardcore champ in the division. This is technically true, but Brian Knobbs was a three-time hardcore champ. Anyway, Meng kills this guy, though Norm does try to fire back after taking a long beating. Another Santa shows up (and once again, production misses it). Norm tosses toys out of this Santa’s bag at an advancing Meng, but soon after, Santa throws powder in Norm and Meng’s eyes. Hey, Santa is Terry Funk! So, Meng blindly TDGs Paisley, and when Kwee Wee runs in to try and save her, Meng blindly TDGs him, too. Terry Funk grabs a chair and hits Smiley and Meng in the head with them; the last one of those unprotected shots pops out the seat of the chair, sounds and looks fucking GROSS, and garners a huge pop. Yuck. Funk declares himself both the most hardcore dude in the ring and the real Santa Claus. He promises to give the PERVERTS IN THE CROWD ELEVEN HOS all at the same time, then, of course, chants HO HO HO until he gets to a count of eleven. He finishes up by challenging Crowbar to a title match at Starrcade. Crowbar gets in the ring and tells Funk that it'd be an honor to wrestle him at Starrcade, and Funk appreciatively says that he’ll see him there, and whoever wins, it’ll be a hell of a fight. No, hold on a second, I messed up my reporting on that one, too. What actually happened is that Funk responded by hitting Crowbar with an unprotected chair shot to the head that also popped the seat up. Yuck. But, I mean, it popped the crowd again! Sarge storms into Commissioner Sanders’s office and demands a match against Lex Luger tonight. Sanders denies his request because Lex already has someone lined up tonight. He offers Sarge a shot at Luger on Thunder, but only for a quid pro quo. We don’t hear what that quid pro quo request is, but Sarge seems interested. What do neo-Nazi scum love more than destroying the fabric of this country with their racist hatred? Well, if the Harris Bros. are any indication, it’s free sandwiches. The Filthy Animals have planted a party sub somewhere backstage, and like rats to filth, the Harris Bros. are there. Kidman and Konnan giggle over the Harrises tucking in as they watch them on a monitor because Rey (who is napping in a nearby suitcase, and no, I didn’t make that up) doctored the sub. Kidman made me chuckle for the first time in months by claiming that “[the Harris Bros.] work so cheap, they’ll have a job in this company for life.” Scott Steiner cuts Gene Okerlund off as Okerlund asks him about CEO Flair’s proclamation; he claims that Flair is just keeping him away from Sid at the cowardly Sid’s request. Steiner says that he’s gonna fuck Sid up anyway, then argues that Flair is booking him against A-WALL to try and wear him down for Starrcade, not that this will stop him from beating the shit out of A-WALL (at least if Steiner's boasting is to be believed). Pam Paulshock interviews the Misfits in Action, whom I should probably identify by their full name since the band the Misfits were also in this company for a hot minute. A-WALL yells out a mediocre promo about Steiner. Rection yells out a mediocre promo about the Fraudchise. Cajun…oh, you get it by now. Rection gets on Cajun's case after Cajun says that he is going to win BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY even though Rection also used that phrase a couple of segments ago. Mike Sanders walks to the ring wearing his office clothes, where he reads a letter from his doctor that claims that he’s injured. That’s not going to stop Syko Sid’s crazy ass from destroying him, though. Sid’s in street clothes. I assume we’re just getting a chokeslam and a powerbomb and a WHO RULES THE WORLD, YEAHHHHHH, and we mostly do, but we also get a nice spinebuster and big boot in there, too. That was a fun little squash dinner! Sid quotes Iceman Parsons again while Stevie knowingly cackles. Hudson is confused, so Stevie says he’ll explain what Sid was saying later. Holy shit, Sid is fucking around with everyone’s cars again. He demands the keys to the cars from some guy who isn’t Moses, and the guy doesn’t have the keys, which makes perfect sense. Moses has the keys! Wait, unless Moses was let go in a round of cost-cutting releases. Oh nooooo, not Moses! Anyway, Sid tosses the guy aside and yells into the camera that he’s got plans for Steiner and that IT’S NOT OVER. Though Marie/a tries to stop him, Reno jumps KroniK in a back hallway, swinging a pipe as he does so. KroniK quicky recover and beat the shit out of him, but Vito runs up and helps Reno out. KroniK says the deal with the Thrillers is now null-and-void since one of them was their attacker; Vito yells out to the departing KroniK that he and Reno will see them at Starrcade. So, uh, did I miss a key segment where Vito and Reno’s brotherly beef was resolved, or like what? I’m very confused by this storyline, I must say. So, we’re back down from a Four Corners Tag Match to a Triple Threat Tag Match as the Insiders face The Perfect Event and O’Haire and Jindrak. Kimberly is mentioned for the first time on television since she disappeared; Tony S. promotes both her and DDP reading Christmas stories in the Atlanta area this holiday season. Man, I miss Kimberly. Anyway, this match is what it is; it’s here to build heat for the tag title match at Starrcade. It’s fine for what it’s attempting to achieve. There are just too many numbers for the Insiders to overcome; Nash lands a Jackknife on Palumbo, but Jindrak catches him with a diving lariat and O’Haire scores a Seanton Bomb. DDP manages to get in the ring and twist O’Haire into a Diamond Cutter, but Stasiak by this time has grabbed one of the title belts, and he uses it to bean Page in the dome. Stasiak drags Palumbo on top of Nash and gets Charles Robinson to count the pinfall. The Thrillers stomp out Page and Nash after the match, and as we go to break, they target Nash’s knee. We see the full brunt of that attack after we come back from break. Sid gets out of someone’s vehicle. Uh-oh. Nash sells a serious knee injury backstage. Sarge walks to the ring, which makes me wonder what he agreed to with Mike Sanders to get this match. Oops, what he agreed to do was get murdered by Goldberg! Haha, that’s a pretty good twist! Sarge is surprised to hear Goldberg’s music, and when Goldberg walks down the ramp, he’s just about as surprised to see Sarge is his opponent. Okay, so I appreciate that they’re setting up Sarge to get so abused by Goldberg that he decides to turn on the guy, but still, we shouldn’t be retiring Goldberg in a feud against Luger! I get that Bischoff still thought he’d be in control of the company and apparently (if the Nitro book is to be believed) influenced the booking so that a bunch of the main eventers would be taken off television before the big return so that he could launch an angle with them all returning at once after Fusient had control of the company, but still! So, this is good stuff. We get a close-up shot and can hear them chat. Goldberg is basically like, C’mon dude, they’re just playing games with us in the Commissioner’s office, I’m not going to fight you and Sarge is kind of offended, like, What, you’re too good to fight ol’ Sarge now or something? Goldberg still doesn’t want to fight even though Sarge gets increasingly more adamant about it; Luger then pops up at the top of the ramp holding a microphone and points out a) that if Goldberg doesn’t wrestle Sarge, Sarge doesn’t get to wrestle Luger on Thunder and b) if Goldberg leaves, he’s going to lose by count-out. Goldberg still wants to leave, so Sarge just beats the shit out of the dude with some real venom. Goldberg is reluctant to fight back, but I mean, come on, you can only club Goldberg with stiff forearms while yelling C’MON BILL, FIGHT ME, DAMMIT for so long before Goldberg decides that YOU’RE NEXT. Goldberg lands a SPEAR, but he’s reluctant to land a JACKHAMMER or SPLAT. He starts to walk away, but Sarge grabs his ankle, so Goldberg is like FUCK, MAN, I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS, BUT I GUESS I HAVE TO, DAMMIT and then picks the guy up and JACKHAMMER, SPLATs him for three. Welcome to the Charming Uniquity list, fellas! This was a neat build-focused squash. I liked everything about this segment an awful lot. Daffney stands with Crowbar, Kwee Wee, and Meng, all of whom are nursing injuries after their segment tonight. Jamie (K)noble walks by and asks them for advice about how to deal with his annoying tag partner Evan Karagias. Speaking of Karagias, he runs up and tells everyone to come with him because Sid’s back and doing more fuckery with the cars in the parking lot! It’s Shane Douglas blah blah, HAH HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH blah blah, I hate the current town that I am in blah blah Rection you hurt Torrie blah blah Cajun, come get your ass FRANCHISED blah blah. Cajun enters the ring and comes out aggressive, scoring a couple of early two counts and controlling the pace of the match. Douglas can’t get right at all; Cajun uses a headscissors to send Douglas to the floor, lands a suicide dive, and then tosses Douglas across the commentary desk and definitively wins an obligabrawl. They get back in the ring and Douglas finally stops Cajun’s onslaught with a powerslam, but it’s momentary. Cajun once again fires back, and eventually both men land clotheslines on one another. Shane goes for his chain; Chavo runs to ringside and tries to get Cajun to use a chair. Cajun resists, but Chavo presses the chair into his gut, and when he catches Douglas running at him, he instinctively slams the chair into Douglas’s gut. Ref Charles Robinson calls for a disqualification of Cajun, though Cajun tries to point out Douglas’s chain. He does so to no effect since Douglas never actually landed a shot with the chain. General Rection makes his way down here, and he and Chavo Jr. go nose to nose over Chavo’s tactics. That was a surprisingly enjoyable little match from these fellas. Promo: I still want this WCW CCG. Jeff Jarrett tells the Harris Bros. that he got some sandwiches for them, and the Harrises are confused because they already ate sandwiches that they thought were from Jarrett, and also, they just might have the poops now. Sid now drives a black car, and he has a determined look on his face as he does it. Mike Awesome tries to heat up his ice cold feud with Bam Bam Bigelow in this interview with Pam Paulshock. He says that the Career Killer is still somewhere inside him, and that persona wants Bammer in an Ambulance Match when they meet at Starrcade. The Harris Bros. sell that they have the mega-poops while Jeff Jarrett talks to Gene Okerlund. Eventually, they decide to go find an appropriate place to deposit those poops, like a toilet bowl or Tammy Sytch’s pre-packaged dinner. The Filthy Animals (w/Tygress) enter the ring. Jeff Jarrett also enters the ring. The Harris Bros. do not enter the ring because they have the super-mega poops and need to find a toilet or Tammy Sytch's pre-packaged dinner. This match is a Tag Eliminator, and Jarrett eliminates Konnan with a Stroke to ease a bit of pressure, but he’s left alone facing two guys who are former tag champs. He should lose to them, and he does, as Rey scores a springboard sunset flip for three after Jarrett KABONGs Kidman. Ah, well. Not every segment can be a winner. Sid has figured out a workaround! Since CEO Ric Flair said that he and Scott Steiner couldn’t touch each other inside the building, he’s decided to park a ring of cars around Steiner’s ride and then fuck the guy up when he comes out there after his match! Yeah, that’s probably a better plan than attempting to get Scotty's car towed or crushed or something of that nature. Apparently, the rest of the WCW locker room passed along that Sid was out there doing some wild shit, so they’re all fired up to see these two dudes beat the hell out of one another in a few minutes. But before Scott Steiner (w/Midajah) can make his way back to his car to fight Sid, he’s got to finish off SGT. A-WALL and retain his big gold belt. Steiner lets the CEO know that if he tries to fire, fine, or strip him of his title, he will show up at Flair’s house and commit violence against him physically and also probably emotionally for that matter. A-WALL puts up a decent fight and, as a guy who works hard, is malleable enough clay for Steiner to mold into a partner for a decent Nitro-style main event. Steiner is over as a babyface here, by the way. A-WALL grabs a chair and clobbers Steiner outside the ring, which the ref sees, but which the ref does not DQ A-WALL for. Well, I suppose the logic is that Charles Robinson is less lenient than Billy Silverman, or maybe it’s that since the chair attack happened outside the ring, it was okay (this was fairly explicitly a part of the house style in 1998 for a few months, if you’ll recall). A-WALL puts a table in the ring and turns his attention back to Steiner, scoring a running powerslam for two and then a chokeslam after that. Instead of covering, though, he turns his attention to the table and sets it up. He looks for one more goozle as Stevie laments that A-WALL is too locked into his usual methods to focus solely on winning the title. And in fact, Steiner slips behind A-WALL, suplexes the big man through the table, and locks on the Steiner Recliner to coax a tapout. That was a pretty darned fun little match, honestly. After the match, Steiner gets his lead pipe from Midajah and uses it to choke A-WALL as he reapplies the Steiner Recliner. Scotty is interrupted in his post-match activities by Sid Vicious yelling YOU’RE DUCKIN’ ME BOY on the TurnerTron and inviting Steiner to catch him outside instead of being some kind of coward. The WCW wrestlers assembled in the parking lot are like FUCK YEAHHHHHH and Steiner feels extremely called out. He hustles into the parking lot with his pipe and starts breaking car windows with it before engaging Sid. Sid tosses Steiner onto the hood of a car and sets up for a powerbomb, but Steiner blocks it. Scotty rains blows upon Sid’s head as Sid lays across the hood, and we go to black. I’m genuinely impressed at how well Taylor et al. did to heat up Steiner/Sid in only a couple of weeks. I know I probably shouldn’t be considering WCW’s recent track record, but I’m actually quite hyped for Starrcade, and this was yet another Nitro that did the business and got me there. I’m aiming for finishing Starrcade by Thursday at the earliest and Friday at the latest, and it made me realize that for the first time since maybe Slamboree ’99, I’m truly interested (in a good way!) to see how a WCW PPV is going to shake out. I missed this feeling. 3.25 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

Two games that I got in the last week: Super Mario Run - I had three dollars in credit at the Google Play Store. It's about as good as a mobile auto-runner Mario game could be. I'm not a huge fan of the Toad Rally or palace building stuff that's tacked onto the core game, but the core game is pretty good, and when I'm in the flow of nailing my jumps, it feels just like a solid Mario game. Boy, do I hate this NSMB aesthetic, though. It looks and sounds ugly. We Love Katamari: REROLL and Royal Reverie - It's more Katamari, which is good! But there's way too much King of All Cosmos being a self-deluded prick, which is bad! That guy is only funny in very small doses. This game varies things up with different types of challenges, etc., but there's too much wandering around a hub world talking to people, then talking to the King of All Cosmos, then doing some challenge, then talking to the King of All Cosmos again, etc. The first game is so simple. You skip past the King's nonsense, and boom, you're rolling up cows into a giant ball of detritus. Some games are just better when they're simpler.

Vince is far better at PBP, IMO. Better voice for it, and his theatrical nonsense just works in the environment that he's in. THAT'S GOTTA BE--THAT'S GOTTA BE KANE at the first HiaC is an iconic call, IMO, for example. Bischoff doesn't have anything half as memorable as that on commentary. I actually don't mind "1, 2, HE GOT 'IM--no, he didn't" because as someone who "watched" a ton of PPVs on scramblevision in the mid '90s, it worked for me to sell false finishes that I couldn't see.

Cody sort of had something as a fiery proud millennial babyface. Jarrett sort of had something as an upper-midcard prick. Neither guy was able to sustain it. Jarrett is about five billion times better than Cody in the ring, though, so there's that. Jarrett was also a good white meat babyface in Memphis. I mean, Cody wishes he was one-one hundredth as good at pro wrestling as Jeff Jarrett is.

Larry Z. is too inconsistent to be good. I am low on Tenay; I think he's best as the fourth man who drops in to educate the fans about lucha and then leaves the desk. If you have him do that and also handle most of the backstage or sit-down interviews, you're probably getting your money's worth out of him in the right way. He's not a great color commentator (though he's better when he's got a color guy opposite him to play off of, which isn't Larry Z. or end-of-career Heenan), and he's a bad PBP guy, IMO.

My Mt. Rushmore of English language PBP commentators is Ross, Russell, Walton, and yeah, probably Schiavone at this point. I'm not sure anyone could overcome late-stage WCW's production problems, and if Schiavone was good everywhere else he went, then...