SirSmUgly

Colors is good, but the re-release was a chugging mess when it came out. I think they've fixed it by now, though. I have the Cowabunga Collection Switch card, but I won't mind downloading them onto my PS5 as well.

Was it just the name, or was it the whole studio-era movie star gimmick, I wonder? Alright, here's what I found. Seems to be from 2020-ish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SObKvjOr0oQ Interesting; I've seen enough of Toni Storm to get that she's jacking the general formula, but with a filmic twist.

Thunder Interlude – show number one hundred and thirty-six – 15 November 2000 "The WCW Gang is just taking things day by day, putting one foot in front of the other" I love wrestling and I love visiting the UK, so let’s smush those two things together and watch some THUNDERRRRRRRRR… Note that we’ve had an update to the previous Thunder’s review; though the score didn’t change, the makeup of one of my lists did because of the cut interview that I was able to watch on the internet thanks to the information I gleaned from Between the Sheets… I have not been to Manchester, but I hopefully will in the next couple of years...Do you know how awesome the UK’s national rail system is?...Meanwhile, the I-5 corridor’s Amtrak service in the Pacific Northwest is thoroughly shocking to people from Europe who come here and ride it…I know...I talked to a couple of Europeans on the train... We’re in the Manchester Evening News Arena (which is well known as the arena that was bombed during a music concert a few years back)...Scott Steiner barges into the building and shoves a poor attendant around…Tony S. mentions Manchester United being the richest soccer (hey, it’s YOUR word, Brits) club in the world…That might sound strange today…It was well before they started furloughing lunch ladies and switching to single-ply in all the restrooms… Finally, Vito and Reno are going to fight it out in the ring…They open the show by throwing hands at one another outside, and then inside the ring…Commentary opines upon the origin of Reno and Vito’s beef as they have an okay match where they bring as much fire as they can to things…Vito traps Reno’s arms and hits an overhead suplex, then drops a Savage Elbow for two and tries a jackknife bridging pinfall for two more…Vito’s got Reno in a world of hurt, so Jindrak and O’Haire rush the ring as Vito scores a diving headbutt…The tag champs run a distraction so that O’Haire can catch Vito with a superkick…Reno immediately follows up with a Roll of the Dice for three… After the match, Reno calls out for CROWBAH…CROWBAH is put on notice that Reno’s getting his return match for the hardcore title at Mayhem… CEO Ric Flair makes some proclamations from his backstage office…First, he awaits Mike Sanders’s booking idea for his mandated cruiserweight title defense tonight…Second, he books Bam Bam/Crowbar for the hardcore title tonight and says that the hardcore title is held “in high esteem,” which isn’t how Flair thought of the title the last time he ran the show…Maybe he came around on the hardcore division in his time away from power…And finally, Flair emphasizes that Storm/Rection at Mayhem is the last time that they’ll wrestle one another for the United States Canadian Championship…Thank goodness…I do believe that Storm wins and Chavo loses faith in the idiot leader of the Misfits and leaves the group…Let’s goooooooooooo… Gene Okerlund interviews Lance Storm…Storm challenges Booker T. to a world title bout…Okerlund calls Gunns a SELF-SERVING BITCH…Potty mouth Gene is a very dumb characterization…And he’s wrong about Gunns…She’s just decided to STAND UP FOR WWE CANADA… Bam Bam Bigelow was never the hardcore champ, was he?...I know Hardcore Hak wasn’t…Neither was Junkyard Invitational trophy winner Fit Finlay, I don't believe…This belt got lost in the sauce when Norman Smiley won it…I like the idea that smarks know how crazy Crowbar is not because he uses weapons, but because one of his fired-up taunt spots is doing a bunch of painful back bumps for no rason…This guy gives himself CTE as a taunt; that’s hardcore!... Bammer theatrically pulls out three tables at ringside and then, like a doofus, just crawls through the ropes to start the match and gets clanked in the head with a trash can…There’s trashin’…There’s smashin’…I’ll tell you if anything especially noteworthy happens before the finish gets here…I guess Tony S. reporting that CEO Ric Flair has declared physical contact between Booker and Scotty Steiner off-limits tonight would count as such…Crowbar gets his spine rattled while I remember that I saw, as I scrolled through the 83 Weeks podcast listing for the first time in months, that Crowbar was on Bischoff’s notice me, senpai offshoot show that only exists to try and neg Tony Khan, Wise Choices…Still, I was interested until I saw that Crowbar was claiming, as I recall from the accompanying text, that AEW took his idea for the “Timeless” character without paying or acknowledging him…Now, that’s Toni Storm’s character, yes?...The one that proves, along with Goldust, that wrestling gimmicks based on studio-era movie stars should be used more often?...So, is there any merit to that claim?...I like Crowbar a lot and sure hope he isn’t trolling for attention on Bischoff’s shows… So, Crowbar takes a disgusting chair shot right to the forehead…That was an idiotic thing to take on a nothing match in a zero of a division on a late-2000 Thunder…And that’s me hugely understating how I feel about that spot…I like the kids in the crowd trying to get behind Crowbar…Wait, no, they just want to see someone destroy a table…They're behind the idea of broken tables more than they are Crowbar...Mike Awesome gets revenge on Bam Bam by shoving him off the top rope through a table and laying a destroyed Crowbar on top for three…That sure as heck doesn’t do much for Crowbar, but at least it also didn’t scramble his brains while also not doing much for him like that chair shot did… Booker is frustrated with taking all these beatdowns lately and also with not being centered in the promotional material for Mayhem...We find this out in his interview with Okerlund…He’s going to take his frustrations out on Lance Storm later tonight… Bammer runs up on Mike Awesome in the back…Security breaks it up… A downtrodden M.I.A. sits in their locker room…Chavo Jr. thinks that maybe he needs some space…Lash is like Everybody needs some time away/I heard him say/FROM EACH OOOOOOOOTHERRRRRRR…THE WALL, BROTHER agrees with Chavo, but in a way that Chavo thinks misrepresents his feelings about taking some time apart…They all bicker until General Rection is like Trust in me, we’ll get the Misfits back on track, and if I don’t, may I be banished to the lower-midcard for life…Loco and Cajun re-dedicate themselves, though A-WALL needs Rection to yell at him a bit more before he recommits…Rection wants to establish their group by ruining Elix Skipper’s life tonight… Kwee Wee and Paisley dance to ringside…Kwee Wee will wrestle Billy Kidman (w/Rey Misterio and Tygress), Rey Misterio Jr.(w/Tygress), Lt. Loco (w/Cpl. Cajun), Cpl. Cajun, and Elix Skipper (w/Major Gunns) in a Four Corners Match Six Pack Match…This appears to be a match to determine who will get the shot at Mike Sanders’s cruiserweight belt…Again, this is a Four Corners Match Six Pack Match with tags, which suuuuucks…They got the formula right for these matches in 1999, so I have no idea why they’ve switched it up…The ladies quickly get in each other’s faces juuuust becaaaause…A-WALL suddenly paces out and walks right up to Gunns, who slaps him…Doug Dellinger and a fellow security mook back the steaming mad big man away from ringside… OK, after all the ladies and A-WALL are walked away from the ring, we go back to having a wrestling match…I thought this was Four Corners, but it’s a Six Pack?...Hold on, now Charles Robinson has disqualified Loco and Cajun for, uh, beating the shit out of Skipper?...OK, I give up…Nothing matters, so I’ll tell you the finish…Wait, no, when we come back from break, Stevie Ray criticizes Ric Flair for not actually explaining the rules of this bout, which would explain why the wrestlers are confused…Then Tony S. clarifies that actually, Mike Sanders put this match together…See, this is why still having two authority figures is stupid!...As is not explaining the match type or competitors to the audience before the match starts!...Anyway, Kwee Wee cleanly pins Kidman (!!) with a facebuster…Then he pins Rey after Skipper puts him down with a nice springboard wheel kick (!!!)…Hacksaw comes to the ring to help Skipper, but Meng is right behind him…Skipper walks over to grab Meng and gets rolled up from behind by Kwee Wee…Meng puts Kwee Wee on his shoulders to celebrate…This was a muddled mess, but after the break, the action, while disjointed, was fun enough… The Boogie Knights go back and forth with a belligerent Gene Okerlund…Disco says that Ric Flair has granted them a tag match against Konnan and a non-Rey, non-Kidman tag partner in about a half-hour from now…Who will help Konnan…Who, I ask, who?... After a break, Okerlund is now firing questions at Commissioner Mike Sanders…Sanders is confident that he’ll be rolling over Kwee Wee at Mayhem…Sanders pretends to be a weathered, grizzled veteran...It’s kind of amusing…Sanders is a decent talker…CEO Ric Flair cuts in on Sanders’s interview to clarify that Sanders has to defend his belt tonight, not simply choose a number one contender tonight…He says that he flew someone in from the States just for a match with Sanders and sends the upset commissioner to go get his trunks on… Interview: Buff Bagwell wants a better push, dammit!...He’s the second-longest continuously tenured WCW wrestler behind Sting!...That means something, right?!...Tenay asks about the scuttlebutt around WCW that Buff simply annoys the shit out of people…Somewhere else in the building, Shane Helms suddenly starts nodding vigorously, and he doesn't know why…Buff claims that people say its his tone and delivery that gets him in trouble, but he thinks he just gets heat because he’s Buff and that other people get away with saying the same shit he does… Buff is like, Yo, why did Jeff Jarrett get a big push when he came back, but I still haven't gotten one?...It didn’t go exactly that well for Jarrett, honestly…Buff points out that he’s never even been the U.S. Champion, much less world champ…So, Buff is over with the crowd, yes…But he can’t wrestle the quality of PPV matches that you’d need to wrestle at even the U.S. Championship level…Jarrett isn’t a main event talent, but he is an excellent worker and perfect as a gatekeeping upper-midcard heel who can hold the U.S Championship…Buff never actually got good at in-ring work, unfortunately for him…Anyway, he ends the interview by challenging that push-stealing punk Jarrett to a match at Mayhem…While Buff can’t wrestle very well, he is over because he's a charismatic guy who can talk a little bit…This was an entertaining worked-shooty interview that didn’t go overboard on the shootin’ and stuck mostly to workin’, which explains why it was a solid watch!... Mike Sanders tries to calm Jeff Jarrett down over the phone…Jarrett apparently asks Sanders for a favor…That favor, granted by Sanders, is to ruin Buff Bagwell’s life…Lots of attempted life ruining going on tonight… Smack in the middle of the card, we get Lance Storm (w/Major Gunns) wrestling Booker T….Well, I didn’t realize until now that the real victory for Booker in becoming champion back at BatB '00 is that, when WCW died, they wanted to put the belt back on a face to give WCW’s final show a rushed happy ending, and Booker was the natural choice considering his long rivalry with Scotty Steiner…That helped him get a central position in the Invasion angle, which helped entrench him in the WWF…Otherwise, his big elevation has been a massive bust…He’s been terribly booked, and only Kevin Nash has really done much to get the guy over…And whatever Nash has done has been erased by shitty follow-up booking… Anyway, after Storm’s pre-match boasts and about two-thirds of the Canadian National Anthem, a pressed-looking Booker T. walks the ramp…Booker’s just too explosive for the methodical Storm to slow down early on…Booker backs Gunns off when he takes things to the floor…Stevie: BOOKER, YOU BETTER TAKE YOUR MIND OFF THAT YAK…And on cue, Booker turns around and is draped over the guardrail…That doesn’t help Storm very much because Booker fires off a series of strikes when the match gets back in the ring…Storm does get a boot up and land a leg lariat for two… They go right back to the floor after Booker eats a Storm superkick…This is a short obligabrawl…Back in the ring, Storm manages to get two more off a missile dropkick, then stuffs a Booker comeback with a basement dropkick…Booker comes back again and tries a Book End, but Storm twists out and into a swinging neckbreaker for two more…Booker once again comes back and manages to land an axe kick, then Spinaroonies up…Booker tries a Houston Side Kick, but Storm ducks out and hits another basement dropkick… Booker manages to flip over Storm after being shot into the corner and tries his sunset flip, but Storm rolls through that and right into a Canadian Maple Leaf…Book struggles to the ropes and goes outside, where he catches Storm following and Hot Shots Storm over the rail this time around…Book goes up for a missile dropkick…Storm grabs a chair that Gunns put in the ring, but Booker dropkicks it into Storm for 2.8…Storm DDTs Booker onto the chair for a 2.8 of his own… Storm goes up top, but Booker crotches him…Book goes up for a superplex, but Storm shoves him away and dives…Alas, he dives right into a Book End for three…That was actually a quite good match after a slow start…Gunns gets in the ring and slaps Booker…Elix Skipper and Hacksaw rush the ring while Booker glares at her, but Booker takes care of them…Gunns hits Booker with a flagpole, and Booker’s had enough, dammit…He hits Gunns with a Book End to a huge pop…As with a lot of dude-on-lady violence, people were really into that spot for reasons that are probably pretty disheartening, call me uncharitable if you'd like…Stevie cackles like an idiot on commentary…Storm and Booker are a good pairing and hit my Good Matches list for the second time this year… Alex Wright asks Disco what they’re going to do if Konnan finds a partner…In response, Disco asks Alex Wright to hand over all the money in his pocket…Wright does for some insane reason, and Disco hurries off…I mean, why not just give money to KroniK for no reason at all, Disco?...It’d be to the same effect as paying them to back you up…They do whatever they want to do anyway, paid or not… Mike Sanders defends the WCW World Cruiserweight Championship against someone…Ric Flair leaves a phalanx of security guards in the back before coming out here to tell us whom…Flair says he’s changed his mind about making Sanders defend the belt tonight…Hell, the guy he got to wrestle Sanders missed the weight limit by over a hundred pounds anyway…And of course, the very large Kevin Nash saunters to the ring with a shit-eating grin on his face… The aforementioned guards hold the Thrillers back from interfering while Nash commits an extended murderizing of Sanders in the ring…The crowd just wanted to see Nash hit his taunts and big moves, and they mostly got it…As Nash sets up for a Jackknife, the Thrillers break through security and attack the ring…Some fan has a sign up that is blurred out on the hard cam sign…I mean, how bad does your sign have to be to get blurred out in a 2000 wrestling promotion’s show?...Anyway, the Thrillers destroy Nash again because the numbers game is simply too much for him…He really needs a buddy or three… Who might Konnan have found to help him in his wrestling match against the Boogie Knights?...I get a kick out of all the English kids echoing Konnan's ORALE, ARRIBA LA RAZA…So, the Cat (w/the undeniably lovely Ms. Jones) is the guy who joins Konnan in his quest to once again beat the shit out of Disco Inferno…This is a brief match that’s worked in a fairly pacey manner…I think a lot of these matches with iffy workers are helped by injecting a bit of pace into them…Leave it to the matches of all good workers to build things a bit more slowly, IMO… There’s not really a traditional FIP segment…The Cat actually controls Disco, who stumbles backward into a tag to Wright…Wright and the Cat double-clothesline one another soon after, which leads to the hot tag…I actually kinda like that the Knights are so overwhelmed that they couldn’t sustain a long control segment, but I also wish the Knights were presented as at least a bit of a threat…Anyway, there’s a ref bump…KroniK makes their move at this point…They beat down Konnan and hit him with a High Times…Wow, KroniK actually delivered their advertised services in exchange for the money they were paid!...Disco’s cover is academic, scoring a three count from a groggy Charles Robinson…Konnan bumped right onto his elbow on that High Times and might have legit hurt himself… Gene Okerlund comes looking for Lex Luger, who has forgotten to show up for his interview time with Gene because he’s busy chuckling his way through Goldberg’s book…Luger tears out pages in the book and notes that the book fails to credit him for getting Goldberg into wrestling after Goldberg came into his gym to work out…This is actually a really good promo in which he tells Goldberg to put that little bit of historical record in the second edition after Luger retires him and puts him in the hospital…Excellent work on Luger’s part...He is an underrated talker and character work guy… Mike Sanders has switched up the booking…Buff Bagwell walks out here and is confronted by Goldberg rather than Jeff Jarrett…OK, so in a hilarious little spot, Doug Dellinger escorts Goldberg out while wearing a British-style police hat…Goldberg double takes and then hits Dellinger with a You serious, bro? look…Dellinger just shrugs on some “When in Rome Manchester” shit…That was genuinely funny…Oh yeah, there’s also a match…The crowd wants to see Goldberg kill this guy…Goldberg kills this guy…Buff hits a shitty double-arm DDT and dances…Meanwhile, Goldberg immediately pops up and spears this dude because Buff ain’t Kenta Kobashi…Then, it’s JACKHAMMER and SPLAT…I love that they undercut Buff’s whole argument about not getting a chance and being a legit main event guy in the interview by having Goldberg completely obliterate him a few segments later…I genuinely enjoyed this segment…After the match, Goldberg helps Buff up and hugs him…They shake hands…Hmmmmmmmm…. Booker heads out to get some post-match grub at a kebab shop just as Scott Steiner (w/Midajah) heads to the ring to face Sting for a post-Mayhem title shot…Steiner’s looking for a bit of security just in case he doesn’t get past Booker at Mayhem…On the other hand, Sting is just trying to get back in the main event, dammit!...Steiner gets a mic and addresses Booker, who isn’t even in the building…He’s hearing none of this, buddy…Book’s got his mind on a kebab and fries chips…Well, considering the carb count of the chips and the definition of his abs, maybe he’ll skip that last part when he orders… This match goes about seven minutes, so it’s worked at pace…I mean, these guys could slow it down and go twelve, but this is how televised main events tend to work here in WCW…Sting rolls Steiner to start…He wins an obligabrawl, scores a face crusher back in the ring, and lands one Stinger Splash…Then, he goes back to the well way too often, getting a boot to the solar plexus on his second splash attempt and a belly-to-belly on his third…Steiner takes over from this point…Steiner jaws at the crowd in between two counts… It’s a shame that this match is slightly rushed…Steiner locks on a surfboard and yells I’M GONNA BREAK HIS BACK while the crowd tires to fire Sting up…They do, but Sting breaks the hold only to run himself into an overhead suplex for two…After harassing Slick Johnson over the cadence of his count, he hangs Sting in the Tree of Woe and cranks his neck, then stomps him…He’s a bit too cocky, though…He gives Sting time to get his bearings when he does some pushups, and Sting makes a comeback that sticks…Sting tries a crucifix, but Steiner blocks it, so Sting just hops out of it and right into a Scorpion Death Drop for three… That match was pretty good and was approaching straight-up good, but it needed two or three more minutes…Midajah grabs Sting after the match, which is a diversion so that Steiner can get his lead pipe and beat Sting down…Midajah has a straitjacket with her, and she helps Scotty Steiner put it on Sting, who is in dreamland…The crowd sure would like Goldberg to help the Stinger out…Goldberg does not help the Stinger out…Instead, Steiner locks a Recliner on a restrained Sting… Another solid show, despite some early hiccups (especially that Four Corners Match Six Pack Match)…The Booker T./Lance Storm match, the Lex Luger interview, the Goldberg/Buff match and segment, and the main event were all enjoyable...Four enjoyable segments adds an extra “O” to the score…WOOOO…So, WCW has stabilized into being consistently solid, but will it become flat out good again?...That’s the question…

I was always the black dude or the woman in beat-'em-ups when I was a kid. Lt. Linn Kurosawa is a damn legend. When I create characters, I typically base them on my wife, which was pretty funny when she saw me dressing my version of the Boss from Saints Row III and IV in turtlenecks and tight jeans (I do love a lady in a turtleneck and tight jeans). Hearing her say, I'm beginning to understand how you see me a bit better while I watch you play this game had me worried for a second, but no, she was just really amused.

I understand that. Faulkner is challenging. Though for me, so is Russian literature and Eastern European literature and art in general. I remember the first time I read Bulgakov. I get the thematic jist, but the actual writing is impenetrable to me. Other than enjoying a couple of Chekhov stories, I am still trying to find a real entry point into Russian literature. I struggle from Dostoevsky to Tolstoy. The flaw is in me, not the lit, obviously.

Mississippi has a rich literary history from William Faulkner to Richard Wright to Donna Tartt. If there's one thing Mississippi should be into, it's reading because if there's one thing that Mississippi should be proud of, it's how good its writers are.

The video game equivalent of leaving a handful of half-finished Liquid Death cans around your house is having like nine Picross games on your Switch, but only having finished two of them. I actually have finished three - S, S2, and Sega Master System and Genesis Edition - but I've started working through S6 again, just a couple of puzzles a night. I picked S6 because it has my favorite music (barring the Sega special edition). Still trying to hit NaN in Balatro as well.

It felt like Savage diving onto Jake was a spontaneous thing that they had to quickly cover for.

This is my one "good sense" post for the month, so don't expect any other reasonable posts from me until Saturday at the earliest.

WWF still dropped some bangers like Razor and HBK's themes (the Sherri Martel one is obviously superior) and had some stuff that I found sneaky good (Beverlys, Narcissist Luger). Maybe this is because of how ingrained some of these themes are in my brain - I can even hear the MIDI music versions from the LJN SNES games in my head on command - I'd far rather listen to '91 - '95 WWF entrance music as opposed to the IMO largely samey-sounding themes of the modern wrestling era. Plus, how many themes have a guitar riff better than Kona Crush's? That guitar riff and the Cranium Crunch had Brian Adams looking like a legit prospect there for a minute.

Dammit, I dug the Steiners' WWF theme. It was the only reason to look forward to Alex Porteau's Superstars appearances in 1996.

IDK, he paid a lot of money for Bobby Fulton to bang them in and he only scored five goals and two assists across all competitions, like a Southern-fried Joshua Zirkzee.

Show #266 – 13 November 2000 "The one that takes place on the Thames" Let’s NITROOOOOOOOOOOOOO across the pond. Recap: Scott Steiner, Goldberg, and the Natural Born Thrillers make a few moves against their opps. So, as we get shots of Westminster, the Tower Bridge, Big Ben, and that one giant Ferris wheel, Tony S. suggests that they’re “not concerned with the vote count in Florida” over here in London. YOU SHOULD BE, DON’T TRUST US, WE’RE TERRIBLE ALLIES, RAISE A GIANT EU ARMY FOR YOUR OWN DEFENSE RIGHT NOW, GIVE UKRAINE FISSIONABLE NUCLEAR MATERIAL TO DEVELOP A PROGRAM WITH, BELIEVE ME ON THIS ONE FROM THE FUTURE. *ahem*, here’s the BRUMP BRUMP *adrenaline* opening. Please forgive me for my outburst. Wow, London is HOT for some pro wrestling action. The whole locker room empties and makes their way to the ring. Luger wanted to show some support for the small but growing attention that the Premier League was getting in the United States, so he wore a Spurs warmup shirt. He got Tottenham and San Antonio mixed up, though. Seriously, did Londoners in 2000 know much of anything about the NBA at the time? How many of these fans were baffled by Luger’s shirt? Anyway, the wrestlers and wrestler-affiliated YAKS have been ordered to the ring for a missive from CEO Ric Flair. Flair enters the ring, WOOs, and defines the working relationship between CEO and a Commissioner. Namely, the relationship is that he outranks Mike Sanders and can overrule or change anything Sanders does. So why have a storyline commissioner in the first place, AAAARGH. Flair demands that Sanders defend his “Cruiser-heavyweight…cruiserweight title” within the next forty-eight hours, which probably means a title match on Thunder in Manchester. Flair keeps making pronouncements. One pronouncement is an obvious “I want to get out of here so I can get sloshed at one of the approximately five hundred Wetherspoon’s-owned pubs within a three-block radius of here and don't have time to think about putting together an intricate card” booking decision: A London Lethal Lottery that will determine a winning team from a randomly-chosen, eight-team four-team tournament bracket. This competition will form the spine of tonight’s in-ring action. The members of the winning Lethal Lottery team will fight one another on Thunder; the winner of that one-on-one Thunder bout will be wrestling Scott Steiner for the world title on the post-Mayhem Nitro. I mean, we don’t know that Steiner will be the champ at the time, but from here in the future, I am looking forward to the stability of having a long-term world champ with clear backing in his positioning and booking for the next four months. Here are your teams: Mike Awesome and Bam Bam Bigelow, Booker T. and Lex Luger, the Boogie Knights, and Scott Steiner and Sting. Steiner is nowhere to be seen during the previous announcement, so Flair demands his presence. Steiner and Midajah walk to the ring, where Scotty goes after Flair and is clobbered by Booker. There’s a huge schmozz as we go to break. The brackets are as such: Bam Bam and Awesome vs. Steiner and Sting on one side, and Booker and Luger vs. the Boogie Knights on the other. Crowbar gets a segment with an interviewer from the Beebs, but he doesn’t get to talking for five seconds before Vito pops in and tries to take credit for Crowbar’s hardcore title victory. Crowbar is like LOL I woulda won anyways and Vito is like LMAO no you suck compared to me and I could beat you for the title and Crowbar is like ROFLMAO no way dood and I’ll defend my title against you tonight to prove it. And we didn’t see the interviewer from the BBC’s response, but it was probably something like My word, these gentlemen are not gentle and are barely men, I do say or some shit like that. Anyway, speaking of BBC interviewers, I’ll let Naga Munchetty interview me anytime she wants, heh heh heh. Let me assure you, dear reader, I am settling down. Lance Storm asks Mike Sanders if he can have his United States Championship shot tonight instead of waiting for Mayhem; Sanders agrees. Scott Steiner storms up and angrily asks the paper commissioner who drew him into a tag team with Sting, but Sanders avoids a goozle. For now, at least. Vito and Crowbar smash and trash one another. They work into the crowd. They do the stuff you’d expect them to do, basically. This arena isn’t much longer for existing, so feel free to bash up whatever the hell you want, fellas. There’s a table full of some sad-looking fish and chips on it, placed backstage so that Vito can send Crowbar through it and so that commentary can yell about the fish and chips. There were no mushy peas or malt vinegar, though, so I remained unimpressed. The crowd gets hyped for Vito setting up a table and embarks upon persistent TABLE TABLE TABLE and WE WANT TABLES chants. They really like table spots here! They also popped huge for the table spot backstage. They needed to do more spots around teasing a spot through that table more quickly than they did because the crowd was hot, but they quieted down a bit. They pick back up for Vito teasing a splash onto a table-prone Crowbar and BOOOOOOOO when Crowbar rolls away before Vito can launch. I suppose they didd communicate a need to do more teases of the inevitable table spot because now they’re working around it more often. There’s a ref bump for some fucking reason. It’s a hardcore match! Interference is legal! If I were booking a wrestling show, I’d have commandments like I was Bill Watts, and one of them would be NO REFEREE BUMPS IN HARDCORE MATCHES. Reno interferes and smacks Vito with a weapon, which he could have done even with the ref standing there and watching him, dammit! Crowbar follows up by superplexing Vito through the table, which gets a big pop and a three count for Crowbar. Hype video: Scott Steiner is about to go completely bananas as your world champ, so if that sounds fun to you, order Mayhem! Gene Okerlund interviews Mike Awesome and Bam Bam Bigelow; I forgot that Awesome has beef with Bammer because Bam Bam jumped his buddy Crowbar a couple shows back. That is the hook for why these two don’t like one another. They don’t quite seem on the same page in this interview, suffice it to say. Before the break, we saw a sullen Kevin Nash making his way through the arena, which might just bode poorly for the Natural Born Thrillers. The latter group saunters to the ring to jabber at this London crowd for a few minutes. Sanders gives the Thrillers an award for top SWERVE, BRO, and Tony S. demands a recount of the award vote, and here’s where I won’t lecture Tony S. on the complete failure in jurisprudence that followed the disputed 2000 election because I write these reviews to relax, dammit! Sanders says that Nash is formidable as both a political and a wrestling animal, so they decided to use their numbers to counter his influence. Alas, Sanders heels it up by letting Shawn Stasiak speak, and Stasiak pronounces the word supposedly as “supposably,” and Stevie talks about how boring this guy is from his position at commentary, and then Stasiak is like NASH, YOU FELL VICTIM TO EVOLUTION, and Mark Jindrak is probably thinking Ooh, cool name for a future stable that I sure would love to be a major player within, and finally, here comes Kevin Nash. Nash’s tortured car metaphor that he uses as part of his response is bad and makes little sense, but the long and short of it is that he’s still standing. Sanders attempts to rectify that by booking Nash in a Four Corners match against Stasiak, Palumbo, and O’Haire, which Nash seems unconcerned about. He has particular animus for Stasiak, whom he promises to revenge himself against tonight no matter what. Sting yells his whole promo toward Gene Okerlund; the content is essentially about how he’s cool teaming with that nutbar Scott Steiner because he’s the Stinger and therefore has got everything under control. Ooh, Ms. Jones! Elix Skipper tries to hit on her, but Ms. Jones is only into guys who are more over than Elix is. Sorry, Elix, but you have to get your overness up or they're going to swipe right on you en masse. Funny enough, a modern male dating guru and Vince McMahon would have the same singular suggestion for upping one's overness: Hit the gym, bro. The Cat confronts Elix over his harassment of Ms. Jones, and Elix challenges him to a match. These fellas agree to mix it up later tonight. Alright, our first Lethal Lottery match pits Mike Awesome and Bam Bam Bigelow against Sting and Scott Steiner (w/Midajah). Awesome and Bam Bam jump Steiner as Sting walks down the ramp, but they don’t have the talent level to take advantage of the initial imbalance in numbers; Steiner and Sting clear the ring. Of course, then they brawl with one another. The narrative of the match is basically that Sting and Steiner should handle their opponents, but their mutual dislike will leave an opening for Awesome and Bam Bam to manage a victory. I wouldn’t mind a good PPV-length Sting/Awesome match, I think to myself as I watch them tangle. Sting was such a good athlete and quite well-conditioned into his forties. Steiner overhead suplexes Bigelow, and it looks fantastic. Awesome manages to slam Steiner, but Sting trips Awesome as Awesome sets up for a top-rope splash; Steiner climbs the ropes, lands a super overhead suplex, and locks on a Steiner Recliner for a tapout that Bam Bam should have taken instead because there is still potential upper-midcard value in Awesome. Bammer attacks his fallen partner after the match and punctuates his beating with a Greetings. Sad little pre-taped promo: Jimmy Hart, you are better than this DJ challenge, dammit. He’s fighting some DJ from the capital of Georgia (the U.S. state, not the Eastern European country) at some point. I sure hope that I don’t have to see it. Huh, the Boogie Knights aren’t interested in potentially getting murdered by Scott Steiner, so they offer to sell their title shot to KroniK. KroniK, being smarter than the average Disco, decline to risk injury against that lunatic Steiner unless they are paid to do so. Though his partner Alex Wright can barely conceive why, Disco takes a wad of cash out of his jacket and hands it over (“There. That’s in English. It’s a lot of money.”). This was a pretty funny segment and does add to the “Scott Steiner is a bad man” aura that they’re trying to build up around their future main event centerpiece, but I can’t entirely endorse this segment. I don’t love the idea that anyone, even a joke team like the Boogie Knights, would duck a potential world title shot. The Filthy Animals are watching this exchange on a monitor and don’t appreciate it. They ask CEO Ric Flair to clear up this crooked nonsense, and he agrees to do so. Wow, that sure is nice of him considering how they left him out in that desert and stole his Rolex a year ago! What a fair and forgiving guy that CEO Ric Flair is! Gene Okerlund, who still works for WCW in 2000 somehow, interviews Booker T. about tagging with Lex Luger and hey, Booker has sort of a lisp. I never noticed that before. CEO Ric Flair confronts the Boogie Knights for selling their television spot; Flair says that he’s got something else on tap for them because he needs them on television considering their drawing power. Oh come on, you two, he’s obviously being disingenuous with that "drawing power" comment. I am depressed about this Misfits promo that is very bad. Stop dragging down Chavo, you idiots! You’d have to be on the purest grade coca to think that pushing Hugh Morrus as a meaningful talent is a good idea. Exciting recap: Ooh, it’s more Battle Dome nonsense! OK, so on the episode after the one from our previous review, the WCW Four once again invaded the Battle Dome arena and were so dastardly that they kicked Ed Lover off of color commentary. Now we have four Battle Dome dudes (supposedly) here in London Arena to respond: Terry “T-Money” Crews, the Hoodoo guy, Bubba Kickboxer, and someone else who looks vaguely like the picture of Patrick Bateman on the U.S. trade paperback version of American Psycho that was published by Picador. T-Money calls rent-a-cop Doug Dellinger SANTA CLAUS and demands to know where THE FAKE-ASS WRESTLERS are at because they’ve traveled a long way to BUST THAT ASS. The WCW Four charge up and brawl with them in the hallway. Stevie Ray’s belief in the power of an experienced tag team over the individual star power of two men thrown together has him reluctantly choosing KroniK to beat Booker and Luger, and I wish his philosophy was shared by everyone who has ever booked the tag team divisions in WWE. As we watch a recap of Goldberg defeating Luger and Bam Bam on the last Thunder, I am reminded that Goldberg might not even be on this trip [Editor’s note: He is!]. At the least, there’s one show on which he does not show up, and Buff Bagwell taunts the crowd about it. Something like YOU DIDN’T GET GOLDBERG AND YOU DIDN’T GET STING, BUT YOU GOT BUFF, AND I’M THE STUFF. I’m trying to avoid the parts of the Nitro book that are covering the periods of time which I am still working through or I’d check the exact wording of what Buff said, but yeah, this is a pretty well-known troll job story about Buff. Anyway, Booker does a fine job of handling both KroniK members. Luger is surprised that Booker deigns to tag him, but he enters the ring without incident and proceeds to get his ass kicked for a bit before landing a couple of clotheslines on Brian Adams. A vertical suplex scores two for Luger, who continues his assault until Bryan Clark hits him in the back on a rope run and Adams drops him with a supremely ugly piledriver. Yuck. Luger is your guy in peril, but Booker slips a Houston Side Kick in on Adams behind Mickey Jay’s back. Booker, uh, continues to basically handle KroniK, which would have been helpful booking for him three months ago, until a weird exchange between himself and Clark that leads to a ball shot. It doesn’t matter all that much; Booker quickly regains control and continues to roll. Luger’s dumb ass then tries to steal a bit of valor by tossing Booker to ringside so that he can rack Adams. Booker is still focused on victory, so he ignores that and, after Luger is tossed aside, hops up top and missile dropkicks Clark while Adams has Jay drawn to his corner. His next move is interrupted by that sneaky lil’ Scott Steiner, who Repo Mans his way into the ring and scores a lead pipe shot that downs Booker. Luger watches from a safe position outside the ring as KroniK seals victory on Booker with a High Times for three. Booker sure does a lot of jobs for a world champ. After the break, Gene Okerlund asks KroniK about their prospects against Sting and Scott Steiner. I’d have to say that “It's 4:19, and you don’t have a minute” is one of the worst catchphrases that I’ve ever heard in my whole well-traveled and well-read life. Shawn Stasiak, Chuck Palumbo, and Sean O’Haire are the three in this three-on-one Handicap Match against Kevin Nash. Following KroniK’s proclamation in the previous segment that they’re cool with whichever of them gets the title shot because if one wins, they both win, Stevie Ray has the utter temerity to say that if he and Booker were in that position, they’d just flip a coin. NO THE FUCK YOU WOULDN’T, STEVIE. WE SAW ALL OF 1998 AND 1999 AND THE FIRST HALF OF 2000 FOR THAT MATTER. This guy must be out of his mind, trying to make me think I didn’t see what I saw. You couldn’t make me forget your jealousy over your little brother becoming a singles star if you used one of those devices from Men in Black to mindwipe me. Anyway, this is a tag-style Four Corners Match for some reason. It’s not good. It’s not, like, complete shit or anything, though. It exists as a thing that I shall surely forget I viewed not long from now. Nash takes a beating, comes back, and tries a Jackknife on Shawn Stasiak. Reno breaks that up and causes a DQ; the other Thrillers rush to the ring and eventually stomp out Nash. O’Haire scores a Seanton Bomb on the laid-out former world champ as the cherry on top. The Cat is already in the ring as Elix Skipper walks to the ring. After demanding that Elix’s SAMMY DAVIS JR.-LOOKIN’ ASS get in the ring, the Cat controls Skipper fairly easily. He does get too comfortable, though, and Skipper is able to kill ten punches in the corner with a Hot Shot. Skip sparks an obligabrawl, yapping at Ms. Jones all the while. He gets too close while barking at her, though, and takes a kick to the face. Tony S.: “Suckas gots to know: Where did [Ms. Jones learn that move], Stevie?!” Stevie: “Yak University, baby!” As Stevie delights over the Cat’s boogie chop, I think that instead of paying to attend some convention full of retired wrestlers so that I can collect photographs, I’d rather pay good money to sit in the back of a car on a short road trip while the Cat and Stevie listened to NPR News and had an animated conversation. So, the finish: Elix loads his fist with his Grey Cup ring, but his punch attempts find only air, and the Cat slips Elix and scores a Feliner for three. What treachery does CEO Ric Flair (I’ve decided that this is now his full name for however long it amuses me, by the way) have in store for the weaselly little Boogie Knights? Goldberg, duh. Do you like SPEARS? Do you like JACKHAMMERS? Do you like SPLATS? If so, dear reader, then have I got news for you! You get two of each for the price of one! Yes, TWO for the price of ONE! What a crazy deal! And if you order now, we’ll throw in a free huge crowd pop! Wow! Can Gene Okerlund coax a coherent statement out of Scott Steiner? Actually, yes, which maybe explains why he’s at least kayfabe still working in WCW. Steiner plans to do nothing but win matches and sleep with his freaks all the way to Mayhem and beyond. Lance Storm is sans Team Canada for his United States Championship shot against General Rection. Let’s see in what manner that Storm insults England. Aw, no dice. He’s too focused on defeating General Rection, whom he hopes will also leave his compatriots in the back. I do like that most of the crowd stood up for “O Canada,” though. Now, that’s Commonwealth solidarity! That bum Rection doesn’t fully accede to Storm’s request; he brings Major Gunns out here while the dubbed Misfits in Action theme drowns out everything – the crowd, the commentary, everything but this sorry attempt at approximating Jimmy Hart and Howard Helm’s knockoff of a classic Edwin Starr song. I think it odd that they’re running this match on Nitro even though they’ve built their Mayhem match as a final encounter between the two. Why would you run this match two weeks before they wrestle one another at Mayhem? The answer appears to be that the booking committee wants to rush this Major Gunns heel turn. The match before the turn has Storm DDTing Morrus on concrete and is worked at a solid pace. It’s decent televised pro wrestling. Team Canada and the Misfits come to ringside and brawl, which draws the attention of ref Slick Johnson. In the ring, General Rection goes for a No Laughing Matter, but Major Gunns clearly appreciated her time as a Canadian citizen and would like Storm to help renew her visa. She pulls Storm out of the way and helps him load his fist; then, after Rection survives a loaded punch by kicking out of Storm’s lateral press and crawls toward the ropes on a follow-up Canadian Maple Leaf, she tosses in the towel to help Storm win the Canadian Championship for a second time. I guess that's what you get for not leaving all of the Misfits in the back like Storm asked, Rection...you bum. Oops, I haven’t updated this in a couple of title changes, so here we go: WCW United States Championship title change count: 8 (Jarrett > VACANT > Jarrett > VACANT > Scott Steiner > VACANT > Storm > Rection > Storm) I have to be real with you; until I updated this count for the first time in a few weeks, I forgot entirely that Scott Steiner was the United States Champion at one point earlier in this year of WCW television. We break for ads. When we come back, Major Gunns is quite proud of herself in her interview with Gene Okerlund. I see an end coming for the sorry-ass Misfits in Action. A glorious, glorious end. KroniK closes this show by wrestling Scott Steiner (w/Midajah) and Sting in the finals of the London Lethal Lottery. Steiner drops Midajah off to join commentary and tells Stevie Ray not to even think of trying to get back at him on behalf of Booker during this match. Stevie is perfectly polite to Midajah, which tells you something. Anyone else, he’s all YAK this and YAK that. Or maybe Paisley had it right and Stevie will only say that sort of thing when any of WCW's ladies are not around. Anyway, Midajah is a solid enough talker and proves a decent addition to the table for this match. She’s sort of a low-talker, though. That’s her only big negative. Speaking of the match, it’s a six-minute Nitro special in which Sting doesn’t get much opening shine and we rush toward an inevitable end. I have been thoroughly trained not to pay much attention to any of the work in these short Nitro main events. I can’t even find the energy to write about the flow of the bout because I know that nothing really matters but the finish that both teams are racing toward. I will note the WHO STOLE ALL THE LUCHADORES? sign in the crowd, though. Bring ‘em back! Bless you, WCW, creating a cruiserweight tag title a) right before you die and b) well after you got rid of all the luchadores that would have been perfect for that division. So, Midajah freaks out after KroniK lands a High Times on Scotty; she hops up on the apron and creates enough of a distraction that Sting can dropkick Adams to the floor. Clark tries to land a Meltdown on Sting, but in a nice little finish, Sting hooks Clark’s head as Clark hoists him up and transitions into a Scorpion Death Drop for three. Steiner attacks Sting with a chair, so Booker runs to the ring with a chair of his own and lays out Steiner with a shot to the head…and then Sting with another shot to the head just because. That’s how your show ends. This episode of Nitro wasn’t great or anything, but it kept me engaged and even developed a couple of feuds in ways that have me questioning what’s going to come next, which is promising. And honestly, the novelty of a UK show works for me. It made me wish that I had visited London long before I first did. Anyway, WCW is creeping back toward respectability in its wrestling shows, and I’m all for it. 2 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.

I think the "numbers go up" gameplay is such a dopamine hit for me that I'd play MUA 4 and love it. These games definitely peaked with X-Men Legends 2, though, which had the dopamine hit plus the joy of making Phoenix a complete damage monster and the random Iron Man unlockable.

I could swear he's on the last Nitro as a babyface, losing to Shawn Stasiak. I'm interested to see how wrong I am on that (false?) memory.

Thunder Interlude – show number one hundred and thirty-five – 8 November 2000 "The WCW Gang continues to stabilize Thunder into a consistently watchable show" It’s time for another short Thunder, so I’m guessing that for whatever reason, the WWE Network’s editors cut another interview…Strange…I wonder what’s behind those editing decisions… Here’s the Thunder opening, still prominently featuring Juventud Guerrera and Tank Abbott… Evan Karagias is exactly in the position where he’s the least useful…On his own as a singles talent…Not for long, though, as future semi-reluctant tag partner Jamie (K)noble joins him in the ring as his opponent in this Thunder opener…Noble quickly takes it outside, hits a running flipping senton to the floor, and wins an obligabrawl so short that it maybe doesn’t even qualify as one…Noble hits a back elbow in the ring and commences to score a series of quick two counts… Karagias finally gets some purchase in the match by tripping Noble as Noble springs to the top rope…Stevie Ray, thankfully back on commentary this week, talks about how much his six-year-old daughter likes the Backstreet Boys…Tony S. prefers both N’Sync and 98 Degrees to the Backstreet Boys himself…Absolutely not to the first, but sure, why not to the second of those boy band alternatives to Backstreet…Stevie, as Tony S. complains about what new music the kids like to listen to: “Hey, leave the kids alone”…Good dad Stevie has already improved this televised wrestling program… Karagias has an acceptable enough heel control segment…He can’t get a three count, though, which is partially because he’s too busy dancing to cover sometimes…Noble blocks a superplex, shoves Karagias to the mat, and follows with a guillotine legdrop…They battle back and forth, but Noble comes out on top with a rolling vertical suplex into a Northern Lights with a bridge for two…Noble starts to pour on the offense… Karagias stops the onslaught by posting Noble…The ref is busy looking at Noble and counting to ten to see (or apparently hear or feel) Shane Helms and Shannon Moore rush the ring and hit a team TKO on Karagias…Stevie: THAT’S WHAT THE TEMPTATIONS DID TO DAVID RUFFIN…I love that this is his go-to for music group backstabbing treachery metaphors…Anyway, Noble beats the count and covers a knocked out Karagias for three…Even though he got the duke, he’s still nice enough to come back after the match and chase off Helms and Moore as they pick Karagias’s bones…Decent opener… After a break, Reno and his trusty kendo stick defend the WCW Hardcore Championship against Crowbar…Put the belt on Crowbar, dammit!...Actually, I’m pretty sure that Crowbar becomes the hardcore champ at some point soon…Crowbar and Meng might have been the last couple of hardcore champs in the company, or at least among the last couple of champs…This match is mostly more of the same with the trashy and the smashy…I don’t like how Crowbar dives onto ladders for sandwich splash spots…He’s trying way too hard for this division and this company…I am all for varying the flow and tenor of these hardcore matches in WCW, but maybe in a less personally injurious way…This is a better-than-average hardcore bout because Crowbar tries really hard and is a solid worker… One thing I can say that I appreciate about the last few shows is that the matches are longer…Even if, as in 1998, sometimes they could use a bit of editing or feel a bit overlong, I prefer that to all the shorter match times of the past year because these longer matches have more of a chance to be good…They also have distinct segmentation...Like, there are actual shine segments for the babyfaces now...Crowbar tries everything, including a diving apron clothesline to a seated Reno and a tussle to the back, where Crowbar gets a fire extinguisher and uses it as a weapon…They fight back onto the stage, where Vito pops up and surprises Reno by hitting him with a Mafia Kick that sends him plummeting to the floor below…Vito actually gets a small VI-TO chant, too…Crowbar follows with a stage dive onto Reno for three and for the hardcore title…This is a well-deserved title for my man Crowbar… After the break, Mike Awesome and General Rection celebrate in the ring with Crowbar…You will never, ever, ever make me care about General William Hugh DeMott-Morrus Rection, WCW. Rey Misterio Jr. has unfortunately colored his hair magenta…He looks like a doofus, sadly...He and the Filthy Animals come to the ring, where Konnan’s pre-match SPEECH ON DIS is still somewhat over…His insults are dumb, though…Apparently, this match between Konnan and Disco Inferno (w/Alex Wright) has the stip that if Disco wins, Konnan has to keep Disco's name out of his mouth going forward…Stevie Ray is apparently not a huge Kidman fan, but he thinks Rey is peachy…Kidman checks a very married Tony S. for asking, “Where is Tygress? Is she going to join us at this desk?”…Tony S. is shameless, though!...He cannot be shamed!... It feels like Disco and Konnan have been off-and-on feuding for a decade or so…Billy Kidman is not good at commentary…He calls the Boogie Knights the worst tag team in history, and Tony S. must feel the need to fill in for an absent Mark Madden because he responds like so: “Worse than the Ding Dongs?”…Also, Scott Armstrong is the ref, but he’s going by Scott James, and Stevie Ray seems on the verge of asking a question about the name change…He lets it pass, though…Anyway, ref James and Disco get in a shoving match… Disco makes me laugh by doing an elaborate celebratory dance on the second rope before coming off with a double-axe…Konnan by that time has gotten up, stepped to the side, and cocked his fist, patiently waiting for that idiot Disco to dive…Konnan continues his comeback, which is when Wright, Rey, and Kidman all get involved…Konnan manages to DDT Disco, but Wright pulls him off the cover…It doesn’t matter…Konnan hits a sit-out facebuster for three…Disco claims that Scott James retaliated against him with a fast count… After the break, we see Disco hire KroniK to get back at Scott James for the perceived fast count… It’s Dopey David Flair!...Dopey Dave's new theory is that the father of Stacy's baby is Rey Misterio Jr. because Stacy has said that she thought Rey was cute…This is so random…Rey and Tygress answer Dave’s demand for them to present themselves…Stevie: “Now, Rey’s got his own yak, so what would he need with David Flair’s yak?”…Tony S. and Mike Tenay inquire upon the difference between a yak and a squack…A yak is a regular girlfriend, but a squack is a lady on the side, if you were wondering…Rey denies being the father…Tygress slaps Dave, and then we get an impromptu match…Rey posts himself somewhere in there, but there’s absolutely no chance that Dopey Dave is going to capitalize on that mistake with a victory… While Rey summarily makes a comeback on Dave, Stevie expounds on his thoughts w/r/t the Battle Domers…He basically calls T-Money a broke bitch…I guess even with the budget cuts, there’s more lucre in WCW wrestling than in chasing guys who work in the L.A. fitness scene and are trying to get some TV time around a poorly-lit arena…We get a FACE FULLA STUFF YAK and a Bronco Buster…The desk is in full-on fuckery mode…Rey drills Dave with a guillotine legdrop for three…Stevie and Tony S. on commentary is improving this generally meaningless Thunder for me by leaps and bounds… Coach Kevin Nash leads his pupils in the Thrillers to the ring for a bout against Shawn Stasiak, that wayward son of theirs…Stasiak was wise enough to keep KroniK on retainer as his backup for this match…Mike Sanders is still the commish, so he grabs a microphone and suggests that KroniK avoid a suspension by leaving the ringside area…Since KroniK gets their money up front, they roll out and keep the cash…Nash says that Stasiak is S.O.L….Tony S.: “And we know what that means”…Stevie, inquisitively: “What does it mean?”…Anyway, Nash is suddenly fired as head coach of the Thrillers by Sanders, and he catches a beatdown from Stasiak et al….Booker T. runs down to make the save, and all seven Thrillers clear out… A post-ad segment sees Nash being checked out by a trainer and selling a concussion from the attack… Now, Lance Storm (w/Team Canada) done pissed off THA MONSTA MENG…They’ll hook it up next…Storm basically argues that general competence is on the decline, particularly in the United States and Tonga…He then stands at attention for “O Canada”…We don’t get through the first stanza before Meng (w/Kwee Wee and Paisley) walks the ramp, his theme music bringing an end to those solemn proceedings… Tony S. to Paisley: “Hello, beautiful!”…He gets a “Hello, handsome” in response and also probably another talking-to from his wife when he gets home…Paisley argues that Kwee Wee Angry Allen is like a smaller version of Meng…A mini-Meng, if you will…Stevie insults Paisley’s hair, which gets Tenay and Tony S. up in arms…Tony S. apologizes profusely for Stevie’s conduct, and I’m going to be honest, almost none of WCW’s feuds matter so I’m sort of okay with the clowning at the desk… Paisley: “Stevie Ray, I notice you call me ‘Miss Paisley’ to my face, but when my back is turned, I’m a YAK”…Hilarious…To crib an idea from Roger Ebert, sometimes instead of a random semi-meaningless Thunder, I’d rather just get in its place an hour of the people who would have been otherwise booked on the show having lunch together, talking about wrestling, and cracking on one another…If Thunder was pre-empted by a proto Table for Three show with Stevie, Tony S., and Paisley having lunch and chatting at a mid-priced café, I’d watch the hell out of that ten times out of ten… Anyway, the rest of Team Canada runs a distraction on Meng and takes out Kwee Wee…Meng manages to land a Samoan Drop on Storm, then leaves the ring to attack Elix and Duggan…Meng breaks Duggan’s 2x4 and Tongan Death Grips both men…Unfortunately for him, he gets counted out while doing so…Kwee Wee recovers and gets in Lance Storm’s face…Storm decides to vacate the premises when Meng backs Kwee Wee up…This was fine as a match, but genuinely fun as an exercise in commentating while only half-focusing on the action in the ring… Booker T. defends his WCW World Heavyweight Championship in the middle of the card against Mike Awesome…Bless your hearts, WCW bookers…Anyway, Tony S. notices Booker’s new gloves, and I suddenly see a lack of Breathe Right strip and try to recall when Book stopped wearing them to the ring…Maybe when he became a singles guy?...Anyway, Awesome gets outmaneuvered by Booker early…Book scores a couple of two counts before being hit with a lariat that sends him to the floor… Awesome instigates an obligabrawl that he wins, mostly by using a steel chair (in front of the ref, no less)…It’s sort of a long obligabrawl, and I’m glad when Awesome brings it back to the ring and lands a slingshot splash for two…You know what?...Awesome’s facial features are too small for his face…Just an observation…Awesome is really heeling it up out here, so maybe we are done with this nonsense ‘70s gimmick the poor bastard has been working…Good news if so… Awesome sets up a table…Awesome loads Booker onto his shoulders for a running Awesome Bomb through the table, but Booker hops out…Alas, Awesome ducks Booker’s roundhouse kick and back suplexes Booker through the table…Awesome covers, but Booker kicks out at 2.9…Awesome tries a top-rope splash next, but Booker rolls away…Book manages a leap over into a sunset flip for two…He gets up to his feet first and lands a reverse neckbreaker for two more, then a spinebuster with a bridge for another two count…Axe kick, Spinaroonie, Houston Side Kick, and all that only gets another 2.9…Excellent timing on a couple of these kickouts from both guys…Awesome is cooked…He swings a wild right that Booker ducks…Book hooks Awesome for a Book End and hits it for three…Decent match, but man, that long obligabrawl dragged it down a bit… So, here’s what was cut: We missed a sit-down interview-slash-insult battle between Mark Madden and the Cat…Scott Steiner asked Mike Sanders for a bit of cover by having Sanders order him to attend anger management courses to appease Ric Flair, then tried to kill the commissioner because he’s CRAAAAAZY…Lenita Erickson, who gets a whole-ass chapter in the Nitro book, was introduced as a backstage interviewer…She won’t be around for long, I don’t believe…Also, we missed her interview of Bob Sapp!...Did he ever make it into a WCW ring for a match?...I don’t believe he did, but I’m happy to be surprised… Post-review update: I was listening to Between the Sheets for this week of television, and that's when I learned that the Lenita Erickson/Bob Sapp interview was posted online. It was a terrible segment, but it was so bad, and Bob Sapp in particular was so hammy (like some sort of pantomime villain in a kung-fu flick) that it came back around and was Dumb, But Entertaining. The link is here for anyone who is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UP6A43eHk8. How this made it on television in the first place, I'll never know, but whoever edited these shows for the Network did the world a disservice by cutting it. All that stuff I listed above would probably have been a net-positive to this episode of Thunder for me and my tastes were it included in this version of the ep… The main event is a Triple Threat Match between Lex Luger, Bam Bam Bigelow, and Goldberg…Bigelow’s t-shirt has ominous text in tiny letters on the front: Nowhere is safe…You’re telling me, Bammer…Before Goldberg can enter the ring, KroniK makes their way down the ramp and kicks the shit out of ref Scott James per Disco’s paid request…If this isn't going to end with Bullet Bob showing up, flanked by Brad, Scott, and Steve and throwing punches at Disco, this probably won't have the end result that I'd most desire... After the break, Goldberg finally makes his entrance…Stevie and Tenay debate whether or not ref James’s count in the Disco match was, in fact, fast…Mickey Jay is now the ref in charge for what is essentially a handicap match…This match is what it is…Shine, heat, comeback, SPEAR, JACKHAMMER ATTEMPT THAT FAILS BECAUSE BAMMER WEIGHS A TON, JACKHAMMER, SPLAT on Bammer…Luger bails out rather than take the loss…This was perfectly fine for what it was… Speaking of things that were perfectly fine for what they were, let me introduce you to this edition of WCW Thunder!...Anyway, I'll next see you in the UK!...WOO…

I'm wondering if I should put him on my master list of Every Personality Who Showed Up to Wrestle in WCW During the Nitro Era that I'm making. If he at least makes it in the ring for a scrap, the heck with it. I will.

This "Daffney was a fantastic personality" truther agrees 100%

How have you not been kicked out of Mississippi for holding this opinion? As for a Repo Man face turn, you'd just make him a Robin Hood type character and feud him with Dibiase's Money Inc. stable. Which sounds terrible, but which could work from the standpoint of making Repo a babyface. Darsow could play a mischievous trickster, so I bet in the alternate universe where this turn happens, he has at least a couple of fun segments on those dreary late 1994/early 1995 RAWs.

Really hoping he's not living the "Charlie Kelly washes down his steroids with beer" part of the gimmick, though.

Show #265 – 6 November 2000 "The one with a bonus Battle Dome review!" Recap: Ric Flair is WCW’s new CEO, and I ask you, what the heck is the point of keeping the commissioner’s position, then? Also, Shawn Stasiak is still boring and Booker T. is still questionably booked. In a pre-tape, Midajah walks up to Sting as a diversion; Scott Steiner jumps him from behind and they have a short brawl before security pulls them apart. We cut to Nash suggesting to Mike Sanders that he fill a segment by having Sting and Scott Steiner wrestle one another during it. For fun, he further suggests throwing Jeff Jarrett into the match just for the fuck of it all. He and the rest of the Thrillers cackle. “S.O.L.” isn’t catching on as a catchphrase, fellas. Here's our ugly Nitro intro. Bring back the desolate city blocks, dammit! Chicago is subdued for the opening of tonight’s show. Alas, few are excited to see local suburbanite Lex Luger. Luger’s got a rolled up magazine in one hand and a microphone in the other. Luger walks to the desk and asks Mark Madden to stand up. OK, so this is hilarious. Last week, after Luger said that he was six-four, two-eighty, and had five percent body fat rather than his usually-stated two-seventy-five and four percent body fat, Madden off-handedly commented with something like, Huh, he got a little chubbier since the last time we saw him on Nitro. I half-chuckled, but I didn’t think enough of that comment to even write it into the Nitro review. So, that comment has been eating at an irate Luger all week, apparently, as he calls Madden an endomorph. Hey, Lex, how would you personally define an endomorph? “A gigantic glob of cellulite celluleet (that's how he pronounced it!), fat, poor conditioning, slovenly eating habits, and a piece of garbage.” He says that he has mesomorphic magnificence. Wait, hold on, Lex, what is mesomorph—“Six-foot-four, two-eighty, four percent body fat, and [in] the greatest shape of any athlete on the planet Earth.” OK, thanks, Lex. Though I don’t know why Luger is so mad; Madden’s comment obviously drove him to drop a full percentage point of body fat in a single week. Madden: “So much for the heels sticking together.” Luger gets in the ring and talks about his motivation for beating up Buff Bagwell last week, which mostly was to send a message to Bill Goldberg. Basically, Luger cuts a promo about how much he hates Goldberg’s streak, and the subtext is that he actually hates that Goldberg was booked to get a streak in the first place because he didn’t suffer for DA BIZNESS like everyone from Ric Flair to the Road Warriors. Luger is surprised that Goldberg has a book about to release, mostly because he didn’t think that Goldberg could read. He’s got with him an excerpt of it that was written in WCW Magazine. Ross Forman is at ringside taking snaps, and Luger asks him to come into the ring since he also edits the magazine. Luger asks Forman whether he liked the Goldberg book excerpt in the magazine more than the Luger feature in that same magazine. It’s a trap, Ross! He even called you his friend, which is an obvious set-up! Poor old Ross confusedly notes that Luger doesn’t have a feature in the magazine. Luger complains about the Power Plant graduates and the lovely ladies of WCW getting more attention than he gets from WCW's promotional arm before attacking Forman for not respecting him. Luger racks the guy for a good minute or so. Well, closer to two minutes considering that like eight refs slide in the ring and can only manage to all politely ask Luger not to rack the poor bastard anymore. Luger drops the erstwhile magazine editor and declares that Goldberg – just arriving to the arena – is next. After the break: Everyone in this company does stretcher jobs! Even Ross Forman! Kevin Nash browses Goldberg’s book and tries to be funny about the content, but I just want him to cut this promo with Pam Paulshock and get it over and done with already. With the Thrillers flanked behind him, he chastises both Shawn Stasiak and the guy who accidentally drops something off camera during his promo. Nash demands a match against Booker T., but before he can say much else, Stasiak walks up and again apologizes to Kevin Nash. Stasiak tries to make up with Nash by promising to be in his corner if he wrestles Booker tonight; Nash ain’t having it. Lance Storm (w/Team Canada) talks about the 2000 United States Presidential Election by saying that no matter who we vote for, we lose since we’re still Americans in the end. Well, I'd say that there are levels to this shit, Lance. Also, your suggestion to immigrate to Alberta really would just create the same problems in a new province. I talked to some British Columbians recently who might as well have been in DX because they were all like ALBERTA CAN SUCK IT, and look, I’m not here to talk Canadian or United States politics to you even though Team Canada will provoke me into doing so over the next couple of weeks, probably. I’m here to tell you about this Storm/Kwee Wee (w/Paisley) match. Upon joining the desk, Paisley immediately tells Madden: “Mark, you’re not funny” and then, when Storm gets in her face, gets up and yells YOU’D BETTER GET OUTTA HERE; I’M NOT SCARED OF ANY CANADIANS. Oh, Paisley. You are the absolute best. While short, the match in the ring is good because Kwee Wee is a solid worker, as is Lance Storm. I really like Kwee Wee’s tilt-a-whirl facebuster, especially. Someone who is currently on television should steal that move if it hasn’t already been stolen. Alas, Storm catches Kwee Wee as Kwee Wee leaps onto Storm for a monkey flip attempt; Storm dumps Kwee Wee and locks on a Canadian Maple Leaf for the tap-out victory. Storm doesn’t release the hold, so Paisley calls out a request to save her man. Her call of CODE BAD HAIR DAY brings Meng and his majestic ‘do out to clear the ring. Goldberg talks to Okerlund, the latter of whom lets him know that Bam Bam Bigelow is once again challenging him to a match later tonight. Goldberg takes the chance to be like, What the hell was the office doing leaving this guy at home the past few months? I mean, he was healing from a few burns for part of the time, dude. Goldberg is also unimpressed with Lex Luger’s boasting, and when Luger walks up and gets in his face, it turns out to be a simple ruse so that Bam Bam can crack Goldberg over the head with a pipe. Mike Sanders has booked Thriller outcast Shawn Stasiak in a hardcore title match with Reno. They’ve seemingly dropped the long-teased beef between Reno, Vito, and I guess Vito’s sister, but I still feel like it did get picked up again eventually. Reno never makes it out here. Interesting – Palumbo was attacked before he could wrestle Stasiak on Thunder, and now Reno has been downed before his match with Stasiak. This time, we see KroniK walking away from the scene. Stasiak is announced as the winner by forfeit, which Tony S. is quick to note does not count as either a pinfall or a submission. I thought forfeits also counted for title changes, but the hardcore title is dumb and also not going to make it through January, so I actually don’t care enough to dispute any of this. As the Thrillers try to figure out who attacked Reno, Palumbo picks up the (bent) weapon of choice and says this: “Y’know Kev, I’m no Columbo, but I am Chuck Palumbo” before showing everyone the weapon and positing about its use on Reno. That was very dumb, but I grinned, so it’s the good type of dumb. It’s interesting how much stuff from Russo’s final run that Terry Taylor, Kevin Sullivan, and whoever else is helping to book these shows are just running with. Ric Flair is still forcibly retired, for one, which originally happened on Russo’s watch. Goldberg still has to replicate his streak or be fired. What else? I’m sure that I’m missing something else. I just wish we could finally find out who was cutting out the lights and attacking wrestlers in the ring from back in Russo's first run with Ed Ferrara. Or who the heck was in that knockoff Scream mask back in those days, for that matter. Anyway, Flair walks to the ring for his nightly proclamation and hypes Mayhem by announcing a few matches. Storm/Rection: The Final Encounter is the first one, so we’re starting out at the lowest possible hype here. It’s okay; we’ll crest with the good stuff at the end. He also announces Luger/Goldberg and Booker/Scotty Steiner, the latter of which will be in a cage. Flair, in what I feel is an obvious signal for this upcoming swerve, says that the winner of the world title bout will be considered the flagship wrestler in the company and then immediately threatens Scott Steiner if his conduct doesn’t improve. Why not just outright tell me that Ric is going to turn heel yet again and team up with Steiner? Even if I didn’t remember that this happened, I would have known it was coming just from that sentence. Scott Steiner and Midajah walk to the ring to retort, and Scotty gets a small pop for calling Flair an OLD BASTARD and a SONUVABITCH. Steiner grabs Flair, but Booker runs in and wins a short brawl that sends Steiner tumbling to the floor. Security has to back an irate Steiner off. Flair resumes talking and makes the cage match a Straitjacket on a Pole Dangling from the Cage Ceiling Match. He also threatens to fire Steiner if Steiner physically accosts any more WCW officials. I’m looking forward to Steiner retiring dudes from WCW, but I feel the exact opposite about seeing Flair be a heel authority figure AGAIN. The time for doubling down on heel authority Flair passed eighteen months ago, fellas. I have no interest in Flair heeling it up in this position into 2001. Jimmy Hart hypes himself and begs AM radio DJs to please help get some attention on this failing wrestling company, please. He pretends that Casey Kasem wrote him a challenge letter and would deign to show up on Nitro. Shaggy Rogers absolutely would not spend one second on this fucking show. Mancow walks up and cuts an annoying fucking promo in the style of a typical untalented AM radio show host before Two Count jumps Mancow from behind and assists Hart in beating down the talentless Chicago-area bag of wind. Fresh off that victory, Two Count hustles to the ring. They’re still calling themselves Three Count, but the name doesn’t work unless they get a replacement for Evan Karagias. They’re hyped about not having to carry their former partner anymore. Leia Meow walks the Jung Dragons out and the desk falls out because her pants are sitting very low on her waist and we can see her thong. I mean, that’s a good reason to fall out, at least if your T-levels are anywhere near healthy! This is apparently a Triple Threat Tag Title Match, actually, as Jindrak and O’Haire make it out to the ring and start tossing around cruiserweights almost immediately. This is another short match. It never settles into an ordered affair and is mostly full of spots where cruiserweights leap at the bigger rookies and sometimes team up with one another to try and double-team their larger foes. The Dragons and Two Count manage to send Jindrak and O’Haire to the floor, but after dispatching of Two Count inside the ring, the Dragons both dive right into the arms of the champs, who dump them and beal Kaz back into the ring from the floor. Back in the ring, Helms covers Jindrak, but Evan Karagias runs in and breaks it up; O’Haire lands a springboard Seanton Bomb on Yang for three. After the match, two things happen. First, outside the ring, Jindrak and O’Haire square off with Terry Crews and his fellow Battle Domers, the latter of whom are in the front row. I did watch Battle Dome at the time, by the way, and I remember seeing this angle in first run as well. It’s not hindsight at all to say that Crews’s performance as T-Money was obviously levels above the performance of any other Battle Domer. I’m not expecting guys who can actually act to be on these shows, as Crews can, but give me at least a few more guys with incredibly punchable faces like American Gladiator Nitro. That’s a place where Battle Dome was lacking. No support for T-Money in his lead heel role. Oh yeah, the second thing to happen: Inside the ring. Two Count and the Dragons stomp out Karagias until Jamie Noble runs in with a chair and makes the save. While M.I. Smooth teases revealing an apparently reinstated wrestler who is a passenger in his limo, I wonder if they even teased this Battle Dome crossover elsewhere on WCW television. I mean, Battle Dome was a syndicated show that barely anyone watched, so it’s not like the audience would have known who they were, for the most part. Tony S. went all Mike Tenay and was like OH WOW, IT’S THOSE BATTLE DOME GUYS, but this is the first we’ve seen of them on Nitro or Thunder that I can recall. Maybe a recap of this feud was cut out of a previous Thunder or something? Also, did I just totally miss Ric Flair saying that he was reinstating a WCW wrestler in his earlier talking segment? Hudson said that Flair teased that he reinstated a mystery wrestler, but I must have blanked out. After the break, we see who the reinstated wrestler might well be: Diamond Dallas Page. We didn’t see him get out of the limo directly. Either way, it’s nice to see Page back; this show needs another big match wrestler badly. Page gets a pretty nice pop and then *sigh* cuts a promo that he claims is “a shoot, for real” about how he wanted to leave WCW because it sucks, but they wouldn’t let him out of his contract. He only decided to come back to keep the paychecks coming in when he heard the crowd pop for him as he walked out for a house show bout against Booker T. a month ago. Page purposely garners as many cheap pops from the excited Chicago crowd as possible in his promo. We see the Battle Dome guys taunting Page from the crowd. Page mocks Battle Dome by saying that they must want to be on a “highly-rated show for once.” Uh, no, they didn’t show up to Monday Night RAW, Page. Page calls out Buff Bagwell, the Cat, and Rick Steiner for backup. The Cat calls out the Battle Dome guys for a fight. Buff suggests that the Battle Domers have a fluid sense of their own sexuality. Rick Steiner attempts to speak English. Anyway, Terry “T-Money” Crews leads the change over the rail and security keeps everyone apart as Buff once again opines upon how little the Battle Domers care to align with heteronormative concepts of sexuality and gender presentation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Update: Holy shit, so before I could edit this review and post it, I had to go to bed. When I got up and started to put in a shift for work in my office, I thought to myself that I’d see if there were any Battle Dome episodes posted to YouTube. In fact, one of the contestants on the show posted a VHS recording of his episode…and the WCW wrestlers are on it! Battle Domer Baby Blue gets his nose busted open and exclaims “WCW Guys…this is the REALLLLL THING.” Immediately after, the PBP man, whose name I don’t remember because he’s just some dude as opposed to his partner on color commentary Ed Lover (!!), tells us that Rick Steiner and his buddies are pulling up to the building. We cut to a limo, where DDP, the Cat, Rick Steiner, and Buff Bagwell step out. OK, this is now a Battle Dome interstitial right smack in the middle of this review. If you want to see this incredibly silly crossover for yourself, by the way, here’s the link: https://youtu.be/wgFIxkxQw10?si=p4Eb1avgdxUiRml0 Review: This quartet of WCW stars have made two previous incursions into the Battle Dome, and while their first invasion attempt went well, they were turned back the second time around. These WCW stars were tormented by the nWo for literal years, and they couldn’t figure out how to effectively utilize the nWo's tactics or anything? It’s Battle Dome! You should be able to successfully invade Battle Dome with relative ease, fellas! Anyway, this episode also shows clips from the segment that just ended, so it can be placed sequentially as happening right after this Nitro. The commercials are also left in this recording, which is fantastic! Battle Dome is sponsored by Nintendo (with the 3D N64-era logo), and we get a Banjo-Tooie commercial in which Banjo refuses a parachute on a skydive because he’s got Kazooie to help him safely land. Unfortunately for him, Kazooie isn’t in his backpack at this moment of truth and is instead chilling out by the pool while Banjo plummets to the ground. Luckily, Banjo only takes a single bar of fall damage. Also, they had Folgers Café Latte crystals at one point, which is amazing and sounds like the best bad latte-while-camping one could have in 2000. Nescafe has long surpassed Folgers at this point. Wait, there were fried crawfish bites at Popeye’s! Holy shit! I want those! An eleven-piece bucket of chicken at Popeye’s only costs ten bucks in 2000, by the way. OK, this is now also a “2000 commercials” interstitial, I suppose. After some dudes jump through a wheel for points, we see Rick Steiner and Buff Bagwell shadowboxing somewhere in the back. Commercials: UPN still exists and has hired Brian Dennehy to host Arrest and Trial, which is real-life Law and Order and even uses the same or similar font as the latter show. We also get a bunch of local commercials from some SoCal city, including a local plumbing company that cribs The Shadow for its ad. Rick Steiner and Buff Bagwell interview with some dude. Apparently, Ricky Steiner is facing off with T-Money later tonight. Buff does most of the talking because Steiner is IN THE ZONE! AAAAAHHHH! So, the problem with Battle Dome is that it’s got far worse events than American Gladiators. The Battle Wheel is a worse Pyramid. This Aerial Kickboxing event is a less-aesthetically pleasing Hang Tough. I like the idea of doing real competition, but making your gladiators be more overtly pro wrestling with the promos and taunts and stuff, especially in 2000, but they needed to license a few of the events from AG. Commercials: Holy shit, a Shenmue commercial! SEGA DREAMCAST: IT’S THINKING. The kid who is playing it in the ad turns out to be in a psych ward because he’s so into the game that he thinks he’s Ryo. Also, the Geico gecko is rendered in some very early aughts CGI. Yeesh. We get Jack (of the eponymous Jack in the Box) and Albertsons commercials; we also get a Tekken Tag Tournament commercial, but I was always a Virtua Fighter dude. Tekken feels more fun to play, though, what with all the juggling. I prefer VF taking it’s high-middle-low guessing game in a more deliberate direction, though. Aerial Kickboxing master Bubba Steel dispatches of all three of his opponents and then cuts a promo on Rick Steiner and Rick Steiner’s ugly face while Steiner and Page do a little light wrestling to get Steiner fired up in the back. Usually, when Page wrestles a Steiner in the back, he gets nearly killed, so I hope he’ll be okay this time around. Also, Mr. Steel calls Steiner a “fake, phony athlete,” which is a kayfabe mistake and honestly feels like it could be a shoot mistake if ol’ Ricky’s feeling testy. Commercials: I haven’t eaten a frozen dinner in years, maybe coming up on decades. This guy in the store looks at a bunch of Healthy Choice and Hungry Man dinners and sadly walks away, but Carl’s Jr. is there for him! I mean, if by “there for him,” we really mean, “ready to give him diabetes and cripplingly unhealthy weight gain.” Also, we get another video game ad: Driver 2 (which I’ve never played, but which people really like as I recall). I forgot about the hoodoo-practicing Jamaican Battle Dome guy. He is the Battle Domer on patrol in the Battlefield event, which is a game that is essentially what happens when you take Powerball from Gladiators and make it far worse and almost completely unentertaining. The guy who posted this show just runs in circles the whole event and doesn’t even make a move toward the goal in a “run out the clock” sort of deal because he’s so far ahead that he’s locked a spot in the final event already. T-Money cuts a fun promo on Rick Steiner in which he says that Steiner “has been livin’ in Never Never Land – welcome to reality” and promises to show the WCWers that “money, hoes, and clothes is what it’s all about.” This is an obvious thing to say considering Terry Crews’s success as a comedic actor, but if WCW put him on their television regularly right now, he’d already be a top-five promo guy in the company. Maybe top three. Maybe top two? Even that last one is not a stretch. Video Allen Iverson is upset at some preppy dudes from a Los Angeles high school who beat him at basketball in the video game world of NBA 2K1. Man, do I miss console-company Sega. I’m glad that they’ve stabilized as a third-party publisher, but video gaming is far poorer for the lack of new Sega consoles, and a bunch of their intellectual properties are basically dormant now. Other ads: Twix is extreme! Some kid practices his greeting for working at McDonald’s in the mirror, though we are led to believe that he’s practicing an attempt to ask a lady out. The Tekken Tag Tournament ad is our first repeat ad; speaking of, I just rescued the Heihachi Bot in one of the latest Astro Bot DLC levels. When you interact with him after rescuing him, he’s training his buddy Kuma, and Kuma poots on him, much to his dismay. Yes, that sentence makes sense in the context of the game. As another aside, Tekken had Kuma and VF/Fighters Megamix had Kumachan, and I always get the two mixed up. DDP cuts a terrible promo on T-Money while Money and Steiner get gloved and helmeted up for a game of Shitty Powerball. Steiner easily shakes Crews because Steiner is a legit athlete, but he slips before he can get up the pyramid and score. Anyway, they drop the ball and work a fight. Steiner is very gentle with the future Everybody Hates Chris and Brooklyn Nine-Nine star. Everyone else jumps in and has a weak pull-apart; T-Money cheap shots Steiner while some refs and security have him pinned against the cage, and Steiner responds by punching some refs in frustration. Commercials: Cars, razors, but not enough video games. Wait, just at the last, here are Bubba Ray and D-Von Dudley to help advertise for WWF No Mercy! YEAHHHHHHHHHHH Rick Steiner sells T-Money’s overhand right by icing his forehead while DDP promises that T-Money is catching an asswhipping on the upcoming Nitro! YES! I LOVE IT! THIS IS NOW UNIRONICALLY MY FAVORITE ANGLE ON NITRO AT THIS MOMENT! The final event is between the final two competitors, and it’s a faux-UFC fight. What a show this Battle Dome is. It is entirely of its moment – a mashup of Gladiators, early-era UFC, and Attitude Era pro wrestling. This show could not exist at any other time than the time that it did. Anyway, the dude who posted this episode to YouTube wins it by executing a clean judo throw to toss his opponent off the platform, for which he gets a motorcycle and a Battle Dome ring. Will we ever see Nintendo sponsor a show this edgy again? Again, probably not as Nintendo's edgy period was really for five years specifically within this time and place. Battle Dome sort of stinks as a going concern, but this episode should go in a time capsule or a museum because it’s so singularly unique a piece of entertainment. The preview of next week’s Battle Dome promises more WCW vs. Battle Dome action! Also, as we see a few final ads from show sponsors, there’s a BowFlex commercial, which is spot on sponsorship for this type of show. And after the Battle Dome, the next show is…Creflo Dollar scamming his existentially frustrated viewers out of their hard-earned money. 2000: What a fucking year! Okay, back to our regular Nitro action (though I wish that after going back to writing about this Nitro, I could then literally go back to 2000, maybe early invest in Chipotle, Nvidia, and Amazon, and play Sega Dreamcast and N64 with my friends. Would it be weird if I tracked down my teenaged wife and told her that we’d be getting married some day, so let’s hang out and get some coffee together? Yeah, it’d be weird, probably). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shawn Stasiak is getting far too much talk time tonight and television time in general. He denies causing Reno to be attacked in response to Pam Paulshock's hard-hitting investigative questions and again asks for forgiveness from Nash and the Thrillers. WCW is off to London and Manchester next week. I wish I were off to London and Manchester next week. Jeff Jarrett and Scott Steiner (w/Midajah) are tagging together, it appears. Sting’s partner in this bout is Buff Bagwell. As Steiner jaws at some rube in the front row, Mark Madden suggests that CEO Ric might get a kick out of Steiner literally killing a fan, and the tone of admonition in Tony S.’s voice seems shoot-y, in a Don’t you dare be bringing Turner S&P down on me, man sort of way. Madden responds by basically daring someone at WCW or Turner to fire him. Boy, did I not remember that Madden was basically trying to get let go for his last few weeks of work. It’s actually perversely entertaining. As for this match, there’s barely any babyface shine; Sting whiffs on a splash early and ends up as FIP. The production truck misses Steiner interference that would have been helpful to see and which prevents Sting from making a hot tag. You know, just a typical Monday night here in WCW! Steiner slaps on a somewhat shitty-looking surfboard, which maybe explains why Sting is about to fight up from it and land buckle bonks before getting kicked in the balls and losing control of the match again. It takes a Sting escape from a Steiner suplex attempt and a counter DDT for a hot tag to occur. Buff clears out Jarrett and gets two on a double-arm DDT to Steiner. Buff goes up for a Blockbuster and lands it, but Jarrett KABONGs him right in front of everyone but Slick Johnson, who has somehow stumbled into a seated position in the corner and missed it. I mean, even if you missed it, how are you going to ignore the guitar pieces, buddy? Sting chases Jarrett away from the ring, but Steiner locks Buff in a Recliner for the knockout victory. This was fine. Except for the dumb finish, of course, but that almost goes without saying here in World Championship Wrestling. Promo: Has anyone browsing this thread read this Goldberg book? It’s probably not worth seeking out, but I would love to be wrong about that. Lance Storm joins the desk to complain about Alex Wright (w/Disco Inferno) getting a United States Championship shot tonight, and he is correct in kayfabe about his argument that a) Wright hasn’t done enough to warrant a shot at the second-biggest singles title in the company, especially since he’s been working in mostly tags since he’s come back, and b) as a guy who hasn’t been pinned for any of the three titles that he won, Storm should get the first shot at General Rection’s (w/Major Gunns) title belt. Disco does his unfunny deal where he translates Wright’s pre-match German speech. Mark Madden is out here making WW2 jokes: “When was the last time Germany won on their own soil?” OK, I’ve decided that Madden not giving a fuck, making jokes and challenging the office, and sabotaging what fabric of narrative believability this show has is actually pretty funny. I’ll allow it. This match is so enthralling that a small segment of the crowd audibly starts a WE WANT PUPPIES chant. What’s so weird about WCW is that, if they could have hired someone with reasonable creative ideas to run this show at any point in the last two years, Alex Wright would probably actually be over at this level. There was a point in about 1997 when Wright was feuding with Ultimo Dragon that it seemed like he might be a long-term upper-midcard talent for WCW someday. Even in this match, he unloads some nice offense and has wonderful timing. That Berlyn repackaging just destroyed this guy’s WCW career. The finish is that Disco tries to get involved with a chair, but the other Misfits rush the ring and chase him away. Meanwhile, Gunns draws the ref’s attention to no purpose whatsoever because Rection simply catches Wright going up top, presses him to the mat, and lands a No Laughing Matter to retain his title. If Storm had gotten involved somehow, drawing the ref might have made sense. This match was also fine. Pre-tape: Hacksaw Duggan whispers. Then he yells. Mostly, he yells about what’s wrong with the United States. Oh man, where to fucking start? He estimates that he needs ten whole days to list everything. I mean, that’s a low estimate. Actually, what he does complain about is low voter turnout. Might I suggest that low voter turnout is good? Fewer idiots voting means better outcomes, probably. He also notes that the candidates, as much as they may be middling-to-bad, are chosen by the electorate, which is why I don’t want to hear anything about how the parties don’t serve the people. The parties are imbued power by the people! Organize and change the party if you don't like it, dammit! That’s how it’s always happened in a two-party system like this one! That’s what the Republican electorate has done to their own party over the past twenty years! Neocons – sidelined! Isolationists - centered! So, in conclusion: Stop pretending your leaders aren’t a reflection of your wider culture or community in some way and also, most people are too uninformed and confident in their own ignorance to make good choices at the booth, so high turnout doesn’t mean much but high idiocy. Thank you for coming to my Poli Sci seminar. Goldberg/Bam Bam wasn’t interesting in late 1998 and early 1999, so you can imagine how I feel about it in late 2000. Luger walks onto the ramp to view the proceedings. He momentarily distracts Goldberg, but you know the end of this song, don’t you? Spear, Jackhammer, SPLAT. Kevin Nash finally gets a return world title shot after his Fall Brawl loss to Booker T. Scott Steiner and Midajah walk out here first; Steiner threatens both Ric Flair and Booker and finally gets the “you are fatherless” insult right. It only took him multiple tries and many weeks to land that insult. Bless his dangerously enlarged heart. So, after a commercial break and introductions, we get a classic six-minute Nitro main event special in which what action there is means nothing because some sort of fucky-fuck finish will be the focus anyway. Hold on: Steiner is incredulous when Hudson and Tony S. claim that Booker might not have the height advantage over Nash, but that he does have “the heart advantage” over Nash. Steiner, scoffing: THE HEART ADVANTAGE?! ARE YOU HIGH?! Hahahahaha, fan-tastic. Anyway, there’s a ref bump off a Houston Side Kick. Stasiak runs in and hits Book with brass knucks as Book sets Nash up for a Book End. Nash loads Booker up for a Jackknife, and Stasiak punches Nash with his loaded fist, tosses Booker on top, and revives the ref to count three. This whole main event was a vehicle for centering Shawn Stasiak. I am staggered, folks. This Nitro wasn’t good, but I loved the Battle Dome episode, as bad as Battle Dome's events are. Only as a one-off, though. If I started a thread and reviewed every Battle Dome episode, it might look mostly like the 2000 WCW part of this thread. Anyway, this review is special; it gets two scores! 0 out of 5 Stinger Splashes; 3 out of 5 T-Moneys.

I left town for the President's Day weekend and bought two books, both of which are very good reads. Theresa Runstedtler, Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA: '70s NBA is an under-chronicled period for the league, which is a shame. People pretend the league didn't exist until Magic and Bird were drafted, but this book is a very well-researched look at how black NBA players, shaped within the era of civil rights and labor rights that they came up in during the '60s, in turn won a series of labor battles that modernized the NBA and gave players more control over their careers (and I'm very much fine with the modern player-controlled NBA in comparison to any other period where owners had more control than they do now, which might be a minority opinion). It also covers the misreported and misrepresented "cocaine problem" that this era of the NBA is still known for. I've read statistical studies that show that criminality isn't particularly more common in a random sampling of, say, NBA or NFL players than it is in society at large, and this book is clear about how the media was able to center Bernard King and Spencer Haywood and their drug and alcohol issues as emblematic of the whole NBA. Anyway, this is a fine book for NBA fans who enjoy learning the history of the league. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Warming Up Julia Child: The Remarkable Figures Who Shaped a Legend: If you were to ask me whose life I would like mine to be almost exactly like if I could choose, it'd be Julia Child's. She got to live in Paris and Marseille, learned to cook in the French way, made close friends, and had the support of those friends (and her amazingly supportive spouse Paul - I can say that this is incredibly important to one's success in life because I also have a supportive spouse, though she's not named "Paul") to help her craft and publish a seminal cookbook and then go on to also develop and host a seminal cooking show. Julia Child is just an incredibly impressive person, you know? Even being this impressive doesn't get you as far as you can go as being impressive and having the support of people who care about helping you express your impressiveness. Anyway, this book is also a wonderfully researched work that delves into the archives and uses letters from Paul, Julia, Avis DeVoto (friend of the Childs and editor/shepherder/publisher go-between), Simca Beck (co-author and great chef in her own right), and everyone else who helped Julia achieve so much as a chef, a writer, and a television personality. The big takeaways that I have from this book are that 1) people who are very individualistic underestimate what they are able to achieve only with the help of a supportive community and 2) everyone should write more letters because when people were regular letter writers back in the day, they were much more engaging and used lovely language more often than I see in today's writers - including myself.

They still have 'em in my neck of the woods, I'm pretty sure. Try Safeway/Albertsons if you haven't.

IMO, the store ones suck, sadly. They don't have that Rally's umami-and-heart-stopping-grease-bomb flavor. ...we need more food-based gimmicks in pro wrestling, dammit. I want someone to work a Julia Child gimmick where she takes nips of brandy or cooking sherry during the match and attacks her opponents with a chicken carcass a la Terry Funk in 2000 WCW. Of course, the chicken would be impeccably roasted in the French way.

Thunder Interlude – show number one hundred and thirty-four – 1 November 2000 "The WCW Gang attempts to entertain its viewers by trying this whole 'put on a bunch of decent-to-good pro wrestling matches' strategy that they hear is amenable to the pro wrestling fans who are still sticking with them" OMG, it’s a car with a New Jersey tag on it pulling up to the arena!...What a start to THUNDERRRRRRRRRRRR… It’s already November of 2000, so please get good again quickly, WCW… It sure is nice for WCW to book Three Count on one of their shows…Evan Karagias snatches the mic from Shannon Moore to talk about how awesome his dick is…By "his," I mean "Karagias's," to be clear...Shane Helms asks Karagias to keep focused, but Karagias declares himself the leader of this group, and also, since he has the best abs (also his declaration), he gets to make the rules…Three Count doesn’t even get to dance, but it’s okay because Leia Meow leads the Jung Dragons to the ring… Where the fuck is Stevie Ray?!...Tony S./Madden/Tenay is a commentary team fit for hell…Helms and Moore put together some solid combos, but Evan Karagias is on his Shawn Stasiak shit right now…This unfortunately isn’t the best match these trios will ever have with one another…It’s not bad, but they’ve worked at such a high level in the past that having a decent, but unmemorable tag match is sort of disappointing to me…Karagias gets tagged in, but doesn’t tag out because he wants the spotlight…A frustrated Helms tags himself in eventually… Huh, so at the same time we're working a sudden dissention angle between Karagias and his band mates, we’re also working a sudden dissension angle between Jamie (K)noble and Jimmy (Wang) Yang…Knoble accidentally clocks Yang…Helms and Moore combo Yang on a team TKO, and Karagias hops into the ring and steals valor by taking the pinfall…Helms and Moore kick the shit out of Karagias while Meow slaps Jamie Noble around…Kaz and Yang proceed to kick the shit out of Noble…The ejected group members are left laying in the ring, and as they stir, they look suspiciously at one another...Suddenly, a burst of a long-forgotten memory comes back to me that Noble and Karagias became a tag team and there was some sort of three-way tag feud between these teams… All I have to ask after the execution of this angle is the following…How much longer until we break Helms and Chavo away from their respective teams and have them feud with one another already?...Are we there yet?! Gene Okerlund holds court with Kevin Nash and Chuck Palumbo…Nash talks about kicking Stasiak out of the Thrillers…Palumbo faces Stasiak tonight...Palumbo threatens Stasiak…Everyone swats one another on the ass… Bam Bam Bigelow walks into the arena, tosses a friendly Crowbar ("Hey, Bam Bam!") into a door, and then demands that, uh, head of security Doug Dellinger give him some interesting matches or something like that?...We’re really scraping the barrel with these mysterious vehicle spots…Teasing Bam Bam Bigelow returns in 2000 and shit… Elix Skipper gets in the ring and cuts a mediocre promo against Lt. Loco…Skipper’s not happy with Loco's "Whine Time" nonsense and is all like SAY IT TO MY FAAAAAACE…We are reminded of said extremely shitty Lt. Loco impression from a couple Nitros ago…I forgot about that segment and am not angry, but rather disappointed that WCW reminded me of it…Loco and Major Gunns make their way to the ring…Once everyone stops talking, we get a typically good wrestling match, which doesn’t surprise me with Chavo leading the way against a green, but game worker… Gunns tries to start a LO-CO chant which weakly takes, though after ten seconds, it turns into a much stronger TAKE IT OFF chant…Welcome to the year 2000, everyone!....Loco sets Skipper up to get slapped by Gunns…Skipper is so awkward…He fucks up his part of a tilt-a-whirl slam…Even with the botch, the match is good…Skipper mostly gets his ass kicked, but manages to land a desperation lariat after managing to rana Loco onto the apron… Loco is clearly a couple of levels beyond Skip, though…He makes a comeback when the action gets back in the ring…Gunns gets in the ring and rips off her shirt, but the ref stops her before she can boot Skip in the balls…As the ref - is that an Armstrong Boy? – backs Gunns out of the ring, he misses Loco rolling up Skipper for a visual three…Skip tries to load his fist with his Grey Cup ring, but Gunns grabs his arm…That doesn’t stop Skipper, though, as the ref is drawn to Gunns again and Skipper kills a Loco sunset flip by planting himself and punching Loco right between the eyes with his still-loaded fist…After that, dropping down and getting an easy three count is academic… Kevin Nash joins commentary for this Chuck Palumbo/Shawn Stasiak match that no one with any sense would care about…Nash, after he sits down: “What an incredible pop”…Then he laughs because there are about twenty-seven people in the building…They tried to darken the completely empty upper deck on the hard cam side as the show ended, but we all saw it…I think this week of television really cements that WCW is fucking cooked…Even, like 1995 WWF or 1991 WCW didn’t feel this dead…This is so bad that they might as well just have all their matches in a pink room... (Okay, maybe it’s not quite that bad, but it’s not that far off…) Palumbo doesn’t make it out here because someone put him through a table backstage…Nash gets up and confronts Stasiak himself…They don’t fight or anything, though…Stasiak just shrugs as Nash points at him…Somehow, in a segment that promised a match between two midcarders with no heat whose feud I don’t give a shit about, this still came off as anticlimactic… Billy Kidman and Rey Misterio Jr. (w/the Filthy Animals) work a tag match against the Boogie Knights…Konnan speaks on many things, such as the health of the familia and the nice texture of his headband…Kidman buries Jindrak and O’Haire by saying that they suck at the art of pro wrestling…What the fuck?...Why is Kidman talking about carrying guys to good matches like he's writing for a dirt sheet?...That makes no sense…Kidman fucking sucks, get the mic away from this dude…The presentation of Jindrak and O’Haire is baffling...They’re two big athletic dudes with promise…Why in the world would you portray them as two chumps who can barely win a match and can’t work a lick?... Anyway, Kidman also calls out the Boogie Knights, both of whom charge the ring…As I watch Rey and Disco work a fun sequence, I wonder why we don’t talk about WCW fumbling Rey more often…That’s a bigger fumble than fumbling Benoit or Eddy or almost anyone else whom you can think of…Rey damned near concusses himself by spiking his own head into the mat on a headscissors attempt, but he gets over it and gets back to work…The Animals keep Disco deep in trouble with quick tags until Alex Wright is able to pull the top rope down on a Kidman rope run and beat him down at ringside… Can I get back to talking about how dumb it is that WCW spends a lot of show time talking about how much of its own roster and show sucks?...Jindrak and O’Haire suck…Disco Inferno sucks…WCW itself sucks…What if the showrunners at least pretended that their characters were good at the art of pro graps, whether they actually were or not?...It wouldn’t change anything major, but it would make this show more fun to watch by building its wrestlers as worth watching… Anyway, Kidman is your FIP…He eventually is able to suplex his way out of trouble…Rey and Wright meet up after Kidman makes a hot tag, and Rey lands a bunch of impact offense before getting clubbed away from a pinfall attempt on Disco after hitting an Asai moonsault…The match breaks down...Kidman lariats Wright to the floor, then lands a springboard dropkick > baseball slide to the junk > Bronco Buster combo in tandem with Rey…Wright makes his way back into the ring and hits Kidman with something, but we miss it on camera…His cover gets two…Rey manages to rana Disco to the floor while Kidman dumps Wright…The Animals set up for a Nutcracker Guillotine Legdrop, but Rey chooses to dive onto a recovering Disco instead…Wright gets to his feet and tries to suplex Kidman, but Kidman hops behind him and twists Wright into a Kid Krusher for three…Hey, look, a good match acting as an oasis in the desert that is the rest of **waves arms** all this… As I went to put that previous match on my Good Matches list, I realized that Nitro is deep in the midst of another good match drought…After parking a match on the list for three straight Nitros in August, there has only been one Nitro match placed on this list since August 21st, 2000…Yikes… SGT. A-WALL sets up a table at ringside…Lance Storm is his opponent…No, wait, Storm got an opponent for A-WALL…Storm presents THA MONSTA MENG...So, if Meng got fired because he couldn’t beat Goldberg, did Storm give up some of his own pay to get him back?...Actually, that’s what Storm alludes to when he joins commentary…It’s strange to me that Storm has the rep of being boring, because he’s actually a solid heel personality…This match isn’t any good, so it’s a real bummer that A-WALL takes a clean chair shot to the dome in service of a match that isn’t any good…Then again, at least this wasn’t terrible or anything…In a bit of a surprise finish to me, Meng goes up to the second rope and leaps right into a goozle…A-WALL deposits Meng through a table via chokeslam for three…I’m somewhat surprised that WCW hasn’t put the hardcore belt on A-WALL yet…He’s got the whole table gimmick that the fans are at least somewhat interested in, and he works hard…Storm gets in the ring and slaps Meng while yelling YOU FAILED…Meng deposits Storm at ringside with a TDG in response… After a commercial break, Storm walks right back out here, holding a mic in one hand and his injured throat in another…Storm sells a wrecked larynx as he TRIES TO BE SERIOUS FOR A MINUTE…He gives up on attempting to talk and just waves for the truck to hit the Canadian National Anthem…Norman Smiley makes his return to a major WCW television show tonight…Lots of returning talent on this show…Storm and Smiley work a series of arm wringer reversals before Storm trips Smiley, but whiffs on a follow-up elbow drop…Back to standing, they lock it up again…They reverse full nelsons, after which Norm trips Storm, then cartwheels away from a Storm attack and wiggles… Wow, two dudes working holds in 2000 WCW?...This is novel…They exchange some lovely escapes and counters before trading two counts on a series of pinfall reversals…Smiley backdrops Storm to the apron, but he charges and Storm is able to hang his neck over the top rope…Storm boot chokes, then lands a dropkick for two…Smiley’s Irish whip is reversed, and Storm catches him with a knee to the gut… Storm continues his assault…He scores a backbreaker for two…I suppose it’s obligabrawl time…Storm dishes Smiley to ringside and knocks him around a bit…Storm wins it, but when he tosses Smiley back into the ring, my absolute least favorite transition happens…Smiley starts his comeback and lands a back elbow for two…Unfortunately for him, Storm blunts his momentum with a lariat and a lovely vertical suplex…Storm manages a nice side Russian that he transitions directly into an octopus hold…Norm fires up and elbows his way out, then grabs an ankle lock that Storm rakes Norm’s eyes to escape… Storm’s up and in control, landing a series of chops in the corner…Storm whips Norm in and tries to follow, but Smiley escapes and hits some loud return chops of his own…A stalling double-underhook slam gets two for Smiley…Norm avoids another corner charge with a boot and a back elbow, then goes up to the second rope and hits a diving back elbow…Norm lariats Storm to the floor, then tries to suplex him back into the ring…Storm flips behind Norm, who blocks his back suplex attempt and rolls through and into a Big Wiggle…Norm’s swinging wind-up slam attempt is stopped cold with a jawbreaker…They struggle over a Northern Lights, but Storm manages to get Norm over and bridges for two… It's so nice to get a couple of good matches that are given ample time on this show…This was Thunder’s whole deal for most of 1998…Let’s get back to that style of show layout again…Norm leverages himself back to his feet after being snapmared, then trades small packages for close two counts with Storm…Norm struggles to hit a double underhook takeover, but does and floats over for two…Storm whiffs on another lariat, but scores a back kick to the nuts when Norm goes behind and tries a piledriver…It gets blocked and reversed into a back body drop…Storm gets right back up and powers into a bridge for two…*sigh*…Norman tries to bridge up out of it, but can’t, and Madden is the bright boy who points it out by saying, “They’re trying to do that Flair/Steamboat ’89 spot, but they’re both pretty tired”…What a dolt…Back to standing, Storm manages to trip Norm once more and transition into a Canadian Maple Leaf for the submission victory…After the match, Meng chases Storm away from the hold and eats a Storm superkick for a light snack besides…Storm scurries off before Meng can attack him… Wow, look at what WCW can do when it puts its talent that can go in a ring and gives them eight to twelve minutes on television!... I sure do wish someone on the booking committee would advocate for giving Crowbar a small push…He’s just around to get punked by less enjoyable wrestlers in the back and to do jobs in the ring…He’s out here to get killed off by Bam Bam Bigelow…It’s a noble thing that Bam Bam saved some kids from a fire…But also, feed someone else to him on his return…Actually, they should have played up Bammer's heroism and brought him back as a babyface...Anyway, there's a long obligabrawl in the middle of this thing…Back in the ring, Bammer hits a Samoan Drop and calls for a Greetings, but he instead wastes time with a choke…This gives Crowbar a chance to come back, but he runs the ropes and rebounds right into Bigelow’s grip…A Greetings From Asbury Park later, and Bammer gets a win…This was bang-average, which I think is fine considering it involved 2000 Bam Bam Bigelow… After Jeff Jarrett gets done complaining about Ric Flair being the new Chief Executive Officer of WCW, our main event commences… Jeff Jarrett “Slapnuts/Slapass” Count: 3, by the way…Jarrett and Vampiro tag up in a match against Mike Awesome and Sting…After a break, the match starts with Awesome and Vamp going at it in the ring while Sting and Jarrett throw hands at ringside…Awesome deposits Vampiro to the floor and dives onto him while Sting and Jarrett re-enter the ring… Sting lands ten punches in the corner, but Vamp has somehow dispatched of Awesome and clubs Sting from behind…Awesome follows…He and Sting send Jarrett and Vampiro spilling to the floor and rule the ring for a bit…Jarrett does a nice little heel spot where he excoriates ref Billy Silverman for not settling the match down…He pleads for order…Then, as soon as Silverman manages a bit of order and Vampiro squares off with Sting in the ring, he quickly disorders things again by hopping into the ring and clubbing Sting in the back…What a PHONY that guy Jarrett is!... Sting is your FIP, but only briefly…He comes back, but Jarrett dodges a Stinger Splash…Vampiro tags in and does get two on a back kick, but he never really feels in control and trades blows with Sting before managing to put knees up on a Sting splash…He tags back to Jarrett, who locks Sting in a sleeper while Madden exclaims that the crowd is ELECTRIFIED FOR THIS MATCH…Spoiler alert: They are absolutely not…Madden keeps calling attention to stuff on this show that he shouldn’t be calling attention to…He gets fired in December, so I am guessing that this is Madden approaching his most checked out…Of course, the very most checked out he got was when he got fired for criticizing management and giving info on a potential sale of WCW… Oh yeah, this match…Poor Mike Awesome works so hard, but the crowd doesn’t care about him because of all the rapid stupid gimmick changes and wishy-washy booking…The finish is that Awesome looks for an Awesome Bomb on Vampiro…Jarrett tries to KABONG Awesome, but Sting grabs Jarrett’s shoulder…Jarrett swings his KABONGing guitar at Sting, but Sting busts it to pieces with his baseball bat…Jarrett runs to the back, Sting chasing behind him, as Awesome completes the Awesome Bomb on Vamp for three…Show over… This is a short upload – only about an hour and thirteen minutes – so that means another interview got cut…I looked it up, and the interview that got cut was a Tenay sit-down with Shawn Stasiak…I read about it since it’s not on this recording or easily accessible online, but I have no need or desire to see it…It doesn’t move me either way on the surprisingly positive score for this wrestling-heavy episode (even with the cut interview)…WOO…There are only two "O"s in that WOO because the bad commentary and questionable shoot-bang-ish comments brought it down from earning a longer WOOO...