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SirSmUgly

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Everything posted by SirSmUgly

  1. Yeah, back in Show #33, which I should edit into the original post, actually. Bischoff seemed more worried about showing Regal bleeding from his head than smug about it, IIRC; he's really trying not to piss off Turner by being too violent or whatever. Heenan is the weak link, IMO. Tony S. chuckling and Heenan chuckling read as two different things. Tony S. seems to be chuckling in disbelief. Heenan's forced chuckling just sounds like he's laughing at the competitors for being goofs. It pains me to talk about what a massive negative Heenan is at this point in his run. One of the low-key issues with WCW is that they never really had a strong color commentator in position on Nitro or Thunder. Dusty was great at it, but he never really gets burn on one of the major shows in that position. I liked Scott Hudson sitting next to Tony S. near the end, but otherwise, color commentary has been a glaring weak link on this show the whole run. This is the Uncensored 1996 match that I think you're talking about. People herald that match as a gem in the DVDVR/PWO fandom, I think, but yeah, more widely, I don't think people talk about it much. The last time I saw it, I found it stiff, but overlong and a bit aimless in the middle. I don't think I wrote about Uncensored for this thread because I came to it before I decided to just watch the major TV and PPVs from the whole era, so after I finish with this run of WCW, I'm going to add all the PPVs that I didn't cover here already. I wonder how my perception of the match will have changed since I saw it four or five years ago.
  2. It did start out really well in the WWF! I think Mick Foley specifically took it seriously, which helped big-time to establish the division. Using this division as a vehicle for a Knobbs push in 1999 is insane. Completely bananas. And you are right; except for Bam Bam, Knobbs is pushed stronger than the rest of the division. I also do note that Hak showed up, hung out with Raven, and Raven looked longingly at a Roddy Piper promo photo...and none of that was ever addressed again. Man, WCW's booking of secondary angles pretty much went completely south after Jericho's Cruiserweight Championship run and Eddy/Chavo ended. Hak and Chastity were over, so they spent their time jobbing Hak to anyone and everyone for three straight months. I also LOVE your idea for Norton. That's a fantastic little character/booking idea for Norton in the hardcore division. Norton proclaiming that he's the only weapon he needs would have ruled. And I thought they were going to present a new WCW Hardcore Championship belt back at Spring Stampede, so yeah. This times a thousand.
  3. Show #193 – 14 June 1999 “The one which suggests the hypothesis that Rick Steiner is a harbinger of doom for a show's quality” After a quick review of the 83 Weeks episode on GAB ’99, I learned that Eric Bischoff was actually quite high on the show's quality and thought the dumb dog attack spot was neat, which explains a lot about why he was relieved of his position about three months from that show’s original airing. There are no angles or feuds right now that I’m looking forward to and a few angles and feuds right now that I’m dreading (WTR/No Limit, whatever the hell the Steiners and Sting are doing, Piper/Bagwell). That’s really the problem. I would have loved it if they just put the belt on Savage and had him spend the next month surviving title defenses on Nitro through Team Madness gaga, jibber jabber, and unadulterated fuckery. That would have helped. Speaking of that last group, they arrive at the MCI Center in DC right before we hit the title sequence. It looks like Virgil and Crush are going to face Curt Hennig and Barry Windham (w/Bobby Duncum Jr.). Hold on a second, I have a vague memory of Virgil being part of the WTR as “Curly Bill” all of a sudden. It’s weird how often random things pop up out of the recesses of my mind while I watch these shows, stuff I didn’t even think I knew. Tony S. and Bobby H. talk about how many tiny groups and stables are popping up and how they can strategically use the Freebird Rule. I think the Freebird Rule is one of my favorite tropes in pro wrestling, and I agree wholeheartedly that it makes some of the potential match combinations between these potential stable feuds more interesting. They talk about Sid and Savage and Piper and Flair and Buff throughout this match, which is fine because it is so freakin’ BORING, man, no one in this ring does much for me. Sorry, Barry Windham fans. I enjoyed him in 1988, at least! There’s not a babyface team here, so Virgil is the Wrestler in Peril, mostly because he’s exactly the wrestler in this ring who you’d expect would spend his time in peril, at least according to kayfabe. Windham and Hennig kick the shit out of this guy for a long time. I guess it works! Virgil counters a vertical suplex with one of his own, and the crowd applauds. He actually follows it up with a couple of nice lariats before making the hot tag. Crush gets two on a legdrop to Windham, but Hennig comes in and clears him out. The match breaks down and the nWo, once again outnumbered, falls to the numbers game. Duncum yanks Crush – the legal man, mind you – out of the ring, and Windham takes Duncum’s bullrope, points the ref over to Duncum and Crush brawling outside the ring, and then tags Virgil – NOT the legal man, mind you – with the cowbell end of the rope. Windham covers for three, and boy oh boy, was that match a) mostly a snoozer and b) too damned long. I will say that though I noted that Virgil was not the legal man, I actually don’t mind it that much. Anderson lost control of the match and simply lost track of who the legal man was. Refs fuck up all the time in real sports, after all. There’s a pre-recorded press conference to introduce Master P to WCW, which I LOVE because Okerlund has to say, “I Miss My Homies” when introducing Mr. Miller, and my only sadness is that they didn’t make him also mention another Master P hit, “Make ‘Em Say Ugh.” Bischoff said the title on the 83 Weeks episode about GAB ’99, though! It was great! He said it like this: “Make Them Say Uh.” As a Black American who has been described by one linguistics major as talking like a, and I quote, “local Midwestern newscaster from Nebraska,” I got a kick out of it. It reminded me of one of the funniest Boondocks bits. Take it away, Riley Freeman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXvADWAPJ0M Man, I love Regina King. Anyway, even though when it came to Southern rap families in the late ‘90s, The Dungeon Family > Cash Money > No Limit, I enjoyed a couple of Master P records, as well as a couple of Silkk the Shocker, C-Murder, and Mystikal records, back in the day. Master P is a legit wrestling fan, and I think it’s too bad that WCW put him and the No Limit Soldiers in a no-win situation angle-wise as I and zendragon have both pointed out elsewhere in this thread. I’m not sure Eric Bischoff gets it, though. I don’t think it’s some sort of obfuscating stupidity thing; I just don’t think Bisch is a very deep thinker, the more I listen to him. Team Madness, minus Sid, comes to the ring. Savage does some idiosyncratic bragging: “Last night, I was crowned the uncrowned undisputed world heavyweight champion of all time.” That is an amazing sentence if you want to try and parse it. He feels ripped off that he’s not holding the gold right now. He dropped the Savage Elbow and should have won, but he’s not happy about the ref’s count or something. He shares his version of the events of GAB ‘99’s main event. Savage is hilarious. He says that all the ladies in the ring are his witnesses that he beat Nash. He calls Madusa the “all-time women’s wrestling champion.” He says that Mona “beat 25,937 other women” to become Miss Madness while Mona blows on her fist and polishes it off. Then, he announces that Gorgeous George is retiring from wrestling as the only undefeated wrestler ever. This is like when Bart Simpson retired from a boxing video game (IIRC) before Homer could beat him. Anyway, Savage has decided to be entertaining on the mic tonight, which I appreciate. Gorgeous George quite lasciviously gets down on the mat to portray Kevin Nash while Savage covers her and Madusa counts three. Savage is determined to get that belt from Nash and says that he’s going to be “unbelievably VICIOUS.” He proclaims himself the uncrowned champ once more and gets a fifty-fifty response from the crowd. He’s got two more words for Kevin Nash: 1. THE; 2. WOLFPAC; 3. SUCKS. Then he has some more words after those before he finally leaves the ring. The Nitro Girls dance. That’s a pretty fun watch! Sting and Rick Steiner stills from GAB are next. That’s not a pretty fun watch! When listing off feuds that I really don’t want any part of, I forgot this Billy Kidman/Hugh Morrus feud. No thanks. I assume that Konnan and Rey Misterio Jr. peel away from fighting the WTR to end up forming the Filthy Animals so they can feud with the First Family for three months or whatever. Yuck either way. When Rey and Kidman were tag champs, they had a lot of backing from the crowd, and especially the ladies. They were like a Rock ‘n Rolls for the ‘90s. I don’t think that team had a ton of longevity because the dudes in the crowd would be quick to turn on them, but you could have had them be a team for four or five months, fending off tag challenges from the other teams until one heel team finally finishes their run. See, that’s where having a team like KroniK formed earlier than 2000 would have been nice; you give Kidman and Rey a run into September or October, debut KroniK in August and let them kill guys, and then they murder Kidman and Rey for the gold at Fall Brawl or Halloween Havoc. Let me leave my fantasy booking aside to tell you about this match. Morrus dominates, Kidman fires up with headscissors and dropkicks, and Morrus takes things outside. A chair gets involved in the proceedings. Kidman prepares to use it, but gets tangled up with Jimmy Hart instead of just using the chair while Hart has the ref’s attention. Morrus jumps him and hits a press slam that drops Kidman on the chair. Then, he closes the chair and puts it flat on the mat so that he can powerbomb Kidman. I bet you can guess how that goes for him. Kidman follows up with an SSP for the victory to a BIG pop, and let me tell you, these crowds are fucking hot for this guy. He really did get quite over in a way that I think I realized at the time, but totally sort of forgot or obscured later on down the road. It’s kind of like Jericho’s 1998. I hadn’t seen it in a long time, thought maybe it was overrated as the memories faded, then saw it again and realized that no, it was like I initially remembered. Gene Okerlund is in the ring to interview Ric Flair (w/Arn Anderson). Flair admires himself on the NitroTron, then rants about how cool he is and how great his life is in between threatening/threatening to fuck the mothers of various crowd members. I guess he and Roddy Piper’s on-again, off-again relationship is now squarely set to ON. Flair asks Piper to join him in the ring and accept the position of WCW’s new VP. Charles Robinson can’t really fulfill the duties of said position right now, so it’s logical. Flair even went out and got some pipers (not “bagpipists,” duh) to play Roddy to the ring. I really don’t get Roddy’s continuing overness. I hear a faint RODDY chant for a second or two, even. Do you want to know why I don’t get Roddy’s continuing overness? Here’s one example, straight from Piper’s mouth himself: “Those bagpipers, I ain’t heard that much wind passed since Bam Bam Bigelow ate a burrito at Taco Bell, man.” Yeah, I’m going to be a judge of TRUE WRESTLING FANDOM right now. Any fan who cheers for this man or chants his name has bad taste in pro wrestling. B. A. D. Piper accepts the position., though not before Flair insists that Roddy will fuck many of the crowd’s mothers and also Hillary. Yuck. Piper does some unfortunate political “humor” and then hates on the young guys in the back. Then he does some more unfortunate political “humor.” I will say that Flair makes me laugh when Piper asks about what happens if Flair is incapacitated. Flair’s response: “At my age, I might fall over right now.” Heh. Dean Malenko stomps down to complain about this unholy alliance. OK, if they are insisting on doing this young-versus-old angle, Dean Malenko is not a guy you want heading it. I can only imagine how much better it would have been if Chris Jericho was cutting promos on Flair and Piper. That’s the guy you want doing the bulk of the talking for the young dudes. My belief that Jericho was WCW’s biggest loss to WWF during this era only grows stronger with each show. Malenko with his widows peak and lined forehead looks like he should be joining up with the old dudes himself. He comes out and basically is like, WOW Y’ALL ARE OLD, IT’S THE SAME OLD SHIT HERE IN WCW, but in a totally uncharismatic way. The crowd is sort of behind him, though. See, part of the issue is that the fans like some of the young guys and some of the old guys, so they don’t want to root against either party. This tepid mic battle ends with the old guys jumping Malenko. Buff Bagwell runs down and fights all three old dudes off for the save, initially, but they finally win the numbers game. We get a split screen; Saturn and Benoit see the carnage on a monitor and rush to help, but are jumped backstage by the Jersey Triad. Imagine this angle, but with Rock and Stone Cold on the young dudes’ side along with Jericho. Fuck yeah. Not possible for obvious reasons, but watching those three eviscerate Piper on the mic would be a fun watch. Dammit, Bischoff’s joined commentary. I didn’t think it necessary, but WCW’s going to hopefully end this Cat/Scott Norton feud tonight. I am entirely too excited for babyface Commissioner Cat coming to the ring with Ms. Jones. Oh man. There’s a lot I love about 2000 WCW, actually. I’m pretty excited to get there and see that stuff. Miller grabs a mic and promises to finish Norton off tonight since he didn’t get that chance last night. “Rockhouse” plays, but then the music stops. Miller crows that Norton is scared of him and doesn’t see Norton spring to the ring and jump him. Norton mows down the Cat and as Bischoff talks about the great shape Norton is in, I think he’s not exaggerating. Norton has toned up and slimmed down, but he still looks like a walking beer keg with limbs and a head. We get a wandering brawl outside as the Cat tries to get some space and finds none. Back in the ring, Cat finagles an eye rake, then lands a dropkick to Norton’s knee. He throws a flurry of kicks at Norton’s knee, but Norton works through them and hits a chop and a body slam. Sonny Onoo senses trouble and grabs the ref’s attention so that the Cat can low blow Norton. The Cat rolls outside and puts a slipper on. He misses his kick and ducks a couple of lariats, but the ref is wiped out by the last lariat. Bischoff mocks Jim Ross’s calls on martial arts kicks like a doofus as Onoo hops in the ring and hits Norton on the back with the crowbar. The Cat covers and the ref crawls over, but he only counts two before Norton kicks out. Groggily, Norton gets to his feet and goes after Onoo, who hops off the apron. Norton turns around, eats a Cat superkick with the loaded slipper, and this time can’t kick out before the ref counts to three. We go to break before Miller can dance. BOOOOOO. The Nitro Girls dance. Disco Inferno comes out and also dances. Bischoff promises an upcoming Nitro Girls search. Are the Nitro Girls around until the very end? I don’t remember them being there in 2001, but I do remember a few of them ending up as valets and managers, like Sharmell. They’re going to feed Disco to Van Hammer, I think. Look, as DVDVR’s self-proclaimed foremost Van Hammer fan, even I don’t think this is a great idea. Disco actually has enough credibility that you’d only want to feed him to someone who is more over than Van Hammer. Before Hammer and Disco lock up, Tony S. announces an eight-man tag for later tonight between Ric Flair, Roddy Piper, DDP, and Kanyon on one side and Malenko, Benoit, Saturn, and Buff Bagwell on the other. Bischoff is like SEE, WE’RE THROWING SOME YOUNG GUYS OUT THERE IN THE MAIN EVENT A BIG NITRO MATCH, STOP COMPLAINING. Hammer dominates with power, and again, I don’t understand why people act like this guy is some example of shitty work. It’s not 1992 anymore. He’s actually a solid hand. Is he, like Horace Hogan, dependent on the level of the guy he’s working? Yes. I’m not saying he’s a world-beater. But he’s fun when he’s facing a fun worker. It’s funny because Raven’s Flock breaking up was good for Kidman, and very bad for everyone else in the Flock. Some of these guys need to be the heavy in a group. They can be effective in those roles. Disco makes a comeback after early Hammer domination and stomps a mudhole in the corner. Disco stumbles Hammer with a back elbow, then follows up with a lariat for two. Disco shoots Hammer in and tries a leapfrog, but Hammer catches him and lands a spinebuster. Hammer doesn’t go for the cover, instead choosing to bash Disco’s head into the canvas, land a couple of elbows, and choke Disco. Hammer doesn’t press his advantage enough, in kayfabe, as Tony S. notes. Bischoff well-wishes Bret on commentary while Hammer lands a legdrop to the small of Disco’s back and continues to beat Disco down. Disco tries to make a comeback, but gets cut off. Hammer locks on a sleeper while the crowd chants for GOLDBERG. Disco counters with jawbreaker, but runs himself into a chokebomb. Disco tries to fight up with punches, but Hammer digs his fingers into Disco’s eyes. Disco side-steps a Hammer charge and then, oh yeah, here's why everyone says Hammer sucks, Hammer blows a swinging neckbreaker. Disco continues his assault, lands a second rope elbow, and gets two. Disco tries a Chartbuster, but gets shoved out of it and into the ref. Disco hits a swinging neckbreaker, but the ref’s not there to count it. Disco goes to talk to the ref, and Hammer creeps up from behind, hits a back suplex, and covers Disco while holding the tights for three. I think that’s somehow a worse finish than if Hammer just won this match outright. He looks weak and Disco still lost anyway. If you’re protecting Disco in a loss to Van Hammer, what are you doing, really? Disco Chartbusters the ref in frustration. Fit Finlay faces Brian Knobbs (w/Jimmy Hart). I do like that there’s been a lot of wrestling and not so many bad promos or vignettes. The promos they’ve had have been entertaining or served to move an angle along or both. This is a much better Nitro than they’ve lately put on, at least so far. One thing about 1999 WCW is that a non-descript Nitro that isn’t particularly great, but that isn’t particularly bad just comes off so much better because of the utter dreck that WCW usually serves up. Finlay jumps Knobbs outside the ring as Knobbs jaws at the crowd. Finlay is so much better than Knobbs that I don’t get why he isn’t getting the push that Knobbs is getting. I mean, I do get it, I understand why, but you know what I’m saying. They brawl around ringside and clear out the ring steps. Bischoff insists that the driver of the Hummer wasn’t Sid, but a woman. This is so dumb. Sid makes perfect sense as the driver. Why would you not just take that obvious storyline track? You know what, I’m ignoring this dumb shit. Bischoff was wrong in kayfabe. Sid was driving the Hummer. Great, now I don’t have to wonder who was driving the Hummer. Back in the ring, there’s a tepid brawl and a Pit Stop. Knobbs does land a nice floatover powerslam on a charging Finlay in there, so let me credit him for that. The match goes back outside the ring for a second as Jimmy Hart gets involved, then re-enters the ring. Knobbs misses a splash, and Finlay comes back with a legdrop, a sit-down splash, and a rolling fireman’s carry slam. He misses a corner charge, though, and posts himself. Bischoff talks about how many guys are out injured right now, and that makes me wonder why DDP’s been sort of shunted down the card and out of the world title scene or why Sting is mired in a heatless feud with Rick fucking Steiner, of all people. In the ring, there’s a convoluted spot in which Knobbs runs into a chair wielded by Jimmy Hart and then Hak runs down and whacks Knobbs with a kendo stick besides. Finlay covers for three. Well, I’m glad Finlay at least got a win. Hey, look, it’s Sable Rena Mero. She’s sitting in the front row while Bischoff is like WOW I KNOW HER FROM THAT ONE PLAYBOY ISSUE, YOU KNOW THE ONE, LEGAL WON’T ALLOW ME TO SAY HER STAGE OR ACTUAL NAME, BUT YOU KNOW, YOU GET IT. Ooh, how edgy. Kevin Nash comes to the ring for an interview. He is partially interrupted by SABLE chants for a little bit, which is kinda funny. Anything for a pop, huh Bischoff? Desperate used car salesman Bischoff on commentary reminds me of Dennis Reynolds trying to hold it together when a nineteen-year-old woman that he’s hitting on points out his hair plugs. Nash asserts that he who has the gold is the champ and that Savage is delusional or on drugs, maybe on both. Why do they keep showing shots of Sable Rena Mero during this interview? It’s so dumb. Nash calls out Sid and challenges him to a title match later tonight. Sid responds on the NitroTron. He yells a lot, and it’s cool. Sid agrees to the match is the long and short of things. The eight-man tag is up next. It starts as an eight-person brawl in the ring, and the babyfaces do the business to the heels and clear the ring. The crowd seems to be behind the young babyfaces. I still think reactions are a bit muted, though. Other than Page and Kanyon, crowds actually want to cheer the bulk of the guys in this match, at least in most of the cities that WCW goes to. The match settles down. Flair and Benoit have a chop-fest that Benoit wins. Benoit runs over Flair, then catches Page in a Crippler Crossface when he runs in to try and score a cheap shot at Benoit. The match settles down again and Buff out-punches Piper before the match sort of breaks down again, but the ring is clear again and Piper eats punches from Buff, then punches from everyone in the babyface corner. Piper calls for time out, and Flair runs in and kicks Buff in the knee. Buff is dragged back into he heel corner as we go to break. After the break, Buff apparently got himself out of trouble because Benoit is scoring flash pinfalls on Ric Flair. He and Flair try another bridge spot and Benoit struggles with it again. That’s another thousand Hindu squats backstage after the match for him! Benoit is sort of the FIP, but he gets a lot of flash pinfalls and scores an enziguri, so it never seems like he’s in that much trouble. He wraps Flair in a Figure Four. Page comes in and tries to break it up, but gets put in a Figure Four by Saturn. Malenko and Buff do the same to Kanyon and Piper respectively, and as contrived as the spot feels, it’s very over with the crowd. The ref has no clue where to look, so he doesn’t see Bam Bam, standing at ringside, jump in the ring and break up the Benoit Figure Four. Benoit plays FIP, and takes more damage befitting that role than he did before. Kanyon hits a top-rope Rocker Dropper, for example. Benoit takes some more abuse for a few minutes that is perfectly acceptable heel control. Page and Kanyon have some nice double-team moves, which really helps things. Benoit makes a tag that the ref misses, but shortly after, he gets boots up on a Page dive and is able to make a hot tag to Buff. It’s interesting because Buff is very over with one specific section of the crowd that you can see in the camera shot. The rest of the crowd isn’t really reacting. The match breaks down and everyone brawls outside the ring except for Flair and Malenko, who brawl in the ring. Flair is distracted by Malenko; he shoulderblocks Malenko away, then turns around and into a Blockbuster that gets three. The crowd does pop for that. I think this is why the young/old feud isn’t going to work. If you have a bunch of guys who are still being treated as babyfaces by the crowd, it’s just not going to get over. Flair and Piper are just too entrenched as legends to garner any real heel heat from most of these crowds. Hak (w/Chastity) faces Rick Steiner. Yuck. Bischoff comments on Chastity’s looks and talks shit to Hak about not having a cigarette this week. Double yuck. Rick and Scott think WCW sucks, but Rick Steiner comes down in a WCW ring crew jacket. OK. Ricky jumps Hak and beats the shit out of him. This is a real bummer. They quickly brawl to the back so that Hak can crash into stuff. They get on top of a truck and Tony S. says THIS IS A NITRO FIRST! A FIGHT ON TOP OF A VEHICLE! No, we will not erase the memory of the 4/29/96 (Show #33) Nitro's Fit Finlay/Steven Regal vehicle brawl. WE WILL NOT. That match ruled hard and had a piledriver on top of a tiny little Datsun or Honda or something that looked insanely dangerous. This brawl sucks, man. It’s boring as hell. Hak tries hard by bumping off the truck and diving into shit. It’s not his fault. None of this crappy WCW run he’s had is his fault. I assume Steiner’s jacket is because he’s going to take some sort of dumb spot or maybe a vulture attack from Sting or some shit. Let’s hurry up and get to whatever it is already. The men fight on top of another vehicle, and Sting pops out of the cab and tosses Rick through the gimmicked side of a trailer. Sting marches Ricky through the backstage area and into the arena, which pops for Sting and also probably for getting to watch some action right in front of them and not on the screen. Sting pokes Ricky in the gut with his baseball bat, then just leaves the guy laying there to go to the ring and cut a promo. Sting quotes, um, Jim Carrey in Batman Forever. He tells a couple of dad jokes. What is happening right now? What exactly is happening? Sting drops the mic, then goes back to Ricky Steiner on ramp and hits Ricky with the bat while Bischoff does a bad baseball PBP man impression. Sting picks Ricky Steiner up and carries him away as we go to break. Everything Rick Steiner is involved with is just awful, man. It’s all so bad. This guy has been the common denominator in a bunch of shitty angles, segments, and promos for well over a year now. La Parka and Psicosis tag up together against Rey Misterio Jr. and Konnan (w/No Limit Soldiers). Were they using a No Limit joint as entrance music? I ask because the Konnan theme drowns out all other noise and was clearly dubbed over the top of this entrance. Let me check while Konnan does his Catchphrase Roulette. OK, it’s “Hoody Hoo.” Aw, that would be a better theme IMO, but they won’t even pay money for the Cat’s theme, so I get why they dubbed over it. This match is fine. Rey and Psicosis have a fine little opening exchange. Konnan and Rey end up controlling the ring, and hey, I think that’s Brad Armstrong out there with the NLS. Konnan switches things up by playing FIP for a little bit. Bischoff yammers on and on about what a game changer this Master P deal is. So desperate. I’d be too embarrassed to listen back to these commentary spots if I were Bischoff. Then again, I do have a modicum of shame. But yeah, listening to Bischoff, it’s pretty clear why Schiller ended up making a change. This guy Bischoff is losing it. The babyfaces come back and hit stereo suicide dives to a super-muted pop. This crowd just seems tired or bored at this point. Konnan gets back into trouble for a bit, but he works out of it, Rey hits a Bronco Buster on Psicosis, and then Konnan and Rey get a double pin off a sit-out facebuster for Konnan and a top-rope rana for Rey. The WTR comes out and plays their terrible theme over at the DJ booth, then run off after the NLS chases them away. Master P cuts a promo once they leave and then plays “Hoody Hoo,” which is not dubbed over. I’m done with this angle. Please just end it now. Are there going to be two, three more months of this? I’m bummed out. Michael Buffer is here with about eight minutes to go. Sid and Nash come to the ring. Actually, Sid doesn’t even come down there; Savage does. Michael Buffer’s Ring Announcing Quality Control: It’s Team Madness, not Team Savage. Okay, that one might not be official; how did Team Madness get its name? From the fans? Anyway, Buffer was generally fine. Savage demands that Nash hand him the big gold. Three minutes remain in the show. I guess we’re getting the ol’ bait-and-switch, huh? Nash makes to hand Savage the belt, then drops it as Savage reaches for it and throws punches. The bell rings, so is this a match, or something? Nash hits a big boot. George gets in the ring and distracts Nash; Savage low blows him, but gets cleared out when he holds Nash in place for a Mona missile dropkick and Nash ducks away. Madusa gets in and tries a kick, but Nash catches her leg. Sid runs down; Nash meets him with knees, but falls to the numbers game. The crowd chants for GOLDBERG as we get a two-man beatdown of Nash. Sting runs in for a very late save to a huge pop because, like GOLDBERG, Sting is an extremely over babyface and should be the champ right now rather than Nash. This show went from mediocre to bad, and it did so when Rick Steiner showed up. Coincidence? Probably, but it’s enough to make you wonder. 1.5 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.
  4. England dragged Spain down into the stagnant muck and boring mire along with them. They've got the Spaniards right where they want 'em. Waiting for a 112th-minute Ivan Toney goal to settle it.
  5. As someone who did this and whose spouse and friends all did this, let me assure you that it has zero bearing on how dumb someone is.
  6. Great American Bash ’99 notes: I am making good time on my attempt to get to the year 2000 in my WCW watch by the end of the summer! It’s also probably wise to just mainline as much 1999/early 2000 WCW as possible to get through it so I can get to the good stuff on the back end. Master P and the No Limit Soldiers get out of a limo, where Curt Hennig meets them. Hennig does a whole fake deal where he pretends to love rap, so P signs a No Limit CD for him. Hennig crushes the CD case in disrespect. He’s lucky C-Murder wasn’t around to see that or Hennig might have ended up bleeding out on the floor from an unnecessary firearm discharge. Recap: From feces to felonious assaults with vehicles: The Savage/Nash feud so far. Back to Percy Miller: In theory, getting a hot southern rap label to appear with a still-mostly-Southern company makes sense, but they spend a lot of time in small Midwestern towns by 1999, so that hampers their plan to make a bunch of brown and black rappers and rap-adjacent wrestlers the babyfaces. If they’re booking shows mostly in New Orleans, Atlanta, Baltimore, etc., bigger towns that will be more amenable to hip hop, this could have worked better. But they’re spending time in small Midwestern and Southern towns most of the time, so it’s an almost obvious failure of an angle from the jump. We get a long video package of how all the undercard feuds ended up developing, but believe me, those of us who would pay for this PPV would have been more than willing to suffer through all those angles. It’s not like people who mostly watch RAW are going to be inspired to up and order the GAB this year. Brian Knobbs (w/Jimmy Hart) faces Hardcore Hak (w/Chastity) in a kendo stick match. Knobbs talks before the match for some dumb reason. Wait, he wants to have a taped fist match instead of a weapon-based match. Knobbs desperately needs weapons to have anything remotely like a watchable match, so that seems like a questionable booking update to this match! Hopefully, it’s all for show, and Hak declines and then hits Knobbs with his kendo stick. Oh good, it’s a swerve, though Knobbs is the one to swerve when he grabs a trash can and clubs Hak with it. Now there are a bunch of lid, can, and kendo stick shots. It’s all whatever. Hak is pretty fun in dumb garbage brawls, but he’s wrestling 1999 Brian Knobbs and not 1995 Cactus Jack, so there is an incredibly hard lid, much harder than the trash can lids in the ring, on the quality of this match. Hak tosses a ladder in the ring while Tony S. enjoys this garbage brawl, as he seems to typically enjoy them. Heenan’s voice indicates a man who is trying to get over that the weapon shots are crazy; Tony’s voice, on the other hand, betrays genuine joy at some dude eating a ladder to the gut or a trash can to the dome. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s my read. You know how these matches go: back and forth, maybe a stunt spot or two in there with an illogical weapon contraction. A LET’S GO HAK chant gets started. Huh. Hak wipes out on a senton somersault and lands on the ladder. What a painful bump to take in a nothing match like this. Jimmy Hart tries to get involved by holding up a chair, but Hak reverses momentum and shoves Knobbs into the chair head-first, then brains Knobbs with a kendo stick shot for the win. Hugh Morrus runs down after the bell and attacks Hak, then helps a recovered Knobbs land a spike piledriver on Hak. Knobbs holds the ladder on top of Hak, then lands a No Laughing Matter onto the ladder and Hak. Morrus and Hart then hold the ladder on Hak again so that Knobbs can dive down onto it with a trash can-assisted splash. The First Family is a terrible stable. Just a bunch of jobber types. Jimmy Hart appears to be bleeding from his forehead. At least that was short! It did do its job as a hot opener, no matter how dull I found it. The audience is hot. Baltimore is also typically open to wrestling in most of its forms as well. Buff Bagwell runs into Roddy Piper in the back and thanks him for the opportunity tonight, but he seems sorta disingenuous. So does Piper. Buff promises to have Piper’s back tonight before walking away. Piper also walks away and his goofy smile dissipates immediately, so yeah, lots of disingenuousness in that little segment. Why is Mikey Whipwreck on this show, exactly? He’s a solid worker, but he never shows up on Nitro or Thunder, then gets on PPV randomly. It’s like WCW needs at least one off-the-wall matchup on every PPV. His opponent is Van Hammer, who is getting a tiny push, at least, though I wouldn’t put him on this show either based on a couple of Nitro wins over the past month. What a weird choice. Mikey goes nose-to-nose with Hammer. Well, as best he can. He’s much shorter than the guy. Mikey gets shoved around a lot, which reminds him that he has to out-wrestle a guy like Hammer. He scores a couple of arm drags, but his third attempt is blocked and he eats a rib breaker. So yeah, that’s the story of this match. Hammer is bigger and Mikey struggles when he’s relying too much on power and not enough on agility. It’s a perfectly average match for your typical WCWSN, basically. I do dig that elevated choke beal that Hammer’s doing regularly now. That is a cool-looking move. I also dig Hammer’s stalling superplex. He’s got some cool moves in his repertoire, IMO. Of course, he also insists on working that leveraged abdominal stretch spot. You’re not Scott Hall, Hammer, so it’s a crappy spot. Hammer ends up winning this extended squash with a Cobra Clutch slam. I’m not entirely against a Disco Inferno/Buff Bagwell rematch tonight, but there’s no real heat for it. It’s fine; Disco is a legitimately good worker and keeps the pace up, which helps a lot. I don’t mean to imply that Buff is merely a passenger. He works hard as well. Baltimore lets the folks know at home that [THEY] LOVE BUFF. I get why Buff is getting this push – he is over – but I’d compare him to Billy Gunn over in WCW's rival. Very over doing his shtick, but when you try to push him to the level of other main eventers, it’s clear that the idea of him being anything more than a popular midcarder is a mirage. Bagwell gets things rolling after some back and forth, but is overexuberant and runs himself into a Hot Shot, which allows Disco to take extended control of the match. Disco slows things down here a bit, but that’s fine. Disco continues to target Buff’s neck in his attack. He even goes up top, polishes his abs, dances, and still manages to drill that second-rope elbow. Of course, he tries again almost immediately and misses. Buff makes his comeback off that whiff. He lands ten punches in the corner before going up for a Blockbuster attempt. Disco is able to stumble up and into the ropes, which knocks Buff all the way to the floor. Disco follows Buff to the floor, stalks him, and then drills him with a Chartbuster on the mats. Disco dances before re-entering the ring and celebrating in the corner as Mickey Jay counts six…seven…eight…and stops the count as Buff makes it back into the ring. Disco is shocked. So shocked that he’s (kayfabe) sort of run out of ideas. He decides to try a jumping piledriver, but takes the time to do the Macarena (that’s NOT disco!) first and gets reversed. Buff makes one final comeback, hits a charging Disco with a powerslam, and goes up for a Blockbuster. Disco ducks when he sees Buff, turns, and dances, but doesn’t notice that Buff pump-faked him. He turns back around and eats a Blockbuster for real and for true this time, and that gets three. Solid match. They tried to have an interesting layout for this thing, which helped. Recap: I cannot stand this rap vs. country feud, but WCW will insist upon inflicting it upon me anyway. Nelly and Tim McGraw recorded “Over and Over” five years after this show. We all get chocolate bars in our twangy peanut butter now. Curt Hennig and Bobby Duncum Jr. walk the aisle. Their new theme music is “Rap is Crap,” and let me tell you, that singing is so off-key that I think it might have triggered the neighborhood dogs. Konnan and Rey Misterio Jr. come to the ring to face them. Why in the fuck is Rey still the Cruiserweight Champion? I know, I say it every review, but has anyone in WCW (other than Hulk Hogan post-Starrcade 1997) ever needed a title less than Rey needs this one? Rey HOOTIE HOOs on the mic before the match starts and gets a decent response because, again, we’re in Baltimore and not Des Moines or Charleston. Hennig does some regrettable post-match mic work toward Master P, then gets jumped by the babyfaces. The babyfaces are on fire early. Rey’s leaping onto everyone until he finally gets caught. He pulls off a crossbody onto Hennig outside the ring, but gets caught when he tries on Duncum. Duncum dispatches of Rey with a pretty rude powerbomb, then tags in Hennig. It’s time for Rey to do a lot of bumping and selling. Rey is very good at that stuff, in fairness, so the heel control segment is just fine. There’s some good stuff in there: The Duncum powerbomb I mentioned, Hennig going off his feet to shoot Rey chest-first into the buckles, Hennig drilling Rey in the mush with a standing dropkick. The heat segment goes on a little longer than it probably needs to, but whatever. Rey scrambles between Duncum’s legs and get a hot tag; Konnan opens up with offense before the ref stops him because he some how missed the tag. I see; Duncum was supposed to be blocking him, but either he or Boone was out of place. There’s no reason the ref shouldn’t have seen that tag. I feel like the crowd also knows this because they make a collective sighing noise that sounds like they know it’s a bad spot. Even commentary alludes to it. Welp, let’s go right back to the heat segment that was already long in the tooth. Yeah, the crowd was clapping for Rey as he was trapped in the corner before the tag, but they sort of weakly clap as Rey tries to survive this time. A minute or so after the missed tag spot that got botched, Rey mule kicks Hennig and gets a hot tag. The match breaks down and Rey and Hennig botch a springboard corner spot, but get the crowd back with a Bronco Buster. Barry Windham runs in and attacks Konnan outside the ring, so Swoll hops the rail as Rey struggles to run the ropes, leaps on the apron, and hits a pretty stiff shoulderblock on Duncum. Rey follows up with a springboard rana for three. The rest of the No Limit Soldiers try to get at the West Texas Rednecks and are hustled out by security. The West Texas Rednecks are allowed to stay and inflict a three-on-two beatdown on Rey and Konnan, though. Woof, that match fell completely off a cliff after the botched missed tag spot. That was not good. It’s probably time to move Ernest Miller on from this mini-feud with Scott Norton, and Norton could be deployed for other, possibly better things himself. The Cat (w/Sonny Onoo) heads to the ring. Onoo is carrying a briefcase and maybe a cape under his arms? We’ll find out. Wait, no, it’s not Norton coming out here, though that’s what I’ve been sold. It’s fucking Horace Hogan. Someone agreed to let Horace talk. He complains about being hit with a crowbar while Miller cuts in and says he’s already kicked the hell out of Horace and wants Norton. Horace is like YOU CAN’T EVEN BEAT YOUR OWN DICK, ERNIE, but in the most oblique way possible, so it’s not a very effective insult. You’re on PPV, just say it, Horace! After that, he runs in the ring and wrestles the Cat instead. I guess Norton missed a flight, had an emergency, or is in Japan right now. I just hope they don’t go back to Miller/Norton after this. It was a funny little feud, and Norton destroying Miller tonight would have been a nice capper. But the moment has passed. Miller dominates early, and this match is really not much. It’s a Thunder Special. They have an obligatory ringside brawl. Horace makes a boring comeback. Oh, hey, the suitcase has Miller’s loaded red slippers! I forgot about those! Onoo slips one onto Miller’s foot; Miller lands a kick to Horace’s dome behind the ref’s back and gets three. Then he puts on his slippers, and yep, that’s a cape, and of course, Miller finds the strength to toss of the cape and dance. It’s amazing. I love it. That no-fun bum Horace chases Miller out of the ring while he’s entertaining me, and really, all of Baltimore, and even more than that, entertaining anyone lucky enough to be watching this recording through the magic of technology at this and every other future time in which it exists for viewing. Recap: Roddy Piper is a creative zero; Ric Flair is not, but he’s stuck trying to carry this creative zero Roddy Piper through another feud. Ric Flair (w/Arn Anderson and Asya) faces Roddy Piper in another match for the role of WCW President. They really botched the hell out of this angle. Let’s just get this over with because I can tell you what happens, almost certainly. Piper wins, maybe with help from Bischoff, and the next night on Nitro, Piper hands the presidency back to Bischoff because Bischoff “proved himself” or some shit like that. Maybe it’s not exact, but the broad strokes seem about right. I mean, the nicer and cooler option is that Ric bought off Buff and Buff kicks the shit out of Piper and helps Flair retain the presidency, but that's not going to happen. Flair does his heel act; Piper throws the worst strikes I’ve seen from a long-term main eventer in this whole pseudo-sport of professional wrestling. My goodness. His punches are so, so bad. Stick to your much more credible chops, Piper. Flair runs through all his little heel spots, shoves the ref for what seems like no reason so he can bump off a shove and a Piper follow-up punch, and shows the downside of wrestling a typical Flair match. Against Benoit, it made the young guy look like a possible main eventer. Against a black hole of suck like Piper, it feels tired and old. Eventually, Flair takes control, and Arn and Asya help with a little bit of ringside cheating. Piper pulls Flair’s trunks down, and we’re on PPV, so we get to see Flair’s dimpled white ass. Yeah, you know what, this match is going on the Dirt Worst list. Piper slaps on a sleeper, but Flair escapes. Arn grabs Piper and distracts both him and the ref. Flair loads his fists, throws a hook, and knocks Piper flat. Flair takes time to crawl over, so Piper kicks out at two. Flair locks on a Figure Four and gets leveraging assistance from Arn. Buff Bagwell runs down and knocks Arn away, then attacks Ric Flair. Great news! That means Piper got disqualified! OK, that’s almost as good as if Buff just turned. Piper understandably punches Buff for fucking up his spot, so Buff wins that punch-up, but gets a spinebuster from Arn. Flair and Arn hold Buff down while Piper whips him with a belt. Yeah, this is a well-earned listing as the lowest of the low. Buff’s run-in, as much as I thought it was funny in the context of the match, makes no sense. Buff looks like an idiot for failing to help the guy who he pledged to help unless it's a heel turn and he's trying to hurt Piper, but that's not how they're portraying Buff. They're just making him look like an idiot babyface. The crowd is muted, and eventually settles on a low-toned GOLDBERG chant for a bit since Piper just effectively made a heel turn. You know what, I think it actually would have been better if they’d just done the thing that I expected them to do because somehow, what they did is actually worse. Please don’t make me watch Buff Bagwell feud with Roddy Piper, WCW. Please. Recap: Sting and the Steiner Brothers are mired in a feud that stinks. Is Scotty hurt? He hasn’t really wrestled lately, and he’s so much better than his brother that it’s absurd. Rick Steiner defends does not defend the WCW Television Championship against Sting. Well, that seems sort of like a spoiler regarding who will win this No-DQ, Falls Count Anywhere match. This card has been dull and at best mostly competently worked, but it feels like it’s moving along so much quicker than a Nitro of similar length because they’ve excised a lot of bad talking that normally makes the proceedings feel like triple their length. This match is below mediocre. Sting has energy when he’s on offense, but Rick Steiner spends a lot of time in control, hitting plodding offense at will. Sting makes a comeback, hits a couple of second-rope splashes, then lands a top-rope splash for two. This is a strangely-worked grudge match because most of it is worked in the ring. There’s an obligatory ringside brawl, but the bulk of this is worked like a typical match. Weirdly, though the match is no disqualification, ref Mickey Jay enforces a rope break on a Scorpion Death Lock. They wander the aisle after that rope break. It is deadly dull. They have a tepid brawl that goes to the internet area – hey, is that Chris Jericho over at the desk? – and into the backstage area. Then, get this – GET THIS – Tank Abbott and Scott Steiner jump Sting back there and Scotty lets a couple of Dobermans loose so that they attack Sting. This is so FUCKING stupid. Scotty has a Rottweiler on a leash, and then security rushes onto the scene, and we cut away. Oh WOW, that was so dumb. This Baltimore crowd is considering a revolt. The way they shot this stupid shit with all the cuts only added to the WTF?! factor. Truly, that was some incredibly shitty television. The Steiner Brothers come to the ring and intimidate Mickey Jay into declaring Rick the winner. The way that Bischoff and now Nash have booked Sting since December of 1997 is fucking unconscionable. Holy fuck, Sting is the worst-booked major star of a company in the whole ‘90s. Maybe ever. What in the hell. Unlike Horace Hogan, Rick realizes that he’s on PPV and not broadcast television and calls Baltimore THE SHITTIEST TOWN IN AMERICA. I blame you, Nash. This is WWF-style booking from someone who has seen it, but doesn’t understand it. Recap: The Jersey Triad sucks, and I say that even though I like two of the three guys in it. The tag belts were virtually destroyed by Rick Steiner, and even after a tournament and some new belts, they’re still in hell. Actually, Rick Steiner destroyed the tag belts and is in the process of destroying the TV title, which was a well-booked title for 1997 and most of 1998, right up until Booker got hurt. And even then, it eventually recovered with the Jericho > Konnan > Scott Steiner > Booker sequence. But then that fucking Rick Steiner got his hands on it. How much longer until it ends up in a dumpster somewhere? The Jersey Triad comes to the ring as a tag team. DDP and Kanyon are going to wrestle tonight, with Bam Bam Bigelow as their third. They face Chris Benoit and Perry Saturn for the tag titles. The chyron says that Benoit and Saturn are Brian Knobs [sic] and Jimmy Hart. Benoit randomly stealing Malenko’s entrance music is so weird. This is not a serious wrestling company right now. Poor Tony S. is forced to try and sell that dog attack on Sting. He doesn’t get paid enough, let me tell you. This show was merely boring for the most part, but the last two matches just drained me of my desire to see any more wrestling. It’s probably not fair to the competitors in the ring, all of whom can go and go hard, but man. This show really took a nosedive. Benoit and Saturn control the ring early and the Triad regroups outside the ring. It doesn’t help much, as Saturn does a fine job of slipping Page’s attacks and landing his own. Saturn and Benoit again control the ring; Page finally bails again after eating a Saturn clothesline. They regroup again and Benoit and Saturn attack, but they’re jumped by the Triad when they get back in the ring. They turn it around and Saturn clears out Kanyon with a clothesline over the ropes while Benoit tangles with DDP. Bam Bam grabs Benoit’s ankle as he runs the ropes, and Kanyon and Bam Bam run enough of a distraction that allows DDP to send him to the floor with a clothesline. Bammer and Kanyon take their shots; the Triad traps Benoit in their corner. This match is another match that is perfectly fine. Combinations of these teams have had better singles and tag matches on recent Nitros and Thunders, though. Page and Kanyon have a perfectly solid control segment that ends when Kanyon misses a majestic-looking moonsault on Benoit. Benoit gets the hot tag to Saturn, and the end seems near, but it’s not. Saturn gets two on a top-rope splash. He hits corner punches on Page, but Kanyon comes over and hits a huge facebuster on him so we can go into our second heel control segment. Page and Kanyon have another perfectly solid control segment. This match probably needed to be out-of-this-world great to save this show (or come close), and it unfortunately is not that. I’m just going to say it: As good as the wrestlers in the ring are, this show/feud/match is hurt by not having Raven involved somehow. Raven is such a big personality. It’s weird to me how Bischoff talks about big personalities all the time and how important they are, but he whiffed on keeping Jericho happy and just didn’t get Raven’s appeal at all. After quite a while, it feels like, Page whiffs on a corner splash. Saturn finally makes our second hot tag of the match. Benoit cleans house. The crowd loves it when Benoit whips Kanyon into Page, Kanyon falls backward, and Page topples over and inadvertently headbutts Kanyon’s berries. That got an OHHHHHH. Benoit lands a full nelson suplex that the crowd is sure was there, but was not. Benoit and Saturn go up; Benoit hits a diving headbutt, but Saturn gets snagged out of mid-air and hit with a Diamond Cutter. Dean Malenko comes out and distracts the ref by locking up Saturn in an apparent attempt to help, but which simply makes for a referee diversion. Bam Bam breaks up a Benoit Crippler Crossface and helps DDP hit a tower Diamond Cutter. Page drags Kanyon on top of Benoit and escapes the ring; Johnny Boone turns back around to count the pinfall and give the gold right back to the Triad. This finish was smelly ass. So many bullshit finishes tonight. What started out as an okay show that I was probably going to forget entirely by the time I got two or three months away from this watch has turned into one of the worst WCW shows I’ve ever had the displeasure of seeing. Recap: This Nash/Savage feud started out intriguing and descended into madness. And not like fun OH YEAH, MACHO MADNESS, but very bad WTF IS HAPPENING?!?! madness Michael Buffer’s here to introduce the contestants in the main event. First out: Randy Savage (w/Team Madness). I think Savage is actually pretty over as a babyface, still. I’m sort of interested to see how the crowd reacts here. Nash follows to the Wolfpac theme even though the Wolfpac basically doesn’t exist anymore. Michael Buffer’s Ring Announcing Quality Control: Calls Savage the former three-time world champ (he’s up to four at this point – def. Ted DiBiase at WM IV, def. Ric Flair at WM VIII, won World War 3 1995, def. Sting at Spring Stampede 1998). That’s it. The rest of his announcement was maybe a bit heavy on goofy hyperbole about Nash being known as a) the best big man in wrestling and b) especially courageous, but there was nothing else to really fact check. Ric Flair found time to reinstate the Savage Elbow. So then what the hell was the point of working a “ban the big elbow” angle, anyway? Seriously. They just thought they might have something when Charles Robinson got legit injured by it, and then dropped it two weeks later. If you’re going to book an angle, please try to stick with it longer than two weeks, WCW. 1999 Randy Savage is so dependent on gaga, man. He is so fucking COOKED physically, it’s insane. I think it's especially striking because even in mid-1998, before he went out with injury, he was still moving well. Nash sells a rib injury from the crash while he does his moves, and that is the body part that Savage targets his offense around, but it’s dull. We all want the ladies to get involved, anyway. That’s the fun part of Savage matches, all the chaos caused by the ladies. Before that, we get five or six minutes of boring brawling. Alright, you’re here for the gaga, and I’m here for the gaga, so let’s get to that (and the finish). After a couple of earlier spots where Madusa gets some kicks in to Nash’s ribs, Savage distracts the ref so Mona can land a missile dropkick on Nash. Savage lands a Savage Elbow, but he’s a heel and this is a title match, so Nash kicks out at 2.9. Nash makes one final comeback. I’ll give Nash credit for selling his injuries as he hits offense. Nash hits Snake Eyes and a big boot, then pulls down the straps. Nash lands a Jackknife, so Madusa hops in and kicks Nash in the ribs. Nick Patrick refuses to call for the bell. George jumps on Nash’s back, but gets tossed away. Nash dumps Madusa, then catches a Mona dive from the top and hits Snake Eyes. Nash turns around and Psycho Sid Vicious (!!!) hits the ring and drills Nash with a big boot! Sid on Team Madness sounds like a whole lot of fun, so I’m sure WCW will find a way to ruin it. Sid powerbombs Nash and twitches like a stereotypical lunatic. He gets some boos and a light SID chant as he leaves the ring and helps Savage limp away. Oh, I see we’re going to leave this title change for Nitro, because of course we are. Sid rules, but this show was a no good, horrible, terrible, very bad show. Only three more months of this dolt Eric Bischoff in charge and Kevin Nash as head booker.
  7. How many houses can you sell by repeating IF YOU WANT A HOUSE, COME TOUR A HOUSE, IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, BITE ME, really?
  8. I was at a Smackdown taping where the Mexicools came out and got a huge pop. As retrograde as the gimmick was, Psicosis, Juvi, and Super Crazy were fun as hell together.
  9. Thunder Interlude – show number sixty-six – 10 June 1999 "The WCW Gang loves chaotic-feeling matches and hates booking the WCW Tag Team Championships credibly" It’s almost the Great American Bash, and thank goodness for it… I think this is a live episode of Thunder…Yup, Tenay confirms it…Who was driving the Hummer?...Who?...Bischoff claimed on 83 Weeks that he doesn’t remember and thinks they might have just decided to run the angle and figure things out later… Team Madness is in another limo…Savage thinks that he sees Nash outside the arena and dives out of the limo, but the guy he runs up on is not Nash, but Crush…Well, these dudes still have beef from the winter of 1993/1994…Savage is basically like Don’t make me hogtie your dumb ass again like I did back at WrestleMania X and they back off after barking at one another for a bit… Recap: Randy Savage is even nuttier than usual… Gene Okerlund interviews Buff Bagwell in the aisle…He claims to love Syracuse, New York…Now that is some shameless babyfacin'…I’ve known a couple people from Syracuse who don’t love Syracuse…Buff is getting a rematch against Disco Inferno at GAB instead of the higher profile match that he expected…Buff talks about how he’s being held down…He points out that he did just beat Disco, which is a good point…Ernest Miller and Sonny Onoo bust in on the interview…Ernest Miller’s outfit tonight is magnificent…Hahaha, Miller cuts off Okerlund’s protests and calls him “bird legs”…Okerlund sets up Onoo by asking him, “You gonna let him talk to me like that?”…Onoo’s response is a perfect little shrug and a response of, “You are old”…Onoo and Miller have pretty fun comedic chemistry…This is am enjoyable little mic battle that ends with a challenge being laid down and accepted for later tonight… You may shake your head at me and consider me hyperbolic when I say this, but the way Psicosis won the Cruiserweight Championship and just dropped it back the next week even though his opponent was interfered with was some of the worst booking in 1999 WCW so far…Psicosis is so good, you can’t just let him work nothing matches forever because you don’t love his spoken English…I say that because he’s fodder again tonight, teaming with Villano V against Konnan and Rey Misterio Jr….I got so excited about Psicosis finally getting a proper push, but it was all just hotshot booking bullshit… This match sort of bums me out for that reason…It’s a perfectly fine match because everyone but Konnan is a good worker…But Psicosis deserves much better…You could give him a manager to talk for him and let him bully dudes at the top of the cruiserweight division…Tenay lets us know that the tag title match from Nitro is officially Dusty Finish’d…That really should be known as a Verne Finish IMO…but anyway, it’s a logical use of that trope, and I wouldn’t mind it so much except for the increasing hotshot booking of the belts and in general, the bullshit shock finishes that mean nothing in the long run…Psicosis and Rey are enjoyable in the ring, but they’ve had better matches…Rey and Konnan do have a couple of nice double-team moves…The crowd is into it whenever they’re in the ring together and clearing out their opponents…They finish Psicosis off with a back kick/springboard rana combo… Okerlund is in the ring after we return from break…He interviews DDP and Chris Kanyon…Page calls Syracuse a dump because he doesn’t have to do that fake babyface complimentary shit anymore…Page finally namedrops the “Triad” moniker…He declares that they’re initiating the Freebird Rule going forward…Page runs down Kevin Nash for a bit and promises revenge…He moves on to threatening Chris Benoit and Perry Saturn…Kanyon holds up the belts, which they got made with the old WCW logo even though they were re-debuted two months before they changed the logo…I’m glad that these belts don’t have the ugly new logo, but that’s such a WCW move, isn’t it?...They end by trying to get a new catchphrase-and-pose thing over that is never going to get over, and they should give it up… Team Madness is looking for Kevin Nash backstage and they run into Crush again…Savage and Crush exchange unpleasant words again and eventually agree to get a match made for later in the show… Recap: Shit gets stirred up on Nitro…Literally…Also, there’s a car accident…Well, if it was meant to happen, maybe it’s a car on-purpose instead… Ernest Miller (w/Sonny Onoo) is back out to wrestle Buff Bagwell…I think while I have the audio muted someone joins commentary…Let’s see…OK, it’s Disco, as I find out on caption as I move to unmute the audio…Can you say “shat” on television?...Because Disco just did (Ernest “The Shat” Miller)…Disco is insulted by having to wrestle a “midcard talent” like Buff Bagwell on PPV…I don’t like this "held down" angle…I do like that Buff and Cat do the spot where each one stands in the corner with arms raised, one after the other, so the crowd can go BOOOOOO for Miller and YEAHHHHH for Buff…There’s a 1996-ish RAW where Shawn Michaels is wrestling some heel, and he starts the match by pointing at his heel opponent (BOOOOOO) and then faux-bashfully pointing at himself (YEAHHHHHH), and it killed tween me… The Cat is testing out his own People’s Elbow-ish type move with a bounce off the ropes, a little dance, and a falling chop…Disco says his mom spent some time with a Billy Blanks tape the other day and can take on the Cat…This is a perfectly acceptable match between two midcarders with actual popularity/heat…Disco also mentions Braveheart…Am I going to need to start a Disco Inferno Knows Pop Culture segment in these reviews?…The Cat misses another dancing chop…Scott Norton runs down as Miller swings at Buff and misses with a crowbar…Disco takes off from the desk to interfere as well…Buff hits Onoo with the crowbar and gets DQ’d…Miller gets the crowbar back, whiffs when swinging at Norton, and gets chopped and chased away from the ring…Meanwhile, Disco jumps Buff and then dances… Gene Okerlund is at the bottom of the ramp to interview Chris Benoit and Perry Saturn…Benoit calls himself, or maybe more accurately the payback he’s going to be inflicting on Flair, “the bitch from hell”…This is actually not a bad promo from Benoit…He and Saturn are going to take both the belts and the Jersey Triad’s dignity…Saturn also does a solid bit of talking…He says that he doesn’t have to personally like Benoit to be his partner because he wants to win, and Benoit is a winner…He points out to the Triad that they couldn’t beat him two-on-one without resorting to a phantom punch on Kanyon, and they couldn’t finish Benoit in a two-on-one match, so what makes them think that they can beat Benoit and Saturn in a two-on-two straight up?... Okerlund points out that both men have previous tag partners, but have sort of dropped them for one another…That’s when Dean Malenko comes out to the top of the ramp, stares balefully at Saturn and Benoit, and then leaves…That’s it, that’s the segment… Huh, I enjoyed Benoit and Saturn cutting a promo…Weird stuff, folks!... As an aside, caley noted that Raven is not long for WCW…I had the timeline wrong for a long time…For awhile, I used to think that Raven left for ECW at the same time that the Radicalz left for the WWF…But that makes no sense after I took more than a second to think about it…For one, Bischoff is the guy who gave Raven his release, but he wasn’t yet back into power again when the Radicalz walked out on a new booking committee headed up by Kevin Sullivan…So I guess Raven has to leave before early September, which is when Bischoff gets relieved of his position…I hope he’s not just off television until then and gets at least a little something to do...I have no idea what he’s up to next, and I don’t want to spoil it just to figure out the specific date that Raven leaves… Randy Savage (w/Team Madness) renews an old rivalry with Crush (w/Virgil)…Hey, the ladies of Team Madness can actually walk down this Thunder ramp with Macho…How nice, a ramp that works!...Savage gets a mic and feels good about his chances at GAB considering that he got Nash all bashed up by a fucking Hummer…Savage is glad to accept the big gold via forfeit if Nash can’t make it out of his hospital bed…Crush gets here, and Savage promises to treat Crush like a Nash proxy…Crush asks for the mic and addresses the ladies of Team Madness...He says that the B-Teamers might consider having sex with them after he finishes off Savage…The ladies roll their eyes and gag at ringside, which is actually a very funny reaction to me… Mona immediately hops on the apron and I’m truly excited to see Virgil get his ass kicked by the ladies of Team Madness…Actually, it’s once again all the smoke and mirrors of having so many wrestlers’ seconds (and thirds/fourths in the case of Savage) out here that makes this match fun…Virgil is looking around trying to figure out how to counter these ladies and their coordinated distractions and attacks…It’s novel to have the nWo be the outnumbered ones, even if it’s just B-Teamer nWo…George gets on the apron and taunts Crush, which allows Savage to stick a boot into Crush’s gut from just out of his line of vision…Crush walks through a few jabs and takes control, but he is distracted by the ladies yapping at him… Macho finds a way to lariat Crush to the floor…Madusa lands a kick to Crush’s kidney…It doesn’t hurt Crush, but it does distract him enough that Savage can jump him from behind and smash him into the ring steps...Savage sends Crush into the rail and the steps again…They have a wandering brawl at ringside…Crush presses Savage throat-first across the guardrail…Savage reaches out for George, and she and the ladies help him up and back to the ring…Crush comes over to continue the assault and gets his neck snapped across the top rope… Savage boot chokes Crush, but gets reversed on an Irish whip and hit with a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker…Madusa hops in and lands a high kick…Here comes the ga-ga…Crush is once again unhurt and grabs Madusa in a goozle…The ref is just gonna watch all this happen and not once motion for the bell…Savage recovers and chop blocks Crush when Crush presses Madusa over his head…Madusa falls on top of Crush, and Savage goes up top for a Savage Elbow…Virgil gets on the apron with a chair in his hands…Mona and George grab Virgil’s legs, and he loses control of the chair as it clatters into the ring…That draws ref Johnny Boone over, and Savage drops a Savage Elbow on Crush right behind his back even though the move is banned…Boone turns around and gets three… Then, as the bell rings, Horace Hogan rushes the ring…Savage grabs the chair and brains him with it…It’s mayhem…Stevie runs down and Madusa wraps her arms around his waist and goes limp as Savage sizes him up and hits him with the chair…Horace makes it back to his feet, but George grabs his ankle and Mona goes up and lands a missile dropkick…Savage lands a couple more chair shots on Horace for good measure, then leaps over Johnny Boone and drills him with a Savage Elbow…Madusa jumps Boone and then all the ladies stomp him out…Madusa takes Boone’s belt off and whips him with it…Then she pantses (???) Boone…You know, she yanks his pants down so that he looks like a doofus, is what I mean…GODDAM, THAT RULED…I LOVED IT…Look, I cannot, in any way, claim that this match is good…But the sheer amount of fun ga-ga that Team Madness provides is always welcome on my television…I was so excited for all the chaos of Team Madness and the B-Teamers doing some run-in/interference fuckery…It almost looked like it’d be muted at first, but the finish and aftermath were incredible…This match is maybe the Form of the Good for Charming Uniquity matches… It's Fit Finlay!...Aw, he’s going to job to that lump Rick Steiner…Steiner grabs a mic and calls out Sting…Oh man, this guy hits the same fucking talking points and shitty signature lines as usual…Finlay is a guy who is still improving because he peaked late, and I enjoy watching him work…But he mostly eats offense from a guy who peaked in 1991 or 1992 in Rick Steiner…I wonder how much of Finlay’s incredible later career was that the WWE style somehow fit him best of all the styles…I feel like some day, I’m going to fire up a Finlay thread and just watch a ton of Finlay matches from his career and write blurbs about them… Anyway, Finlay sneaks a couple of two counts, including off his rolling fireman’s carry slam…Steiner hits what is a very bad-looking bulldog on the concrete…Mostly because Finlay’s head is tucked up in his armpit and he lands on his ass, so Finlay’s head is nowhere near the concrete…Maybe Ricky should stop doing these concrete-exposed moves that look awful?...Steiner scores a nasty-looking lariat, a top-rope bulldog, and his sort of octopus hold/armbar sort of thing that looks like shit for the submission victory… Mike Tenay holds a phone interview with Kevin Nash while stills and video of the white Hummer attack plays…Nash sells his injuries as serious, but not serious enough to keep him from wrestling at the GAB…Nash basically duplicates a line from Ron Burgundy after that big news team brawl in Anchorman with his remarks…Wow, that really got out of hand!...Nash wonders about who was driving the Hummer…As do we all…He speculates...He says that people on the internet are saying that Scott Hall maybe did it…He’s tried to reach out to Hall since Nitro, but hasn’t heard bac from him…I’ll give Nash this, he tries to logic us through the spot (I’m less injured because I moved to the other side of the limo when I saw headlights, but I still got impacted against the dumpster that the limo was parked next to on the crash) and adds intrigue to the match by calling for the Savage Elbow to be unbanned because he doesn’t want Savage to have any excuses for losing…I also think that his dropping of crumbs for who was in the Hummer was a nice touch…If only they’d had an idea of where this was all going…Bischoff was on WCW.com back on Monday insinuating that it was Sable…That’s much less clever or interesting breadcrumbing than Nash's… Kanyon is back out by himself, holding a tag title and looking pretty pleased…As he grabs a mic, Larry Z. wonders what happened to that “Shut Up and Wrestle” tagline that they briefly pushed at the same exact time they let Nash turn Nitro into C-level RAW…Yeah, I wonder, too…Kanyon asks his typical question tot he crowd as the cameraperson pans to a young woman who has scribbled SATURN on a white board and held it up as her response…OK, that’s pretty good!...Give that cameraperson a raise for getting that shot!...And I guess I need to say it since I've ragged on him (mostly hyperbolically, mind you) throughout this thread...Good job, Leathers!... Saturn stomps out here looking furious…Kanyon tries to dodge Saturn, but Saturn reaches through the ropes and punches him…Kanyon bails again as soon as possible…This is a neat little opening series of spots…Saturn finally catches Kanyon as Kanyon slides back out with a springboard crossbody…Saturn chokes Kanyon with a television cable, then threatens to punch ref Randy Anderson when Anderson steps in…Hey, a wandering brawl that makes sense!...Saturn brings Kanyon onto the ramp and hits a vertical suplex…Saturn bashes Kanyon into the entranceway set…Are they going to destroy this thing so they can have an excuse for a revamp after the GAB?...Randy Anderson could have counted to a hundred by now…Saturn tosses Kanyon back down the ramp, and he rolls halfway down the aisle…Kanyon stumbles into the ring and catches Saturn with a forearm as Saturn follows… Kanyon tries to choke Saturn and assert some control, but Saturn easily turns the tide of the match back into his favor…Saturn uses the first wrestling move of the match with a release overhead double-underhook suplex…Then he goes back to punchin’…I love it when a wrestler is so mad, especially one with a “scientific” characterization, that they don’t use a “proper” wrestling move until five minutes in because they’re so furious at their opponent…That’s how you know things are serious… Kanyon gets control again by crotching Saturn to escape a series of punches in the corner…He gets two on a suplex and then tries to keep Saturn down with a chinlock…That doesn’t work very well at all…He has to counter a Saturn arm drag with a neckbreaker to stop Saturn from coming back…Kanyon covers and gets two…A slingshot elbow from Kanyon gets two, but the ref sees Kanyon trying to get leverage on the ropes…Kanyon shoves Anderson for stopping the count, and Anderson shoves him right back…Kanyon and Saturn trade pinning combinations for two…Kanyon lands a struggle powerbomb and then a legdrop right across the dick for another two… Kanyon is a bit distracted by jawing at a hostile crowd and gives Saturn time to recover…He shoots Saturn in, but whiffs on a lariat and eats a superkick…Saturn makes a comeback…Inverted atomic drop, crossbody, release overhead belly-to-belly…Saturn signals for a DVD or a Rings of Saturn, but he goes up top instead…He lands a huge splash, but he gets so much air that the impact also hurts him…He crawls over for a cover, but we don’t see him get there because there’s a commercial break… I’m so upset about this break because we come back to Kanyon with a sleeper locked on Saturn…I hate a fucking break that omits a key part of the match…That we didn’t see Kanyon manage to turn the tide sucks…And then Saturn is fighting it off, and DDP almost immediately comes down and attacks Saturn, causing a DQ…Fucking nonsense…This was a really good match, but the break and then the immediate DQ on a run-in made this match ultimately not worth suggesting as a watch…Benoit tries to make a save, but gets dumped… Wait, hold it on that DQ call, I guess now this is randomly a tag match…What the fuck?...I give up, this is nonsense…What dumb fucking booking…We had this really solid grudge match going between Saturn and Kanyon and then it turns into utter nonsense…Syracuse tosses shit in the ring, and while that is unsafe because people have to work in there, I get the sentiment…WTF, Tenay is like HEY I GOT NEWS THAT THIS IS NOW A TAG TITLE MATCH…What the hell?...What is happening?...Who would have logically made this pronouncement?...Piper?...Why are they doing this?...They might as well have left the tag titles dormant because this is ridiculous…Whatever, this show has no respect for its viewer, so let me just tell you how this ends…Malenko comes down, but Arn stops him from getting involved…Malenko leaves…Benoit gets three on a diving headbutt to Kanyon…Fuck right off, WCW… For some reason, a couple of cute simians dressed like Tenay and Larry Z. act and do tricks while Tenay and Larry Z. do voice over…What the motherfuck is this program doing?...I guess it’s a promo for something called The Chimp Channel on TBS…OK, a quick iMDB trip tells me that it’s a show full of stuff like this…Poor monkeys performing for idiots with nothing else to watch on Thursday night while D-list stars do voiceovers to match the monkeys’ performances…At least there was a point to this ending…For a second, I thought Nash had completely lost his faculties… Despite the utter stupidity of the main event, a main event that I thought started out pretty awesomely, mind you, I liked this show a whole lot…Like, a whole lot…I give it a WOOOOOO for a bunch of fun performers doing fun performer things and the Team Madness/B-Teamer showdown…
  10. I thought that the actual escape from the bag was an incredible spot. It was so good that I pretty much forgave the segment for all the things that you mention, honestly, because you are a hundred percent correct that it's a spot with no surrounding logic to it. I looked back at when you posted Bischoff's "movie star" comment yesteray, and IIRC it's from a match against Rick Steiner on the 6/17 Nitro, so Chastity is at least here after GAB for a week or two. And no offense to Franchise fans, but trading Raven and Hak and getting Shane Douglas in return makes me queasy. Oh, yeah, that person. The same one running GTV. How could I forget? I thought this too, but then you wouldn't be able to smoosh the White Hummer angle into the show since that is a direct reaction to the shit angle.
  11. Listening to the episode of 83 Weeks for that previous Nitro while I prep dinner. Since the beans are simmering and need a bit more time, let me post a couple of quick follow-ups: This show is hard to listen to if you hear a few in a short space. It's just Bischoff pushing the same three or four narratives every time (Meltzer knows nothing, Turner is the primary reason WCW died, AEW is kinda like dying days WCW, VKM copied WCW and not ECW when they started the Attitude Era, etc.). I've heard too many eps lately because I listen to the ones that cover shows I've watched, and I've been covering a lot of shows with my extra time in the summer. The "lawsuit" snark from Bischoff was about Sable's lawsuit, not Martha Hart's. Fair, and of course, it takes time to file a proper lawsuit, so I should have known. Bischoff tried to claim that he wasn't even there to see the contortionist bit, so it was funny when Conrad read Meltzer's review a minute later which complained about Bischoff's fake laughter on commentary just like I did. Neither Bisch nor Conrad corrected the record on this one.
  12. Show #192 – 7 June 1999 “The one with the infamous White Hummer angle” *sigh*, let’s Nitro. Randy Savage is wearing a fantastic hot-pink feathered coat. He and the ladies step out of a limo, and then Savage directs and attendant to take the top off of a bucket of d-d-d-dookie. I’m in hell already. We follow this guy through the back while he rants and yells for Nash. I remember how much I liked Team Madness. It was like two shows ago that I was singing their praises. Now, Savage shows up on screen and I’m bummed. Hak (w/Chastity, trusty kendo stick, lit cigarette) enters the arena. FUCK, Bischoff is on color. Whoever mentioned that dork Bischoff getting upset about Hak smoking on television was right that it’s incredibly corny. What a goofball that Bischoff is. Hak faces Prince Iaukea and I think to myself, Three hours of this? Let’s hurry up and get this over so I can get through GAB already. You know these Nitros have been bad because one was actually pre-empted for the NBA playoffs, and I still feel like the run into GAB has been about five years long. I cannot fucking believe how much they make of this cigarette! J.J. Dillon comes down to make Hak put his cigarette out. Hak blows smoke in Dillon’s face and gets an obvious pop – Dillon is a heel and a dork, and Bischoff is a BINO (Babyface In Name Only) and also a joke. That moron Bischoff gets in the ring to remonstrate with Hak. The crowd chants ASSHOLE, but at whom? I genuinely can’t tell. Hak blows smoke in Bischoff’s face, and Bischoff slaps Hak before security holds Hak back. Are you fucking kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?! Bischoff takes the cig from a restrained Hak and flicks it at him, then leaves like some kind of boss. This guy fucking SUCKS. There’s still a match, by the way. While Bischoff shits on Hak’s conditioning and alludes to Chastity having been in a pornographic movie once (so, a week or two before he did it in that clip that caley posted a few pages back), Chastity uses the fire extinguisher on Iaukea thirty seconds in, and then Hak lands a senton bomb onto Iaukea while Iaukea’s on a table. That table got no sawdust on it because it doesn’t come close to breaking. Hak sets it up in the corner and launches Iaukea into it – still not close. Hak covers for three. Brian Knobbs and Hugh Morrus run in immediately and stomp Hak out. Billy Kidman runs down for the save and gets a big pop. He clears house and hits Jimmy Hart, but the First Family reasserts itself and beats down both Kidman and Hak. Actually, Hak and Knobbs just end up brawling to the back and trading kendo stick shots. Morrus drags Kidman down the aisle to take a kendo stick shot, too. This all constitutes some truly awful television. I get why Bischoff finally gets fired in a couple of months. He should have been fired by the end of June for being in charge during this run of garbage Nitros. The Nitro Girls dance live. The Nitro Girls then dance on recording because the Nitro intro plays. Recap: Sting/Rick Steiner/Tank Abbott, a cage, and a dumb angle. Kevin Nash/Randy Savage, poop, and an even dumber angle. I cannot believe how badly this show dropped off in just a few weeks. In mid-March, early-April, Nitro was interesting and fun! Seven or eight weeks later, the show is a fucking dumpster fire. Lenny Lane comes to the ring while Bischoff shills Master P and Dennis Rodman coming to future WCW shows. Then, he rips-slash-spois the Higher Power angle on RAW and talks about Vince getting sued by someone, probably Martha Hart. If it is the Martha Hart lawsuit that Bischoff is using to club Vince with, that’s tasteless even for Bischoff. We’re getting Lane/Riggs. Good news! No, not that we’re getting Lane/Riggs, that sounds dull and crappy. But we just hit under two hours of runtime on this video. Let me update that fact to GREAT NEWS, actually. Can you believe this fucking dolt Bischoff? He buries Riggs for carrying a mirror because Paul Orndorff did that four years ago and then tells Riggs to be original. Why would you say and do that to a guy under your employ who is trying to establish a new gimmick? I’m just going to put “Eric Bischoff on commentary” right onto my Absolute Dirt Worst list. Lodi comes out to cheer Lane on. Lodi’s still got enough heat from the Flock angle months ago that he gets a LODI SUCKS chant for a bit. Bischoff and Heenan bicker on commentary while this nothing match goes on. Riggs does some boilerplate offense. He admires himself in the mirror. Commentary says that Macho has a bucket of SHHH-ugar water like twenty times. It’s not funny. I have committed to watching every minute of every episode of these shows, which is the only reason that I haven’t skipped to the end of this match. It’s not right to skip anything because I'm here for posterity's sake. I pledge to chronicle the whole damn deal on this watch-through. Lane makes a comeback, but falls to a Riggs Rocker Dropper. Ric Flair tries to get Chris Benoit back into the fold. You let this man get his ass whipped by Bam Bam and DDP on Thunder. Why would he even sit down with you? Oh, Benoit explains why. He says that he had so much unconditional respect for Flair that he’s given him this meeting, but that respect is now conditional. Huh, Benoit with a good line in a promo? Weird. Flair continues to press Benoit on coming back into the Horsemen fold and says that his feud with Arn Anderson a few years ago caused him the same problems, but they got that out of their system and came back together again. Well yeah, but that’s because they bonded over stabbing Sting in the back. Maybe Flair and Benoit should find a way to stab Sting in the back. I must note that this last argument actually sort of works on Benoit, who says he’ll consider it. Saturn busts in on Flair and says that he wants a rematch for the tag titles and says that Kanyon is cleared and ready to tag with him. Flair blows him off and gives himself and Benoit a tag title shot instead. Saturn shows Benoit respect, but doesn’t respect Flair trying to drag Benoit back into the Horsemen by giving him a tag title shot. Benoit is suspicious – hey, he’d be out there alone with Flair, Bammer, and Page, and they all beat the shit out of him on Thunder. He’s not wrong to be suspicious, but Flair really sells the idea that he wants to make things good for Benoit, and Benoit ends up accepting. This was actually a fantastic little segment, an oasis of goodness in the middle of *waves arms around* all this. Team Madness heads to the ring with their bucket of poo. Savage rapidly went from being a highlight to bumming me out. He rants about not being able to find Nash anywhere and wants some revenge right now. Macho goes on for-fucking-ever. Eventually, he makes an open challenge since Nash hasn’t shown up. He’ll fight anyone and everyone, is what he says, and he promises to dump the bucket’s contents over his opponent’s head in lieu of Nash. Hell, he opines, he might dump it over the head of someone on commentary. I expect Buff Bagwell to come out around now, but nope, Sting comes out here with a microphone. Sting is like LOOK AT YOUR GAY COAT MACHO, I WILL FIGHT YOU BECAUSE THAT COAT IS GAY AND MAYBE YOU ARE TOO. But if we’re going off well-worn stereotypes, Sting says that Macho should fight, and I directly quote, “moi,” and we all know that using French vocabulary is equally, by ‘90s wrestling standards, as gay (and therefore, by ‘90s wrestling standards, as bad) as wearing pink. Anyway, I hate it. I hate it all. And man, it’s embarrassing to say this, but I don’t think I fully comprehended how often some of us (me included, in both honesty and shame) used “gay” as a synonym for “something unfavorable or bad” back in the ‘90s. It’s just all the time, fucking constantly. Well, we have our Nitro main event now. Sting yells MACHO MADNESS IS ON VIAGRA, and oh no, now Sting is depressing me too. This overlong segment was utter garbage. Recap: Poop from last week. Kevin Nash wanders to the ring with his belt and a duffel bag. He puts the bag in the chair and poses for a bit. Someone in the crowd keeps yelling SHAWN MICHAELS for some reason while Nash tells Savage that he’s in the ring and ready to tangle. Macho comes back out with his shit bucket and a microphone. He and Nash trade some shitty banter, pun intended. Nash leaves the ring as Savage and the ladies enter it. Nash backs up the aisle and, oh yeah, I’ve seen this, a contortionist gets out of the bag and grabs the shit bucket that Macho put down. Yep, she sneaks out of the bag, grabs the bucket, pours the contents over Macho's head, and escapes. I have to admit, that is a very cool duffel bag escape trick. Is it almost ruined by the terrible segment before it? Yes. Is it almost ruined by Eric Bischoff hooting like babyface Doink the Clown on commentary? Yes! But still, much respect to the contortionist and her art of escapology. She’s been the best worker on this show so far. Now we get to watch the crew clean up the ring. Exciting! Diamond Dallas Page and Bam Bam Bigelow are out next. Even though Bischoff claims that the ring still stinks, I just saw Macho walk down to the ring and nonchalantly dap a couple of fans with his bucket-holding hand two segments ago. No one sold any of the "stinky bucket" stuff that Bischoff is working overtime to sell. Page and Bammer likewise no-sell any theoretical pungent aroma that might linger. Bischoff yammers about the young guys that he held back, but that he promises not to hold back anymore, while Ric Flair and Chris Benoit (w/Arn Anderson) make their way down. Benoit wins a punch-up with Page, then knocks an onrushing Bam Bam to the floor. Page shoots Benoit into the ropes, but Benoit ducks a lariat and hits a suicide dive onto Bam Bam. I think it’s important to think about the context that Benoit is wrestling in. This company is awful, and all Benoit does for all of 1999 so far is get in the ring and find a way to have excellent matches in the midst of a bunch of garbage booking and uninspiring work from other wrestlers. I think, if anything, what Benoit has done through late 1998 and into 1999 in the middle of a series of bad periods for WCW booking is specifically what made fans go from “Benoit is a great worker” to “Benoit should be the champ that a company builds around.” He can’t talk, typically (tonight aside), but in 1999 WCW, you know that when Benoit hits the ring, at worst, you’re getting a high-quality match. That’s a huge thing when you’re watching 1999 WCW. Anyway, Benoit basically fights both his opponents off and manages to snap a Crippler Crossface on Page, but Page gets the ropes. Bischoff promotes an Assault on Devil’s Island sequel on TNT as Benoit tags Flair in. Flair lands a shinbreaker on Page and immediately pops on a Figure Four, then leans away from a Bam Bam headbutt as Bam Bam tries to break it up. Flair breaks the hold and he and Benoit double-chop Flair and then Bam Bam. They’re actually a really fun tag team. Flair has more than earned his place on television as one of the older guys. He is consistently entertaining in one way or another on each show. Finally, Benoit settles into the FIP role after Bam Bam gets control. Page and Bam Bam control the proceedings; Benoit gets boots up on a Bam Bam charge in there, but Bam Bam sticks out an arm when Benoit charges in on a follow up. Flair gets heated and grabs Page, and the match breaks down. Page low blows Flair in return for Flair doing it to him earlier, and that settles things down and brings order back to the match. Well, for a second, as Flair charges over and chops Bam Bam when Bam Bam chokes Benoit from his spot on the floor. But yes, after Nick Patrick shoos Flair back to his corner, Page hits Benoit with a powerbomb for two. DDP locks on a front facelock. Hey, it subdued Firebreaker Chip, so why not try it on Benoit? Benoit tries to fight toward the corner to get a tag and makes some headway, so Bammer distracts the ref and Page breaks the hold and drops a couple of forearms, then slams Benoit and tags in Bam Bam. Bammer tries a flying headbutt, whiffs, and Benoit struggles toward a hot tag that Flair refuses to give him. Flair backs away and leaves ringside while Arn freaks out. Arn understandably is freaking out because he’s trying to hold things together yet again! That’s all he does when it comes to the Horsemen from about 1996 on! Arn rips off his shirt and gets on the apron to a big pop, holding out his hand for a hot tag. Arn’s going to hop down off the apron too, isn’t he? Let’s find out. No, wait, Perry Saturn randomly runs down and also offers his hand to Benoit for a tag. OK, we’ve headed straight toward total convolutedness. Benoit dives over to his corner and tags Saturn instead of Arn, and I think Arn is offended. Saturn clears Bam Bam out and then DVDs Page for three, but since Saturn wasn’t signed to this match, I’m going to guess that Flair is going to reverse this decision. In the meantime, Saturn and Benoit are the champs. They eye one another cautiously, but then Saturn throws Benoit a belt and they dap it up. Kanyon comes into the ring and motions to Saturn for a hug, then predictably drills him with a Flatliner when he accepts the offer. Page and Bam Bam hand out Tower Diamond Cutters to the champs and Page gives a regular ol’ Diamond Cutter to ref Nick Patrick just for kicks. The tag title scene is not quite as bad as it was when Rick Steiner and Kenny Kaos/Judy Bagwell were champs, but it’s pretty bad! The narrative that I tend to hear that this sort of dumb twisty-turny booking suddenly started when Russo took over is wrong. That is a new thing that I’ve found out during this watch. I think it was those braindead doofuses RD Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez who really established this narrative just after WCW died that somehow the booking got REAL wacky and swerve-y when Russo came into the company. I somehow don’t think it’ll be that much of a transition when Russo shows up because Nash was already doing that shit back in May. La Parka and Silver King face Damian 666 and Ciclope in a Falls Count Anywhere Hardcore tag match. The latter team brings a bin full of crap to the ring. PUSH LA PARKA, YOU ABSOLUTE RUBES ON THE BOOKING COMMITTEE. The teams hit each other with a bunch of crap, basically. I have a hard time caring. They do dives, but they dive into objects this time. Ciclope does a suicide dive into a chair, which rules, I guess. I don’t know. I think Tony S. actually does get a kick out of this garbage wrestling, though. Heenan does a bunch of fake laughter that annoys me, but Tony genuinely seems to enjoy it. Anyway, I blame ECW for all of this. Fucking ECW. I think my issue is that I’m into weapon shots in a match, but only if the match has stakes where a wrestler really wants to kill another wrestler after months of blood feuding. If it’s just a “trash cans and tables” exhibition, it just does very little for me. Maybe it works in a random match if it’s Raven or Hak, but they have made chairs and tables and kendo sticks part of their character, so that’s what makes that different. Ciclope loses his grip on a trash can lid and it frisbees into what I assume is the twentieth row, but apparently, Tony S. snagged it out of mid-air. That’s impressive if true! Silver King drills Ciclope with a tornado DDT from the apron and through a table on the floor; meanwhile, La Parka blocks a Damien top rope rana and turns it into a diving powerbomb from the top and through a table for…2.9? what the fuck?! That should have been a finish. La Parka hits a disgusting powerbomb on Damien onto two folded-out chairs for three. Overkill, unnecessary, and a gross bump besides. Scott Norton is in the back, steaming mad at the B-Teamers. He asks where everyone was when Ernest Miller clocked him with a crowbar. Stevie Ray, in a voice of total disbelief: “He hit you?” Everyone looks around confused like they didn’t watch it live. Genuinely funny! Stevie tries to gaslight Norton into thinking that they left before they could see the end of last week’s match because they thought he had things under control. The other B-Teamers try to call Norton down, and eventually, he daps them up. He does it reluctantly, though. Ernest Miller’s on his way to the ring next. Miller holds up a fan’s I CAME TO SEE THE CAT DANCE sign. Didn’t we all, fair sign bearer? Someone else across the aisle has a SOMEONE CALL MY MAMA sign. Aw yeah, the Cat’s getting over! The Cat gets in the ring and yells I SHOOK UP THE WORLD on the mic. Fantastic! He browbeats the crowd for not believing in his ability to beat Scott Norton. He issues an open challenge; who shall answer? First, Penzer is bullied into giving the Cat his specialized nonsense ring announcement; Sonny Onoo stands there with his head bowed, then pumps his fist when Penzer calls the Cat THE GODFATHER OF SOUL. Holy shit, that was funny, too. Horace Hogan runs in, no music, and attacks the Cat. Miller slams Horace, dances, then drops a running chop. He tries again and misses so badly that he probably should have been able to stop himself in time. Horace makes a comeback, so Sonny Onoo runs a distraction. We go to split-screen, where the B-Teamers see Miller grabbing the crowbar and laugh. Horace eats the crowbar, which he loses his grip on. It lands in the ring right in front of Mickey Jay. Jay counts three anyway. Norton leads the B-Teamers out to get the Cat, who tosses off his robe and dances. The Cat sees the B-Teamers stream down and manages to hightail it to the back safely. Stevie Ray promises Horace revenge as Horace wakes up from the crowbar shot. The Nitro Girls dance in an ostensibly shit-stained ring before Gene Okerlund comes down and refills the ring with another pile of shit. And by that, I mean that it’s interview time with Roddy Piper. Cleveland seems stoked by Piper, so hey, I guess I understand why Bischoff kept dragging this guy out here. Piper cuts a bad promo, as you may guess. I don’t know, it's not objective fact; I’m sure some sickos out there love late-era Roddy Piper promos. Piper says that when he wins the WCW Presidency, he’s going to address the “Y2K Kids” who want to be in the main event. IT’S REALITY CHECK TIME, and by that, I mean Piper calls Buff Bagwell to the ring. Okerlund leaves the ring just in case. Piper thinks that calling him “Buffy” is cute or funny or something. Piper asks Buff how many times he’s wrestled in MSG; Buff has been a WCW lifer, stupid. According to Piper, I guess you have to wrestle in MSG before you can be a star. Buff tells Piper he’s old, and that gets a bit of a pop. The crowd is trying to figure out who to get behind, is how it feels to me. Piper wants to know what “the stuff” is and Buff says, Duh, look at me, it’s me, I’m magnificent, I'm the stuff, but even more concisely than that. Piper rants about Buff’s whole career over the past year and asks if Buff will do whatever it takes to be the champ; Buff says that he will. Piper says that when he gets power after beating Flair, he’ll give Buff a chance to be a star, and Buff thinks he’ll do just fine! He won’t, probably, considering that he’s bumming around the midcard with Lex Luger when this show is canceled. The ladies of Team Madness sit in their limo and wait for Nash to come along. The ladies ask Nash to join them for some champagne; Nash checks the car to see if Savage is in there and then, I guess because he’s that desperate for some lovin’ or non-Cristal brand champagne, he gets in the car? I mean, you sprayed liquid shit on these ladies, Nash. I know that terminally online so-called alpha males say that negging is a good strategy for attracting the ladies, but I haven’t met a single woman who would be into someone who doused them in human waste. Anyway, the ladies, who got out of the car when Nash checked it, slam the door on him. And then, in an angle that I have heard talk of, but never actually seen until now, Savage rolls down the partition, reveals that he’s the driver, and then drives the car into a spot a few feet ahead so that a white Hummer can bash into the backseat after Savage escapes. If I recall, we never find out who was driving the Hummer, do we? Was it supposed to be Sid? Actually, Sid joining Team Madness could be amazing television. Anyway, Nash is able to knock a window out, but passes out before he can escape the wreckage. Boy oh boy, did Kevin Nash want so badly to be Vincent K. McMahon from a creative standpoint. Bobby Duncum Jr. (w/Curt Hennig) faces Rey Misterio Jr. (w/Konnan, gas masks). Hennig joins the desk. Konnan goes over and joins DJ Ran and commentates from over there. Konnan and Hennig jaw at each other while Bobby Duncum Jr. stinks it up in the ring. Bring Ric Flair back out here to entertain me instead of making me sit through this, please. Konnan finds the olds to be boring; Hennig finds rap music to be not to his taste. Rey and Duncum have zero chemistry, mostly because Duncum doesn’t understand how to space himself for Rey’s reversals a couple of times. Rey uses a head scissors to dump Duncum to the floor. Duncum talks strategy with Hennig, but gets his ass kicked when he gets back in the ring. Eventually, he dodges a Rey corner charge and unfortunately is allowed more offense. Not that much, though: Rey slips out of a powerslam attempt, dropkicks Duncum into the corner, and hits him with a Bronco Buster. That causes Hennig to jump from his seat and clock Rey as Rey tries to hit a rana; Konnan runs them off before they can do much damage. Rey’s got a split lip, I think, so maybe Hennig accidentally tagged him with that punch. After a little bit of shilling and some Savage/Nash Hummer spot recapping, we go to break. When we come back, the Steiner Brothers are on their way to the ring. I scrolled through and spotted an episode of 83 Weeks that covers this show. I’m going to metaphorically self-flagellate by listening to it. The Steiners cut a promo; to clarify, Scott does most of the talking (thankfully). The crowd sings along with BIG POPPA PUMP IS YOUR HOOKUP; HOLLA IF YOU HEAR ME. Then, Scotty runs down Sting because no one came down to help him out when Rick Steiner stomped him out last week. Yeah, where was Lex Luger, actually? Then, he heels it up by letting Rick talk. What a contrast: Scotty is so contemporary, and Rick is so ‘80s. No one sings along with Rick’s shitty catchphrases. Recap: Poop from earlier in this show. Disco Inferno enters the ring and talks some more. He addresses Buff Bagwell. He is not happy with Buff’s response to Roddy Piper; in fact, he wanted Buff to let Piper know how bad Piper sucks. Disco says that Buff is soft for not taking that chance, and that Buff's softness explains why he got kicked out of the Wolfpac. Disco requests a match with him immediately. Buff acquiesces to his challenge. Tony S. flogs the NEW WCW.com, where Eric Bischoff is supposedly giving some HAWT SCOOPZ about who was driving the Hummer. Wait, Buff’s not dressed to fight. He does grab a mic and admits to getting kicked out of the Wolfpac, but says that Disco never even was a real Wolfpac member. Disco takes exception to that and jumps Bagwell as Buff makes to leave. They have a little impromptu match that goes back and forth and is generally kinda dull. It goes through a break and is mostly okay-ish Disco control. Buff makes a comeback after the break, but Disco lands a swinging neckbreaker for two. However, Disco runs himself into a Buff powerslam and eats a Blockbuster when he gets to his feet that ends the match. It’s main event time with about eight-and-one-half minutes left in the show. These three hour Nitros are just a mess. I’m sort of impressed that RAW has been three hours since forevermore and apparently is still able to catch fire occasionally with the odd strong angle. Actually, I’m beginning to understand how efficient the WWE machine is for doing three-hour shows twice a week, plus ancillary shows and Twitter matches and all that while still being able to generally produce decent television every week. From a business perspective, establishing the WWE formula and then standardizing it across all aspects of the product, from production to commentary to in-ring work, is a staggering effort that takes literal years to achieve. I hate to give Vincent Kennedy McMahon any credit for anything at all, but man, as soon as the Attitude Era died, he spent the next two decades slowly building a standardized, easy-to-digest wrestling product and sold it to networks and streamers and investors for billions of dollars. It’s not good for the art of pro wrestling in America, but as a pure business achievement, it’s incredible. George immediately hops on Sting’s back so that Savage can throw a bunch of free jabs. Savage tosses Sting outside so that Mona can hop on Sting’s back and Madusa can throw kicks. Sting makes it back to the ring to get choked and rope burned. At only eight minutes, this is just a boring, plodding brawl in which Savage punches and chokes, chokes and punches. The ladies distract the ref so that Savage can toss powder in Sting’s face. He sets Sting up top so Mona can try to land a top-rope Frankensteiner, but Sting shoves her down. Savage decides, Eh, fuck it, and piledrives ref Johnny Boone, then punches Mickey Jay when Jay runs down as the bell rings and the match is thrown out. Sting comes back and tries a Stinger Splash on Savage, but Savage yanks Mona in the way. Sting tries again, and Savage yanks Madusa in the way. Sting tries a third time, but Savage pushes George out of the way and eats the splash himself. Aw, now that's how you know he really loves you, ladies. Doesn't take a Stinger Splash for you = you're only situationship material to him. Takes a Stinger Splash for you = husband material. Rick Steiner runs in and attacks Sting. Scott Steiner trots down shortly after to help. This is fucking nonsense. Scott clocks Sting with his U.S. title. Finally, Lex Luger runs down with a baseball bat for the late save. If Luger turns on Sting at GAB, I will be the opposite of shocked. I’d be more shocked if he actually was true to Sting. Don’t get it twisted: This show was truly awful. However, it had somewhat less homophobia than last week’s Nitro, plus Ric Flair and Ernest Miller were in fine form. So it had that going for it, comparatively! -20 out of 50 Stinger Splashes.
  13. Like I said, I have no love (or hate, really) for Coach TK or AEW, but there's one thing I know: TK actually respects his stars. Maybe too much sometimes, to the point that he lets them push him around a bit, but if he were transported back to 1997 WCW to take control of the company, he would have found a way to make good for the Starrcade finish and get Sting over strong in the end. I think what's even worse in some ways than the Starrcade finish is how Sting was booked in the months immediately after Starrcade '97. The guy ate another visual pinfall to Hogan the very next night on Nitro! TK is NEVER booking anything like that, I don't care what anyone says. I have very little idea what this means. Don't spoil it, though!
  14. Thunder Interlude – show number sixty-five – 3 June 1999 "The WCW Gang thinks that clean finishes are for CHUMPS!" Thunder has been crushing Nitro in quality over the last two or three weeks…Thunder has its share of problems, like being recap central sometimes or having heatless, average nine-minute matches between lower-midcarders…But the lighter touch on storyline and the probability that one or two matches will be good makes this a much easier watch…Well, that and the fact that there are roughly fifty minutes fewer in these shows compared to Nitro… Scotty Riggs opens the show against Bam Bam Bigelow…Riggs tries to take it to Bigelow early…He drills punches in the corner, lands a dropkick, and boot chokes Bam Bam…Bammer tries to come back, so Riggs takes out his knee…Bam Bam trips Riggs and gets him back with a headbutt to the groin…Bammer locks on a headlock…Riggs has been trying hard in this thing…Bam Bam, on the other hand, is coasting…He still does an obligatory ringside brawl segment, though…Riggs whiffs on a corner splash back in the ring…Bam Bam kills him at quarter-speed…Riggs makes one more comeback after getting boots up on a Bammer corner charge…He gets a couple of two counts, but that’s all…Bam Bam lands a fist to a diving Riggs’s gut and then hits a Greetings for the win…I will forget that this match happened by the time I fire up our next Nitro… Recap: Bam Bam and DDP take out Raven on Nitro, win the tag titles, secretly have formed the Jersey Triad…The tag titles have been passed around since they’ve been reactivated…The use of titles primarily as pass-them-around props is low-key one of the worst things about 1999 WCW… Recap: Brian Knobbs (and Hugh Morrus) run in on the Hak/Kidman match from Nitro. I’m baffled by WCW continuing to try and push Hugh Morrus (w/Jimmy Hart)…Then again, they gave Jerry Flynn a mini-push a couple months ago…Meanwhile, Chavo Jr. got way over in 1998 and then did nothing but lose before basically disappearing from Nitro…What the hell, man?...Billy Kidman is pretty good at this point, but I doubt that he’s good enough to coax something out of Hugh Morrus…Morrus jumps Kidman before the bell…Morrus shoots Kidman in, which is a mistake…Kidman lands a headscissors…Kidman is effective when he runs…He next lands a Frankensteiner off a rope run, then dropkicks Morrus to the floor… Morrus bails, but forgets that he's wrestling a cruiser…The floor isn’t a safe place…Kidman leaps onto him with a crossbody…Kidman tosses Morrus into he steps, then backs Jimmy Hart off as Hart hits some weak clubbering…Kidman gets back in the ring and again is distracted by Hart…He punches Hart, but turns around into a Morrus clothesline…Morrus lands a series of legdrops and elbowdrops…Hart chokes Kidman behind the ref’s back…Kidman tries a sunset flip, but Morrus blocks it and punches him…Morrus on offense is whatever…I wonder if babyface Morrus having to fight from underneath will be more interesting than Morrus in control… Morrus continues on as he is…He lands one corner charge, but misses another and gets missile dropkicked…Kidman tries to make a comeback, but Morrus is able to fight through a kick and clothesline Kidman to the floor….Morrus brings him right back into the ring and goes up for a diving elbowdrop…Kidman dodges, then gets to his feet and lands a rebound bulldog…Kidman tries an Irish whip that gets easily reversed into another clothesline…Morrus tries a powerbomb…That’s a mistake!... After Kidman counters into a facebuster, he goes up for an SSP…This move is crazy over…Even on this taped show with juiced audio, you can see the crowd rise to their feet when he goes up…Brian Knobbs runs down and knocks Kidman off the top…Hey, look, another worthless First Family member…Morrus and Knobbs combine on a Pit Stop and a No Laughing Matter…Hak runs in slightly late for a not-quite-save with a kendo stick attack…That was surprisingly good even with the nothing finish…Let me put more respect on Kidman's name...Morrus on offense is rough, though…Kidman gets to his feet and offers his hand to Hak…Hak answers with a kendo stick…See, that’s why Hak didn’t bother to actually make the save…I like that little detail… Brian Adams (w/Vincent) Crush (w/Virgil) is next out to face Buff Bagwell…They mix in some nice spots to keep this from being a nothing match…Early on, for example, Crush tries to kill ten punches in the corner with an inverted atomic drop…He doesn’t realize that Buff blocked it and celebrates, then turns around into Buff successfully hitting him with an inverted atomic drop…Buff is very over based on the hard cam side’s reaction to him firing up with offense… There’s a commercial break and we come back to Buff trying to fight out of a bearhug…Buff throws elbows at Crush’s shoulder, so Crush turns the bearhug into a spinebuster…See, that’s not a bad little spot…These fellas are turning in a professional job…Buff fires up out of a nervehold, but eats a struggle tilt-a-whirl…Crush misses a top-rope kneedrop, and that’s when Buff makes a comeback that lasts…Crush yanks Mickey Jay in front of a Buff charge…Virgil tries to hit Buff with a weak chair shot, but he nails Crush instead…Buff gets three, or maybe not…Crush kicks out even though the bell rings, and then he no sells a vertical suplex…Buff’s music plays, then stops…Well, we went straight into WTF?!?! territory with this badly botched finish…This is a taped show…Make this look better in post somehow…Or tape another match entirely…Buff hits a Blockbuster for three…Just when I was going to give these fellas some credit, that ugly finish happens… Recap: That dreadfully embarrassing fake Nash-in-ladies-clothes stuff on Nitro… Scott Norton works out his rage against the Cat by beating holy hell out of Silver King…It’s a beating that probably goes on a minute or so longer than it needs to…Silver King is a very good bumper and seller…Norton eventually applies a powerbomb for three… Recap: I’m going to have to suffer this West Texas Rednecks vs. Filthy Animals and/or No Limit Soldiers feud, unfortunately… Curt Hennig wrestles Rey Misterio Jr. after that review…This could be interesting, even with Hennig being kind of a lump at this stage of his career…Rey’s face screams that this match is serious business to him…he rushes the ring and eats a big right from Hennig…Hennig follows up with a chop and some boots…Rey makes a comeback as Larry Z. opines on how Hennig is pretty much a stodgy dude like his parents who freaked out about long hair and rock…It’s actually pretty good stuff…Larry is not a death metal fan, which is probably a heel statement for some of you, though…Hennig bails and then snaps Rey’s neck over the top rope when Rey pursues…Larry puts himself over as the master of bailing and stalling…He sort of is…Maybe not the inventor, as he put it, but one of the masters…Hennig continues to disrespect Rey with slaps… We have an obligatory wandering brawl…Hennig is just not that interesting…He does launch Rey across the guardrail as we go to break, though…That was neat…Rey is out here bouncing around, which keeps this match watchable…We come back to Rey selling for ponderous Hennig offense…Misterio actually manages a Frankensteiner and gets a little comeback going…Rey targets Hennig’s trick knee…He lands stomps and low dropkicks to it, then hangs Rey in the corner and gives him a Shattered Dreams, except with a dropkick instead of a regular kick… Rey climbs the corner and lands ten punches, but eases up when he hops back down and gets a poke to the eye, I think…The camera made it hard to see what Hennig was doing…Hennig takes back over with some dull offense…Oh, and the neck snap spot…That’s not dull…I dig that spot…Hennig hits the Rick Rude hip swivel and points to the sky…Hennig lands a standing dropkick, which is also a nice spot…It’s fine that he's pulling that move off at this point in the match...Rey didn’t score that much damage on his knee… Man, this match is fine, but it feels like it’s going on forever…Rey fights out of the corner, targets the knee with a dropkick again, and gets two on a split-legged moonsault…He tries a springboard moonsault and gets caught, but wriggles out behind and hits another low dropkick to the knee…Rey’s seated senton springboard is also caught, but he punches Hennig down, then slides between Hennig’s legs and hits a mule kick…So, in a nice callback, Rey, who has been dismissively slapped by Hennig at various points in this match, slaps the shit out of Hennig and then lines him up for a Bronco Buster…Bobby Duncum Jr. comes down and yanks Rey down, then slides him into the post…Duncum and Hennig attack Rey until Kidman and Konnan run down and clear the ring…Konnan, Kidman, and Rey seem like a promising core for a stable…It seems like Nash, Bischoff, and/or Russo are going to have to go out of their way to book a stable like that incorrectly, if in fact they’re all part of the Filthy Animals… Recap: Poop… Recap: Dean Malenko thinks he deserves a bigger push than he’s getting…NOPE…Also, the Horsemen are dead yet again and Flair is eternally beefing with Piper… Chris Benoit is just using Dean Malenko’s music now, I guess…What, did Turner lose the rights to Benoit’s old joint?...Benoit faces Ric Flair (w/Asya) in our Thunder main event…Benoit wants to chops the hell out of Flair…Flair wants to avoid getting chopped…Early on, Benoit gets what he wants, so Flair bails and backs up the aisle…Flair calls Asya over and talks strategy… Flair gets back in the ring and wins a shoulderblock, but gets suckered into a drop toehold…Benoit locks the Figure Four on in the middle of the ring…Ric gets the ropes, so Benoit goes on the attack and targets Flair’s knee…Here’s one thing I have to say about Flair’s style…Because he’s got a “play the hits” philosophy, that means that when he’s a heel, he is extraordinarily generous to his opponents…It hurts him in the sense that his peers don’t give nearly as much (or anything at all, *coughHulkstercough*)…He looks a level beneath those guys as a result…On the other hand, Benoit looks great because Flair’s giving him so much… Flair even takes a bump off a ref shove, but he eventually sneaks and cheats his way into control…Ric draws the ref over so Asya can dig her fingers into Benoit’s eyes…Larry Z. wonders what she can bench, and yeah, I’m curious…Ric chokes Benoit, then Asya chokes Benoit…Benoit fights up an drills Flair with punches and chops…Benoit hits a back body drop and then knocks Flair down…Flair begs off, but it doesn’t earn him any space…The match feels like it’s cresting here and we should be going into the finish, but there are still eight-ish minutes left in the show…Flair and Benoit trade flash pinfall attempts before Flair bails again… Benoit chops Flair outside the ring, then tosses him back in and continues to be a step ahead…Benoit gets two on a snap suplex…Flair and Benoit crash into each other on a shoulderblock and trigger a standing ten count…Flair crawls over and covers, but only for two…Flair shoots Benoit into the ropes, but Benoit reverses and locks on a sleeper…Flair reverses it, but Benoit runs him head-first into the corner buckles…Benoit flips out of a back suplex attempt and rolls Flair up for two… Flair pokes the eyes to get some control and tries to assert himself with chops, but Benoit eats one and then dishes out several in return…Benoit hits yet another back body drop, then throws a bunch of punches…Benoit tries another back body drop, but Flair stops short and kicks him…Flair tries a Figure Four, but Benoit turns it into a small package for two…Benoit tries a side headlock, which is a common mistake against Flair…Flair turns it into a kneebreaker, then locks on a Figure Four… Benoit survives the Figure Four and turns it over…The men roll into the ropes and break the hold…Flair grabs Benoit’s leg, but Benoit lands an enziguri…He’s added that move into his repertoire since Owen passed, I’ve noticed…Benoit tries a dropkick, but Flair dodges it, then gets two on a pinfall attempt…They trade pinfall attempts and Benoit struggles to bridge up and out of one pinning combination so that he can flip it around and get a backslide…He juuuuuust gets his shoulders up enough on the first try so that it’s plausible that he kicked out of the pinfall attempt, barely…I know that psychopath made himself do five hundred Hindu squats in the back right after the match, no breaks, no water or Gatorade, for that minor mistake…Benoit lands a clothesline, then another…He drops a diving headbutt for one…two…and DDP runs down and yanks the ref out of the ring…Page, Bam Bam Bigelow, and Ric Flair attack Benoit…Benoit tries to fight them off, but falls to the numbers game…Page and Bigelow combine on a tower Diamond Cutter… That match picked up and had a second wind, but man, is it a bummer that this match also ended in a DQ due to interference…I would still suggest it to anyone who wanted to watch a random WCW TV match from 1999, of course…But three matches ended in DQs tonight…Yuck…It’s okay to just let the babyface win sometimes, booking committee…I still enjoyed the show well enough, though…I score it a WOOO…It could have scored more if we got a couple more clean finishes, though…
  15. I vaguely remember Savage and the ladies getting hit with sewage in the ring, now that you mention it. I don't know where I saw that clip. Anyway, at least now I'm emotionally prepared, so thanks! According to Twiztor below, it was Jesse agreeing to be at SummerSlam, which makes it pretty embarrassing on the part of Bisch. That man is shook as hell. I'm not even sure that Hogan's babyface turn is taking - as you note by using the word "ostensibly" - so yeah, Bischoff trying to be a babyface is absurd. He's smarmy, he's shitty, he's mean. He sucks. And the last time we saw him prominently on-screen (so not his brief glimpses on Nitro when Bret Hart "quit" or when he got the main event at Slamboree re-started), he drove Ric Flair into a field for a ten-minute long gang beating! What the fuck, no one forgot that he did that on screen! Hak is good and deserves my respect. Crush is bad and does not (until KroniK, when he will be allowed his full name). I've also made a ruling on Virgil/Vincent. It's Virgil until he's off screen. Hak needs to blow this popsicle stand anyway. He's been booked like a doofus. If you're going to start a hardcore division, bring in Sandman, and have him proclaim to be the King of Hardcore, maybe jobbing him in hardcore matches to everyone from Bam Bam to Brian fucking Knobbs is not the best way to get a return on your investment. I will just be glad if the rest of the feud doesn't stink, even if that was as good as it gets. As I said up top, embarrassing. Bischoff's stream of consciousness about how he's going to be a better creative executive mixed in with his random outbursts at the WWF and its creative direction are pretty funny if you take them in a different light, however. I think the man is subconsciously realizing that he's a fraud without the twenty or twenty-five years of distance from the situation to offload the blame for this show tanking in the ratings onto Turner being a mess (which it was, but come on). This is going to be a long four months. The best thing about the Russo era is that the show goes back down to two hours at some point during it, IIRC. Thank goodness. Three-hour Nitro has been mostly a bummer. Because I'm a doofus, I listened to a recent 83 Weeks on this past Nitro, and it staggered me that this Astrodome show was attended by about 45% of the people who were at the last Astrodome show in December of 1998. What shocks me about Nitro's fall is how rapidly it happened. You look at ratings or attendance for Nitro between late 1998 and early-mid 1999, and it's wild how quickly they got crushed. Once Austin becomes champ over on RAW, the WWF never has much trouble with direct head-to-head against Nitro again, but just looking at the Nitro numbers, they go from regularly pulling ratings in the mid-4s to regularly pulling them in the low-3s in seven or eight months. Attendance nearly halves in that same time. That's a wild turnaround. Just as fast as WCW elevated itself to doing record business, it fell off.
  16. Show #191 – 31 May 1999 “The one where Randy Savage, Eric Bischoff, and Kevin Nash combine to produce what could end up being the single worst episode of a wrestling show in the history of time” Raven, wearing a dope Hellboy shirt, wanders around outside randomly, where he is jumped by DDP and Bam Bam Bigelow and then tossed into a dumpster. Somehow a ring of observers was here, efficiently cordoned off by security before it happened, almost like this was staged for a wrestling show and not a spontaneous attack. Title sequence. Recap: All the stuff that happened the last Nitro and Thunder, at least related to ongoing feuds. What I’m most surprised about is that we’re this late in the year and there are still angles that show promise. Team Madness adding one more male member, maybe a sociopathic little Savage protégé, and then running around causing fuckery in multiple angles sounds like something that I could watch for the next six months. It feels like WCW has the tweeners and heels to put on a consistently good show, but they’re just not able to get right. Nitro Girls. Pyro. Maybe the problem is the lack of strong babyfaces, actually. There’s Goldberg and Sting, and then Rey’s very over as a babyface and Nash is pretty over depending on the location of the show, but this show is setting up to rely on Piper, Hulk, and Bisch as lead babyfaces, and that’s no formula for consistently good television. I mentioned that Konnan lost a bit of overness without the Wolfpac, but so has Nash. He’s clearly behind Goldberg and Sting when they clash heads in a match or angle, and he struggles to be over more as a babyface than Ric Flair when they're in the South. Eddy Guerrero! YES! Thank goodness he’s back on television. He’s still healing, so he’s going to join commentary. They share pictures of Eddy’s bashed up rental car as he talks about the injuries he got. Wasn’t Eddie on somas when he rolled that car? It’s sort of audacious to show pictures of the car he rolled while pilled up if that’s how it was. Eddy looks genuinely happy to be here, but he’ll get sick of all this WCW shit again soon enough and head to New York in about seven months. Hardcore Hak (w/Chastity) faces Billy Kidman in the opener, which is a pretty interesting matchup in theory. I’m not entirely sure what we’re going to get. There are a cadre of misguided Hulk Hogan fans holding up signs and rocking the black-and-white nWo t-shirts in the fourth row on the hard cam. Boy, it’s gonna be a long night with those fellas throwing their signs up. Well, at least they’re not signs with random homophobic insults on them, I can at least credit them that much. Kidman goes behind Hak and trips him, then tries a hammerlock that Hak back elbows his way out of. They do some mat wrestling, and I sort of enjoy it, mostly Hak flopping around like a fish trying to work his way to the ropes. Oh great, here comes Tank Abbott with a group of dudes who I don’t recognize any of off the jump. He grabs a mic in the middle of this match and cuts a terrible promo in which he says these rasslers ain’t hardcore, he’s hardcore because he fights in a cage for every match, not just the occasional gimmick match. He declares himself the ref for the Rick Steiner/Sting cage match, and if he’s not allowed to be, “[in a tone that sounds like he’s on somas himself] I’m gonna bring hell with me.” I don’t ever want to hear shit about Ken Shamrock’s shortcomings as a wrestler ever again. He came off like a total psycho whenever he yelled into a mic; Abbott sounds like he’s sleepwalked into the arena. Oh yeah, there’s a match going on that I was interested in until Tank Abbott got all the attention. Chastity grabs a chair and holds it up in the corner, then directs Hak to grab Kidman’s jorts and yank him backward. He does, and Kidman takes a header into the chair. This gives Hak some space to grab a bunch of junk and pile it in the ring. As an aside while Hak sets up his little in-ring playground, do you know how many times I’ve typed “Sandman” during Hak matches and then had to go back and update it? Dammit. Hak tries a rolling senton through a table, but whiffs, and then Kidman puts a chair on Hak’s face and goes up for an SSP, but Hugh Morrus runs down, knocks Kidman off the top, and stomps him out. Brian Knobbs follows and crowns Hak with a trash can. Just upstream, Twiztor was talking about how effective Randy Savage was as an agent of chaos on this show, and I think Scott Steiner fits that role as well. So I get it; the booking committee is trying to copy the WWF style at the time, with twists and turns and storylines bleeding over into one another and lots of run-ins. But what they’re missing is the characters who make sense in that environment. The WWF had a lot of outsized characters. I don’t want to say “cartoonish” because that’s not the appropriate word, but they had guys who were even larger than your typical larger-than-life characters. Even the steady midcarders in the company were that way. WCW doesn’t have that outside of Savage or Scotty Steiner, really. Maybe Ric Flair can pull it off and be contemporary enough at the same time, too. But outside of those three, this type of television doesn’t serve WCW’s roster well at all. I mean, go back to what I was writing about Shamrock versus Abbott. Shamrock in the WWF tapped into that sort of vibrant character and came off as the ultimate, number one ankle-snapping lunatic (at least until Perc Angle in the mid-aughts). Abbott doesn’t have any of that in him. I mean, he’s not fit for the transition to pro wrestling in probably any capacity, but even if he were mechanically good at it, he’s got no personality for that sort of big, vibrant character work. WCW shouldn’t be putting him in positions to do that sort of thing! Anyway, this opening segment was a noisy mess. I really did not like it. As Knobbs storms out of the ringside area, we see Ric Flair on a phone in his backstage office. He’s purchasing the services of some sex workers. Then he hangs up and asks his buddy J.J. Dillon if the WCW Executive Committee agrees that the Savage Elbow is banned if Ric wants it banned. Ric does a whole routine where he asks who gets to make the bannin’ official and when the bannin’ can be made official and IT’S BANNED, is what you want to know and need to know. The Savage Elbow is BANNED. J.J. Dillon tries not to corpse as Flair does what is a pretty comical routine, actually. Recap: WCW is putting a lot of eggs in this busted, unsanitary Tank Abbott basket! Heenan compares the speed of Tank Abbott’s fists to the speed of Roddy Piper’s fists. That is one of the funnier things that I’ve heard in a while. Way to bury a guy, Bobby. Eddy leaves the desk, but thanks the fans who kept him in their thoughts, and also thanks WCW and Eric Bischoff for keeping the checks coming while he was on the shelf. See, Eric Bischoff is a good guy now! Any Eddy/Bischoff interaction or discussion actually is what I was interested to see, just a bit, because last we saw Eddy, he was a heel in a feud with another heel in Bischoff over who could be the biggest dickhead. Diamond Dallas Page comes to the ring with Bam Bam Bigelow. Page laments that no one has appreciated his attempts to apologize for obliterating Hulk Hogan’s knee. He’s upset that the Hulkster responded with that crutch shot at the end of last week and has decided that maybe he’ll need to put Hogan out of WCW permanently. No, that’s our weird, yappy little annoying hero New Yorker Vince Russo who does that. Page and Bam Bam joke about “taking out the trash” w/r/t Raven and then demand their tag title shot against Raven and Saturn tonight and not at the Great American Bash. Mike Tenay ambushes Saturn and Kanyon as they arrive and lets them know that Raven got dumped in a trash can in a weak attack that apparently sent him to the hospital somehow. That guy has been drilled with all sorts of detritus, but apparently a few punches and a dumping into a trash can put him out for the week. Kanyon is shocked, SHOCKED, I say. Tenay also tells them about Page and Bigelow’s challenge for tonight. Saturn laments not coming to the arena immediately like he suggested to Kanyon, and then Kanyon immediately volunteers himself as a replacement for Raven in said match. This actually does make sense as a turn, as Kanyon had multiple beefs with both Raven and Saturn in 1998, but Kanyon got over as a babyface in Pennsylvania (finally!), so probably even though this turn on Raven and Saturn was planned for a while, it’s not quite coming at the right time for Kanyon, I don’t think. I think the crowd wants to see him stick with those guys. I can’t blame Nash and Company for following through on this angle, though! It does make a lot of logical sense. I guess DJ Ran shit on Curt Hennig during his set – we catch a quick glimpse of him for the first time in these WWE Network edited shows on our return to ringside – and now Hennig walks over to Ran to harass him and maybe warble a country tune. Bobby Duncum Jr. (in Don’t Mess With Texas t-shirt because it’s the ‘90s) comes over to join Hennig and gives the guy a cowboy hat. I briefly think about how few Stinger Splashes this show can possibly earn at this point. Anyway, they run the DJ off, but then Konnan and Rey Misterio Jr. come out in Astros jerseys – obligatory FUCK THE ‘STROS – and they yap for a bit before brawling. I forgot to mention that we’re in the Astrodome tonight. I wonder if it’s as papered as the Alamodome was for the 1997 Rumble? I complain about the first hour getting punted, no action, just a bunch of video packages and wastes of time, and then Nash and Company hear my pleas and make sure to make this more action-y first hour be as unsatisfying as possible. Konnan and Rey Misterio Jr. will meet Curt Hennig and Bobby Duncum Jr. in a tag match later tonight. Van Hammer comes to the ring; his singlet promises NO ICE CREAM, NO PEACE! No, wait, it only promises that last part. His opponent: Evan Karagias. This could get a little ugly, but then again, Vampiro/Cat on Thunder ended up being decent, so I’ll assume the best. Then again, Miller and Vampiro are both way more fun than Evan Karagias. Hammer jumps Karagias at the bell and clubs and chops him, then catches him on a crossbody and Oklahoma Stampedes him into Tree of Woe position. Hammer lets Karagias squiggle out of Tree of Woe position so that he can charge him, but that’s a mistake; Karagias moves. Alas, Karagias is badly outsized, and Hammer easily shoots him into the ropes and shoulderblocks him down. There is a neat spot here where Karagias gets up for a headscissors and Hammer blocks it by prying apart Karagias’s legs while Karagias tries to leverage him over before finally getting enough weight down on Hammer to flip him. That was a unique struggle spot, actually. Hmmph. Karagias tries again, but Hammer is able to fall backward and dump him from that position into a Hot Shot. Hammer hits a rib breaker and then a big body slam and an elbow for two. Karagias tries to fight back, but gets clubbed down. Hammer lands a running clothesline into the corner and then that choke beal that’s he’s doing with his opponent seated on the top rope. Hammer locks on an abdominal stretch and leverages himself by grabbing the ropes, but Karagias is able to break it with a judo throw-ish sort of move, maybe an o goshi is the closest throw to what he does here, and he topples into a cover for a one count before Hammer powers out and goes right back to killing the future Three Count member. Hammer lands a superplex, covers, but pulls Karagias up. That sort of cocky behavior guarantees one final Karagias comeback, and Karagias hits a nice dropkick and then a springboard crossbody for two, but when he swings with the right, Hammer hooks him and hits a Cobra Clutch Slam for three. That match was slightly longer than it needed to be, but it was the best possible Van Hammer/Evan Karagias match possible. I am pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it was. Gene Okerlund interviews Roddy Piper in the center of the ring. Okerlund gives Piper a whole lot of wrestler/actor/Renaissance man plaudits in his introduction. They Live is a classic, I’ll give Piper (and Keith David, and John Carpenter, and Ray Nelson) a lot of credit for that. Piper comes out and immediately shouts out the NBA Rockets and also the troops on this Memorial Day show in what is a staggering display of cheap pop begging, even for him. He proceeds to cut a promo that is slightly better than the list promo from last week or whatever it was, but which is still doggedly worse than even his usual fare. Piper cribs a Michael Buffer saying to bring a somber Dean Malenko down to the ring. Malenko must feel pretty good about being the best mic worker in the ring for a brief moment after Okerlund excuses himself. Piper talks Malenko’s wrestling ability up for a second before grilling him about what’s up with the Horsemen. Malenko is not very talkative, but eventually, he basically says that the Horsemen are dead because Ric Flair instigated the break-up. I don’t think that Malenko and Benoit not getting a title shot after losing three title shots in a row or whatever it was is a good enough impetus for this turn. They come off as whiny, not as righteous. Ric Flair and Arn Anderson come out for a response. Malenko is like Pass the torch to the young guys, you jerk. Agreed, but he should be passing it to, like Chris Jericho or Rey Misterio Jr., not to you, you bland dolt. Flair checks his watch, seems bored, and finally after Malenko is done talking, tells Piper, who he calls “the mic stand” for tonight’s show, to back off. Then, he calls himself Big Jesus. Well, at least he didn’t call himself “bigger than Jesus,” as adding that extra word to the phrase apparently is unforgivable. Arn grabs a mic and is irritated that this conflagration is even happening right now and, man, this is so boring. Holy shit, Dean Malenko can’t talk at all. Malenko storms off and Arn goes after him. Piper crows about the Horsemen being troubled and makes to walk off, but Flair jumps him. Piper embarks upon a comeback, and I can’t believe they are running this feud and this match yet again. Piper whips Flair with Flair’s own belt, but Flair tries to fight through it; it doesn’t work, and Piper controls the ring. This goes on way too long, with Flair trying to grab Piper in between swings of the belt. Flair gets an ankle and drags him out of the ring, but Piper manages to fight Flair off. Finally, fucking finally, Flair backs away and this segment mercifully ends. Eric Bischoff joins the desk to commentate on this Konnan and Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Curt Hennig and Bobby Duncum Jr. tag match. Please drag Rey Misterio Jr. out of this muck and mire and put him in a feud more befitting his stature and talent. Konnan and Rey jump their opponents as said opponents sing an off-key country tune. Konnan lands a DDT; Rey hits a Bronco Buster on Duncum. Bischoff doing his late-1995 babyface color in 1999 is just weird, man. So weird. Hennig and Duncum isolate Rey in their corner. Duncum gets two on a shoulderbreaker; Hennig tags in and disrespectfully slaps Rey, then puts all his effort into whipping Rey into the other corner. The country-fried heels continue to tag in and out and control the match. Boy, they had a limited shine segment and went right into the FIP segment super quickly. Hennig does a little Rick Rude hip swivel as a tribute before going back to beating down Rey. After a couple more tags, Rey finally manages to get some space by elbowing Duncum when Rey is shot into the heel corner, then elbowing and mule kicking Hennig before throwing one final punch and diving for a hot tag. Konnan is on complete fire, as is the crowd, and locks Hennig in a Tequila Sunrise before Duncum draws a DQ with a cowbell shot and then a hog-tying of Konnan while Hennig restrains Rey. Bischoff putting over hip-hop and rap as a cultural movement is certainly a thing for this dorky cornball Baby Boomer to try and credibly attempt as a babyface commentator, but hey, he tries anyway! The Macho Man heads to the ring by himself tonight. I think he’s just cutting a promo. Savage claims that Nash is going to fight him tonight rather than at GAB; then, he makes a point of asserting that NASH IS GAYYYYYYYY and Bischoff, the babyface commentator, mind you, says SAVAGE IS THE GAYYYYYY ONE, JUST LOOK AT HIS CLOTHING. Boy oh boy, the ‘90s: Full of good things like Hey Arnold! and Boyz II Men albums and the best era for both the NBA and MLB. Also, full of bad things like casual homophobia every-damn-where and ineffective, harmful crime bills and the SNES game Lester the Unlikely. Dualities, man, dualities. Madusa jogs down, not wearing a bra, and I only note that because she barely averts a nip slip and Bischoff nervously mumbles EEEEEEASY on commentary. Not to be crude, but wearing that and jogging at the same time was tempting fate. Anyway, Madusa is like George told me to tell you that Kevin Nash is here, and Savage is like OH YEAH and then he leaves. That whole segment was a black hole of suck. We cut to the back where Kanyon pretends to be knocked out as Page and Bigelow poke at him. I think, even considering my foreknowledge that the Jersey Triad is a thing, this is the most obviously telegraphed turn that I’ve seen in a while. It’s not quite “Tatanka is the one who sells out to Ted DiBiase instead of Lex Luger,” but it’s not that far off. Erik Watts faces David Flair (w/Torrie Wilson, who is dressed like a sultry plantation owner) up next. Ric, Arn, and Asya are there to oversee the proceedings. Bischoff, in a hilarious statement that only gets funnier from here in the future, says that his fifteen-year-old son Garett could have a winning record if the fix were in for him as much as it is for poor dopey David. Now, I didn’t watch that Hogan/Bischoff era of TNA, but come on. COME ON. WCW can be so unintentionally funny sometimes. Bonus for David wrestling Erik Watts while this conversation goes on. Look, I’m not one of those “nepo baby” critics because frankly, everyone uses whatever ins they have in whatever industry or walk of life they’re a part of to get ahead. Society is in no way a pure meritocracy, and in many fields or walks of life, it can scarcely be considered a meritocracy at all. However, while being the kid of the booker gets you in the door easier, you have to actually be good to stick. Just ask Dustin Rhodes or Charlotte Flair about why they have long, successful careers…and ask Erik Watts, Garett Bischoff, and David Flair why they never found much success in the business. Pro wrestling, somewhat like real sports, values actual results too much for anyone to hang on in a big spot if they don’t have the talent. Watts kills David until Flair distracts the ref and Arn hits a spinebuster; David crawls over and gets three. This new Great American Bash logo that plays on this promo for the show is sinfully ugly. Good gracious, it’s hideous. Recap: Randy Savage pretties up Kevin Nash with a little face paint. Are they really going to hot shot two big matches on the GAB card two weeks before the show? Really? [Editor's note: Not quite, but it's not like the alternative was any better than just going ahead and doing it. In fact, hot shotting the matches would have surely resulted in a better Nitro.] Buff Bagwell meets with Ric Flair in his office. He challenges Flair to prove that he’s The Man (in Charge) in WCW by booking him in a match against Randy Savage tonight. Flair says that Buff has earned a lot of nice stuff in life, but he hasn't earned a match against Savage because Buff’s not in Savage’s league. Arn suggests that Flair give Buff the backup option: Bobby Eaton. Buff slanders poor Bobby Eaton’s name (Buff: “Does he even work here anymore?!”). We continue pushing this “old guys protect their spots against the young guys” angle that seems like it’s not going to be any good. Buff storms out, promising to take it to Eaton. Ernest Miller (w/Sonny Onoo) comes to the ring. This bum Eric Bischoff pimps ad sales for Nitro being up eight percent. This fucking CLOWN, holy shit. What is he doing out here? The Cat’s robe has the classy and classic WCW logo on it. I miss that logo so much. Miller clowns on the crowd and does his routine. He calls out Scott Norton specifically. Norton comes to the ring as everyone is confused about why the Cat continues to do this to himself. Norton kills this poor bastard, of course. The B-Teamers get a kick out of the massacre backstage, as we see through the magic of split screen. But wait just a minute! Sonny Onoo sees his man is in trouble and slips him a crowbar when the ref forces Norton to break in the corner. Onoo draws the attention of the ref, and the Cat swings for the fences and hits a home run. The Cat gets the three, to the shock of the B-Teamers, who all immediately split because they know Norton’s gonna be pissed when he wakes up. The Cat dances, then chokes the passed-out Norton for a bit before going back to celebrating. That was pretty good, though I ultimately don’t have any clue where this mini-feud is going. Randy Savage (w/Team Madness) comes out here again. I have to admit, his new theme has grown on me. It’s pretty sick, actually! I am aware that there’s a terrible Savage/Rodman feud coming at some point, but I sure wish they could have gotten more out of Savage and his dodgy knees in this final run. Bischoff desperately flogs future ticket sales by saying that the Nitro Girls do hot dance routines to popular music during the commercial breaks. This is the most desperate that I’ve ever heard one man be. I’m not kidding. I don’t ever want to hear this dude make fun of Tony Khan being a desperate weirdo at an AEW press conference or on Twitter or whatever ever again. No more of that shit. Huh, the Wolfpac's theme plays, so I guess Nash is on his way…no, wait, it’s a guy made to look like Nash, except dressed as a woman because NASH CROSS-DRESSES ON ACCOUNT OF HE IS GAY. SO GAYYYYY which is as bad as being a WOMAN. If you are gay or a woman, don’t bother watching pro wrestling in 1999! It only has contempt for you and people like you. And don’t get me started on how pro wrestling in 1999 feels about trans folks! Needless to say that this segment fucking SUCKS. I just gave Macho some praise, and then he pulls off what has got to be one of the worst performances that I’ve seen in the segments that he’s been in tonight. Even though women SUCK and are WEAK and STUPID, Madusa manages to get in the ring and kick the shit out of the Nash impostor, then sets him up on the top rope so that Mona can drill him with a top-rope Frankensteiner. Bischoff is like NO GIRL COULD DO THAT! MONA IS ACTUALLY A DUDE because he is the GODDAM WORST. GET HIM OFF TELEVISION. GET HIM OUT OF THE COMPANY. You will never convince me that Russo is worse than this guy! Maybe just as bad. But worse? I refuse to believe it. George comes in and lands a Gorgeous Elbow, then Savage slams the impostor and drops a Savage Elbow for three. Hey, this was awful television. Except for the Mona Frankensteiner and the Gorgeous Elbow. But you know, not nearly cool enough to overcome the noxious stew of sexism, homophobia, and transphobia in that segment. I can safely say that a far less enlightened teenage me still would have thought this segment was lame and tasteless. Older and more enlightened me is pretty fuckin’ disgusted, honestly. Recap: Savage puts it to Buff Bagwell. Why in hell has Bischoff deigned to insert himself back onto commentary? He fucking BLOWS at this. Bobby Eaton comes out here. I don’t care about this show anymore. Just hurry up and get this thing over. Fuck me. Buff Bagwell comes out here. Bischoff goes off on Jesse Ventura and how the guy is a joke. I don’t know where the hell that came from. Like, he spends a good couple of minutes shitting on him. Did Jesse say some shit about WCW or something? What the fuck? Eaton jumps Buff at the bell, but Buff eventually lands a monkey flip and takes over with a couple of arm drags and a dance. Eaton gets back on top with a boot choke, gives Buff a lot of problems, and basically proves Ric Flair right about Buff not being able to hang with a guy like Savage if he’s having so many problems with 1999 Bobby Eaton. Buff should have killed Eaton in about two minutes to prove Flair wrong, but no, here he is whiffing on a crossbody and spilling to the floor. Do these fellas need to brawl outside the ring in a match like this? That’s rhetorical, but whatever. Eaton once again counters Buff with a neckbreaker when he’s back in the ring. Buff takes back over, hits a back suplex, and lands a Blockbuster for three as Tony S. says that Eaton was one of the advisers on how to make the WCW Mayhem game more realistic. I consider this piece of information to be a knock against Eaton and a blight on his resume. This show is in competition to be the worst one of the whole bunch…so far. Saturn comes out alone to defend the tag titles since Raven got hurt before the show and Kanyon got “hurt” backstage. Saturn gets a mic and promises to win the match by himself; then, DDP and Bam Bam Bigelow enter the arena. Page just checks to make sure that Saturn is agreeing to wrestle them for the titles before starting the show. Bischoff goes on and on about how kewl Hulk Hogan is and how much he luvs da bizness and such. Vincent Kennedy McMahon, from a creative standpoint, looks better and better for figuring out how to make Eric Bischoff an effective on-screen character. Getting Hogan over as a megastar when he was eighty percent of the way there already is nowhere near impressive. Cutting Steve Austin loose: same. Letting a legitimate A-list movie star get himself over: more of the same. But making Bischoff a positive as an on-screen character after how little ability and talent Bisch showed in WCW is nothing short of amazing. Saturn starts out hot and gives suplexes to every-damn-body before the break, but he suffers a beating after it. I’m baffled as to why they’re pushing this match up two weeks, but okay. The crowd gives Saturn a supportive chant, but he continues to eat offense. This is a loooooong FIP segment with a few two counts sprinkled in there. Bigelow misses a diving headbutt after an eternity, and Saturn makes a last-ditch comeback. He gets 2.9 on a rollup, then lands a DVD on Page that Page kicks out of a 2.9, and was he supposed to? I think maybe Bammer was supposed to break it up. Anyway, Kanyon runs in, stands in Saturn’s corner, and calls for a tag. Kanyon catches the hot tag and takes a dive off a DDP discus punch that hands the gold to Page and Bigelow. Ah, we’re going to draw this out, huh? The crowd is dead silent, by the way. Team Madness gets in a limo, which has a camera placed in it for some reason. Suddenly, Nash pulls up in a septic tank, blocks the limo, and spews waste through the sun roof and into the limo. He takes off, and Team Madness piles out of the car and screams for a bit before hacking up poop bits. I cannot express to you how deeply I hate all of this. Oh, how I loathe this Nitro. Can you believe this bum Nash? We get a “Nitro is sponsored by…” card in which Nash reads a voice over for the fake waste company that he got the septic tank from. “For all your savage waste needs” is NOT FUNNY, Nash, you idiot. It is DUMB. FUCK OFF, NASH. DJ Ran commands the cage be dropped for a match that I forgot was going to even happen, and I was absolutely not looking forward to it at the start of the night: Sting versus Rick Steiner in a cage. Recap: How did we downgrade Sting into this nothing feud with the lesser Steiner Brother? Who the fuck cares, actually? Tank Abbott and his entourage full of noxious Twitter profiles come to the ring. Flair let Abbott be the ref for this match, apparently. This show has been so bad that it makes the Fingerpoke of Doom Nitro look like Bash at the Beach 1996. This is an eight-minute match in which six of the minutes are cursory work. Sting deserves far better than he gets in this stupid company. He’s still pretty over even though he’s been booked into the dirt. Sting tries hard, doing stuff like hanging from the cage to send double boots into Steiner or flinging himself into the cage and bouncing halfway across the ring when Steiner ducks a Stinger Splash against the cage. I don’t know why he tries so hard. His opponent stinks in singles competition. I wish we could somehow transfer 1999 Sting into 2023 AEW so that his effort and abilities could be at least somewhat properly utilized. I don’t even like AEW or its house style, but there is zero chance that Tony Khan books 1999 Sting with this much disrespect. Tank Abbott yanks Rick Steiner out of the way of a Stinger Splash because Abbott and Steiner yapping at each other on Thunder was YET ANOTHER RUSE, you see! Steiner uses athletic tape to tape Sting’s hands to the ropes, then beats him down. That’s it. That’s the show. I don’t care if you think I’m crazy: Hammer/Karagias was the best thing on this show, and Cat/Norton was the second-best thing, and those were only average. Looks like we’ve reached a new low in NITROOOOOOOOOing! PLEASE! FIRE! ERIC! BISCHOFF! DAMMIT! -50 out of 5 Stinger Splashes.
  17. The season pass for Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope was on sale this week, so I went ahead and bought it. The sequel was nowhere near as good as the first game (mostly because the freer movement of the second game took a lot of the fun out of the SRPG parts of it), but what the hell, I'm interested in re-visiting it. Also, Rayman is in the third DLC, and I am very into that. I guess since I'm talking about Rayman and Mario crossing over, I'll go ahead and drop a "Put Rayman in Smash, Sakurai/whoever takes over for Sakurai" here.
  18. The first link is Al Green doing a soul cover of a Country Western song, but I guess that is technically correct, which is the best type of correct! /Futurama Oh, I'm on an ice floe floating out to oblivion on Van Hammer being sorta fun and entertaining. I accept it. The guy tries so hard and does have fun matches if he's got someone to lead him, IMO. I just sound like a DVDVR contrarian, I know. Savage as Agent of Chaos is the best way to define his WCW run, and from that perspective, he was a great character. This guy just bounces around causing discord everywhere. Every wrestling company needs a character like that, but Savage is the rare wrestler who was totally convincing in that way. Actually, so was Scott Steiner, who is doing a mini-version of causing chaos and discord ever since his heel turn. The Krayzee Eyez Killa ep of Curb is the perfect analog for that Flair/Stevie Ray sketch! Horace works hard, and I will always maintain that he was a useful piece of the Flock in ring. The thing is that as soon as he goes from getting to wrestle Kanyon, Raven, and Saturn every night to wrestling Stevie, Crush, and Virgil in the B-Teamer feud, you see that, much like Van Hammer, the guy is heavily dependent on having an awesome opponent to be more than just boring, but serviceable. Well, after checking what Van Hammer's been up to because of your post, I think you, Twiztor, and I can all agree that as bad as Hammer might objectively be at wrestling, he's still better at that than driving! By the way, I asked my wife if she ever watched Headbanger's Ball, and she said not usually as that's not her type of music, and then she said (with no prompting from me), "Hosted by Matt whatever his name was?" I told her it was Rachtman and not Pinfield and mentioned the conversation about that a couple pages back. She quickly looked up Pinfield's Wikipedia page and figured out our shared confusion: Pinfield hosted another heavy metal show called 120 Minutes, which is what we both misremembered as Pinfield hosting Headbanger's Ball. Another mystery solved! I was just glad to know that it wasn't only me that hallucinated Pinfield as the host of Headbanger's Ball.
  19. HOW DARE YOU BESMIRCH THE NAME OF THE PITBULL, LONG MAY HE APPLY CODE REDS TO MANY A PUKE.
  20. FINALLY If you can't steal Bielsa from Argentina, give a lot of money to Jurgen Klopp to try his hand at coaching a national team, please and thank you.
  21. Meh, don't try to win the ball with your studs. That would have been called a foul if it happened somewhere in the middle of the pitch, so I don't have a problem with it being called a penalty when it happens in the box.
  22. No offense to Harry Kane, but he needs to go off at sixty or sixty-five so Ollie Watkins or Ivan Toney can come on in the final. He's still a great player, but he's running on empty.
  23. Thunder Interlude – show number sixty-four – 27 May 1999 "The WCW Gang's biggest stars are secretly the Rock and Gorgeous George Wagner" Let’s Thunder… Video retrospective: Team Madness wreaks havoc on WCW… I think Savage is going to win the gold off Nash at GAB, mostly because I know he still has two WCW World Championship victories to score in the next six-ish months…I also know that he doesn’t hold the title long either time…And I know that he always loses World Heavyweight titles to either Ric Flair or Hulk Hogan…So my guess is that Savage wins it at GAB and drops it back to Ric a Nitro or two later since Hulk's injured… This is a live Thunder, so Larry Z. gets some obligatory chants…Tenay says that Rick Steiner and Sting will wrestle in a steel cage on the next Nitro…There’s a bit more recap, and then we get a match… Hey, it’s Kaz Hayashi!...Let’s get this guy a little push…Tenay tells us that Hugh Morrus is jealous of all the attention the cruisers have gotten, which explains him ruining the cruiser battle royal last week…Kaz is facing Lash LeRoux…Alright, I’m into this…This company is so bad at building more cruisers to make for a competitive division…But I think they get better at it as they get closer to dying…I could be wrong, but that’s my memory… Lash controls out of the lockup with a waistlock, then escapes an arm wringer…Kaz decides to stop mat wrestling and start striking…He misses a spin kick and gets powerslammed, though…Kaz blocks Lash’s follow-up arm drag and gets a backslide for two, then lands a dropkick to a still-seated Lash…Kaz brings Lash back to standing and wins a chop-fest, then does a People’s Elbow knockoff…It’s kind of insane how many guys did stuff that Rock did at the time the Rock was still active. We cut backstage during this match…Team Madness is there, and Savage is busting through doors and looking for Buff Bagwell…If you’ll recall, Buff said that Savage was old and busted and scared of the young guys on Nitro…Savage busts in on a still-injured Disco and a mirror-wielding Scotty Riggs and tosses them over a table…Let me give Riggs credit: He tries to ward off Savage’s attacks by nodding to his mirror and saying, “Hey, seven years’ bad luck”…It didn’t work, but I appreciate the effort… Back in the ring, Kaz is still in control…The ham ‘n eggers in the crowd chant U-S-A…That chant should only be done ironically at this point…By “at this point,” I mean in 1999, much less 2024…Lash makes a comeback…He gets two on a Blue Thunder Bomb and then two more on a floatover Northern Lights suplex…He puts Kaz in fireman’s carry position, but Kaz escapes and after a couple of counters, eventually lands a Frankensteiner on a charging Lash…Kaz goes up top, but takes too much time and gets crotched…Kaz fights Lash off, but takes more time to dive and gets counter-dropkicked…Lash now goes up top, but is hurt, takes time, and gets crotched himself…Kaz suplexes Lash to the mat, then pulls him into position and goes up one more time…He scores a senton splash and wins a three count…That was decent, but breaking away from it hurt the flow of the match way too much from a viewers’ standpoint… Prince Iaukea meets Van Hammer in the next match…Hammer is trying to be logically consistent in this heel turn…He is now anti-peace!...It even says so on his singlet!...Based on this stuff and the things he jabbers into the camera, he’s doing his own character evolution in which he’s decided that his ‘60s hippie approach is not what the animals in this late ‘90s crowd wants…His disappointment in that has led him to giving the crowd what they demand…Edginess and violence…No one on commentary has quite made that connection…Poor old Van Hammer, trying his hardest to tell a story, and no one cares…Well, I care…As this board’s foremost (?) Van Hammer mark, I care… Oh yeah, you probably want to know how the match is going…Well, Hammer leverages his size…He does a very cool choke beal to Iaukea with Iaukea sitting on the top rope…Oh no, Tank fucking Abbott is sitting in the front row…Tank Abbott is yet another harbinger of the coming death of this once great company…Van Hammer destroys Iaukea’s back while Tenay talks up Abbott’s UFC credentials…My friends and I used to get together, rent a couple of early UFC competition tapes from Blockbuster and then watch them while marveling at the utter nonsense that was early UFC…Then we’d play some video games…Good times!...All this is to say that I knew who Tank was at the time and thought he was a Family Dollar Ken Shamrock at best… Van Hammer continues to destroy Iaukea’s back with a bear hug and strong Irish whips into the corner…He tries another choke beal and gets knocked away, but quickly crotches Iaukea as Iaukea tries to get to his feet for a dive…Hammer lands a stalling vertical suplex and then his Cobra Clutch Slam that has a name that I forget and that might have a different name now that Hammer’s a heel, who knows…Anyway, he wins the match…I’m sorry, but I think Van Hammer is fun and doesn’t deserve your scorn… Recap: Savage paints Nash with lipstick because lipstick is FOR GIIIIIIIRRRLS! And Nash is a GIIIIIIIIRRRL! Which is bad, obviously, it's the '90s. Randy Savage and the rest of Team Madness come to the ring for an interview with Gene Okerlund, and this group is way the hell over in my house…They’re also over in South Carolina. Now, what I don’t get, as I see Savage rip up someone’s Wolfpac sign, is why the build to Savage/Nash isn’t more focused on Nash merging with Hogan again when Savage wanted to create the Wolfpac to seize power from Hogan, specifically…Instead, it’s corny UR A GIRL stuff that's fueling this feud… Anyway, Okerlund is confused as to why Savage is so mad when such lovely women, and also Madusa, are associating with him…Speaking of Madusa, Eric Bischoff on an episode of 83 Weeks I just listened to went out of his way to say that she wasn’t nearly the worker she thinks she is…Bischoff is usually diplomatic (or disingenuous, depending on your point of view) in speaking about wrestlers, so that surprised me…It surprised Conrad too that Bischoff felt the need to make that declaration… I think, as someone who has very mixed feelings about Madusa, where I land is that I don’t like her character work at all, but I think her opinion of herself in the ring is at least somewhat justified…She had legitimately good-to-pretty great matches when she was in there with good talent…And she wasn’t a passenger against workers like Bull, either…Hell, she landed a match on my Favorites list during this watch through, and she drove the story of that match with her incredible selling of a knee injury…I think, from what I have heard Madusa say, she’s more upset at not getting the opportunity to do good work because no one took women seriously and thinks she could have had more good-to-great matches if WCW or WWF had done so…Which I think is fair…It was weird for Bischoff to throw shots like that, but he came off like a dick, IMO…Not that you won’t hear me bitching and moaning about Madusa in the next years’ worth of WCW programming reviews, mind you… Anyway, back to the interview…Savage says that he gets dates all the time, but he’s most focused on the date with Kevin Nash for the big gold…He’s more focused on Buff Bagwell tonight, though, and then, holy shit, he steals a catchphrase from Rock!...See, I told you, everyone is just cribbing from the Rock right now…Is there any question that he’s the biggest and most influential star in the business ever?...People didn’t steal from Hulk or Stone Cold like they do from the Rock…And not just anyone, but the Rock’s fucking contemporaries!...Guys that Rock would have looked up to as a kid!...Savage promises to beat Nash, and the crowd is mostly into it…Gene asks, “Do you mind if I do a little Richard Dawson,” and I think he’s going to try to steal kisses from much younger women, but no, I think he’s just going to do a survey about who the best wrestler is…Madusa is super-trashy while giving her answer…Which also doesn’t quite make sense…Go class things up by asking Mona…Thanks, Okerlund…So, as it turns out, all the ladies love the Macho Man the most…But who doesn’t, really?...Savage says he’s going to beat Buff up, but not too much because he wants him to make GAB to see Savage win the big gold… It's the Cat!...You may think I’m joking, but I really do have his actual music cued up on YouTube…As soon as I hear the dub’s terrible BOMP BOMP BOMP BOMP opening, I go back ten seconds, mute the show’s audio, and fire up the real thing…Bless YouTube for making this easy to do…The Cat and Sonny Onoo bully Penzer into announcing Miller as “The Greatest of All Time” and “The Godfather of Soul,” which is pretty amazing…Miller blows kisses to the crowd while they chant YOU SUCK at him…Miller threatens Scott Norton…Please stop calling your B-Team enemies “Yogi Bear,” Miller…That insult doesn’t even make sense…He decides that if Norton won’t come out, somebody better so he can whoop them…A porno funk riff brings out Vampiro…This is gonna be ugly, isn’t it?... Vampiro throws a few warning kicks…Onoo tries to pay off Vampiro, but it’s really just a distraction so that the Cat can jump him…They kick one another…Vampiro lands a spinning roundhouse kick….Onoo tries to distract Vampiro…The Cat tries a kick, but Vampiro moves and Onoo gets cleared out…Vampiro tries to take Miller up top for a move, but the Cat makes it out by low blowing Vampiro…Vampiro quickly fights back and lands chops, kicks, and a running lariat…Vampiro ducks a weak haymaker and gets two on a Uranage…Vampiro looks ascendant, but Onoo lands a kick to his kidney as he backs up against the ropes…That sends Vampiro stumbling forward into a Feliner that gets three…Yes!...They do the classic James Brown cape spot where Onoo covers Miller with his coat as Miller walks out tired…Miller finds his energy, bursts up, and dances!...Man, I love the hell out of Ernest Miller…And that cape spot that James Brown did was originally inspired by Gorgeous George (Wagner, not Bellars)…Is there an argument that Gorgeous George is the second-most influential wrestler behind the Rock?...Maybe he’s the most influential if you expand your view outside of only pro wrestling?... DDP and Ric Flair have a casual conversation in the back…Benoit busts in and shits on Ric, calling him a selfish old man…He wants a fight with Ric…Page jumps him from behind and stomps him out… Gene Okerlund interviews Brian Knobbs on the ramp…Why?...Knobbs yells about how nasty he’s going to make WCW and how good he is at being hardcore…Knobbs challenges Bam Bam Bigelow to a fight…Jimmy Hart joins the proceedings…Knobbs alludes to their past business dealings…Hart tries to bring Knobbs back into the fold as part of his First Family…Knobbs says he’ll consider it…Okerlund totally misinterprets Knobbs’s “I’ll think about it” as a firm no… Recap: I’m just going to go ahead and put the West Texas Rednecks/No Limit Soldiers feud that I deeply despise – I was very aware of it even though I wasn't watching WCW regularly at the time – on my Worst Feuds list now and save us all some time… Konnan comes to the ring as Larry Z., of all people, expresses a healthy view of rap…”Poetry[…]to a beat instead of singing” is what he calls it…When even Larry Z. understands rap on a basic level, close up shop…Konnan doesn’t do his whole Catchphrase Roulette…He revises his own personal history by casting the Wolfpac dumping him after the merger as Kevin Nash telling him that he didn’t need the Wolfpac as a crutch anymore and that he was ready to run by himself…Yeah, humans rationalize things all the time like this, don’t we?...That was a very human thing to say on Konnan’s part…Konnan, for all the shit I give him, can cut a thoughtful promo when he wants to…He shouts out Rey Misterio Jr., Billy Kidman, and Nash for helping him out recently…Oh no, he calls himself and the people who choose to run with him going forward “young, filthy animals”…OH NOOOOOO…He says they’re out for blood, “new or old”…OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…Then he hits the Catchphrase Roulette…And ends by quoting a JT Money song… Kenny Kaos comes to the ring to oppose Konnan…Tenay fills us in that Buff Bagwell will face Randy Savage later tonight…He also tells us that Tank Abbott will cut an interview with Gene Okerlund…Kaos overpowers Konnan on a collar-and-elbow tie-up early…Konnan gives him a lot of offense…Some of it is bad, like a goofy-looking clothesline that Konnan sort of just runs into before slowly toppling over…Konnan makes a comeback, but runs into a better clothesline after a minute or two of that…Kaos gets a couple of two counts…He gets cocky and jaws at the crowd…This is a classic “coulda been shorter” WCW television match…Kaos keeps cutting off comebacks…He tries a senton splash from the top and whiffs…Konnan gets up and quickly locks on the Tequila Sunrise for the submission victory… The bad news: Part of this recording is lost to time according to the WWE Network…The good news: The part that’s lost includes a chunk of Lenny Lane vs. Evan Karagias…Hey, Lodi’s now hanging out with Lenny Lane…As I recall, they do a gay panic gimmick for a minute or two until Turner S&P cuts all that out…As a matter of fact, Lodi’s lascivious “He’s lookin’ really, really good” into the camera w/r/t Lane speaks to where this on-screen relationship is headed…Neither of these guys in the ring are very good…They trade two counts…Karagias hits a shitty-looking corkscrew splash for three…I mean, it was a struggle corkscrew, let me tell you…It had no flavor…They show it on the Cinn-a-burst sponsored replay, but that corkscrew was more appropriate for a Fruit Stripe-sponsored replay…Absolutely zero flavor… Recap: Those damn rascally Steiner Brothers are targeting Sting and Lex Luger… Gene Okerlund awkwardly introduces Tank Abbott, who is still sitting in the front row…Abbott cuts a vile interview…Something about “cherries” in the ring…Konnan also talked about “bananas in tailpipes” earlier…I assume that all fruit-based insults are homophobic…Wait, except for my Fruit Stripe insult…That was a “bad gum”-based insult, not a homophobic one…Rick Steiner walks down and tries to brawl with Tank Abbott…Yeah, let’s fence these two off into an eternal feud…Maybe exclusively on WCWSN so that I don’t have to see it… Recap: Ric Flair hands Page and Bigelow a tag title shot, and while maybe this impromptu tag team should maybe win a tag match first before they get a shot at the tag titles, Benoit and Malenko are mistaken that they have any claim on another shot at them…Also, this version of the Horsemen lasted barely five months… Chris Benoit comes to the ring even though Dean Malenko’s music is playing…He faces DDP…They had good, but not amazing matches in 1998…Let’s see how it goes tonight…They have a punch-up to start…Page tries a discus clothesline and Benoit grabs Page’s arm and transitions into a Crippler Crossface…Page makes the ropes…He bails on a rope run, but Benoit clatters him with a nasty-looking suicide dive…Benoit beats Page around the ringside area…Benoit tosses Page in the ring and hops the ropes, but Page is there and sticks out a knee to land an impromptu inverted atomic drop as Benoit lands…Page hits a back suplex, then stomps and chokes his opponent…Benoit comes back with chops and a few stomps of his own…Page finagles a back elbow on an Irish whip reversal that sparks a standing ten count…Well, ref Boone is kneeling, but you know what I mean…Page gets up, hauls Benoit up, and tries a suplex, but Benoit reverses into a Crippler Crossface and tumbles outside with Page as he tries to lock it on…They have another obligatory ringside brawl, but the match has been intense enough that it’s reasonable to have in this match…Page gains control and hits a vertical suplex in the aisle… There’s a commercial break, and when we’re back, both men continue to battle outside the ring…Page gets control, but Benoit hops up and meets him with boots when Page dumps him into the ring before re-entering himself…Benoit tries ten punches in the corner, so Page low blows him to stop all that, then drops Benoit face-first into the buckles…Page is first up on another ten count and stomps Benoit all the way to the apron and then out onto the floor…Page tosses Benoit into the post, then rolls him in the ring and snaps his neck over the top rope…Back in the ring, Page lands a huge gutbuster…I love how he torques his smaller opponents before dropping them…That’s a great looking gutbuster…Page tries another gutbuster, but instead of dropping Benoit over his knee, drops him over the top rope to hang…Page follows up with a boot that knocks Benoit onto the apron… Page tries to run Benoit’s head into the post, but Benoit blocks it…Benoit hops up to the top rope, but Page is not hurt enough to do that yet, and DDP hops up and knocks Benoit into a seated position…Benoit drops into Tree of Woe position, and Page stomps him until Boone is able to back him off and unhook Benoit…Page asks Boone to check the time in this match, then chokes Benoit with tape while Boone talks to the timekeeper…Page locks on a chinlock with the tape hidden under his elbow, then lands a tape-assisted choke bomb that is creative and cool…Page goes back to the chinlock, no tape…Benoit fights up and breaks it with elbows…Benoit tries to chop Page down, but Page quickly grabs him and hit a tilt-a-whirl slam for two…Page decides to try a sleeper this time…Benoit manages to break it with a jawbreakers…Benoit comes back with punches and then chops… Page reverses a whip to the corner, but tris a back suplex that Benoit hops out of…Benoit lands a German Suplex for 2.5, then hangs on and hits another one for another 2.5…Benoit hangs on and tries again, but Page grabs the ropes and back kicks a low blow…Page hits a spinning powerbomb for 2.7…He signals for the Diamond Cutter, then attempts one…Benoit slips out and gets a backslide for two…Page is back up quickly and swings a wild haymaker at Benoit, who catches it and finally locks on the Crippler Crossface in the center of the ring…In a MAJOR bummer, Bam Bam Bigelow and Ric Flair run in…Bigelow and Page team up on an elevated Diamond Cutter…Two key observations about this one…First, this was the best Page/Benoit match so far, and in my opinion, that’s down to Page being in a clear sneaky heel role…Second, this goes on the list of good matches because it was really good, but the run-in was such a killer…If they’re going to do run-ins like this, make the matches shorter and less epic…A longer competitive match like this deserves some kind of finish, even a screwy one where Page cheats to win… Buff Bagwell and Randy Savage (w/Team Madness) meet in the main event of Thunder once more…Savage grabs a mic and promises to put on a show-slash-warning for Nash by beating up Buff next…Buff grabs a mic and tells Savage to take himself and his three chimpanzees back to the zoo…Mean!...The ladies surround the ring as Savage directs traffic…Madusa enters and draws the ref’s attention…Mona steps in and gets in Buff’s face…George sneaks in and pushes Buff from behind, giving him just enough of a shove to send him into a Savage forearm…Savage chokes and punches Buff… I gotta give Savage this much…He’s entirely broken down, but he was wise enough to create Team Madness as a way to help him add some fun gaga to his matches as compensation…We get an obligatory ringside brawl…The downside to Savage being physically busted is that outside of the gaga and the Savage Elbows, his matches stink…Madusa and George distract the ref so Mona can pop off her heels, climb to the top, and drill Buff with a missile dropkick…It ruled, and it got a pop that indicated as such…Savage hangs Buff in the Tree of Woe, goes outside, and yanks back on Buff’s neck…He shoves the ref away, and then George runs in and takes off her shoe, then jams the heel into Bagwell’s throat while Savage yanks away on the neck… It gets so nutty that ref Nick Patrick grabs a chair and threatens Savage with it (!!)…Savage rips it away and then threatens to swing it at the refs and security who have run down to stop his assault…That didn’t do much for Buff, but who cares?...Buff sucks and Team Madness rules… Benoit/DDP and Team Madness’s antics made this Thunder well worth my time and energy…Oh, and the Cat, too, he deserves some love…I give it a WOOOO…
  24. See? Kiss. of. Death.
  25. Huh, I don't think I fully remembered that there was a time that Tatanka, Kid, and Steve Austin were all under the employ of Ted DiBiase at the same time. Now that's a stable that could be pretty productive, theoretically.
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